Bear Grylls, a survival expert, recently parachuted into the Costa Rican rainforest. This is one of the most dangerous jungles out there. It consists of more than 300 square miles described as the most biologically intense place on earth.

Ninety-four people had to be rescued there last year by the Red Cross. Bear described the purpose of his visit: “My mission is to show you the skills you need to survive in the rainforest and find your way out.”

Part of success is finding your way and visualizing the end result of finding your way. Bear Grylls envisioned the heated bed that would be available when he reached civilization.

Most of us already have a heated bed available, but we don’t appreciate it enough! Many of us don’t appreciate our computers enough.

To find our way home, all we have to do is check

http://maps.google.com Enter your home address and then press ‘enter’.

If you want an aerial view, just click the ‘satellite’ button when the map appears. Of course Bear was missing a nice warm bed and a computer!

He only had a knife and a bottle of water. People who get lost in the jungle often only have the clothes on their backs. Bear landed in the trees twenty meters up. He rappelled off the ground in style.

He decided to head downhill to find a stream or river to get out of the jungle. There are many jaguars in this area of ​​the rainforest, but snakes and smaller creatures are more dangerous.

The undergrowth in the forest was really thick. Bear wasn’t getting anywhere: “I need another plan.” Successful people are not afraid to change their plans when necessary.

Lacking an aerial photo or a computer, he had to climb the highest tree he could find to see a way out. This was risky.

Above the canopy, all he could see was miles and miles of jungle in every direction. However, she saw a slight depression in the jungle where one side was higher than the other. This suggests a river and gave Bear a possible direction.

Just walking, you have to be careful where you step. If you step over a log or grab a vine without looking, you could be bitten. He saw a serpent spearhead:

“These guys are responsible for more deaths in Central and South America than any other snake. Fer de lance means Lance Head. If that hit me and bit me, I might as well be dead before nightfall.”

Many snakes are very dangerous. Two million people report snakebites each year. 60,000 of those who are bitten die. Most of us don’t appreciate the comparative security of our own lives, and appreciation is a big part of success. We tend to get more than we are grateful for.

He saw a stream and followed it in search of direction and water. You can survive three weeks without food, but you can only survive a couple of days without water.

If the water is flowing fast and there are creatures like crayfish swimming around, it’s probably harmless. He tasted good to Bear, who drank freely.

The route Bear was following might not be the fastest or the safest, but: “This route is all I have.” Successful people don’t sit around and complain that they don’t have all the information they need. They just use what they have.

Then he came across a steep waterfall. Turning around would take a couple of hours and it would be dark by then. He came down using some vines.

To make a shelter for the night, Bear needed a sharp knife. He found a quartz-like stone which he broke, ground and smeared on some damp wood without the bark.

He then ran the knife up and down the stick to sharpen it. Skills are the ingredients of both survival and success.

Bear came out of the stream to find plants to eat. They are the easiest source of food in this jungle. They abound and do not escape:

“Avoid bright red berries and, in most cases, plants with milky sap. Test the juice on your skin to see if it reacts and try to eat a small piece, but be prepared to spit it out.”

He found some blackmouth berries that were packed with good natural sugars. Healthy eating and self care is a key part of success.

Bear now looked for a place to take refuge. The rainforest is a few degrees north of the equator. Days and nights are the same length in this area.

Falling trees and branches are the biggest killer of people in the jungle, so you need to find a clear ground and away from trees.

He needed a shelter because it was the rainy season and he also needed a fire not to keep warm but to take a break from the mosquitoes. Mosquitoes are annoying and can carry diseases like dengi fever and malaria.

Clear the ground with a stick and not with your hands. There could be snakes or scorpions around. When I was a little boy in a concentration camp in China, I saw my father’s back badly swollen from a scorpion sting.

Their venomous sting usually cannot kill a healthy adult, but the venom of some types of scorpions can kill the young, the sick, and the elderly.

He used his knife and a branch as a hammer to cut down some small trees to help build his shelter. He used a makeshift bow and three pieces of wood to build a fire and put a termite nest on the fire to help keep the mosquitoes away.

Successful people use everything available to them to achieve their goals.

Bear had a bad night of diarrhea and vomiting and hardly slept. He felt cold and chills. He wasn’t sure what he had done wrong. He hoped he wasn’t suffering from dysentery, a severe form of diarrhea.

“I think I just got a stomach bug maybe from touching animal droppings.”

Maybe it was the water Bear had drunk. He boils the water for at least 5 minutes before drinking it.

