finally settled in the field of counseling psychology all because he
has a deep desire to help people. But what stands out about Andrew
the most is his ability to selflessly jump into dangerous circum-
stances to help others – a behavior for which he has something of
a reputation.
Once we were walking along in my neighborhood
with a group of people during a neighborhood festival. It was
a beautiful day and there were people everywhere. A car drove
by with a huge dog who had half his body sticking out the car
window taking in the wind. Then something happened. The dog
leapt out of the moving car and, uninjured, tore down the street
after a squirrel. Was the dog okay? Where was it going? The people
in the car pulled over. Everyone was shocked, except for Andrew.
I looked around and he, too, was gone. Without missing a beat, he
raced down the street through the crowds, was able to nab the dog,
and reunited him with his owners. All of this before any of us
realized what was going on.
Here’s another example of Andrew’s altruistic nature. “It
was just after I left the Sheriff’s Department,” Andrew explained. “I
was riding with a friend in San Francisco. We were talking about
being a cop and then were stopped at a traffic light behind some
other cars. We were near this alleyway and we both look down
there, and there’s this guy threatening a woman who is pregnant.
But we’re just watching this guy threatening and holding this
woman against a wall. I jumped out of the car and ran toward
them and confronted them. I broke up the fight. When I got back
to the car my friend said, ‘I turned around and you were gone. They
could have had a knife. They could have had a gun. You’ve got to
think about those things.’ I actually think it’s important that we
don’t think about those things and we just act.”
One of the things that struck me in this story was that last
line: Just act. That’s something I heard over and over again from
high sensation-seekers. In fact, some of them would use the phrase
“analysis is paralysis.” Instead of analyzing situations they jump
headlong into danger and trust their bodies and minds to respond
as needed in the present moment. The goal is not to think about
what to do too soon and of course not too late.
All in all, that’s not such a bad thing. Many of us do the
opposite and analyze each worry that pops into our mind. There’s
a classic study that demonstrates this. Psychological researchers
had people keep a daily log of all the things that worried them165 / Super Power or Super ProblemDownloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Access paid by the UCSF Library, on 11 Nov 2019 at 14:18:43, subject to the Cambridge