Prepper Knowledge and Tools Won’t Save You If You Don’t Have This

Before we moved, If you had taken a trip down to my basement, you would have seen that it’s decently stocked.  Would it have helped to have more things in it?  Doesn’t it always?  I also have a decent working knowledge of basic preparedness – with the exception of animal husbandry or butchering of which I know little, but now on the farm, I’m learning more and more.  Even with my decent stash and knowledge, there’s one other thing that without which I wouldn’t survive and neither would you.  And that ONE thing that you, I, and everyone else need is mental preparedness, so that we don’t panic in the face of uncertainty.

Have you ever met someone whose composure under pressure just blew you away?  Maybe they had to make a huge presentation or answer questions under fire to exonerate themselves, and they looked as cool as a cucumber!  Doesn’t that ability just boggle your mind?  That’s something that we all need and believe it or not, it is within all of our grasps!  Keep reading, I have actual exercises for this later in the article.

How do you develop mental preparedness?

There are three aspects to mental preparedness:  the ability to stay calm, will or willpower, and resistance to normalcy bias.  Let’s tackle each of these.

The Ability to Stay Calm

While for some people this is an inherent ability; for other people, panic is just second nature to them.  I have one child who shall remain nameless whose default mode seems to be – even if nothing else is failing – PANIC!  We are working hard with that child to stop before that child panics.

But if you are one of those people prone to panic, how do you overcome it?

Practice

All types of preparedness begin not with knowledge but with practice.  Knowledge WITHOUT practice will do you NO GOOD.

Let’s pretend it’s the middle of February.  It’s in the 20’s outside.  A beautiful blanket of snow (gag) nestles on top of your dormant lawn.  Your family is sitting in front of your fireplace (yay to this!).  One of those Duraflame logs is going in the grate.  You just used your last match, so you added matches to your Wal-mart grocery list chiding yourself for letting your stash get so low, or have the kids been raiding the matches despite your manifold warnings?  You’re enjoying the ambiance and the togetherness as you sip hot chocolate and laugh about some of the dogs (or kids) antics.  Not long later, it’s time for bed, so everyone gets on their nice warm PJ’s and snuggles down for the night.

But partway through the night…..

You’re roused from sleep and you don’t quite know why.  You listen and you don’t hear anything but the wind outside.  Then you realize you don’t hear anything but the wind outside.  You don’t hear the hum of the refrigerator or the heat coming through the grate, so you flip over and glance at your clock.  It’s blank.  There are no numbers on it, and you realize that there is no electricity.  You take a closer look outside.  Sometime between the time you went to bed and whatever o-dark-thirty it is, you were hit with an unforecast ice storm.

You bundle up in a fuzzy robe, wool socks, and slippers and step out on your front porch to almost fall on the ice with just that one step.  You aren’t going anywhere.  Sure you have some real wood outside, but you’re out of matches and you don’t have any of those butane lighters.  What are you going to do?  If you don’t know (and haven’t practiced) multiple ways to light a fire, having wood will do you no good.   All preparedness starts with knowledge – even mental preparedness, but it can NEVER end there.  It has to end in practice.

So how does that help us learn NOT to panic?

Well, when do you panic less?  Do you panic less when you know that you can start a fire with a 9-volt battery in your closet and the foil in your kitchen and when you’ve already taken other steps to stock your woodpile?  Or do you panic less when you’re wrapped in a fuzzy robe, wool socks, and slippers staring out your window at your pile of firewood with no KNOWN way to light it?  Knowledge – only with practice – will help you not panic.

Let’s take a different example.  Let’s mentally fast forward to next April.  Totally unexpectedly, your husband comes to you and says his company is closing their doors.  Work ends at the end of the week.  If you’ve already got a garden growing in your yard (because you have read about and practiced gardening) you are going to worry less (though I’m sure a bit of worry still takes place) about taking the 40% pay cut than you would get if you go on unemployment than if you didn’t have a garden already producing food.

So while we start with knowledge WITH practice, we can’t stop there.  We need to add will/willpower.

Will or Willpower

But knowledge and practice only get you so far.  Mental Preparedness needs for you to have a will to get through whatever the situation throws at you.  You might think, well, of course, I have a will to get through the situation if it warrants it!

But let me ask you this question.  Have you ever set yourself any New Year’s Resolution?  Maybe you decided that you’d read your Bible through in a year or you resolved to read 12 books in the year, or lose 30 pounds.  How were you doing with those resolutions by the end of JANUARY – not the end of the year, but just the end of the first month.  Had to taken steps toward making those resolutions happen?  What about half-way through the year?  How were you doing?  Had you kept up with them?  Hey, I’m the same way.  It’s so easy to have great intentions to do what’s good to do, but follow through?  That’s a whole different story, huh?  Mental preparedness isn’t as easy as ya thought?  Yep.  I agree with you, 100%.

So can you increase your willpower?

I’ve read three different articles that say you CAN increase your will or willpower.  They all offered different suggestions of exercises to do it, but before I get into any of them, let me start by saying they all equated willpower to a muscle.  Like muscles, if you use it appropriately and don’t push it too often, you will strengthen your muscle or willpower.  If you get up each morning and do 5 push-ups, but no more, soon you’ll be able to do 7 push-ups without too much difficulty.

