Everyone is under pressure. In a survival situation your under even more pressure.

Just about everyone has experienced a situation where you choked. You know what your doing. You have experience. Normally you can do the job easily. But this time you choke. You can't do anything right. Your all thumbs and it is all down hill from there. Everyone has been there.

Choking in a survival situation can make you useless.

Why is it that sometimes you choke and sometimes you don't? How can an otherwise easy task become seemingly impossible? What can you do to avoid choking under pressure, or at least lower the odds?

http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2008/03/how_to_think_under_pressure.php

To survive you must act. To act well you must use your brain. How you drive your brain is at least as important as how you drive your gear.

I don’t recall ever choking up.

Just remain calm and do the job that needs to be done.






How can an otherwise easy task become seemingly impossible?

Get the government involved in doing it….
LOL

I have never had the problem of choking up because I concentrate on the mission and getting it from "now" to the successful conclusion.

Now is the key word

What you did yesterday doesn’t make a difference.

What you are going to do tomorrow doesn’t make a difference.

What you do right now does.

Another thing that can lead to "choking" - or at least not performing correctly - exhaution

I can remember a couple years ago, sitting at a friends place, TRYING to coil a roll of coax cable, a messing up 2-3 times in of, 5 minutes.

Didn't help that I had been up almost 60 straight hours (all 3 of us had), that in those 60 hours, the temps ranged from a LOW of about 90 to 102, and we were rushing to get some gear now and inside before a thunderstorm hit (we could hear and see it coming).

I think I got it right on the 4th or 5th try, walked inside his house, laid down on the floor, and was out like a light bulb in about 5 seconds

I think that the three biggest things are training, training, and more training. If you train and practice, you will have a lot less chance of choking up when it really counts...

+1 on training.
Also, my EMT instructor used to say: "Remember, when someone shouts 'HELP" you are the HELP, and if you want to get upset/sick about what you see, do it later, after you've done your job."

+1 on training... or is that +2

I think the topic is a bit too absolute. Failure is a part of the human factor; we overcome it by refusing to quit. You choke when you give up, otherwise you keep working the options. To quote a fictional hero of mine, I don't believe in the no-win scenario, so if I don't realize the solution right away, that just means I need to continue trying. If it doesn't work the first time, then change something and try again.

That's the way I've pretty much lived my entire life. That brings to mind one more famous hero quote, a man's gotta know his limitations. You come to believe that no matter how bad it can get, there's always gonna be something next, and it's either gonna be better, worse, or just as bad. Time don't stop for no man.

The finality of death is overrated, and what could be a worse outcome? Ergo, quote number three, "Everybody gotta die sometime, Red."

My thoughts as well- I've seen people who are amazingly well trained glitch due to other stress and exhaustion, and they try again and again until they are just making it worse. If anything, I've seen it happen at least as frequently, due to cockiness.

Training and determination make it less likely you'll "choke", or at least choke when it is convient. But no one is every going to be able to say they are 100% sure they won't freeze, hesitate, or in some other way just make the situation worse.

Just have a human failure factored into your plan.