My friend Aaron Linsdau is an Antarctic explorer and he has taught me a lot about developing
a positive outlook strengthens your resiliency.
He did this in the most unforgiving climate on the planet.
This is going to blow your mind.
For several years now, I mentioned this man in my keynotes and presentations.
And Aaron, I have a confession to make.
I usually declare, from the front of the room that you are crazy.
*Laughs* I'll take that personally from my psychologist.
Well, I'm sure that you will appreciate when a cli nical psychologist declares that from
in front of the room.
But here's what this guy did.
This is Aaron Lindsdau.
If you're not sure who he is, you're going to know after this video.
He trekked, solo, from the Hercules Inlet on the coast of Antarctica to the south pole.
This sends over 700 miles, I think it took you 3 months.
Yeah.
That was the longest day of your life, I'm sure.
Because the sun never went down during that time.
Folks, this is a feat that very few people on the planet can claim.
That's why I said that you're crazy.
Yes, absolutely.
And I embrace that.
You're going to embrace that a little bit aren't you?
Do you learn somethings from that experience?
And by the way folks, Aaron and I are doing another episode, you can look for it.
It's How to survive in Antarctica?
Where you're going to share some of the crazy things that came up for you.
And we'll have a lot of fun in that episode.
The thing that struck me, Aaron is you shared this experience with me is the importance
of a positive attitude in developing resiliency and even right down to survival.
What have you learned about that?
The number 1 thing about being positive and these experience is where you're in extreme
conditions and that the circumstances are completely out of control is to actually choose
to have a positive mindset.
Because you can actually develop physiological problems where you start spiraling down and
you think, "Oh man, this is terrible, this is tough."
And after a long, long time, you actually get to the condition where as you're skiing
along and you're dragging this 300 plus pounds of food, fuels and supplies.
Your hair will actually hurt.
Now, of course you're hair can't hurt because we all go to the barber.
Clip, clip, clip, there's no bloody screaming.
And yet, that will actually happen to you.
Because as you go along, you start thinking and worrying and all, "This is tough and my
body hurts."
Your finger nails will hurt, you're hair will hurt.
And that's why I want to ask you Dr. Paul is that this whole psychology of as you become
more and more negative, you can create physical problems in your body.
And I am not a doctor and i can't say it causes cancer.
But there is that possibility where negativity just totally will destroy you.
It has, as you pointed out, a physiological effect.
No to even mention all of the psychological barriers that it creates.
let's just go there first.
Because every thought that you have has a chemical component.
Just connect with that for a minute.
This is the way nerves talk to each other.
A neuron talks to the other neuron through a synapse and then that synapse or chemicals
and there's a transfer from one end to the nerve to the other.
It's a chemical-electrical process that happens.
So, understanding that the more we focus on negative thoughts or the more we get in to
this hopeless ideations, we're actually changing the chemistry of our neurophysiology.
And that has an impact.
Like you were saying it.
It makes you more vulnerable now to all kinds of things.
Discouragement of course.
But also in injury.
So, really, we enacting a different part of our brain to engage.
And without getting into all the details about that, yes Aaron, you're absolutely right.
It has a physiological effect, the psychological aspect is huge as well.
In fact, I think before Aaron, you shared with me that water is number 4 on the survival
list.
You remember that sharing with me?
Yes.
People will always think, "Oh, you need food, you need water, you need shelter."
And really know that the number 1 thing that you need to survive and we'll talk about this
on another survival video, is the attitude and the belief that you can make it through
this challenge.
That is the number 1 thing.
Because let's say the horrific instance of...
There's a movie out now, I think it's called "ALPHA", the first dog.
The boy get's tapped under this ice.
And he is flowing along in the river or the lake or whatever is happening.
He had that moment of, "You know what, I'm not going to make it."
And he breathe in...
Over.
He's done.
Instant.
He's right actually.
Yeah, but if you have this belief, "Well, I got 4 minutes, I can still fight for 4 minutes."
That's a long 4 minutes that you might make it out.
So, it's number 1 because nothing else is relevant if you abandon that one?
Yeah.
If you abandon the will to survive...
Food, water, shelter?
You'll never even make it that long.
Completely irrelevant.
I got to ask you, what's 2 and 3?
It's just drives me nuts.
I have a book coming out about that.
Yes, an expedition book.
And I am sure in a polar environment, as something to do with shelter, heat or...
Oh, yeah, yeah.
It goes by the list of things that will kill you.
Oh yeah, that makes sense.
And so, how long will it take XYZ to kill you.
And food?
That's like 3 plus weeks.
I mean, you go on dying on starvation.
Oh my gosh.
That also happens with as negativity builds up, it also builds up this distraction in
your mind.
And that's actually what causes a potential for injury because I am sure you've had this
experience where you have this silly argument that you've had with your kid, your spouse
or whoever significant other.
And you're stewing on that and all of a sudden, *Skreetch*.
I totally did not see that red light there because I was often low, long land.