If however, you tried to do 30 push-ups before you were going to hang curtains (also an activity that takes arm muscles), you’d find your strength depleted and you’d be less likely to be able to hang the curtains immediately after.

So exercise your willpower muscles, but don’t deplete them!  

Here are some of the exercises that they suggested.

(1) Meditation

When a person meditates for even 10 minutes a day, it helps them focus better.  I’m not talking about sitting cross-legged on the floor and chanting “Ohm.”  If you’re a Christian, we are told to meditate on scripture (Joshua 1:8).  Sit quietly and quote one of two verses of scripture to yourself for just ten minutes.  If you aren’t a Christian, find a favorite inspirational saying or two to quote to yourself over the course of ten minutes.

(2) Deep Breathing

When you are feeling tempted or anxious, take deep breaths.  I learned a technique from my primary care physician’s nurse.  Breathe in while counting to four in your head.  Hold for a count of two.  Breathe out for a count of four and repeat.  It lowered my pulse by almost 10 beats per minute!  There’s also a book that I’m in the middle of right now called “Breathe.”  It’s about learning how to breathe in such a way that you lower your blood pressure, anxiety, and heighten your mental acuity all by breathing!

(3) Distract Yourself

Yea.  Literally, change your focus from what you are wanting or craving to something else.  Put on a movie or some music and dance to it.  Even I have a song that makes me want to kick up my heels a bit.  Find something else to focus on.

(4) Sit up Straight

Can you believe that one?  They suggest that every time you catch yourself slouching, choose to sit up straight.  Doing this simple thing improved people’s willpower on certain tests they were given.

(5) Get More Sleep

Is it any surprise that when you are tired you have less willpower?  When your muscles are tired, they aren’t as strong.  You can’t lift near as much as you could if your muscles aren’t tired.  It’s the same with your body.  Get more sleep, and you will have more willpower.

Resistance to normalcy bias will help you with mental preparedness

I can see some of you scratching your heads now.  What’s “Normalcy Bias and what does it have to do with mental preparedness?”  Normalcy bias is the belief that everything will always continue as it is.  So what’s wrong with that?  When you believe that everything will always stay like it is now, you can’t react when something isn’t the same.

Let me give you an example.

We started playing chess at a chess club here in Central Illinois back in 2014.  At that point, I had lived through a tornado.  I had lived through the Ferguson Riots.  You would think that I knew that anything could happen to us.  As I look back on it now, I think with the tornado and the riots, they were scary and life-altering, but they weren’t personal.

Our second week at chess club, we arrived and set our things down.  The kids grabbed chess boards and got them set up.  The coach taught a short lesson on a chess strategy, and everyone went to it.  About fifteen to twenty minutes into the club, a young man ran into our room brandishing two knives over his head, and he screamed, “I’m going to kill everyone!”

Do you want to know what I really thought?  I really thought that he was a kid playing a prank and trying to scare us.  I think most all of us in that room froze.  Well, we froze until he started cutting his arm with one of the knives.  It was then that I knew they were real – not just some fake plastic knives.  I carry my pocket knife in my bag.  I also had a cell phone.  Neither of those things came across my mind.  I froze. Why did I freeze?  Normalcy bias.  Everything would always be the same as it always had been, right?

Fortunately for us, our coach was amazing.

Our Coach engaged the young man in a conversation taking his focus off of us and putting it on himself.  He waved behind his back for all of us to get out of the room, which we did.  Coach saved us all because he didn’t freeze.

As soon as I was out of the room, finally some sense kicked in and I ran to the front desk (with five kids in tow) and told them to call 911.  Our coach was injured, but he saved all our lives because he didn’t freeze like the rest of us did.  But it was that normalcy bias that caused us to freeze – or I’ve heard it called “deer in the headlights syndrome.”  Just like a deer freezes when your lights hit them as they travel up the road in front of your car.  Because they froze in place when your car lights hit them, you hit the deer with your car.  We froze when someone threatened us when we didn’t expect it.

So how do you combat “Normalcy Bias?”

Believe it or not, there’s a game that I think would go far in helping combat it.  It’s called Worst Case Scenario.  Worst Case Scenario is a game that gives you a survival situation.  On that same card, you are given four choices for ways to survive the scenario.  You have to use what you know and deductive reasoning to figure out the best answer to the question.  This helps you fight against normalcy bias because if I had already thought through what I would do if a man with a knife runs into a room while I’m in it, I don’t think I would have frozen.  Exercising your brain as a survival muscle and realizing that sometimes terrible things happen to good people will help you fight against normalcy bias.

What About You?

Do you struggle to remain level-headed in a crisis?  How’s your willpower?  Did you ever hear of exercising it?  What’s your take on normalcy bias?  I’d love to hear!  Leave me a comment below or reply to this e-mail.

This post is an updated post originally posted on August 22, 2018.

Remember, knowledge isn’t just knowing something.  It’s living it!

There are links in this post.  Some of the links may be affiliate links.  Some of the links may not be.  My promise to you is that I will only recommend the most economical version of the best quality of items to serve you. These are the items that I have bought for my own family.  You can feel free to use my affiliate links, of which I will get a small amount in compensation, or you can choose to search out your products on your own.