This. Is. Happening.

How to deal with new events in a changing world

February 28 of this year, I was at Rob McNealy's excellent Off Chain Conference with an instructor introducing me to CoronaVirus details for the first time.

"People, there is something that you have got to realize. This is happening."

I sat there absorbing some predictions of what the future might be, deciding what my next steps should be. The next day I began basic preparations as I tried to picture what reality might look like in the near future.

I didn't need to wait long. two weeks later, my governor advocated shutdown and the world went insane. The guy was right. This is happening.

How we deal with new situations

As events unfolded in the first few days, reactions were all over the map and many times in the extreme. One person would tell me that panicking was stupid and there was no need to prepare. Others would say that nothing short of complete lock-down would save us. Scientists and health professionals, it seemed were fairly pessimistic. Government officials spoke calm, but their actions spoke otherwise. Many nations chose different approaches. At every level, there was at least some confusion, and a lot of 'Fog of War'.

This kind of reaction is a key indicator that the world has changed and the old models are having difficulty processing the information. When we have a new situation and apply our old processes to it, results can be deadly. Let me explain.

What I am about to teach are my modified take-aways from the excellent book Deep Survival: who lives, who dies, and why. While Deep Survival is about encounters with nature, the lessons apply to situations where the world has changed and how to deal with it. Here's the process we go through.

1. Emotions drive decision making. I don't care how logical you think you are. Scientists have found that when the emotional processor of the brain is removed, decision making becomes impossible. Knowing this can mean life or death in a survival situation.
2. Strong emotion creates "book marks" in our mind. Our mind is trying to protect us. When we have a strong reaction to something, our mind categorizes that as important. It then uses that reaction/experience/emotion to anchor and guide it when making future decisions. It is beautiful, brilliant, and deadly all at once.
3. Book marks create a conceptual model of the world. As our mind collects book marks of emotion and experience, it connects them and relates them in a way that helps you act. Generally, the mind will be lazy, and tend towards non-change, non-action, no-pain decisions except when it is forced to. Your mind wants to survive and those book marks run all the way into your reptilian brain.
4. Our conceptual model filters everything we receive from the world. The world is far too complex for us to absorb everything. The model keeps us sane. It also orients us toward what (we think) is most important goals, focusing our energies on what will help us the most. The flip-side is that we are ignoring massive data under which are possibly the clues we need to take to adjust to things outside our conceptual model.
5. When our models become rigid, we can't take in new clues.When things don't fit, we either pidgeon-hole them or reject them. When we Pidgeon-hole these things, we create a working idea of them that fit our conceptual model. When we say "Covid-19 is like the flu", "Toilet paper isn't going to run out", "Why is everyone panicking?" we are fitting it into our model. Sometimes this works really well. Other times, we could be wrong, and we need to change our book marks. If we reject them, it means there is no place where those things make sense in our model. To our mind's credit, the model is based on your sum experience of your life, and probably has some genetic markers as well, so it is processing the largest dataset it has. The problem is that one lifespan or even many lifespans is not enough to know what to do for disruptive changes.
6. When a new situation surprises us, it is a sign that we have become rigid and need to change our model. There are many ways to do this in the wilderness, in business, in society. The foundation is always coaching the mind that the change will have a greater reward or less punishment if it changes than if it stays. For me personally, I teach my peers to have a 'questioning, curious, hopeful' attitude to keep the model changeable. Whatever methods you choose, realize that you need something to help you adjust your model.

Changing our Model

In Boy Scouts, one of the first things you do when you are lost is that you acknowledge you are lost. Notice how this step is subtly directing the mind to switch models. The facts have not changed. The way a lost person approaches those facts have changed completely. The second thing you do is maintain a positive mental attitude. This comes before first-aid, signaling, water, or shelter. Your positive mental attitude is the foundation to changing your model. With it, you can adapt.

It turns out during this pandemic that both the people who hit the panic button and the people who didn't do anything were both wrong. It wasn't that they were wrong in the various facts they cited, it was that they were wrong with their model. They didn't have the change mechanisms necessary to confront the situation and so they reacted by pigeon-holing or rejecting, as noted above.

In my last article, I mentioned that Covid-19 was big, but not 'The Big One'. Here's the secret: our lives are always happening. Things are always changing. The ability to adapt your mental model will serve you everywhere you go, no matter what you do. Covid-19 has given us a serious enough disruption to our mind that we are willing to finally change and learn. Let's take advantage of it and build in resiliency to everything we do. The big lesson from Covid-19 is not to prepare for the next pandemic. The big lesson is to prepare our minds to adjust better for whatever the next challenge is.

This is still happening. Let's learn to grow from it.