In my mid-20s I began slowly easing into prepping. With no clear direction, I made no real progress. Now, I am in my mid-30s and quite a bit has changed. So, over the past 10 years or so, what did I learn that I wished I had done differently in the beginning? What could have helped me to get off to a better start and save myself the grief of so many mistakes? (As an aside, I firmly believe that many of life’s best lessons are made through mistakes. But, try to learn from my mistakes instead of making them yourself.) As I break down some of my basic principles, please keep in mind that I can only share my opinions and experiences. I’m not a life-coach or survival guru. You may see something that could have been done better. If so, please comment and share. The prepper community is all about helping one-another out. The next few personal principles will not be exhaustive and I’ll go into each one in more detail in following posts. That being said, I’ll get started.
Lesson #1 – Don’t freak out. Don’t get caught up in the fearmongering that is so prevalent in our society. Don’t get caught up in impulse-buying the mystical save-all survival items. Relax, take a breath, and take care of the things that you can take care of. Outside of that, it’s out of your control anyway.
Lesson #2 – Get Focused. Now that you’ve calmed down, it’s time to sit down and really figure out what it is that you’re trying to accomplish. At this point, a lot of people jump way ahead and say “I’m preparing for an EMP” or some other major event. Well, you can’t really prepare for the “major” if you haven’t prepared for the “minor”. That missile silo in Kansas that you bought and stocked is going to do you absolutely no good if you don’t have a way to get there from your house in upper New York in the dead of winter. Start small.
Lesson #3 – Develop a plan. It doesn’t matter what you want to accomplish if you don’t have a plan. Without a plan, you won’t know what to do to get from point A to point B, to C, to D, and on and on. This plan can be very simple and concise, or it can be very detailed. I suggest you start with a simple overall plan from start to finish and then go back and fine-tune said plan. That way you at least have a general idea of what you want to do before you get hung up on the intricacies of one step and can’t move to the next.
Lesson #4 – Start making progress. Thinking things through will only get you so far. Reading will only get you so far. Don’t get hung up on the academic side of getting prepared. Start taking practical steps toward your preparedness. Once you have developed your plan, put it into action. In the next post I’ll expound on some of these lessons in more detail. I’ll let you know where I went wrong and what I have learned that has better served my own preparedness.