Right.
And this same thing happens in extreme environments like, in polar areas.
In Arctic and Antarctica and high mountains.
Man, when your mind is wondering around and for some reason in tough conditions, it will
always gets wrapped in a negativity just because your body's working out, your subconscious
is really trying give you an excuse to stop.
And that's why things start hurting is.
And that's why I want to ask you Dr. Paul, how does that subconscious actually make things
hurt that shouldn't even hurt and the moment you stop, i feel fine.
Aaron, pain is a psychological experience.
We tie it to our physical body and we say we feel pain in this area or in that joint
or in that extremity or what ever.The pain is actually experienced here.
And we know that because if we put your head to sleep, you don't feel any pain.
That's what anesthesia is all about, folks.
Right?
We just put your mind to sleep and then you don't seem to feel the pain as we surgically
open up your knee.
Right.
So, pain is psychological.
And it makes sense that if we're focused on this negativity, we're going to experience
more things like pain or fatigue or exhaustion.
Resiliency, tell what are your experience has been with resiliency.
What does it mean to you and what does positive attitude have to do with that?
So, resiliency is your ability to spring back from whatever condition or circumstances happened
to you.
And that's really your capability of, "Okay, it's all gone wrong."
And in my instance, I coughed a blood, the skis in my sled broke, the worst conditions
in a decade.
I mean, let me go on this long let me of "yeah, yeah, yeah."
All the reasons?
Yeah.
Where this happened to me.
And people they say, "Why?
How come this happen to me?"
And that's why talking to my speech, "Why not you?"
Love it.
Let me give you somebody's phone numbers and email addresses, we'll send this some of this
problems.
Of course not.
Stuff is going to happen to you.
If you know that's going to happen and you accept.
Well you know, you don't go drive into a car wreck.
You don't starve yourself to death.
But okay, things broke and my kid got a bad grade in school.
My car broke down.
It's going to happen.
If you just look that.
And look at it objectively and saying, "Alright, it's happening.
What can I do about it to improve the circumstance?"
That is resiliency.
You can choose the negative aspect and demote it and cry.
And make everybody miserable and just get to the point where you can't even get up of
bed.
Or "Well, it broken.
How do I fix it?"
You just simply make the leap over that river if you will and go to the solution.
Because so often, so many challenges in life, making a lawn.
Like, "Hey, I want to go land on the moon."
It's complex.
But really, you go through this process and the quicker you can get to that solution phase,
the better off you are.
But that's not saying to deny your emotions, though.
And this is key.
Because if you say, "Oh, I need a but a robot, I need to be military..."
No, no, no.
Emotions happen to us.
And that's what I want to ask you, Dr. Paul is, you have this emotional state but to bring
yourself up have of it, what's the best process for people to do that?
I love that you mentioned that it's not about not having a particular emotion.
Because as human beings we're programmed to have a wide variety, a range of emotions and
you're never wrong about how you feel.
It really is painful.
It really is disturbing, it really is something that you're sad about.
But as you're talking about resiliency, Aaron.
It's about, "Okay, well how do you spring back as quickly as possible to that position
of Okay, now what?"
And get into that problem solving mode.
Right.
I think one of the keys here, psychologically is to allow yourself to feel whatever you're
feeling.
This might sound a little counter-intuitive because we're all here about, you know, "Well,
let's get positive and increase our resiliency and our chances of survival."
Yes.
And one of the ways to do that is to give yourself permission to feel your feelings.
Feelings change.
In fact, I got a colleague who made this whole career of of those 2 words.
Feelings change.
And notice that this is true in your own experience.
It's not going to hang out forever.
Just feel it, okay?
How are you supposed to feel when you ski brakes out in the middle of Antarctica?
And so, you let yourself feel that.
When you let yourself feel it...
It's interesting because giving yourself that permission actually shortens the duration
of that feeling.
So that you can move through it and passed it more quickly.
And then you get back on purpose.
You know what Aaron? until we see it as a choice, it's not.
And so, our programming just kind of default kicks in with, "Oh no, I can't do what I was
going to do."
Or something negative.
If that's our programming.
Pause for a moment.
Let yourself feel whatever you're going to feel and then notice that you're taking a
position about it.
And you have some choice about what position you're going to take.
So the resiliency kicks in when you say, "You know what?
I've been hit."
But think about a rigid stick that sticking in the ground and something hits it and just
breaks it off.
Right.
As opposed to a green tender sapling.
Something hits it and it bends over and then it springs back.
Master Dr. Paul here.
This is what...
Well, image comes to mind about resiliency, right?
It is.
You're going to bend and shift to the things that hits you.
And then spring back into purposeful action.
Yeah.
I don't know if I even answered your question.
Now that I do as I meant, I had conditions when I am skiing along when Antarctica is
the wind would build up through the day.
It was so severe that I couldn't even face into it.
I had to turn away and while on my skis and I'm kind of huddle up there for a moment.
