Sleepless nights, fear and anxiety have their impact on all areas of your life, affecting your personal health and relationships. Here’s how to build resilience and courage.

Although people will often tell you to “be strong” or “be brave” few people actually know how to be brave. People will often tell you that bravery is something you are born with, someone is brave and someone else is a coward.

Bravery is relative, it is also context specific. Above all it is all about what is going on in YOUR mind.  There is a story of a World War II bomber pilot who had flown into through enemy anti-aircraft fire on numerous occasions. He said he never felt fear. There was too much to do.

The bravest thing he ever did was walk through a rice paddy in Burma. He never got a medal for it. There wasn’t an enemy soldier present for 50 miles but he had perceived that the danger was high and walking, he had nothing to occupy his mind – and it fixated on the danger.

I was once snorkelling with a friend of mine at a seal colony (in a wetsuit) and I asked my friend if he was ever afraid of sharks. He looked at me as if he hadn’t even considered the possibility and said, “If I think about it, of course I’m afraid of them.  I just don’t think about it.”

He mightn’t be one of my smartest friends, but he’s certainly the bravest, and amazingly enough, he's still alive.

The Romans believed that bravery could be taught. With an army of 500,000 men they protected an empire that encompassed Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. They regularly fought armies much larger than their own. The Roman legionaries were definitely brave.

The Romans taught their soldiers to be brave by accustoming them to the sense of danger and teaching them how to respond to it. Danger triggers adrenalin which can significantly enhance your strength, awareness and abilities.

In a dangerous situation you can become another person, if you know what to do.

The key is to focus on what to do, what you can do and responding to the situation. People who are afraid focus on the danger, the possibility of being maimed or killed and the possibility of having loved ones maimed and killed. They’re not pretty thoughts. In crisis situations don’t think them.

Easier said than done, you say.

Exactly.

And it might take some effort to teach yourself not to do it, but it can be learnt, and all it takes is a little bit of time.

What we want you to be able to do in an emergency is to replace those terrifying and unpleasant thoughts which trigger fear and flight and replace them with immediate actions that need to be done. But the first thing to do is general preparation.

General Preparation

1. Have an emergency kit ready, check the Civil Defence website for suggestions
2. Make sure your family knows how to respond to emergencies
3. Have meeting points arranged so you can meet up
4. Minimise dangers at home and work

By taking these steps you know that you have done everything you can to minimise the danger. This isn’t a guarantee but it means the chances are in your favour that you and your family will survive. This means that when the ground starts to shake or any other emergency begins, that you are set up for survival.

Research the Experience

Know what you are going to do when an emergency occurs. Do some research so you know what the cause is and what the best response is.

 Knowing what is causing the emergency by itself makes it feel safer.

Rehearse the Experience

Now you know:

• what will happen in an emergency
• know that you have safeguarded yourself as best you can
• know what the best response is

You can mentally rehearse various emergency scenarios.  There are several effective NLP techniques for doing this, if you know something of NLP you can do these yourself.

They include:

• The Swish
• The Trauma Cure
• Chained Anchors
• Timeline processes
• Mental Rehearsal

For those less familiar with these techniques, the best approach is simply mentally rehearsing what you are going to do and how you are going to do it. If there are family members that you need to look after, include helping them in your plans. Play these plans like a movie over and over several times. The repetition moves the thoughts into your subconscious mind so that when you need to, you can act immediately.

This preparation will enable you to act immediately, without thinking, to do what you need to do. Like the WWII bomber pilot, when you know what to do in an emergency, you just don’t have time to get yourself scared.