(Continued from Part 1. This concludes the article.)
Step #4 – Warnings About In-House People Problems
We specifically included the following blog article for its high self discipline / self management value. This was a last minute find equal to being a “ Golden Nugget “ for our family and for me personally. This is a highly protective tool!
Prepper Complacency, by Wood Tamer (May 3, 2019)
Another excellent tool we included from the archives was the following:
Five Common Mistakes New Preppers Make and How to Avoid Them- Parts 1 & 2 (June 1, 2016)
Failure to Properly Assess Your Situation
There’s an old saying, “If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail.” This could not be truer than when it comes to survival. Failure to assess your individual situation from the beginning can and most likely will leave you more unprepared than you would like to believe. If you are new to prepping and just getting started, the first thing on your list should be a complete assessment. If you have been prepping for a while and have not done a proper assessment of your specific needs, then now is a good time to do so.
STEP #5 – How To Properly Plan For Prepper Success
Again, I went back to the blog archives for success from the past and I found the very best “how to “ instructions in the article named and quoted below. Note the “everyday life wordage “. It’s a principle!
The Thorough Planning and Orders Process – Part 1, By J.E.D. (September 10, 2015) After reading articles on this site and many other similar sites over the last few years, it has surprised me that no one has written about the planning process itself. I have read quite a few well written articles that have contained very good information about planning for tasks such as defending your home, bugging out, and other activities. In this article I would like to address the overall planning process that can be used for everyday life.”
Step #6 – “Enough On Beans & Bullets & Bandaids”
I knew that we were dealing with strong family oriented young men and women who trusted me, so I felt very comfortable building in the moral aspects of proper preparedness.
And again I found, and quickly included in the Family Prepper Package, the best tool for my task to be an archive article as named and quoted below. I do love the good stuff. Your tool choices can best reflect your circumstances and your specific needs.
Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual Preparation for Survival, by S.L. (June 27, 2018)
“”What does it mean to survive? Obviously, humans have survived countless natural and man-made disasters and continue to survive and thrive on planet earth. However, in this blog, we are focusing on surviving a SHTF situation.
We Prepare
All around us we see our freedoms being eroded and many of our systems being corrupted. So we prepare. But for what? So many scenarios could play out– a false epidemic, fires (natural or man made), SWAT teams in the early hours in small communities where they can knock out power and cell, preventing us from spreading the alarm. And, there are so many more possibilities.
Three Most Critical Areas of Preparation
The three most critical areas of preparation are rarely discussed. These are mental, emotional, and spiritual.””
*The critical area message above teaches somber and sound truths of human nature and human experience that is always common to every environment and situation. These truths are well worth holding dearly to our selves, and to freely sharing with others, everyday.
We teach best by a combination of both words and deeds. Our words and deeds are a single and forever combined easing tool. All too often, our students may well be thinking that they can not hear what we are saying about preparedness because what we are “ not doing “ is so very loud. “I am working to get better at this task” is a bold statement.
Step #7 – Seek And Acknowledge Family Member Feedback
From the blog archives, Again: Leader, Supervisor, Mentor, by D. Hacker (May 22, 2013)
“It is important that proper “feedback”, whether good or bad, be provided by leaders, supervisors, and mentors.
A survival situation is not the same as the normal business world, and the importance of keeping good relationships and completing important tasks cannot be underestimated. Lives could be at stake. With that in mind, realize that the way feedback is given greatly influences the way it is received. If correcting someone (or giving negative feedback): make sure to give the feedback in a prompt manner (don’t wait till three days has passed before you tell them they screwed up); be specific about what should be done better (they need to know what they actually did wrong); try to give negative feedback in a setting that is away from others so you don’t appear to be trying to embarrass them; and, try to use the “sandwich” technique of saying something positive, then the negative, then finish up with something positive again.
For instance, you might say “Thanks for helping split this wood. I know it’s hard work and I appreciate it. Can you please split the pieces a little thinner so we can fit them into our stove easier? Again, I really appreciate your help with this. This will help us all for quite a while.”
Giving positive feedback is easier, but just as important. We can all use positive reinforcement for the jobs we do, and it makes us more willing to do them. As a leader, supervisor, or mentor, you will be giving feedback, but you will also probably be receiving it.
Make sure you take the feedback with an open mind and react the way you hope others react when you give them feedback. In fact, as a leader, supervisor, or mentor, I would suggest you occasionally request feedback. How else will you know how you are doing and where improvements can be made? It also conveys the feeling that you care what others think about your performance and that you have their interests at heart.“””
I have found that the SurvivalBlog archives are a terrific tool for my personal efforts to be prepared and to help others to learn to prepare themselves to be ready for difficulties with no stress advance response decisions.
We make our home in a tiny town of about 500 folks in southwestern Utah. We are very slow and rural and yet very close and helpful in an emergency. Many have common gardens and share the goodies freely. Our town council has allowed me to volunteer to be the “go to“ e-mail guy for answers and guidance on preparedness questions and difficulties. And I use the blog archives for much of my data.
There are tremendous personal benefits generated by sharing the wealth of the blog archives. Stake your claim soon. Help someone today. Teach someone today, Help yourself by enabling others be prepared and independent. These principles I know to be true and everlasting, Putting these principles to use in our lives has brought enablement and great joy to this old (78) catastrophically disabled house-bound guy on oxygen 24 / 7 who can’t drive … to be useful ! Disabled is never Unable.
My specific goal in preparing this report is to use our experiences to covey to the reader an opportunity to be more aware of the personal benefits to be gained by sincere efforts to enable others to provide care and security for themselves and their families. The benefits encompass everyday life and most especially our preparedness efforts. The benefits will be found in many areas of our daily lives, especially in improved management skills, stronger self discipline, a rapidly growing knowledge base, and most importantly, a powerful grasp of greatly enhanced self confidence:
Yes I Can Because I Truly Believe That I Can
The “Family Prepper Package” creation efforts were actually a series of joyful simple events, and were very easy. The ease of effort was a direct result of my daily early morning use of SurvivalBlog as my Internet “homepage”, and the powerful every ready availability of the blog archives. Thanks to JWR! My thanks for comments and feedback.
I get the giving feedback and giving it in a manner that will be well received. However, I find that people who have to give corrective feedback most often have to because they never communicated the tasks needing to be performed. Over communicate the specific tasks needed, demonstrate those tasks to them, and then observe the person as they perform the tasks a few times.
In other words: Thanks for helping me split wood today. We need to split the wood into pieces no wider than 3″=4″ so they fit correctly inside the stove. Then we will throw them into a pile next to the Polaris (or stack next to the shed, etc.). Here let me split a few so you can see exactly what we are going to do. Got it? Great, try a few to make sure we are on the same page. Perfect, let’s knock this out. Done and done without making emotional sandwiches.
Now you can spend both your and their time working and talking about them and their family or activities or their lives instead of waiting to find a nice way to correct them and having to go back and re-split wood.
I know you used the “splitting wood” as a convenient example but over communicating works on other tasks and longterm project or goals as well. Remember, in nearly 100% of failed projects that are reviewed “poor or little communication of the tasks” is always #1 or #2. So over communicate on the front end to increase your success.
Freeheel, excellent exposition. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Carry on
WHAT HAPPENED TO ” ALWAYS A MARINE?”
“SEMPER FI” FROM THE ARMY GUY – OLD BOBBERT
Great job and well referenced! Remember a lot of the articles you referred to in past years.
Old Bobbert. Have you considered sharing your work with other readers on a thumbdrive? Perhaps at a modest cost to offset your expenses?
Keep up the good work.