This One Step is Guaranteed to Continually Improve Your Preps

by Todd Walker

You want to improve your preps.

I know this because you’re reading Survival Sherpa. Our motto here is, “Helping each other on the climb to self-reliance and preparedness…the Survival Sherpa way…One step at a time.”

I also realize that you are afraid of change. You’d like things to stay the same. But you also feel the tsunami coming and want to head to high ground. You’re worried that all the boats will sink. You don’t have enough time, energy, and resources to get there.

Here a truth that set me free. Preparedness is a journey, not a destination. You’ll never arrive! But what if you only had to change one thing to be better prepared, you’d think I was crazy, right?

Headlines often promise more than they deliver. But this one simple step really will increase your level of preparedness, self-sufficiency, and resilience.

What’s the one step?

Prepping Kaizen!

What’s Kaizen? Breaking the word down, “kai” means change/make better, “zen” means good. Apply the word to prepping and it means “continuous improvement.”

Kaizen was practiced here in the U.S. during the great depression and later to help rebuild Japan after WW II. Once it took root, it helped this war-torn country bounce back and become a dominate economic power. I own one of their success stories – a Toyota Forerunner. It just turned over 235,000 miles. I’d say it’s middle-aged now, thanks to kaizen – and regular maintenance.

Preparing for the coming chaos may look like a cooked elephant sitting on your table, so add a little Prepping Kaizen to help clean your plate.

That’s the purpose of this article – to help you bounce back from whatever gets thrown at you… without being overwhelmed. If you’re new to prepping, you may feel like throwing your hands up in despair. You’ve  managed to click away from a well-meaning, self-proclaimed expert prepper blog extolling you to get ready for the zombie apocalypse. Anxiety grips your mind and emotions.

“You mean I’ve got to have 10,000 thousands rounds of ammo, one years worth of food storage, and live off grid – by next month!?!”

None of these are bad if that’s you goal. But for those newly initiated to preparedness, this is a blueprint for burnout.

This is where Prepper Kaizen comes in handy.

You see, you don’t need to have to have it all. You never will anyway. But what you do need is the ability to see the whole picture and take the small, simple steps, master these, and look back at how much you’ve improved and accomplished. Those weekly Buy-One-Get-One deals at the grocery store start to accumulate. You notice that your pantry mysteriously grew from a three-day supply to a three-week supply.

The key to lasting success is lasting.

Micro manage your preps

Prepping Kaizen is a strategy that takes your focus off the size of the tsunami and helps you do the little stuff (micro) to get you to safety. This approach is like taking your first step as an infant.

You learned locomotion one step at a time. You didn’t crawl up on the sofa arm and run sprints in diapers. You mastered walking first.

Most of you aren’t building a multi-million dollar corporation. But you can benefit from the kaizen model that rebuilt Japan.

Here’s how to get your Prepping Kaizen on.

• Step 1: Start

Sometimes a tiny step is all it takes to build momentum and confidence for your journey. If all you see is the approaching tsunami, you’ll be tempted to just bend over and kiss it all good-bye. 

Stacy (new to prepping) drives home this point in her recent comment to me, “I feel more like I’m in a whirlpool!” She’s not alone. 

She and her husband have made the first step on their journey to self-reliance. They started with emergency water containers. Now she’s working on food storage. Her husband wants to know how to get 6 months of food storage. Simple answer: One bite at a time. Start buying extras of what you already eat. Before long, you’ll need to find creative ways to stash all this food – under beds, furniture, and other unlikely pantry spaces. 

• Step 2: Stick to it

Now that you’ve taken the first step, pick an area you feel is most important and break it down into smaller steps. This is a very personalized process. Priorities are dependent on your individual scenario. If you live on property with fresh water springs, water storage won’t be as important to you as the family living in an arid climate.

With that being said, pick one area to improve and focus your energy and resources for one month on that priority prep. If it’s food storage, take conscious steps each week to improve this area. Having spent a month dedicated to the process of storing food, the remaining 11 months will become routine. You fix the kinks and streamline the process. This discipline will easily transfer to your next area of focus.

• Step 3: Pick the low hanging fruit

This is how smart preppers apply Prepping Kaizen. Smart people pick the easy stuff first. The stuff that’s free, inexpensive, or readily available.

• Buy an extra case of bottled water for 4 bucks
• Do some bodyweight exercises – no expensive gym membership needed
• Buy a 50 cent box of table salt
• Read free ebooks on prepping and survival – knowledge weighs nothing
• Never pass on Buy-One-Get-One deals
• Save your pocket change in a jar to buy more preps – don’t trade in your nickels though
• Become a yard sale junkie – chew on the hay and spit out the sticks.

Easy pickins give you immediate, tangible results. The foggy path to preparedness begins to clear and you grow more confident. So does your knowledge and skills. Build off this new-found confidence and pick the next area of improvement. How hard can it be?

• Step 4: Ask why with an axe in your hand

Mistakes are not a sign to quit. They’re markers of what not to repeat. Even if you’ve been prepping for years, you make mistakes – sometimes stupid ones. I’ve made my share. Mistakes improve the process if we ask… why, why, why, why, why. 

Part of kaizen is asking 5 whys. There is always one root cause to every problem. Some issues won’t take 5 whys. Other may take more. Instead of dealing with the symptom, the 5 why method digs until you find the root. This forces you to stop the hurried Do-Do cycle and fix the real problem.

Try this. You notice the bottom of your tomatoes are developing brown, rotting spots on their bottoms:

1. Identify the problem. That’s easy. The spots are visible. You’re green-thumbed neighbor tells you it’s blossom end rot.
2. Identify the cause by asking, ‘why did this happen?’ Brainstorm all the possible causes.
3. Write it down on paper. Insufficient calcium, not enough water, too much water, soil PH, etc.
4. Ask why for each of the causes you’ve just identified. Ask 5 times per possible cause.
5. Once you’ve identified the root cause – use your axe.

Was it the soil, minerals, or watering that’s destroying your fruit? Whatever it is, this process will help you lay an axe on the root cause. Armed with this knowledge and experience, you’ll make continual improvements to bear more fruit next growing season.

• Step 5: Take Curly’s advice

If you’ve made it this far, you want to be better prepared. Keep in mind that you don’t have to ‘get there’ immediately. Making sweeping changes to your lifestyle is not a prerequisite to being more resilient, self-sufficient, or whatever it’s called these days.

Remember the scene from the movie City Slickers when Curly (Jack Palance) gives Mitch (Billy Crystal) his simple version of the meaning of life?

Curly: Do you know what the secret of life is?

Curly: This [as he holds up one finger]

Mitch: Your finger?

Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don’t mean shit.

Mitch: But what is the ‘one thing?’

Curly: That’s what you have to find out. (smiles)

Figuring out your one thing is up to you. I don’t assume to know what you need. I’ll leave that to a fictitious cowboy. Curly wisdom maybe right in the movie…

But, if you want to be better prepared to face uncertain times, you have to do more than one thing. Lots of things actually – without freaking out.

You have to take that first step. Then another, and another, and another.

Maybe you’ve already gotten your fundamental preps in order. Congrats! Now take the next step and apply Prepping Kaizen through out your journey. You’ll notice steady improvement in quality and quantity over time.

You’ll be more prepared tomorrow than you are today.

