Lessons From the Edge

Stress and anxiety are on the rise in modern society, and it’s no wonder: every day, we face new mental, financial and social challenges. Adventurers, explorers, survival experts and endurance athletes make a career out of subjecting themselves to extreme situations, meaning they’re highly skilled at dealing with the issues most of us find tough. Here, you’ll find the psychological tools and techniques they use to cope at the very limits of human capability - tips that will make us all better equipped to survive the trials and tribulations of our own day-to-day lives.

Words MARK BAILEY

Avoiding risk can hinder our progression, professionally and personally. But, says Guillaume Galvani – the Frenchman who, to achieve our stunning opening shot, hung from a paraglider more than 2,000m above the Aegean Sea near Oludeniz, Turkey, before parajumping off – risk is something anyone can manage. And the results, whether getting a promotion or finishing a marathon, can be great.

“I’m not Superman,” says Galvani. “I’m just an everyday guy living his dream of flying like a bird.” Risk, he says, can be diminished if you’re willing to put in the time and effort: “With aerial sport comes risk. But risk can be assessed, appraised and even avoided. Would you scale a mountain with no experience? No. But if you develop skills in a controlled way that’s tailored to your mental and physical qualities, you end up with ideas, analyses and experience of how to manage risk and know your limits.”

Once this self-knowledge has helped you squash risk to a manageable size, you’ll reap the rewards. “When I do a wingsuit jump, I don’t need a lucky charm or anyone else,” he says. “I don’t even need complete focus. Once I’m ready to fly, my limits are set and my analyses have been done, I’m in tune with my body and I just focus on my movement. After that, it’s sheer pleasure.”

Signing up for your first triathlon or starting a new job is certain to cause anxiety, because you’re leaving your comfort zone. But David Lama, who, in 2012, completed a nerve-jangling first free ascent of the Compressor Route on Cerro Torre in Patagonia, knows that doing scary things is often the best way to live life to the max.

To ensure nagging worries don’t wreck your life goals, you need to know how to defuse anxieties before they grip you. Lama’s solution is to develop mental battle plans for potential scenarios.

“If you know what the difficult parts of a new project will be, and you think of solutions, you can prevent panic,” says the Austrian mountaineer. “Anxieties come from being afraid about what might happen, not what is happening. So when I’m standing in front of a big face, I think, ‘How will I respond if my climbing partner or I break a leg at 5,000m? What strategy will I use to get us back down safely?’” Developing mental blueprints for different situations restores your sense of control: “It’s not about giving into anxieties – it’s realistic thinking, which can help remove them.”

By arming yourself with go-to strategies – from how to fight cramp midway through a bike ride, to what to say on a date if things go quiet – you’re less likely to be swamped by panic. And while you can’t prepare for every possibility, you’d be surprised how adaptable your mental battle plans can be. “In 2016, I was doing a climb on Lunag Ri in the Himalayas when my climbing partner Conrad Anker had a heart attack,” recalls Lama, 27. “That was something I’d never prepared for. But because the situation was similar to a broken leg, I knew how to react and get him down to safety, so I stayed calm.”

His other trick is to test your limits in a risk-free environment before taking on a big challenge. “I grew up sport climbing, so I could test myself without consequences – if I fell, I was protected by ropes and bolts and I wouldn’t break my back. Now, when I climb big mountains, I know my limits.”

Exploring your mind and body in a ‘safe zone’ – whether testing a wedding speech on your housemates, or doing work experience before going for a job – can boost your confidence and keep anxieties at bay. “The more you test yourself, the less likely you are to be afraid,” says Lama.

A negative experience, personal setback or bad mood can cause you to lose focus, energy and motivation. But endurance cyclist Juliana Buhring learnt to sail through tough times when, in 2012, she became the fastest woman to circumnavigate the globe by bike. During her 152-day, 29,060km odyssey, she rode through a cyclone in India, escaped frenzied packs of dogs in Turkey and contracted hypothermia in New Zealand.

“You soon learn that everything’s temporary and this bad moment will pass,” says Buhring, now 37.

To steel her mind in dark times, she performed self-talk – a psychological technique that harnesses words and phrases to alter your mood state. “I peptalk myself so I can almost stand back and tell myself what I need,” says Buhring. She built up a toolbox of different selftalk strategies for different moments – a flexible skill set anyone can learn from. To fight off pain or boredom, she used positivity: “I would tell myself, ‘This is fun… what a smashing ride,’ which tricks your brain into switching off the alarms that want you to stop.”

