On the first season of Alone Australia, one of the participants, Michael, mentioned this thing called the Survival Triangle, which lays out the 3 things – hope, a plan, and work – necessary for survival.

John Hudson's Survival Triangle (Credit: John Hudson’s Survival Triangle)

As season one narrowed down to 3 contestants, it was uncanny how well the Survival Triangle explained why each of them were there.

Take Michael, who is deeply religious. He didn’t have much in terms of a plan and work. But faith in God kept him mentally committed. He lasted 30 days! Eating weeds!

Then there is Mike, who I call ruthlessly efficient. (By the way, has anyone ever named their kid Ruth Leslie? It’s a pretty badass name.) He was constantly optimizing his systems and looking for problems to solve. For example, one contestant who was lucky enough to catch an eel early on found it so fatty and disgusting that she almost hoped that she wouldn’t catch another one. When Mike encountered the same issue, his response was, right on, let’s build a smoker to improve the taste.

Gina seemed to have a healthy balance of all three vertices of the triangle. She’d endured the death of her infant daughter years earlier and was mentally prepared for hitting rock bottom. She had plenty of practical skills. She had faith that Mother Nature would take care of her. And because of that, she seemed to be adapting her plans organically, in harmony, with nature.

In the end, it came down to Mike and Gina. I found myself rooting for Mike, who put so much raw effort into his systems. He built a freakin’ canoe, for heaven’s sake. However, Gina had luck on her side. While zoning out on a log after a midnight pee, a wallaby ambled by. She lunged at it instinctively and became the only contestant on the show to catch non-fish protein. Whereas Mike, poor Mike, built not one, but two traps, for the neighborhood pademelon, only for it to escape multiple times.

The Survival Triangle stuck in my mind because it maps neatly onto the different buckets of support I provide to clients as a career coach. Here’s how it’s shown up recently in my coaching:

1) X felt it was time to make a move. In the past, the next step seemed to be driven by luck. A pretty good opportunity would fall into his lap, and he had the discernment to run with it. But, according to X, “luck isn’t a process.” And what if he wanted something greater than what luck could deliver? We agreed to work together to strengthen his Survival Triangle. We’ll work on hope by tackling his lack of confidence, create a plan to map out his transition, and carve out time for the work of building his next move. He won’t need to wait for luck. He’s creating his own opportunities.

2) When B and I first started working together 6 months ago, she vacillated between excitement and hopelessness at how she could ever create the work and life that she wanted. When she was overwhelmed by hopelessness, her ability to plan or take action shut down completely. So, we focused first on hope, dismantling self-limiting beliefs that told her how she couldn’t have the life she wanted. Then, we optimized her work by co-creating workflows and systems that let her get more done in less time. At our most recent quarterly debrief, she was lit up, excited about all the things that she thought were out of reach that she’s finally allowing herself to pursue. Now, with those pieces in place, we’re focusing on the plan – setting ambitious, concrete goals to channel her energy in the right direction. She just committed to another 3 months of coaching to make it happen.

3) When I first spoke to P, he waxed on about the grand plans he would like to pursue and, in the same breath, concluded with, “But I’ll probably go back to my old, unsatisfying job after this sabbatical.” When I pointed out this curious “I’d like to do this, but I will probably do that” phenomenon, we uncovered that he had cultivated a kind of apathy towards his dreams as a defense mechanism. The logic was, If you don’t let yourself hope, you can’t be disappointed. But how can you pursue something that you won’t even let yourself imagine is possible? If we were to work together, I’d want to focus on strengthening his hope vertex first. That would mean helping him reconnect with the excitement of his big ambitions and start to believe they’re possible. From there, we’d co-create a plan to break those big goals into smaller, actionable steps, and build momentum through consistent, focused work. The goal would be to help him stop holding back and start moving toward the life he really wants.

Thriving in the great wilderness of one’s lifelong career requires the same three elements: hope, a plan, and work. 1:1 coaching is the fastest way to build the systems and mindset you need to succeed. If you’re ready to strengthen your Survival Triangle, apply for a strategy session.