Keep doing the stuff – one step at a time,

Todd

P.S. 

Did you find us from a link from a friend, or Twitter, or Pinterest? However you found us, we’re glad you here. Please feel free to share anything you find useful. All we ask is that you include the original line to this site. And comments are always welcome.

Related articles

• The Vince Lombardi Guide to Becoming an All-Pro Prepper (survivalsherpa.wordpress.com)

 

Building Self-Reliance in Children Through Free Play

by Todd Walker

I dare you!

Who hasn’t been dared to do something totally stupid growing up? Like when we dared my younger bother to climb the tree over our swimming hole.

“Bet you can’t climb further than Henry! Chicken?”

Life was a huge adventure and he took the risk to beat Henry’s mark. No one had eclipsed Henry’s monkey-like ability. Ever.

“He won’t do it,” Henry said as we watched from the safety of earth.

“Yep, there he goes.”

To this day, my brave crazy little brother holds the record for reaching the summit of that old Georgia pine. The youngest of our tribe of four, he constantly had to prove his worth. After reaching the outer limits of where no kid had ever gone before, perched on a wrist-sized branch, he gloated. We cheered. The bow gave way and he tumbled, in what seemed like slow motion, back first into the shallow water with a thud.

We pulled him to shore. He regained his breath and we never told our parents. This true story may be hard to believe for helicopter parents.

We never had adult supervision on our day-long explorations down the ‘big’ creek. Or a warning sign in all caps that read “TURN BACK NOW!” Every bend in the creek reveled a new challenge or new vine swing or new critter to catch. We were denied no hazards. All the while being too young by today’s risk-averse style of parenting.

That was a past time of pure, unadulterated play. We weighed risks, took chances, learned how to cooperate, negotiate conflicts, attend to the wounded, respect each other, depend on each other, and eventually, to run our own lives – without adult hovering. Adults were avoided. They took the fun out of play.

“There’s no such thing as pirates in those woods,” would quickly kill our fantasy.

For the record, our parents were trusting, not negligent. Granted, growing up in the 60′s and 70′s was different from today. It’s likely that my parents would have had several visits from child protective services if they had to raise us in our stuck-indoors-safely litigating society.

The war on play

Our perceived fears of all the possible dangers to our children handicaps them in the playground of life. The anxiety is crippling. It’s hard not to buy into the myth of safety being peddled in mainstream media, schools, and even churches. Stranger danger! When the Amber Alert breaks into our regularly scheduled programming, parents call the kids in from their backyard and lock the doors – even in ‘safe’ neighborhoods.

We’ve become a nation of soccer mommy’s boys – and girls. Every moment of free time is filled with organized, adult supervised and sponsored busyness. Left alone, kids get creative and entertain themselves. They make up the rules for a pick up game of “Balls and Grounders” in the vacant lot or field. Self-regulated fair play happens with out official umpires or refs. If someone is found cheating, the others will expose the misdeed. Kids learn to govern themselves in free play to discourage players from taking their ball and going home. End of game. That’s no fun.

One of the greatest infringements upon free play is found in our system of public schooling. Recess has been outlawed. We educators have come to the distorted view that play time is a waste. We need to use those extra 30 minutes to teach to the high-stakes exam and make them even more unhappy. This is the highest priority in schools today. We need scores to compare students with each other, other schools, other states, and other nations. We then rank and pigeon-hole accordingly. We believe free play has lost its role in education. Plus, we can’t chance a lawsuit by allowing kids on those dangerous monkey bars, now can we?

What are the consequences of the war on play?

According to Peter Gray, Ph.D., a research professor at Boston University and author of “Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life“, the decline in children’s freedom to play points to psychological disorders.

He cites research that shows that the rate of suicide for children under the age of 15 has quadrupled since 1950.

“These increases seem to have nothing to do with realistic dangers and uncertainties in the larger world. The changes do not correlate with economic cycles, wars, or any of the other kinds of national or world events … affecting young people’s mental states. Rates of anxiety and depression among children and adolescents were far lower during the Great Depression, during the Cold War, and during the turbulent 1960s and early ’70s than they are today.”

The changes have more to do with children’s perception of the world than with the way the world really is. “Anxiety and depression correlate strongly with people’s sense of control or lack of control over their own lives.” When one moves from a belief of having the ability to exercise control of one’s own life to being controlled by circumstances outside of the person, a dramatic shift in mental health occurs. From 1960 to 2002, children between the age of nine to 14 showed a linear increase in the lack of personal control.

Why try? We’re doomed. Not if we allow our children time and freedom to use their powerful instincts of survival.

We do a great disservice to this generation by hovering over and controlling children’s desire to educate themselves and follow their interests. As prepper parents, we should find ways to allow our young to exercise these instincts of self-reliance. Here’s a couple of suggestions.

• Trust children to follow their passions. Here’s an inspiring story of parents that encouraged their children to follow their passions. 
• Get over the myth of safety. It doesn’t exist in nature or your backyard.
• Allow children to free-range without going nuts. 
• Quit believing that your children are in constant danger of abduction or other unlikely events. Prioritize your threats and let your kids live the adventure.
• Go outdoors. Loosen the safety harness. Let your kids be kids.

Life is an adventure. Having freedom and time to play is the first step to building self-reliance in your children.

And no, they probable won’t put out their eye.

What’s your story? Do you agree or disagree? What suggestions do you have to help children develop self-reliance and resilience? Please share your thoughts in the comment section.

If you’ve found this helpful, please consider sharing it with your family, friends and social network. I double-dog dare you!

Keep doing the stuff,

Todd

Related articles

• Six Dangerous Miseducation Lessons You Should Unlearn Immediately (survivalsherpa.wordpress.com)
• 3 Habits that Should be ‘Automatic for the Prepper’ (survivalsherpa.wordpress.com)

Paint by Numbers: A Blueprint for Despotism

 

 

by Todd Walker

Drinking the liberty Kool-Aid

I hated painting by numbers when I was a kid. Even if it was a picture I really liked.

Now I hate them even more.

Let me explain.

Staying inside the lines and matching the color with the number didn’t appeal to me. My finished paintings never looked like the picture on the box. I’d make new shades of color and add them where they didn’t belong. Even though I mixed my own colors, I quickly realized…

I’m still painting inside their lines, their boundaries, and using their outline.

The manufacturer’s blueprint offered one outcome – their image.

What if the things we see in “trusted” media sites, alphabet agencies, and the printed page was nothing more than some master artist outlining our reality. We come to believe that “they” are the professionals and know what’s best for us. They wouldn’t intentionally lie, would they?

Sound silly? Conspiratorial? It’s not.

Here’s what I mean.

We’re lead to believe that we are a free people with essential liberties. Ha! The real loss of liberty is happening in broad daylight. It’s witnessed by millions everyday. And no one seems angry about it. We continue to march in lockstep inside the pre-determined lines of CollectiveThink. Security is our aim.

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

– Benjamin Franklin

If we delegate responsibility for creating our masterpiece, someone else gets to paint on our canvas. The blueprint begins with your child. Forced schooling is in the business to mass produce lowest common denominator artwork. No matter how much lip service is given about the importance of the individual child on the conveyor belt, a magnum opus is never achieved. Your child’s life canvas falls off the production line and gets tossed in the corner with all the other cheap paintings.