When her motivation dipped, Buhring used negative self-talk to jump-start her energy levels: “I would say, ‘Come on, lazy bum, get moving.’” And if something disastrous happened, she went into war mode: “I would think, ‘Bring it on. Is that the best you’ve got?’” Sometimes it was best just to laugh: “I would say, ‘Silly girl, look what you’ve done!’ It changed the focus so the problem didn’t feel so bad.”

Arming yourself with different strategies for every scenario – from feeling lazy in the gym to dealing with bad news – can help you rewire your thoughts in difficult times. And the rewards can be big. “There were moments when I was tired and sick, but when I passed through those points I would get a real rush,” says Buhring. “I thought, ‘Oh my God, I made it.’ I felt euphoria. It makes you curious about what else you can do. It gives you a sense of self-sufficiency. Now I know I can get through anything.”

Today’s wired-up world can make your head spin, while nagging work pressures gnaw away at your inner peace. But ultrarunner Jez Bragg has learnt that mindful thinking can calm the brain – anywhere from in the office to a body-wrecking 160km race.

“The secret is to focus on where you are and take in your surroundings,” says Bragg, who, in 2013, ran the length of New Zealand on the 3,000km Te Araroa trail, burning through 12 pairs of shoes. “You focus on the views, the weather, how your body feels – any element of the experience. It grounds you in the moment.”

Centring yourself in the present stops you being worn down by ‘catastrophic thinking’ (ruminating about worst-case scenarios) and gives you better perspective. This technique can help you survive the exhausting 170km Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc – which Bragg won in 2010 – or just get through a stressful day.

“It teaches you to think about the next few steps, not the finish line, and that’s calming,” explains the 37-year-old Brit. Whether you’re on a stress-busting lunchtime walk or trying to cool down after a blazing argument, the secret is to embrace as much sensory information as possible, from sights to smells. “You enter this dreamy kind of space that helps you relax,” he says.

The technique should be practised often to keep negative thoughts at bay. “During runs, I have regular selfchecks,” says Bragg, “so if I’m feeling in a dark place I can work out why.” These encourage you to take control of your moods: “I realise it might be triggered by hunger or a negative thought. So I think, ‘How can I change that?’ Maybe that’s a rest or some positive self-talk. Self-checks stop your mind running away from you.”

Bragg has noticed the benefits in his day job as a construction project manager. “This process really cleans out your mind,” he says. “I daydream, which helps me problem-solve. I come up with some good solutions for my work when I’m out on a hill, because you get real clarity of thought.”

An overflowing inbox, frantic work schedule, high-pressure deadlines or new responsibilities can leave you feeling like your life is spiralling out of control, but polar explorer Ben Saunders wrestles with real life-ordeath situations every day.

“In polar terrain, you’re completely self-sufficient, so you can feel overwhelmed,” says Saunders, who, with teammate Tarka L’Herpiniere, slogged 2,913km across Antarctica in 2013-14 to complete the longest human-powered polar journey in history. “Antarctica is the coldest, driest, windiest place on Earth, so you feel like an astronaut in space. In this hostile environment, you always know you could be dead in minutes.”

Saunders, 40, says that anyone can benefit from the chaos-soothing psychological strategies he has perfected. During his gruelling 105-day Antarctic expedition, he imposed order through detailed daily planning and timetables. Whether dodging frostbite or powering through a crazy day at work, structuring your day in minute detail will neutralise stress and boost your sense of control.

“In Antarctica, my daily life rotated around routines,” Saunders explains. “I would wake up, light the stove, start melting water, pack the sled in a certain way, and then divide the day into blocks of time, stopping every 90 minutes to eat and perform key tasks. Planning and routines streamline your day so you feel more in control.”

Saunders used colour-coded bags – blue for food, red for goggles and mittens – to stay hyper-organised. “You have to be meticulous: in Antarctica, the consequences of dropping a mitten can be catastrophic,” he says.

Sticking to structured routines can also drag you through a tough day when you’re tired or stressed. “It enables you to operate on autopilot,” explains Saunders. “The Antarctic expedition was so intense, I lost 22kg. But with good routines you know what you have to do, even when you’re not physically and mentally at your best.”

