Grounded: How Leaders Stay Rooted in an Uncertain World

CHAPTER 8

Positive Emotions

Triumphing Over Fear

At age twenty-three, Nando Parrado, his rugby teammates, and their family members were flying over the Andes to a match, when their plane crashed at over eleven thousand feet. Parrado lost consciousness for three days. Some of his teammates lay dead, as did his mother. Parrado regained consciousness in time to hold his sister in his arms as she died of exposure. Survival was an immediate issue. The people who remained had no food and only melted snow for drinking. Three of the survivors, led by Parrado, climbed out of the mountains for help and hiked eleven days before spotting a peasant, who led them back to civilization. All told, the group had been missing in the mountains for seventy-two ...