Paint by numbers reality

We exist in a reality created by our controller’s blueprint. The recent Boston bombing demonstrates my point.

America watched the mainstream media paint the picture of CollectiveThink for Bostonians. All the major media outlets filled in the corresponding color on the numbered canvas. Terror. Fear. Lockdown. Huddling in their homes, citizens of Boston gladly surrendered liberty to the black clad militarized enforcers stomping on their Fourth Amendment. The flag wavers gave the black helicopters a big thumbs up for doing their job so well. We’re safe now. The Calvary is here!

“It’s okay. They submit,” the blueprint designers must have thought. “Let’s try something even more daring next time. We must never let a crisis be wasted!”

We’re being conditioned to fit into their painting. Daily. The numbered canvas defines us. It’s our reality. We throw up our hands and accept our spot in their design. Their utopian paint-by-numbers masterpiece has your number.

Our behavior aligns with the artist’s paint brush no matter the circumstance. We adjust our desires and dreams to fit into our new regulated reality – no matter how cramped and uncomfortable you find your numbered spot. Independent thinking upsets the whole project. Trying to run outside the lines upsets the whole portrait. Colors begin to merge. The image blurs. Another “event” happens and we get back inside the lines.

Habit training is the flywheel of despotism and tyranny

You’ve been told what your numbered spot is and how you fit into this new portrait. You and I become useful on their blueprint. Of course, once the scary situation is resolved, you’ll notice the lines of liberty have shrunk significantly. The next episode, real or manufactured, fills in more of the artist’s canvas. Our skillful artists are able to define what we see, feel, desire, resist, and hope for.

We gladly stay inside the lines on the canvas. It’s for the good of the group we’re told. So we scurry around inside the lines of our maze like laboratory mice. We’re trained. Our habits benefit the blueprint maker.

Don’t be predictable. Rip the numbered canvas off the easel. The first step to painting outside the lines is to realize there are no lines.

Create your own masterpiece.

 

5 Subtle Enemies of Preparedness (that trip all of us)

by Todd Walker

You see yourself as the ant, not the grasshopper. You want to be prepared but can’t seem to shake these 5 enemies. They turn your plans into puddles of tears. They use your dreams like a janitors mop on a filthy floor.

Avoid them!

1.) Perfectionism.

Pursuing perfection often means that nothing gets accomplished. No desired results. Nada. It’s impossible. Like a master artist brushing paint on canvas and never satisfied. She can’t let it go. The world never gets to see her masterpiece.

Take my blog, for instance. Please don’t go back and read my first posts from a year ago. They’re hideous. Has my writing improved? Maybe. Who cares. It’s something I create. It only matters to me.

Create something today – an idea or a new skill that builds resilience. Quality matters but will only come when we start doing the stuff. Action counts. Perfect is unattainable.

2.) Consensus.

Be an individual. If you wait on the committee’s approval, your effort is probably not worth doing anyway.

Do you really want GroupThink telling you your plan of action does not meet standards?

GroupThink levels you to the lowest common denominator.

3.) Weakness. 

Focus on your weakness and you become weaker. Do the stuff that makes you feel strong, invigorated, and in the flow. The molasses of the mind turns to raging river water. This is the place of your strength. The place where you lose track of time – you get lost in the moment – swept up in the momentum.

Delegate your weakness. This buys you precious time to develop your strengths.

4.) Knowledge.

Admit it. We’re all ignorant. The more I learn, the less I know. Peeling the next layer on the onion revels more of the same.

I read that we only use about 5% of our brain power. Hum, seems like such a small amount. Figure out how to use 6% and you’ll be a genius.

At some point though, all that knowledge reaches the point of diminishing returns. Apply the 80-20 rule. Increasing our effort to learn more about being prepared is noble, and can be achieved… in the head.

Practice what you learn. If you graph the relationship between what you know and what you do, the trend line would have a positive slope. And who said you’d never use algebra in the real world?

You’re only going to remember 50% of what you just read on this page once you click away. I’m being generous on this estimate. If the Pareto principle holds true, 80% of your knowledge comes from 20% of what you read.

I’d like to be in your 20% one day

5.) Habits.

Being in a groove is completely different from falling in a rut. Groove sounds so, uh, groovy. Rut is where all the stagnate water collects.

Rut is another word for bad habit. Grease the groove to get out of your rut. Bad habits aren’t final.

 

 

Got any you’d like to add? Please leave them in the comment section.

Related articles

• Applying the 7 Characteristics of Living Things to Your Survival Plan (survivalsherpa.wordpress.com)

 

Forced Schooling: The Antidote for Genius

by Todd Walker

What’s nepenthe?

Nepenthe – (nuh-PENTH-ee)

noun

1. a potion used by the ancients to induce forgetfulness of pain or sorrow

2. something capable of causing oblivion of grief or suffering

My cache of fancy words is limited. I try to follow this simple rule when writing: Don’t be tempted by a 20-dollar word when there is a ten-center handy.

Sometimes, only the 20-dollar word will do.

Nepenthe popped up in my “Word of the Day” email on my school computer. A curious word, no doubt.

I had just finished Lew Rockwell‘s podcast interview with John Taylor Gatto on my morning commute. Both men being heroes of mine, this post began taking shape.

One statement John made that got my attention was…

genius is as common as the air we breathe. 

That’s a bold statement. If I made that statement around some teacher friends, we’d all give it a good chuckle and a resounding, “Right!”

We can’t see the genius for all the compulsory regulations and restrictions. To counteract genius and critical thinking in schools, we serve heaping doses of the balm of forgetting. Sweet relief comes by removing all recollection of our history and replacing it with the revised Hollywood version.

God cannot alter the past, but historians can.

- Samuel Butler

Is genius really that common today?

According to Mr. Gatto, it is, and history proves it.

• The U.S. was the patent king at the beginning of the 20th century. We owned 92% of the worlds patents. 
• How could a no good 12 year-old worker named Andrew Carnegie coiled twine on bobbins and one day become one of the richest men on our planet?
• Other notable figures were written off early in life who later reveled their genius.

Before the turn of the 20th century, forced schooling in America was nowhere near the size and scope of today’s Leviathan-like institution. There were no centers for habit training where intellectual development was retarded. Now we train students to be obedient and pliable conformists. Our colonial forefathers would have never resisted tyranny had they been government schooled.

Our present consumerist economic model requires that future wage slaves never reach self-sufficiency. Any independent thinking threatens to sever the head of the beast. His fight or flight primal instinct kicks in. The serpent tempts us with another mind-numbing-dumbing dose to help ease the pain of forgotten genius.

Laissez-fair schooled geniuses

In “Is Public Education Necessary?“, Samuel Blumenfeld performs a great service in exposing the intellectual elite’s plan to reign in the “rebel” individualist and pioneering spirit that founded this nation. Ask any loyal educrat and they probably won’t know that wholesale government education didn’t exist in the 18th century. And somehow our population was educated without coercion and force – even without Al Gore’s internet.

Our cherry picked curriculum doesn’t mention that educational freedom in colonial days, free of governmental control, produced far better results than modern government-run schools. Here are a few inconvenient facts educated elites hope remain forgotten.

