Fight or Flight is thought to be a typical human response to stressful situations. According to this, we are either primed to respond with strong action or to run away from the situation.
This theory fails to account for a vital third response – Doing an Ostrich i.e. burying our heads in the sand.
And my belief is that we do an ostrich much more than we like to admit.
That’s why..
..executives in ‘customer oriented companies’ live with horrible customer feedback.
..managers in teams with high attrition rates see nothing unusual.
..we live with broken commitments like missing our daily dose of exercise, reading or writing.
Our lizard brains just pretend nothing happened.
In these situations, fight i.e. tackling the problem would be great. Flight i.e deciding that the problem is not worth our time would also be just fine.
It’s ostrich-ing i.e. pretending that these problems don’t exist that kills us. And it’s why we live with mediocrity – because we pretend it doesn’t exist!
Seth Godin rightly pointed out that we need less resolutions and more commitments in 2012.
My belief is that we need to watch out for the ostrich within us and actually kick on with decisions. Say No to more and actually Do what we say Yes to.
Fight or Flight in 2012. No Ostrich-ing.
A Learning a Day 