Part 1 in a 2-Part Series
The Magic of Mental Mastery
According to military advisors, survival is a matter of thinking. It's not just a positive "attitude." It's precisely what we say to ourselves that can make the difference between health and illness, life and death.
One true story demonstrates just how much our minds matter:
Lt. Costello (Name and location changed) sat behind a large, conspicuously clean desk at a small Westchester, NY police station. He was cool, composed, and seemed as uncluttered mentally as he was physically. The awards on his book cases and certificates on the wall attested to a long, successful career. "I paid my dues," he smiled as he scanned the room and the work it all represented. As he saw it, however, his career really started in Vietnam when he was only a teenager serving in the U.S. Army. It was there, assigned to an armored car division sent deep into the jungle, that he learned what it took to survive physically, mentally, and emotionally.
He was on a mission in the Delta, it was summer and the temperature outside had reached upwards of 115 degrees before noon. Inside the tank it was at best unbearable under normal conditions. On one particular day he still remembers with stunning clarity, it was life-threatening.
"It must have been 130 or more inside. It was hot in a way I had never experienced before. I couldn't stop sweating, couldn't drink enough, couldn't just get up and go to the bathroom. I was burning up. I don't mean that metaphorically. I was literally burning up and I had to lower my body temperature somehow or I was going to die.
"Funny how it didn't scare me. It was just as clear to me as the coffee in front of me now. It was a fact. I had no air conditioning. I couldn't get out of the tank. There was nowhere to go except a POW camp, if I was lucky enough to get caught and not killed right away. I remember thinking that I should have been panicking. Instead, I was utterly, crystal clear. It was in the space of such a small moment that I realized it was completely up to me. Whether I survived or not was between me and my own mind." The lieutenant sat forward, his body compressed with the intensity of the experience, still vivid in him.
"For some reason, I remembered something about monks in the Himalayas going outside in sub-zero temperatures to meditate without getting frostbite. They raised their own thermostats. And I figured if they could do it that way, I could lower it. To this day I don't know exactly what I did or how I did it, but I imagined cool water inside me and around me, like I was dunking myself into a cooler filled with ice or skinny dipping in the lake back home. And hell if it didn't work. I'm here. I never forgot that," he sat back. "This," he pointed to his head, "was my greatest weapon of all. And it has served me ever since, no matter what or where the battle."
The good news for parents is that those survival skills may be learned in early childhood and can be taught with a very simple protocol. Anyone, anywhere can help children utilize their own minds to stay calm and change their biochemistry.
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