• Based on the evidence of signatures on deeds, wills, militia rolls, and voting rosters, adult male literacy in American colonies ran from 70 to 100 percent. 
• George Washington was educated by his father and half-brother.
• Benjamin Franklin was taught to read by his father and attended a private school for writing and arithmetic.
• Thomas Jefferson studied Latin and Greek under a tutor.
• Of the 117 men who signed the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution, one out of three had only a few months of formal schooling, and only one in four had gone to college.

5 tips to finding your genius within

Could little geniuses be filling cramped public school houses all across America? Of course! They’ve just never been weaned off the nepenthe of forced schooling.

Here are 5 tips to help you discover your child genius.

Stop sipping on your potion of forgetfulness for a second.

Start listing all your ideas. Sticky notes, napkins, notebooks. Doesn’t matter where you write them. Just write them down.

1. Practice writing ten new ideas everyday. You’ll find that one idea will spawn new ideas. Keep writing. Ten daily is the minimum maintenance required. This keeps your idea machine from rusting. Think of it as motor oil for the brain. When I neglect this practice, my mind doesn’t run at peak performance levels.

2. Shamelessly steal ideas. I’m not saying plagiarise here. But when you see a good idea, make it better. A “nobody” could improve a product or machine or idea, patent it, and put the original out of business.

Your masterpiece is carved by removing the stuff that doesn’t fit…little pieces at a time. What are you creating?

3. Read. Widely. Outside your field. Create connections to what may seem unrelated to your idea. Use the shotgun approach. Cross pollination in the garden of ideas is a good thing.

4. Get lost. Daydreaming may get you a reprimand from your teacher or boss, but it’s such an important incubator for creativity and genius. I hate telling students to get back on task. I really want to join them in their mental adventure. They seem lost in their own weird little world. It’s a survival technique.

Creativity is the residue of time wasted.
~Albert Einstein

There’s a time to focus on our job or work, but daydreaming is time well spent. Do it often.

5. Live unplugged. Throw it in the woods. Cure your nature deficit-disorder. In “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder” Richard Louv relates the importance of getting in touch with the wild side of our nature. I haven’t finished the book, but definitely see Nature Deficit-Disorder in kids today. Here’s a telling quote from a fourth grader response in the book:

“I like to play indoors better ’cause that’s where all the electrical outlets are.” 

If you can’t get in the woods, simply sitting outside to read your paper and drink your coffee or tea stimulates your senses. Do stuff differently. Stay out sterile environments as much as humanly possible.

Another path exists. What’s keeping you from discovering your child genius?

Doing the stuff,

Todd

P.S.

Here’s a sample of my brain working to come up with possible headlines for this post:

School History: Drink Nepenthe to Swallow It

Does Your Child Drink the Nepenthe Potion in School

You Must Drink Nepenthe to Swallow the Lies…

Drink this Potion and Live Happily Ever After

Washing Down the Dumbness with Nepenthe

Genius is Forgotten with Nepenthe

Forgetting Your Genius Within

The Potion That Kills Genius

Nepenthe: Dumbing Down Your Unique Genius

This Tempting Potion Washes Your Child’s Genius Away

Did I choose correctly?

Related articles

• John Taylor Gatto On The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher & The Root Causes Of Tyranny (westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com)
• Against School – John Taylor Gatto (antioligarch.wordpress.com)
• School Alchemy: Turning Students into Gold for the State (survivalsherpa.wordpress.com)
• An Unlikely Hero: Reflections on John Taylor Gatto, Sir Ken Robinson and the Education Revolution (seanhamptoncole.wordpress.com)
• Get Outside (everydayfamily.com)
• Six Dangerous Miseducation Lessons You Should Unlearn Immediately (survivalsherpa.wordpress.com)
• A Warning for Prepared Parents and Public Schooling (survivalsherpa.wordpress.com)
• Life Learners: Unschooling the Prepper Community (survivalsherpa.wordpress.com)

Applying the 7 Characteristics of Living Things to Your Survival Plan

by Todd Walker

 

Change is inevitable. Survival is optional.

One of the most liberating days in your life is when you come to realize you are responsible for your own success. No more excuses. No more blame game. You’ve entered the no-victim zone.

The concept of survival distills down to pain management and increasing pleasure. Bingo! You start planning. You spent long hours studying, reading, buying, and mining data to build the perfect system. You attend preparedness expos, interact on discussion forums, devour books, and maybe even start a blog.

Congrats! Your hard work has finally paid off.

Just as you finalize your sacred plan, even before the laminating film cools, some world event or local elected thug makes it a non-perfect plan. An unexpected health issue, job loss, or simply ignoring that nagging gut feeling about your family’s future can blow your plan to nothingness.

The beauty of pressure and time is its ability expose weaknesses. Ignoring science and history, you find yourself driving down the road to your fatal dead-mans curve clinging to your laminated preparedness plan.

I apologize up front to anyone reading this who happens to be “set in their ways” or downright rigid. You’re not going to enjoy what follows.

Adaptability and agility are two key elements you must develop to increase your chance of staying alive. Unplug your laminating machine, grab a pencil, paper, and several erasers because creating a living Individual Preparedness Plan gets messy.

First, let’s go back to your middle school (junior high in my case) science class for a refresher course on the 7 Characteristics of Living Things. And please, no spit-wads hurled at the teacher.

Learning Goal: The student (you) will identify and apply the characteristics of living things to your Individual Preparedness Plan for survival and resilient living.

1. Living things are highly organized, from the smallest part to the largest.

• Cells are organized into tissue (muscle)
• Tissue into organs (liver)
• Organs come together to form organ systems (nervous system)
• Organ systems work together to form an individual living thing
• More than one living thing makes a population of these particular things (the population of wild turkeys on your back 40)
• The population becomes part of a community composed of different kinds of living things (species). It’s were living things live, work, play, etc.
• An ecosystem is then formed when all the living things, non-living things, environment, and energy come together in their happy place

2. Living things have the ability to get and use energy.

• Without a constant supply of energy (food) living things die and become food (energy) for much smaller living things
• For humans, we use energy (food and fuel) to maintain the our core body temperature around 98.6 degrees F – our happy place

3. Living things have the ability to respond (movement) to their environment.

• Sensitive to changes and responds (movement) to the stimuli in the environment
• For example, the ability to move your hand off a hot stove (pain), or marry a hot wife (pleasure)

4. Living things have the ability to remove waste

• Living things use different methods to excrete waste
• For humans, the simple act of breathing removes waste
• If a living thing is unable to excrete waste, it quickly becomes an organism formerly known as a living thing

5. Living things grow

• Living cells grow to a certain size and then divide
• A living thing turns stuff unlike itself into more stuff like itself – eat kale (plant) and it chemically turns into more of the eater (human)

6. Living things have the ability to reproduce and pass on genetic information to baby living things

• Reproduction is essential for the survival of the species 
• All living things reproduce by either asexual or sexual reproduction

7. All living things have the ability to adapt to their environment

• Adaptation is a trait that helps living things survive in its environment
• Living things that are better at adaptation increase their survival and reproduction rates, thus strengthening their species
• Important note: only individual living things have the ability to adapt – species do not adapt, they evolve
• Variations of individual living things makes the species stronger (individualism)

Now, let’s discuss the application of this mini-lesson to your Individual Preparedness Plan.

When evaluating your IPP to determine if it is living or non-living, all 7 of these characteristics must be present.

