Michael Tougias Shares the Lessons of 'Extreme Survival' that Anyone Can Use

New York Times bestselling author, Michael Tougias, returns to Writer’s Voices to discuss his riveting survival biography, Extreme Survival: Lessons From Those Who Have Triumphed All Odds. Filled with real-life accounts from survivors who have faced extreme circumstances, Extreme Survival also includes survival techniques that readers can use in many different situations and in everyday life. “I’ve done seven books with that true survival and rescue theme and over many years, I’ve interviewed probably seventy or eighty extraordinary survivors who, as I was interviewing them thought, I could’ve never made it and that would send me into a deep dive with them of ok, ‘What were your thoughts? What was going through your mind to keep going?’ So that was the genesis of Extreme Survival, is how do these people do it when the rest of us think we could’ve never got through the ordeal?” Structured by theme, the chapters include stories of survivors who used a particular survival technique to endure their own unique situation. Other subjects in the book include the internal methods that the toughest survivors have used to pull through their most difficult moments, such as giving yourself breaks and going into a dream state when necessary, encouraging yourself with pep talks and pats on the back, and finding things within your control.

One commonality that Tougias noticed when interviewing these survivors was that many of them said that while they were going through their ordeal, they felt someone with them, whether they could see this being, spirit, or not, and this presence stayed close by to encourage and uplift them, sometimes telling them what they should do. “Time and time again, that came up. Even Ernest Shackleton, who’s known as one of the greatest survivors ever said in the final days when he had to march over the icebergs, he felt the presence of another being encouraging him, and later he was with the men he talked about that and they said, ‘we felt it too,’ and so a poet took liberty with that and later called it the Third Man Factor. It’s quite common. I’ve had many survivors say, ‘oh a clear voice told me what I should do next…'”

Regarding the subtitle, Lessons From Those Who Have Triumphed Against All Odds, Tougias remarked, “That subtitle is so important to me because I wanted the readers to know that you’re not just going to get these survival stories. You’re going to get some of the lessons, and not what they did physically to make it, not that they walked 100 miles through the desert or that they fixed whatever was broken, but more [to] get into their minds and thought processes and how they fight on.”