🐻 They Die of Shame

My friends and I in 2003 in the Highlands of Scotland, trying not to die from shame ...

why do people die in the forest ? They die of shame ….

The Edge, leadership and the difference between problems and solutions

Some years ago I watched a film that stayed in my mind for a long time: The Edge.

The story is simple but powerful.

A plane crashes in the Alaskan wilderness and the survivors — played by Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin — are suddenly trapped in an immense forest with almost nothing.

Cold. Hunger. Isolation.

And a massive bear hunting them.

Their only goal is to reach civilization before the wilderness kills them.

At a certain moment Baldwin’s character collapses mentally.

He wants to give up.

And then Hopkins says something that I never forgot:

“Most people lost in the wilds… they die of shame.”

Not hunger.

Not cold.

Not the bear.

Shame.

Hopkins explains that when people get lost in the wilderness they often cannot accept the situation they are in. They feel ashamed of the mistake that led them there. Instead of acting, they start lamenting, blaming, freezing mentally.

And that paralysis is what kills them.

The difference between lamenting and solving

I see this phenomenon very often in companies.

Let me give you a very simple example.

In one of our clinics I had a wall space of 1.50 meters for a television.

So I bought a television.

The problem?

The television was 1.53 meters.

It didn’t fit.

Several employees reacted immediately:

“Now what are we going to do?”

“You bought the wrong TV.”

“Did you notice it’s bigger than the wall?”

They were absolutely right.

But they were also completely useless in that moment.

They were describing the problem, not solving it.

Then another employee came to me and asked a very different question:

“How are we going to sand the wall so the television fits?”

Not if.

How.

That single question changed everything.

Two mentalities

In reality, every organization is divided between two types of people.

The observers of problems

They analyse.

They explain.

They criticise.

But they stay stuck in the error.

They die of shame.

The builders of solutions

They accept reality immediately.

The problem exists.

Fine.

Now the only relevant question is:

“What do we do next?”

The same thing happens in surgery

Any surgeon knows this moment.

A guide doesn’t seat perfectly.

Bone density is different than expected.

An implant trajectory needs adjustment.

If the surgeon freezes, thinking about the mistake, the surgery becomes chaotic.

But if the surgeon simply says:

“Ok. This is not the plan. What is the next move?”

Then the mind clears.

Action returns.

Solutions appear.

The wilderness is everywhere

The truth is that the wilderness is not only in Alaska.

It appears in:

• companies

• surgeries

• laboratories

• families

• everyday life

Mistakes are inevitable.

What matters is whether we stand there lamenting the situation…

or whether we start carving the wall so the television fits.

Because in the end, as Charles Morse says in The Edge:

“Most people lost in the wilds… they die of shame.”

And the people who survive?

They simply start looking for the way out.

Stay safe

Andre