If your plan follows just a few on the list, it’s a non-living IPP. To stay in the living category, your plan must show all 7 characteristics. Granted, we are all individuals at different stages of development. Our progress in certain areas may be strong while other areas need immediate attention. A humble analysis will be required, as will ongoing monitoring to ensure you and your IPP maintain living thing status.

1.a. Applying “Living things are highly organized” requires, um, organization. Lists are popular with most preppers. Simply having a list of lists doesn’t mean your organized. Lists will get you pointed in the right direction, but energy and focus are required to fill the list. SurvivalBlog offers the best lists I’ve seen to help organize, acquire skills, and stay on the living things list. You can find the “List of Lists” link on the left side bar near the top of his blog.

Organization applies to more than just stuff. Your living IPP should include finding other prepper populations and building community. Lone-wolf living organisms rarely survive.

Now, if I could only remember where I put my list?

2.a. What’s your plan for “Living things have the ability to get and use energy”? To avoid becoming room-temperature, pay close attention to these basics: food and water. Plan now to secure the knowledge and skills for sustainable food and water – to be converted into energy for your body. We all need energy to push, pull, and move.

Also, since we don’t hibernate, alternative, sustainable methods of energy production keeps us in our happy place, warm and dry. Consider passive solar, geothermal, hydroelectricity, and wood heating. There’s more. Any suggestions?

3.a. Think movement when applying “Living things have the ability to respond to their environment.” Your IPP should include a plan for Getting Out Of Dodge if you sense or see that your present environment will soon be hosting a bunch of non-living things. Keeping a 72-hour emergency kit ready is for smart living things. Or, if you know your environment will be full of non-livers, avoid the rush, make the necessary sacrifices, and move already.

Physical movement takes energy (see 2.a.). Natural selection favors those living things that are able to move efficiently. Stop neglecting your fitness. Nuff said.

4.a. “Living things have the ability to remove waste” must be applied if you plan on being a living thing. Applied to your physical body, elimination is essential. For the purpose of your IPP, the same holds true. Apply the Sherpa Simple philosophy to your stuff. Cleaning out that colon you call a storage closet brightens your day and makes room for useful stuff. Today’s society of consumers collect shiny stuff that, unless eliminated, turns toxic. Eliminate and flush.

5.a. Applying “Living things grow” to your plan. Your paradigm of preparedness should grow exponentially. Your IPP should include specific skills that need to be developed for you to be a well-rounded living thing. This is not meant to be applied to your waist line. What you thought you knew was the best today, changes tomorrow. Stay informed on practical ways to grow physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Remember, to grow, we need energy.

6.a. Applying “Living things have the ability to reproduce and pass on genetic information to baby living things” to your IPP. Is your plan reproducible? Could your neighbor, neighborhood, or community reproduce what you, the individual living thing, are doing? The genetic information of preparedness and building resilience needs to spread to audiences outside the present prepper population. When each newbie living thing begins taking personal responsibility, the community and entire “ecosystem” becomes stronger.

7.a. How you apply “Living things adapt to their environment” is the cornerstone to all living Individual Preparedness Plans. When living things are involved, expect monkey wrenching. Mother Nature keeps a tool box full of monkeys and wrenches. Bouncing back is easier if you have flexibility and redundancy built into your systems. A rigid tree won’t last long in the coming storms.

The problem with life is it changes. Well, it’s not a problem, it’s just reality. As a matter of fact, change is what keeps us out of that state of atrophy. Avoid pain and increase pleasure by applying these middle school science lessons to your Individualized Preparedness Plan.

Change is inevitable. Survival is optional.

If you found this helpful, maybe you could help get the word out by sharing it with your social network, family, and friends. We certainly appreciate all the support we get from you!

 

Also, please follow me on Twitter for updates on our journey: @SurvivalSherpa

 

 

 

Preparedness Community: Individualism vs. Collectivism

by Todd Walker

Too big to fail globalists want us to believe their titillating noble lies. Their mouthpiece, the Main Stream Media (MSM), denies the Newspeak coming from elite lips and to disguise  what their hands are doing. To reduce thought and critical thinking, truth is labeled ‘conspiracy theories.’ You’re a whack-job if you believe alternative news sources.

Elitists hate individuals. To them, we’re a pebble in their jack boots.

MSM is not their only promoter. Public schools are shills for the Collective. It matters not whether the school is populated by offspring of mostly conservative, liberal, or fence sitters. Every government-run school in America is a decoy for State enslavement – for the good of the group.

For those unfamiliar with the term collectivism, it is the complete opposite of individualism. Many times my students yell the answer of the math problem, 4 – 10 = 6. The answer given is the complete opposite of the correct answer, (- 6). Leaving out the negative sign seems like such a trivial matter. I point out the ‘simple’ error more times than I care to admit. The two numbers are on opposite ends of the number line.

“The answer is correct, except for that little sign,” Mr. Walker.

The importance of building resilient communities for not only survival, but to thrive in the coming days, can not be overemphasized. Neighboring Matters was an article I wrote about the importance of community in dealing with unknown unknowns. Today, some of the unknowns are turning into knowns. Confiscation in Cyprus ring any bells?

We’re social animals and thrive in community. What we don’t do well is live in the societal super-organism called the Collective. In this living, breathing entity, the individual merely survives by sacrificing his/her own self-interest for the “good of the group” – unless you’re at the top of the elitist pyramid.

“Collectivism often sounds humane because it stresses the importance of human needs. In reality, it is little more than a rationalization for sacrificing you and me to the desires of others.” — Jarret B. Wollstein

Individualism and Community

First, let’s explore building community based on individualism. By community, I’m referring to building mutual assistance and aid based on voluntary association without force, coercion, or treat of violence.

What makes you happy?

In a community of individuals (anti-collectivists), one is able to exercise his natural right to pursue life, liberty, and happiness. A moral individual wishing to pursue her happiness will find it necessary to cooperate with other like-minded individuals, not just in trading goods and services, but sharing knowledge, and developing genuine relationships as well.

The aim of building community should be to increase our quality of life. In a true free-market, these pursuits (life, liberty, and happiness) would be more easily attained.

Individuals make up a community, obviously. We’ve all witnessed how individuals come together during a crisis to serve (voluntarily) to help others in their community. Remember the devastation of Hurricane Katrina? The communities that rebounded quickly took matters into their own hands. They weren’t coerced into giving charity. They saw a need and made a decision to help neighbors.

The recovery time of any natural or manmade disaster takes longer when collectivist thinking dominates a community or society. Charity to your neighbor becomes a duty – enforced by the State. Give until it hurts or until the-powers-that-be say stop. Violating my rights in no way motivates me to give. I’ll gladly and willingly help others out of love for my fellow man and mutual benefit. However, coerce me and I resist.

No amount of guilt, force, or pressure applied by the Collective can be matched by the power of individuals motivated to pursue their own self-interest.

Individuals in the Collective are like oil and water. They don’t mix.

Collectivism and Controllers

Look no further for a shining example of that living super-organism called the Collective than our public schools. Students are trained to snitch on individuals who don’t play by the rules. Schools are a reflection of our nanny state encouraging “see something, say something”. The Powers of Fairness rule schools. Individualism is ferreted out and dealt with brutally for the good of the group. Parents chained to their office cubicles see no way out of their compassionate cage and allow the hostage taking to continue.

