Another audio book that has helped me is Shoot for the Moon by Richard Wiseman which reflects on lessons that can be learned from NASA’s Apollo Moon Program giving tips on building an Apollo Mindset.
People respond to daunting decisions through fight or flight depending on the level of personal risk and fear.
Ways to become more “Fight then Flight”
- Think of a situation where you had to make a decision that made you feel frightened or anxious. eg changing career.
- Imagine you have a crystal ball and you can see your life one year from now. What can you see if you had decided to change job and everything turned out well. Write down the best case scenario you can imagine.
- Still looking into the crystal ball and things look different. You changed your job and the decision turned into a complete nightmare. Now write down the worst case scenario you can imagine.
- Rate how likely you think the worst case scenario is on a scale of 1 to 10.
- Ask yourself, “how would you cop if the worst case scenario became reality?”. Would it actually be that terrible and what would you do to make things better? Are there any similar situations you can think of from your past to help stimulate how you overcame problems. List people who you could ask for help.
- Think about the things you could do to reduce the chance of the nightmare scenario happening and or ways to reduce the negative impact. Do you have the skills to prevent these things from happening?
- When making an important decision, people often focus on the associated risks but ignore the costs associated from not taking action. Imagine that nothing changes and you don’t make any decision. Look into the crystal ball again. What does your life look like in a years time if you do nothing?
There is definately a time to listen to your fears and a time to ignore that fear. In my situation after my stroke I had lost my contract position as a prototype vehicle tester at Jaguar Land Rover. I have no income and my only fear is my health and state of mind. Whilst I still suffer from fatigue, deciding to build a digital profuct fills my heart with hope for the future.
This book managed to merge history, an adventure and mental health into one and I found many aspects very helpful. To learn more about he book by Richard Wiseman click on this Amazon page link.
