Break through points lead to choosing extreme conditions, and extreme conditions lead to break through points. In whichever case, a person will turn more toward exploring the purpose of their life, and its meaning.
Now finally the most interesting and important connection: Embarking on a expedition always has the potential of bringing you the rare opportunity to perceive your life in the ultimate perspective. It is only at the moment when you are sure you are going to die in a minute or two that you have your last seconds to review your life and state honestly to yourself whether or not you lived your life and to what extent. As long as you have plan B and plan C to escape, then you won't be forced to be direct enough to consider the things you could have thought of before but never had a 'chance' to face. In such a near-death situation this statement will naturally appear without the wrap-up bullshit that our lives are full of. Years of introspective struggle might not be able to take you there; such is human nature. I would estimate that this experience is worth $1million.
The conclusions we get to at that point are often very similar. They have one predominant tendency: emphasis for living one's own life instead of what is expected by others, and enjoying life more now instead of waiting for the goal to come...
I decided to paste below a list of the most predominant regrets that people who were actually dying have stated. Maybe it will inspire you to give a moment to consider your own life in a similar light:
1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I hadn't worked so hard.
3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
(based on research by Bronnie Ware)
In terms of mental preparation all of your life that you've lived so far is a preparation. All of the moments in your past that you executed more effort from yourself, more determination, persistence, focus, and all of the moments that you handled pain and discomfort and that you pushed your limits... these will be an asset...
Now a bit of humor in the end to chill out.
It is going to be black humor though, sorry. The funniest or most amazing death accidents:
458 BC: Aeschylus, the great Athenian author of tragedies. Valerius Maximus wrote that he was killed by a tortoise dropped by an eagle that had mistaken his head for a rock suitable for shattering the shell of the reptile. Pliny, in his Naturalis Historiæ, adds that Aeschylus had been staying outdoors to avert a prophecy that he would be killed by a falling object.
1518: In the Dancing Plague of 1518 a woman (and eventually a league of 400 people) uncontrollably danced for a month causing dozens of participants to die of stroke and exhaustion. The reason for this occurrence is still unclear
As the dancing plague worsened, concerned nobles sought the advice of local physicians, who ruled out astrological and supernatural causes, instead announcing that the plague was a "natural disease" caused by "hot blood." However, instead of prescribing bleeding, authorities encouraged more dancing, in part by opening two guildhalls and a grain market, and even constructing a wooden stage. The authorities did this because they believed that the dancers would only recover if they danced continuously night and day. To increase the effectiveness of the cure, authorities even paid for musicians to keep the afflicted moving. Some of the dancers were taken to a shrine, where they sought a cure for their affliction[
1916: Grigori Rasputin, Russian mystic, was poisoned while dining with a political enemy, and supposedly he was given enough poison to kill three men his size. When he did not die, one assassin sneaked up behind him and shot him in the head, and while checking Grigori's pulse he was grabbed by the neck by the mystic and was strangled. He proceeded to run away, while the other assassins chased. They caught up to him after he was finally felled by three shots during the chase. The pursuers bludgeoned him, then threw him into a frozen river. When his body washed ashore, an autopsy showed the cause of death to be hypothermia, not drowning.