It’s only fair, right?

There seems to be no escape.

Ask yourself this question: Who benefits from those dependent on the Collective?

From an evolutionary point of view, bad ideas should die out. The Collective not only controls the bad idea factory, they have the State in their pocket to enforce their insanity. As the bad idea of collectivism becomes worse, it manifests destruction, an unproductive class, theft, vice, and pure evil. The Controller’s matrix punishes producers and rewards dependence. Before long, your proper position in the food chain is established.

Exposing the self-sufficiency myth

There’s a myth (or dream) floating around the prepper community about being completely self-reliant and self-sufficient. I’ve been guilty of falling for and even promoting the myth. Is it really achievable or just selling snake oil? With so many odds against us, I sometimes feel like I’m constantly selling some secret elixir out the back of a wagon.

The main obstacle to self-sufficiency is not money, resources, land, or skills. The biggest hurdle is the Collective.

That pesky Collective keeps us dependent on their matrix. I’ve got to keep my health insurance, pay for shelter, food, and other needs – rinse and repeat. Stop paying rent (property taxes) on what you may call ‘free and clear’ land or house, and the Controllers send in goons to take what you once called home. Fiat greenbacks are required to pay tribute. Bartering in this situation won’t work.

Is there a better way to earn your freedom and escape the Collective cage? Freedom and liberty trump control and forced servitude. I’ve tried to wrap my mind around living off the land, hiding in caves, or some other Hollywood Doomsday lifestyle. It’s not for me, DRG, or our loved ones. If you think you’d enjoy that lifestyle, more power to you. I enjoy things that satisfy me personally and connect me to my true nature – without extravagance. This forces me to rethink my preparedness paradigm.

Redefining preparedness 

1. Get your mind right. Ditch the spin doctors. Whatever label you have pasted to your forehead, spinning your version of truth doesn’t apply to everyone. We’re individuals. Not groups crammed into the Collective. Absent regulatory control, the free market will expose fraud and bad ideas. The Medical Industrial Complex, Industrial Food Machine, mass media, and whoever you voted for are cogs in the collective wheel.
2. Adopt a depression lifestyle. This one involves distinguishing between the needs and wants. Take pleasure in withholding produce from the Collective. They need me more than I need them. Play their game better than they do. Do it all legally and above-board. Shrug.
3. Bloom where you’re planted. If you’re not already living in a sparsely populated western state, and don’t have the resources to relocate, or better yet, don’t want to relocate to what experts call the safe haven states, what’s a prepared family or individual to do? Bloom right where you are. No doubt the number of potential roving gangs of looters drops in less populated regions, but if every follower of this brand of prepping acted on this advice, wouldn’t these states quickly grow in population? Yes, but they’d all have the right mindset. Don’t be so sure of that. Follow your gut.
4. Down size. Learn to love less. Houses, cars, gadgets, etc. Decide what’s a priority in meeting needs, not wants. Tangibles and quality equipment and tools and things that hold value over time are stuff to go after. When the balloon goes up, you’ll be glad you collected stuff smartly.
5. Take advantage of living in our modern world with our modern conveniences. Use technology to resurrect lost skills – and make them better. Alternative energy (passive solar, hydro, and even wood gasification) will be a key element to bouncing back from chaos. Every family needs at least one geek. Khan Academy is an example of a ‘geek’ who has bypassed traditional brick and mortar classrooms to teach effectively online. The same strategy can be applied to starve the Collective and build resilience. Geek on!
6. Resilient health. Health is wasted on youth – among other things. After our personal SHTF experience, we don’t take our health for granted. Be proactive about what you put into your body. This one act alone can reprogram your health. You’ll also need proper amounts of sleep, exercise, sunshine, play, and down time. The last thing you want is to be dependent on the medical/pharma system to keep your ticking. This is one more step in pulling the plug on the Collective.

Not everyone is going to grab the flag and lead the charge. But once one person storms the hill, they won’t be alone. Many will follow. If you haven’t begun building a group or community, it’s not too late. It’ll take some time, but it can happen, one individual at a time.

If you found this helpful, consider helping get the word out by sharing it with your social network, family, and friends. We certainly appreciate all the support we get from you!

Also, please follow me on Twitter for updates on our journey: @SurvivalSherpa

Fear Built the Coffin, Are You Carrying the Shovel?

by Todd Walker

Preppers seem to be an intelligent, discerning bunch. They embrace individual responsibility, self-reliance, preparedness, and self-sufficiency. Very admirable traits indeed. My intention here is to shine some light on the foundation of many doomsday preppers – fear.

All fear is not bad. It’s a gift in many cases that has been passed down ancestrally.

Fear of our future has motived many of us to change our lifestyle. Too much fear paralyzes. Picture your health. You’re chilling on the sofa after work with remote in hand – feeling fine physically. An ad from the Industrial Pharmaceutical Complex interrupts compelling you to take action (and their newest wonder drug – which may cause anal seepage). Hum, as the thought bubble forms. I do remember not being able to remember the name of my co-worker’s daughter’s husband. Is this the onset of …. [fill in the blank]. I can put up with a bit of seepage if that pill can help me.

Then there’s the pesky problem of information overload. We’re drowning in a tsunami of threats, boogeymen, four-horsemen hype that would make for a bad day – even for the most prepared. Anxiety and hand wringing in the corner or buying the latest shiny object seem to be our only hope of survival for our species. Negative news sells. Who tunes into a local newscast with stories of families that made it home safely for dinner? No one. We rubberneck to see the disconnected devastation and destruction on our idiot tubes. We want to have our fear – and be happy too.

But we have to stay informed on all the potential S hitting the fan, right? There’s better ways to stay informed than faux news. I try to find a happy medium – staying informed – without succumbing to anxiety-induced anal seepage.

Last year our family experienced our own genuine, personal SHTF scenario. This was not a drill or practice session. DRG’s life was on the line. Discounting or overlooking real threats to our families is just plain stupid. Minimizing our risk in this preparedness game is all we can do. The first step would be to prioritize what’s really likely to happen in our individual situation.

I’m not your typical prepper – whatever that term implies. I don’t own a single gas mask. I know the three minutes without air rule. It’s just that, in my estimation, owning a chemical suit and gas mask is not a priority for our family now. Would I buy one if I thought breathable air was in short supply? Yes. But for now, my priority is to fry bigger fish – like water and food.

Here’s the good news! We don’t have to watch fear-based TV news to stay informed. No more throwing remotes or shoes at the talking heads on your screen. Online alternative news sites are everywhere. User beware. Some prepping sites fall into the fear, doom and gloom category. I’ve found that I was guilty of this myself in the early stages of this blog – fanning the flames of fear drives web traffic. Again, look for information that offers practical advise and steps to living a more simple life. A lot of “non-prepping” sites offer excellent information. Meaning, surf outside the prepping wave pool. I’m always interested in other non “prepper” sites y’all ‘Commentistas’ have discovered. Please, do tell!

How do we avoid the coffin that fear built?

Put down the shovel and stop digging.

