When I was in the business world I never thought my love for the outdoors and adventure had anything in common with being a successful entrepreneur. After walking away from society to live in the bush for 7 years, I realized Survivors and great Innovators have a common mindset that is critical to success, whether that is life and death for you or your business or thriving and scaling.

Although my adventure of living off the land was a self-inflicted survival situation, it was very real. There were no stores to get food, no humans within hundreds of kilometers, and no rescue options available. We had to figure out how to survive or die, not for days or weeks, but for several years. The experience was very similar to what it felt like as an entrepreneur, and that’s when I realized the mindset is exactly the same. The Innovator Mindset and Survivor Mindset have 3 critical traits in common.

1. Awareness – highly observant and empathetic to the reality around and within you.

2. Adaptable – includes openness to being receptive to change and new information, as well as the ability to adjust to different conditions and transform to meet the situation.

3. Courageous – recognize the edge, and despite uncertainty, having optimism and faith in yourself and your team, to make calculated decisions for action.

Grouse, coyote and bear track - ever vigilant for prey and predator in business & survival!

Today’s post is about Awareness! The mindset of having a firm grip on the reality around you and within you is critical. Awareness means being highly observant, in tune with the environment, and self-aware of your own assumptions, capability and thoughts. In the bush we became hyper aware and we used every human sense, including a sixth ‘warning’ sense, to detect changes, problems, threats, safe havens and opportunities.

One time when I was sitting at a well-used rabbit trail, stomach rumbling because I hadn’t eaten protein in days, begging silently for food to come, I realized I couldn’t sit still. I was squirming, scratching, and swatting constantly. No self-respecting grouse, rabbit or squirrel was ever going to come near me! And as the reality of the situation hit me, I realized I was being swarmed, tickled and pinged by food: mosquitos, ants, and grasshoppers! And now we had a new, easy to get protein food source – insects! The solution was all around me and I would have missed it if I hadn’t been aware and open to seeing the situation from a new perspective. Of course being adaptable and having an open mind also had to be active for me to take that first bite!

One awareness survival skill is to always view the world with wide angle vision, never focused straight ahead, never with blinders on, like we do with our screens. In the bush, it allows your brain to pick up tiny movements all around you that you cannot see even if you were staring directly at the area of movement. This saved my life on several occasions. One of those times I was picking soopolallie (Shepherdia Canadensis) berries several hours away from where Dave, my hubby, was located. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a tiny branch moving in a slightly different direction than the wind was blowing everything else. I became extra curious, stayed alert, and continued what I was doing as I changed direction to silently find a different angle. The wind was loud, my scent blowing away, the bushes were thick and the terrain tough to move in. A few more steps and sure enough, it was a bear, within 3 meters of me, headed straight toward me, oblivious that I was there. I moved quietly and calmly in a different direction and from a safe distance made sounds to let him know I was there. He harrumphed a few times, stood up to check me out, and then started to eat again. We both continued picking berries in the area, now circling and keeping each other at a safe distance, glancing at each other occasionally, but both ready if the situation changed.

Being highly observant, with every sense active to pick up slight changes & differences in our environment are critical to survival and innovation. In this different situation, the bear blended in to the surroundings.

As innovators, we need to be hyper aware of everything happening in not just our industry and marketplace, but also other industries and within our own organizations. Keeping a wide angle view on the trends, the new business models, and the new technologies allows innovators to see threats and opportunities early enough to react. Awareness is about being highly observant to minute changes in our world and to use all our senses to understand every aspect of a situation. Awareness is the innovators ability to see opportunities when others only see a problem or threat. Being fully aware requires innovators to be ‘always on’, alert, curious and empathetic. Highly attuned to the realities around us and within our organizations, industries and those impacting our customers. Awareness keeps you ahead of the threats, capitalizing on opportunities others haven’t seen yet, and responding to situations with calm readiness to respond as situations change. Awareness is one aspect of the Innovator’s Mindset that keeps your company alive and thriving, just like it does in human survival situations!

Three Traits the Innovator Mindset and Survivor Mindset Have in Common!