And the wind was so strong that would actually push me on my skis and I would start scooting
backwards.
So, imagine...
That's like 50 or 60 plus mile an hour winds to take you.
And not just shove you around but on your skis you begin scooting back and you're start
thinking, "I don't want to move backwards.
This is totally wrong."
And you begin spiraling out of control in this conditions.
And I will get to the end of the day and I would be so tired where I would literally
ski along and I would fall over and you know, my face and the eyes are like, oh my gosh.
But as I got my tents, oh yeah.
But I got my tents set up.
I would unzip that door and unzip the fly.
I would dive in there and get my feet off the freezing ice.
And I would zip it up.
And all of a sudden, my emotions just, I mean like one of those star wars sound where you
get the power down.
Yes.
Yeah, I can hear it.
And all of a sudden I feel like, "Hey, it's not so bad."
"I'm okay."
Yeah, I mean, just a couple of milliliters of nylon from being in a horrible place to...
"Ahh, this isn't so bad."
Wow.
People joke, "Hey, let's go to my happy place."
But it really did make a difference of, "Okay, come to where have you got."
The safe place.
Just evaluate the condition.
Because when you're at work in you're tough conditions, your boss is mad you and your
spouse and kids or whoever it is who's mad about you.
If you can just take a moment instead of boiling up and doing something not smart, to throttle
up back and say, "Hey, let's let this calm down.
Let me be a little more objective, let my feelings pass."
Yeah, just for me, I mean, there is no other place to hide than in the tent.
So, as soon as I got in there, "Ahh, you know, it's not so bad.
Maybe I won't quit today."
Wow.
You know what?
And I have to acknowledge.
I've got your book here, Aaron.
Antarctic Tears by Aaron Linsdau.
If you're going to read this, have a blanket handy.
This was like 3 months of daily exposure to the most extreme climate on the planet.
And it's kind of a hard read that way.
Yeah.
But you give a nice background to what it is that you're sharing with this right now.
And I think add such validity.
Because what conditions are we facing and it's really easy in the perspective of, "Oh,
my job is hard", right?
Or "My spouse is nagging me about whatever."
And you've got 30 mile an hour, 30 below winds beating down on you in Antarctica.
And that was during the good weather.
It's all relative, right?
And this is something that adds to our perspective.
It could always worse as you slip inside of that tent.
You know, some people on the planet might think, "I'm in a little nylon tent in the
middle of nowhere.
I'm going to die."
And you're climbing there and you're like, "Ooh, home.
It's nice."
Right?
Oh, yeah.
That's all about perspective.
Notice that.
I just want you to notice that, Aaron, you've helped me to notice that because you're experience
is so extreme compared to anything that I've ever done.
It helps me to have a better perspective of, "Oh, you know what?
I can handle this."
That positive attitude creates a resiliency that allows you to snap back up in the place
and get in purpose again.
Yeah, and that's a thing, I mean, people hire me to speak at their corporate events or their
organizations.
And I've had quite a few clients that say, "You know, we looked at you, we looked at
your picture, we read what you did.
We just couldn't believe it.
We actually had to bring you here to see..."
I mean...
Is this guy for real?
Yeah.
I mean, because expect.
"Oh, polar explorer."
6 foot 4, 230 pound.
Like, look, I am just regular average guy maybe even a little bit thin.
You started as an engineer for Pete's sake.
Well, there's a whole other problem there.
That's another story.
But the ability...
And people say, "How did you get through these things?"
And it's not in the bron, It's in here and in here.
Yes.
That is really...
What takes...
They're couple others explorer in it.
One young woman, she's was in the mid 20's on that time.
5 foot 4.
Just little petite thing from Iceland.
She was out there skiing by herself to the south pole alone.
First person ever from Iceland to do that.
And you look at her like, "She did what?"
Nobody believes her at all.
Ever.
And it's like, no.
Because she actually told me, her plan was to think, "How am I going to emotionally respond
to XY and Z?
How am I going to bounce back to build my resiliency when my ski breaks, when the weather's
bad, when my..."
I mean, she got sick.
She got food poisoning down there.
Yeah.
And so, "How am I going to spring back from that?
Am I going to let that completely shut me down?"
Or I'm going to say, "Alright, I know what just happened.
That's fine.
What can I do to avoid this circumstance?"
But also to just let it go.
Because once it has happened, it's happened.
You take a piece of paper, you crease it.
That piece of paper will never be uncreased again.
Now, what are you going to do?
And you got to decide.
The paper is now creased, let it go.
It's a pretty darn good question.
Now what are you going to do?
Instead of like we normally in psychology, we will turn that into a statement disguised
as a question.
"Now, what am I going to do?"
See, how's that's a statement?
I like that.
Yeah, turn it back into a question, "Now, what am I going to do?"
That's resiliency.
I'm always amazed and fascinated when I hear this man's story.
It's powerful and it can be applied to almost anything.
Thank you for watching.
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