The explorer knows these angstbusting organisational tactics also work in daily life. “Even when planning an expedition, I’m an inveterate listkeeper,” he laughs. “My entire life is organised on an app called Things, so I can keep track of training, sponsors, food and equipment. It takes away the madness, because I can plug into my lists and stay on top of things. You have to see yourself as the CEO of your own business and manage every part of that business to stay in control.”

Whether you’re filing a tax return or finishing a work report, deadlines and time pressures can pile on extra stress. It’s the same for Saunders: “In 2014, if we’d finished late, the cost of keeping the airstrip open would have been $30-40,000 a day.”

According to Saunders, the key is to compartmentalise your thoughts. “I have learnt not to expend mental energy on things I can’t change,” he says. “In polar environments, you can’t control the visibility, the wind speed or the snow conditions. So I shepherd the limited energy I have towards things I can change: good navigation, moving efficiently, ensuring something important doesn’t drop from my pocket. The rest will fall into place.”

Saunders says everyone should take on new responsibilities – even if that feels difficult – because they galvanise your mind. If a polar expedition is too much, try something else. “Big challenges like marathons give you something to fall back on: the next time you feel stressed, you know you’ve been through worse before and you can power through.”

Shyness and self-doubt can block your path to success, but Mollie Hughes overcame such confidence issues to become the youngest woman to summit Mount Everest from both the south (in 2012) and the north (2017) side.

The best way to fortify self-belief – whether for public speaking or a big adventure – is step-by-step. “For me, it started with a simple camping trip at school,” says Hughes. “Smaller trips built up my self-belief so I knew I could get to the top of a mountain.”

Acknowledging micro-successes gives you a bank of positive memories to tap into. After climbing in the Alps and Africa, Hughes felt ready for the -35°C temperatures and 3,000m drops of Everest. “[During the expedition] I went through my previous climbs in my mind, day by day, to remind myself what I can do.”

This self-belief can help you smash your phobias. “I can now give a talk in front of thousands,” says Hughes, 27. But if your inner confidence does start to fail, focus on the immediate actions you can take to restore your mental control. “In the Khumbu Icefall, we had to cross crevasses – some of them as much as 4-5m wide and 50m deep – on ladders hundreds of times during our acclimatisation. And, believe it or not, I don’t like heights,” she reveals. “But I just focused on what I could control, like being clipped into the safety rope and moving well.”

Confidence stems from the knowledge that your actions can positively influence a result, so by focusing on the processes of a task, instead of the potential consequences, you can boost your self-belief. “It was still terrifying, but after a few weeks I was moving across on autopilot,” says Hughes.

Nagging, slow-burn anxieties about money, moving house or changing jobs can grind you down. But adventurer Ed Stafford, who, in 2008-10, became the first man to walk the length of the Amazon River, had to spend 860 days knowing that at any moment he might encounter drug smugglers, venomous snakes, or – as on one unforgettable day – be greeted at arrow-point by an indigenous tribe. Don’t assume he’s blessed with superhuman composure, though.

“I tied myself in knots and was constantly battling paranoia and anxiety,” explains Stafford, 42. “My mental shift came when I was later dropped on a desert island for 60 days for a TV show [Naked And Marooned] and I learnt psychology to prepare my mind.”

Stafford zeroed in on two anxietyshattering techniques that can help anyone neutralise daily doubts and worries. “The first is meditating daily,” he says. “At home, I use an app called Headspace, which provides 20-minute meditation sessions to encourage you to step back from negative thoughts. I’ve practised the techniques so much that I can now use them in survival situations. One example is to imagine sitting by a motorway and seeing all your negative thoughts as cars. You learn not to jump in front of them or let them carry you away. It’s better to let them pass by.” And if it worked for Stafford when he was so tired and hungry he started gnawing on the bones of a dead mouse, it can work for you, too.

His second tactic derives from Aboriginal philosophy. “Aboriginal people believe we have three brains,” he says. “The biggest is based on your gut and instinct; the second biggest is based on your heart and emotions, and the smallest is your logical brain, which is the one in which most westerners live their lives. They call this logical brain ‘ngan duppurru’ – tellingly, it also means a fishing net tangled beyond repair.”

Stafford realised that, whether you’re battling anxieties at home or surviving on a desert island, you must re-prioritise those three brains. “If you live in your logical brain, you can’t avoid anxieties and fears. It’s better to follow your gut instinct about what is good or bad and what will make you happy or sad, then use your emotional and logical brains as a filter system before taking action.”

