Geoscience Reference
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patience. They had a good sense of humor and were likely to laugh at mistakes. They were pos-
itive, yet also looked at the downside of things. They didn't act mean or tough, even though
they could be as mean and tough as anyone. Siebert noticed that each of these men had a type
of personal radar, which was always on “scan.” He realized that it was not dumb luck that had
brought these men through their ordeals, but a synergistic combination of qualities that tilted
the odds in their favor. Al believes that we can all benefit in our daily lives by nurturing and de-
veloping these positive character traits within our own personalities.
Typical Survivor Personality Traits
•
Flexibility.
The number-one trait to which many survivors attribute their success is the
ability to adapt to the situation.
•
Commitment to survive.
When conditions are extremely difficult, it takes a strong
will and commitment to survive. Jewish Holocaust and Bataan Death March surviv-
ors tell tales of watching their friends lose the will to survive. Under these harsh con-
ditions, once the drive to survive was lost, they usually lasted a short while, ranging
from a few hours to a few days.
•
Staying cool.
Survivors have the ability to stay calm, or regain calmness, so they can
think clearly and intuitively “feel” their way to a correct choice, without being
hampered by emotions that have run amok.
•
Playful curiosity.
Survivors usually like to know how things work. They show a play-
ful curiosity that helps them adapt to changing circumstances.
•
Sense of humor.
The ability to laugh helps people manage under the worst condi-
tions. My father-in-law survived being captured and tortured by the Nazis. Later, as a
Dutch marine in the Indonesian revolution, he survived while more than three-quar-
ters of his company was killed. Throughout his life he maintained a great sense of
humor and loved nothing more than to make people laugh. His favorite saying was,
“Make you happy!”
•
A mixture of opposites.
The typical survivor is not always either hot or cold. Surviv-
ors have the ability to blend optimism with pessimism, so they can see the faults in a
plan, but are not paralyzed by negativity. They combine humor with seriousness,
self-confidence with a critical eye, and so on.
•
Intuition
. At some point in our lives, we have all had demonstrations of the power of
intuition. The rational mind makes decisions based on the available information,
which is always imperfect at best. Intuition appears to give us the ability to move
beyond the limits of time and space, to “see around corners” that the rational mind
can't breach.
