I suppose that is true, although I've certainly been in a lot more high-stress situations than I've been in life-threatening situations, and I expect that the same goes for most people on this forum. But then again, I don't think that was necessarily the point you were trying to make. I didn't mean to downplay the difficulty of coping high stress situations-- it's legitimately hard. But practice is the best way to increase your likelihood of not-dying.
For example, when I was taking martial arts, I was told that the best thing you can do if you actually wan...
I think there's a limit to how much a belief like this can be instrumental. It's a belief whose benefit would be very highly context dependent. For example, believing that you are capable of winning a boxing match might be highly instrumental when you're actually in the ring, but it would not be instrumental before the match when you're deciding how much money you want to bet on your performance in the competition (since you would bet as if your likelihood of winning was higher than it actually is).
That said, I think that psychologically dealing with high-stress situations is a skill just like any other. You practice, you fuck up, you think about it, and eventually you get better.
Hi LW
The name is Daniel. I'm 22, coming out of college and running into the problem that there aren't that many people out there who get as excited as I do about epistemology, evolutionary theory, and interdisciplinary science as I do. I ended up coming here because I'm beginning to suspect that the longer I spend not talking about my ideas with other people (see: reality checks), the more likely they are to spiral off into flights of fancy. And nobody wants that. Plus I feel like in the day-to-day life, there's so little opportunity to really engage in pr...
Write things down. I think 90% of successful experimentation is keeping good notes.