• Relax. Take frequent breaks from the potential unknowns that keep you from sleeping. Health-destroying headlines top my list.
• Turn off the TV. I use to be a news junkie. I’ve broken the addiction. I value my psychological health. Here’s a study that found that watching the news on television triggers persisting negative psychological feelings that could not be buffered by attention-diverting distraction (i.e., lecture), but only by a directed psychological intervention such as progressive relaxation.
• Erase the hell-in-a-handbasket mindset. Bad stuff has happened in our time and to our ancestors – yet they prevailed.
• Fire the worker bee in you. What if the secret to survival was to fire yourself? You’ve probably read the “What did you do to prep” threads on forums. If not, they’re easy to find. I sometimes get the impression that if you’re not doing something to prepare everyday that you’ll eventually get caught, um, unprepared. We have to escape the tyranny of the urgent – the daily grind. Well Mr. Knowitall, who’s going to do all that stuff ‘experts’ say are essential to survival? You will. But first, you must fire yourself. Go ahead. Step away form the food dehydrator. You could use the break, right? Take a weekend off to concentrate on your long-term plan. Act like a CEO, not a worker bee. Then, step-by-step, begin implementing your plan. Scurrying around full of fear is unproductive.
• Focus on the main thing. Every trivial “news worthy” event has side-track potential. Your main thing may not be my main thing. Discover yours and focus your energy there.

What’s the next pandemic? I don’t know, and frankly, don’t care. Viewing life through the lens of fear shapes our future. Sadly, a lot is written in prepperdom that reinforces the panic-stricken mindset. My job is to decide what’s worth my time and energy. Standing over my coffin of fear with a shovel and dirty hands is not an option for me. Fear not.

How about you?

If you’ve found this helpful, please share it with your it with your family and friends. 

Also, if you’re on Twitter, you can Follow me for the latest on our journey to self-reliance, preparedness, and resilient living: @SurvivalSherpa

5 Must Do’s Before the National Nipple Runs Dry

by Todd Walker

I hate labels. I’ve spent the better part of my adult life dodging bumper sticker nomenclature.

Prepping, survivalism, back to basics, resilience, self-reliance, sustainable, self-sufficient, homesteading, simple living, etc. all have a common philosophy: Taking responsibility for you own life. I wrote about chasing the simple life here. Sherpa Simple is…

Living in a way that is economical, sustainable, individualized, self-sufficient, comfortable, practical, resilient, and in harmony with nature and neighbors. It’s all about helping each other as we chase the simple life.

Weaning ourselves off the National Nipple requires time, energy, self-education, and force in some cases. And here’s the thing – the more we drink, the more we believe that the State udder will never stop flowing. We become addicted. Suckling becomes a basic right.

This is what the National Nipple will do for you

“Once the government becomes the supplier of people’s needs, there is no limit to the needs that will be claimed as a basic right.”

– Lawrence Auster

Even if you’re thumping your chest with pride for never wrapping your proverbial lips around the golden udder, we’re all affected by the overwhelming dependency bred into our culture. The State is the great equalizer dispensing fairness for the collective good. This arrangement is not voluntary. It’s sustained by force. “Legitimate” force.

If you knew the day our National Nipple would run dry, wouldn’t you live differently. It’s not a matter of if, but when. And ‘when’ happens, there will be more than a bit of bawling and screaming. Everyone will fill the pain – your elderly parents on medicare and fixed incomes, your neighbor working in the public sector, all the public school teachers (and there are a lot of us), owners of stocks and bonds, retired veterans, everyone. I’m not even counting those totally dependent government for food, houses, and cell phones. The reset will happen.

How could it not. The truth behind the recovery propaganda should cause some of us to begin self-weaning. The feral Federal Reserve will continue the train wreck by printing more fiat paper. The productive class will continue to shrink. It’s becoming more and more difficult for middle class families to provide basic necessities, much less save for that rainy day.

Retirement looks further away by the minute. The elites keep sending their handlers back to the kitchen to cook more numbers to keep the herd happy. Does this make me vigilant and awake or a conspiracy theorist?

You decide. Search economic collapse for yourself. Here’s a small sampling to get you started:

•             Personal Incomes & The Decline Of The American Saver

•             Comparing the past to predict the future

•             A chart proving that the MSM is lying about unemployment

The picture painted is scary. As people come up for air while nursing on the National Nipple, there may be some that begin to wean themselves. For those of you already standing back from the feeding frenzy, you need to get into high gear with your preparedness plan.

You may think I’m hardnosed or uncaring by my next statement. I prefer a sudden reset over a long, drawn out collapse. I never liked tip-toeing into our cold lake. I found jumping in head-first to best for me. My body adapted to the shock of cold water better with total immersing. Let me clarify. I’d prefer no collapse at all. But that ain’t happening.

You only have power over people so long as you don’t take everything away from them. But when you’ve robbed a man of everything, he’s no longer in your power – he’s free again.  — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The list of nations spiraling towards collapse is growing. What steps should Joe and Jane Average take now to build a hedge against financial Armageddon? This is not a step-by-step plan. It requires thought, creativity, and determination – no matter what your financial status. To answer the previous question, do what we know is the right thing to do. Simplify. Less is more. ‘Less’ dependence on the fragile systems of mono-crop corporate farming, fractional reserve banking, and our ‘sick’ care medical establishment.

Building resilience in these areas one step at a time will only increase your chances of survival. And may actually help you thrive.

While this list is not exhaustive, it points us in the right direction.

Food

Grow your own or buy from local farmers. Doing this will accomplish several things:

• Strengthen your local food system. These producers live where you live. Small family owned and operated farms will contribute to your overall health and resilience in return.
• Reconnect with your food and community. Build relationship with food producers that don’t live 2,000 miles from your house. Better to meet them now than after the balloon goes up.
• Save resources. The amount of packaging material and fuel is drastically reduced by purchasing/bartering for groceries you can’t produce for yourself. Find farmers that practice sustainable growing practices.
• Education. Many local farmers/producers are happy to help you learn how to grow your own. Plus, you’ll begin to know where your food comes from.
• Food storage you’ll actually eat. When you preserve the harvest from you garden or local farmer’s market, you’re putting away food that you’ll actually enjoy eating and not some pre-packaged, processed items or MRE resembling food. Dehydrating, canning, and proper storage techniques will go a long way in supplying your family with stores of food for the long run.

Health Vigilante – physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.

• 90% of what we eat is the cause of our chronic health conditions.
• Be your own health vigilante. Take your health into your own hands. This past year taught DRG and me that modern medicine is run by pharmaceutical companies. There’s a chemical soup in pill form for everything.
• Explore holistic health practices.
• Eat nutrient dense foods. Avoid processed junk foods. I recommend the Primal Lifestyle. Your mileage may vary.
• Regular exercise without being married to the gym. Develop a mindset of functional fitness. Lift heavy things, move slowly every day, and sprint (max capacity) once every 7 to 10 days.

Invest in assets and skills

• By assets, I mean tangible items that hold value. Look up Alpha Strategy. That case of ammo you bought last year was a good investment after all. 
• Focus on your strengths. You’ve got one or two skills that you’re very good at. Develop those even more. But don’t forget to add more resilience-adding skills to your toolbox.
• Barter is becoming more important these days. It may one day be a crucial skill for acquiring basic necessities.
• Learn permaculture. Hiding food in plain sight.

