Fight or Flight

To begin this post I want to start you off with a mental visual. Picture this, you're in a prehistoric jungle somewhere, doing your best to survive another night. Just as the sun sets off in the distance, the jungle falls into a deep, haunting darkness. You carry only a small knife fashioned out of rock, and small torch made out of a tree branch. A rumbling off in the dark distance catches your immediate attention, but just as the thought breaches your frontal lobe, a large cat-like beast leaps from the darkness and penetrates the circumference of your torch light. As the beast circles it's hopeful prey, you remain fear stricken. Regardless of your awareness of it, your brain has to make a clear decision; to stand and fight for your life (fight), or run like hell in the other direction (flight). The decision you make is crucial to your survival, and make the wrong one, well... that beast will be calling you dinner.

People naturally fear the unknown. It makes total sense as to why. Evolution has made sure we survive as a species, hence our fear of unknown outcomes. What we are unsure about, may cause us harm, therefore we are hesitant to plunge ourselves into unknown circumstances. Most fears can be explained, so let's use our jungle example to explain the typical fear of the dark. We may fear the dark because most predators hunt at night. To avoid becoming dinner for a hungry cat-like beast, our ancestors developed a fear for not the dark, but what may lurk in the dark. Because the dark allows for creatures to hide, our brains are now hard wired to fear the dark, because we don't know what we can't see, therefore, it is unknown. The same instance goes for most other fears we experience in our day to day life (snakes, heights, etc.) All fears can be traced back to a survival instinct to some degree. Imagine if we suddenly became aware of the unknown how fearless we would become. If I know for a fact I am not going to fall, I will be fearless walking towards a cliff. The funny thing about life is that we cannot always see the future. We cannot always be certain if something will hurt us or not, but a key to life is knowing how to react to those unknowns.

We fear to survive, simple as that. At this point in reading, you may be saying, "This isn't a cognitive evolution blog, so why am I reading this?" and you are very correct. This is not a cognitive evolution blog, however, the reason why we fear, and our reaction to that fear, is what cripples our minds from accomplishing our dreams. Correcting our fight or flight instinct to react the way we want it to is certainly a key to living happily.

When dealing with the monotonous day to day tread, our fight or flight instinct kicks in when we encounter fear. One of the most common fears that is presented in our lives on a regular basis is the fear of change. As much as someone says they like change, they are lying. Nobody likes change. As human beings, we find what is comfortable and we stick with it for the reason that we know we can survive. We know that as long as we are in the comfortable zone, that we will survive, no matter how long that may be. The only scary thing is that some people remain comfortable for their entire life. The truly successful people, however, find a way to be uncomfortable, and change and modify their lifestyle to fit their desires. They are constantly on the move, cooking up new ideas to catapult them into a state that they want to be in. Whether that be more money, a new car, a new house, a new business, they are never stagnant. When we encounter something that might have to change, we have those same two options that we had in the jungle. We can either face the change head on, or we can turn around and run away to stick with what comfortable. So why can't we all be successful? The simple answer is, we all can. When the time comes we can choose to fight our fear, or we can choose to cower into what is comfortable. If we decided to choose the flight option in the jungle, we might have gotten away for the night, but no matter how hard we try to get rid of it, until we face our beast head on, our beast will always be around the corner; watching, waiting for the right moment to attack. There comes a point when avoiding the issue doesn't work anymore. The sooner we can recognize that a fight situation is ultimately inevitable, the sooner we can resolve them, and the sooner we can be on our way to our definition of success.

The most difficult part about overcoming that fear of change is not knowing what is on the other side. Like I said before, we will have no problem changing if we know exactly what is going to happen, however, life can sometimes be unpredictable. It is not our job to figure out precisely whats going to happen, so stop trying. When we finally make the decision to break out of our comfort zone, to take a leap of faith into an unpredictable future, is the moment we truly experience what life is about; constant progressive motion. There are more experiences in this world than can be experienced in an entire lifetime, so close your eyes and jump, and live your life without the beast stalking you waiting to make you its dinner.

Warm Wishes and Enjoy Life,
Andrew R. Kranich