Stafford considers this his biggest discovery so far, helping him prioritise his deeper emotional state. “Knowing how to light a fire is no good alone,” he says. “The mind is the most important survival tool there is.”

To smash a fitness PB, storm through a pile of work or nail your next big outdoor challenge, you need to find your ‘flow’ – that irresistible feeling of intense focus and concentration that allows you to ignore distractions and instead zero in on the challenge before you. This is precisely the mindset that Mexican extreme kayaker Rafa Ortiz taps into when he’s paddling down killer waterfalls, knowing that any lapse in attention could prove fatal.

“You need to know how to adopt an intense, concentrated focus,” says Ortiz, 31, who, in 2012, conquered the 57m-high Palouse Falls in Washington, USA, plummeting at speeds of 130- 150kph. “That feeling of relaxed focus is your sweet spot for success. Distractions will still be there, but you’re so focused they don’t bother you. Some of my biggest mistakes in kayaking were because I got distracted. “We face the same conflict every day, because distractions are growing exponentially – you used to have [rudimentary mobile game] Snake on your phone; now there are 1,000 apps and notifications. Modern life is an attention funnel and it’s wrecking the concentration you need to be successful. But find your focus and anything is possible.”

In 2013, Ortiz used his icy focus to kayak down the world’s steepest navigable whitewater – a sequence of back-to-back drops at Rio Santo Domingo, Mexico, that are as high as 27m in places. To achieve maximum focus before a big challenge, he uses visualisation – a technique that works just as well before a downhill ski run as it does on the morning train commute into work.

“I always visualise what I’m about to do in thousands of tiny pictures,” says Ortiz. “The process helps channel your mental resources into a concentrated focus. I think of the lines I’ll take, my reactions, and every little wave or boulder I might encounter along the way. It’s a bit like virtual-reality training, playing a video in your mind. When you come to do the big challenge, you feel so focused, because it’s like you’ve already done it.”

Visualisation shifts you into a state of laser-sharp concentration so that you find your ‘flow’. “It combines relaxation with focus,” Ortiz explains. “Normally when you relax, you disperse, like when you fall asleep. But visualisation teaches you to combine 100 per cent relaxation with 100 per cent focus. It’s a really intense sensation that gets your mind ready and armed against distractions so that you can be the best you can be in that moment.”

New tests come knocking every day, from training for a sport event to plotting your next career move. But completing challenges is a routine task for British expedition leader Belinda Kirk, who has trekked across Nicaragua, searched for obscure camels in China’s Taklamakan Desert – aka the ‘Sea of Death’ – and managed expeditions for Bear Grylls.

“The key is to break down a challenge into manageable pieces,” says Kirk, 41. By making the task seem easier, you change your psychological perception of it from a problem to an opportunity. “When I was 18, I travelled around Africa by myself for a year. If you’d have told me that 12 months earlier, I just would have laughed. But if you break down a journey into smaller chunks, it feels more achievable. Like a marathon runner, you tick off a mile at a time.”

First, you need to identify your primary motivation – this is the energy source that will drive you on through the hard times along the way. “Are you trying to break a record, achieve a certain result, or just make personal progress?” Kirk says. “Decisions become that bit easier if you know why you want to do something.”

Once your motivation is clear in your head, make your challenge public to create a sense of accountability. “Tell your friends, so you can’t back out,” says Kirk. Social pressure is a powerful psychological weapon: “On my trip to Africa, a guy died on the bus seat next to me. I could have quit right then. But it was the embarrassment I would have felt if went home early that made me carry on – and that trip changed my life.”

Kirk breaks down each new challenge into small parts – routes, kit, timing, skills required, climate, environment – to simplify the project, but she also develops ‘what if?’ strategies to help prevent failure. “I think about all the stuff that could go wrong, like falling out of a raft on the Zambezi, and how I’d respond. The resilience you need to get through a challenge is really about building up coping mechanisms – having the most effective responses available to overcome each obstacle.”

Good planning is essential, but so too is adaptability: “On one expedition, we crossed a river in Alaska when it was a trickle; however, when we returned, it was a raging torrent. We met a hunter in the area and they helped us create a roped crossing.”

Your ability to overcome obstacles is exactly what will make your achievement so meaningful. “Every problem you deal with raises your resilience and makes success more likely,” explains Kirk. “After climbing a mountain or learning a new skill, you realise you have been putting ceilings on your dreams and that anything is possible.”