 Build Community

• Most of us don’t live in a rural homestead self-sufficiently. We live mostly in urban and suburban neighborhoods. Your neighbors will play a huge part in your families ability to survive and thrive in coming days. I’ve written some thoughts on the importance of neighboring here. 
• With proper planning and the existence of basic resources, your neighborhood is very defensible and livable in SHTF scenarios. More on this in a later post.

Housing – Living big in small places

• Learning to live big in small places (locally) means re-educating ourselves on what resilience really means.
• Simplifying your life gets rid of all the clutter. If you’re like me, that’s a hard thing to do. Letting go of things I’m going to do something with one day. It forces me to really evaluate what’s important. Prioritizing my stuff allows me more free time to focus on what’s really important.
• Consider downsizing your home. We’ve downsized twice since the housing bubble popped. Talk about freeing up time!

I’m aware there are many more must do’s before the National Nipple runs dry. This is intended to spark a discussion on adding to our list. Please feel free to comment on the list and add your valuable insight. Or email me your thoughts via the contact tab at the top of my blog.

Follow me on Twitter for the latest on our journey to self-reliance, preparedness, and resilient living: @SurvivalSherpa

Related articles

• Time To Plan For The Worst Rather Than Hope For The Best (personalliberty.com)

Ability Is A Poor Prepper’s Wealth

by Todd Walker

“To attain knowledge, add things everyday. To attain wisdom, remove things every day.” Lao Tzu

I use to look at all the preparedness blogs and books and turn green drooling over all the cool stuff these folks say I needed to survive an emergency, SHTF situation, or TEOTWAWKI. I still slap myself on my green face from time to time. Maybe the hand prints are fading with time. Let’s hope so. I’d wake up at crazy hours of the night wondering how I’d get my family to safety WTSHTF. I still envy some of my self-reliant heroes and heroine. It’s addictive. But I’ve come to realize that only makes me more stupid.

I’m no expert on anything. I’m a self-professed serial multitasker. I consider myself the stupidest survivalist on the planet. I’ve added lots of preparedness knowledge to my brain, but I have to balance my knowledge with wisdom. Taking away things like prepper envy adds wisdom. It’s so unwise to envy what many in the prepper community have in terms of gadgets, supplies, and tools.  But I catch myself still doing it. Then I remind myself to live Sherpa Simple.

Here are 7 ways to beat the envy trap.

Prepper Envy Cure #1:

Be honest. Seems simple. The most useful, yet most neglected, item in my preparedness toolbox is honesty. I wish I was more honest with myself. I said I’m the stupidest survivalist on the planet. I really feel this way. This isn’t false humiliating, self-depreciation babble. This falls into the more I know, the less I know category.

Arrogance humbles. Last year I decided I needed to start working out with my BOB (Bug Out Bag). I consider myself to be in above average shape for my age (50). So I sling my 40 pound pack on my back and start my daily 4 mile walk with my Loving Wife. Into mile 2 I discovered I hadn’t been honest about two things: A) My fitness level; B) The amount of “needed” stuff in my BOB. Find out before the curtain goes up for the show if you’re ready. Be honest and adjust your lifestyle.

Every book I read reminds me to be honest about my abilities. Kevin Dunn’s Caveman Chemistry is one book that has me humbled and excited. I was never interested in chemistry in school. If all school textbooks were written like this, government schooled students might have a chance of learning. Dunn comes across as a mad scientist at times. I like him. Now I see my lack of knowledge and treat it as a challenge. Learn to be a producer. Your stuff/supplies will run out eventually.

Prepper Envy Cure #2:

Don’t worrying, be happy. Pollyanna notions about whirled peas is not what I’m talking about here. Worrying may be the biggest drain and waste of energy in the prepper community. FEAR! A friend gave me this advise in the early 90′s that has served me well since (when I do it): Be prayed-up and laid back. At some point, we all have to get over ourselves and depend on a higher power. Mine happens to be God. This is by no means a He’ll take care of everything excuse not to prepare for our future. Prepare, but stop worrying about things you can’t control. Do what you can do, do all you can do, and let go of the rest.

What’s your biggest fear?

Prepper Envy Cure #3:

Hone your abilities. Coach John Wooden once said, “Ability is a poor man’s wealth.” You don’t have to be wealthy to be prepared. Skills trump gadgets. Again, I’m not advocating not stocking up on supplies. I’m saying practice your skills. Ability comes from experience and practice. Turn off the TV or computer (ONLY after you’ve finished my article) and get outside and practice bush crafting skills. Take a kid fishing/hunting. Walk your lawn and identify common weeds that might be useful for meds or food. You do have weeds in your yard right? I know exactly were to find plantain in my yard for the occasional tick bite or skin irritation. It’s an amazing wild weed!

Quit wishing you had the latest whatyacallit all the experts say you need. Time spent developing yourself helps dissolve prepper envy.

Prepper Envy Cure #4:

Avoid stupid mistakes. Avoid getting a personal “Darwin Award”. “That could have put your eye out,” Mama said. Why? Because we were shooting our BB guns at each other and she found out. It was obvious with the welt over my eye. I’d be envying the ability to see if the BB had landed 2 inches lower.

We all make stupid mistakes. Prepper envy doesn’t have to be one of them.

Prepper Envy Cure #5:

Exercise mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. I know I could have made these four Prepper Envy Cures #5-8, but I refuse to have “list envy” on top of prepper envy – (you’ve seen it, “The 39 Top Threats…”,  “7 Myths That Schools Teach as Real History”, “30 Canned Foods You Never Knew Existed“).

I touched on the physical aspect here. I’ll develop these four in a later post.

Prepper Envy Cure #6:

Fail forward. No regrets. I regret way too much. When I was five, I wanted to grow up to be the guy that rode on the back of the trash truck. It’s looked fun at the time. I don’t regret following that dream. I do regret wasting so much money, time, and energy on stuff that really doesn’t matter in the big scheme of life. I envy those with no regrets. See how it’s a vicious cycle.

Regrets waste energy and stop your preparedness momentum. Let the past go. In an earlier chapter of my life, I read a John Maxwell book or listened to one of cassette tapes (that dates it, huh?) and remember hearing the phrase “fail forward.” That stuck with me. I don’t always follow this wisdom, but it’s still truth. You’re reading this from an electric device because Thomas Edison was a “fail forward” man.

Regrets kills future ideas! I’ve never read any science on this, but it’s been proven in my life. The more I wallow in regret, the less creative I become.

Prepper Envy Cure #7:

Perfection is overrated. If you have OCD (Obsessive Compulsion Disorder), I feel for you. My mother-in-law has it. I don’t know how I passed the vetting to marry her daughter. Somehow she overlooked my many imperfect traits.

We’re bombarded with thousands of images daily promoting perfection – the perfect figure, job, car, drug, home, makeup, gun, knife, etc. Even in “education”, NCLB (No Child Left Behind) says we will achieve 100% passing rate on standardized testing for all students by 2014. Educrats are clueless! Resist the urge to envy ‘perfect’ preppers. They’re photo shopped. Be yourself. That’s enough.

See Prepper Envy Cure #1: Be honest about your imperfections. This quality opens more doors and opportunities than the vinyl veneer of perfection. See, I told you I’m the stupidest survivalist on the planet.

Follow me on Twitter for the latest on our journey to self-reliance, preparedness, and resilient living: @SurvivalSherpa

Related articles

• Time To Plan For The Worst Rather Than Hope For The Best (personalliberty.com)