Diarrhea drains the body of water and salt and you are then vulnerable to heat stroke. Every year hikers die because they don’t drink enough water.

Although the jungle can make you sick, it can also help you if you know what to look for. Bear, like all successful people, doesn’t give up even when he’s sick.

Instead, he remembered a milk tree, nature’s milk of magnesia, that had passed half a mile back. She went back up the waterfall.

Nearly half of the drugs we use were developed from rainforest plants. The pain reliever ibuprofen was synthesized from a vine called the monkey ladder tree.

Bear found the milk tree and sucked on the milky sap that would settle his stomach. Normally, milky sap is a sign of danger, but not in this case.

He headed back down the river and his appetite began to return. She cut a palm sapling and ate some of the heart of palm. The center is white and sweet and she tastes a bit like asparagus.

“You can almost taste the nutrition in this.”

Bear got ready for another night in the jungle. He cut some sap from a camphor tree. Camphor is the material from which mothballs are made and has the same repellent effect on mosquitoes as it does on moths.

He also used the camphor resin to help create a torch that would help him find shrimp or crayfish. Four crayfish made him a decent meal. His spirits lifted as he watched the crawfish cook.

In a survival situation, battles are won or lost in the mind. There is a story of Marcos Martínez, a 17-year-old boy, who was separated from his uncle in this area and spent thirteen days and nights alone in the jungle living on green banana trees and polluted water from streams.

After 40 kilometers of walking, Marcos, sick, dehydrated and disoriented, staggered out of the jungle.

He said the thing that scared him the most was thinking about animals at night, but his faith in God kept him going. Whatever you use to keep your spirits up will help you survive. Sometimes it’s just campfire food that keeps you motivated. Successful people find ways to keep their spirits up.

It rained all night and the shelter only worked for about four hours. In the morning, Bear was drenched and demoralized.

He didn’t want to spend another sleepless night in the jungle. He wanted to get out of the jungle as quickly as possible, especially since he no longer had the river to himself.

There were spectacled alligators, close relatives of the crocodile, moving menacingly through the shallows. Downriver, there could be American crocodiles that were twice as big and ten times as nasty:

“If I run into them, I could be in real trouble. I’ll take the stick. You should never go near a crocodile, but if you do, the advice is to go for its eyes and nostrils.”

Successful people like to be well prepared for possible problems. Robert Ringer leaves almost two hours free to catch his plane. You never know what annoyances might disrupt his best plans in the real world compared to the ideal world. The jungle is definitely part of the real world.

The river was now wider. Bear was looking forward to completing the mission from him:

“There’s a good chance that tonight I could be in a warm and cozy bed.”

He crossed the river pushing with his stick to scare away the river snakes. On the other hand, he cut down a balsa tree that could be the base of his raft. He used the bark to bind their trunks together.

He headed down the river and found that floating was much faster than walking. He realized that he was now passing mangroves, salt-tolerant plants that grow out of water. The tide was coming out fast and was dragging him along at the speed of knots:

If I’m not careful, they can take me straight to the Pacific.

Bear tried to find a way out through the mangrove, but it turned into a nightmare. He spent three hours climbing through the swamp, but he wasn’t getting anywhere.

He decided to go back to his raft and take a chance on the river. He reached the mouth of the river just as the tide was going out and was swept out into the Pacific Ocean.

“If you’re caught in a current like this, don’t fight it. You’ll just wear yourself out. Just row parallel to the shore and sooner or later you’ll get out of the current and then you can swim to shore.”

Successful people don’t get scared. They stay calm, conserve their energy, and use their brains.

Bear did all this and soon came to a beautiful beach. He had no idea where the beach was, but he didn’t care because he saw the flicker of electric lights a couple of miles from the sand. He now he could relax because electricity meant people and people meant security.

The jungle can be intimidating when you’re lost and can quickly drain your strength. But it is an extraordinary world. It is also a world that is getting smaller. Every second, an area the size of a football field disappears. One day, a tropical jungle to get lost in might not exist.

Bear commented, “I hope that day never comes because it’s such a special place, but for me it’s definitely time to go home.”

Survive or succeed, then, by finding your way with whatever tools you have, visualizing your goals, adapting your plans, learning useful skills, maintaining your morale, being well prepared, appreciating and using what you have, and staying safe and healthy!

Above all, success follows action. Bear Grylls keeps moving and performing even when he’s sick. If we follow his example, we won’t go far wrong.