Fight or Flight Response

Imagine walking on the road late in the night and you happen to bump into a couple of drunks. As expected they start talking nonsense and start abusing you. You are alone and do not see any other soul nearby. Watcha gona do? You can either run away from there hoping that you'll not run into a similar situation or you can play the Rocky soundtrack in your head and throw a couple of punches at them. Don't worry the drunkards will have a higher probability of punching a tree than you, considering their balanced state.

The former response is called as flight and the latter is called as fight. The fight or flight response is common among animals and humans when they are under stress. If at all a deer is attacked by a lion, it runs and thus opts for flight. Rats tend to respond in a similar manner when attacked but throw a fight when they are cornered. We all have experienced these scenarios and generally speaking males tend to opt for fight and females tend to flee when confronted in certain situations.

Now lets apply this theory to our day to day lives. You have a manager who constantly criticizes you or overloads your schedule with unwanted or his share of work. What do you do? My solution would be to fight. When I mean fight, I'm not suggesting one to scream or abuse the manager let alone kicking him in the groin area. A fight here can be looked at channeling your aggression to get the work done and increase your productivity thus filtering out your anger. If one decides to flee in this situation by getting depressed or having those Monday morning blues throughout Monday and for the rest of the week, it not only undermines your potential but also makes you a bouncing board for your manager's self satisfying releases.

These reactions can have a resounding effect on a team. The attitude of one person in team can have a cascading effect on others. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, the Indian cricket team was known for playing cricket matches overseas just for the sake of formality. They had convinced themselves that they couldn't win a series overseas and would just go and play to help the BCCI make some money. But look at the situation now. There have been numerous records broken in the past few years and some of the senior players and even tailenders in the team have shown a lot of resilience. VVS Laxman's fighting spirit and classy knocks have made the team believe that they can win even after following on and even when they are 8 down. This is just one of the many examples that show how the responsive actions can impact the overall attitude of a team.

Not all the time does the fighting instinct help you. There are situations when the best option is to flee and not look back.  Yasi the cyclone that has lead to mass destruction in Australia, is a prime example. Whether it is the Yasi or Katrina or something as a big as the Tsunami, your best option is to flee.

We humans exhibit these kind of responses in numerous situations in our daily lives. While it all boils down to choosing flight or fight, what can cause more damage is the tendency to choose  the same option everytime. I guess Yeddy is a classic example of a guy opting to flee whenever he is under stress. He spent more time in the temples and donating millions of the tax payers' money to them when he was needed in the office. Now that his chair is became weak, he flew to the banks of a river to please the gods with his striptease.

P.S - Just a dozen more days to go, have to see which team will fight and eventually take the Udaan with the ICC cricket WorldCup.

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