Wellness

Survival Mindset

Jessie Krebs

Lesson time 10:22 min

Jessie explains why mental fortitude and focus are necessary to survive. You’ll learn how to balance different mindsets in order to enter the wilderness prepared for any scenario.

Students give MasterClass an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars

Topics include: Call on Your Willpower • Focus and Breathe • Check Your Mindset • Prepare Before You Leave

Preview

[MUSIC PLAYING] - I think there's a lot of confusion recently, especially, between the difference between what primitive living is and survival is. And primitive living is what people have done on the planet for millennia, right? It was home. The wilderness wasn't the wilderness. It was home. And so there are still people now who choose to live out in the wilderness and just disassociate from modern society. And so that's a choice, and there's so much that goes into that. So much has been lost from tribes around the planet. Knowledge that they had about the local plants and how to make tools and hunting and everything that they knew about that landscape, very intertwined with it. And that's much different than what we're talking about in this class. This class is, "I'm a modern human and I'm going out into the wilderness to play, and it's beautiful. And I'm having a wonderful time! And then I'm not," right? And things go wrong. Survival skills is, "I want the nitty gritty. I want the basic stuff that's going to keep me alive until I can get back home again because that's really my ultimate goal. I don't want to be here anymore. I was having a good time, now I'm not. I just want to go back to my nice, comfy home." [MUSIC PLAYING] Survival skills are a combination of a few different elements. One is simply your intelligence and your general ingenuity. How good are you at problem solving? One of my favorite things to do. So how good am I at that? Also, it's a combination of skills. Am I good at starting a fire? Do I understand concepts, right? So those are things we've learned. Those are more hard skills, like the solid stuff that we have that we can actually tangibly touch and work with and make. So there's that kind of thing. And then there's also the thing that's totally intangible, and that's our willpower-- our ability to just push through when things get hard. And there's a story of this. It's the English Navy. A bunch of vets end up in the water. And some of these guys are older. They've been through World War I. They've been through a lot of life. They're in their 50s, 60s, maybe even. And then you've got a lot of new guys who've just come on board, right? They were too young for World War I. So there are youngsters. They are coming in their 20s and 30s. And when this ship would sink and you got all these guys in the water, they'd sit there for a few hours. And now rescue shows up. Guess which age group is still floating? You'd think it would be the young, like 20-, 30-year-olds that are in better physical shape, right? Not getting older. No. Those are the ones that are sinking. It's those older guys that are making it because they got the mental toughness, right? So it's not all about just those physical skills or even problem solving. A big part of it is, like, "I am not going down right now." And those guys that have been through World War I, they've been through it, right? They've been there, do...

About the Instructor

As a former Air Force SERE (survival, evasion, resistance, and escape) specialist, wilderness survival expert Jessie Krebs spent 30 years preparing people for the unexpected. Now she’s teaching you the mindset and skills to safely explore the outdoors. Learn essential survival techniques—from signaling for help to reading a map, finding water, making shelter, and more—and embark on your next adventure with confidence.

Featured MasterClass Instructor

Jessie Krebs

Wilderness survival expert and former Air Force SERE specialist Jessie Krebs teaches you the skills to explore nature safely and confidently.

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