Mental Preparedness 

​Mentally preparing yourself for an attack is similar to preparing yourself for other security, safety, and preparedness situations.  The first mental preparation step in self-defense is to acknowledge that you may have a violent encounter.  While we all hope that we won’t experience a violent encounter, it is a possibility.  Therefore, anything other than acknowledging that possibility is living in denial.


When it comes to self-defense, denial of the possibility puts you on the path towards tragedy.  So, accept that you may find yourself in a violent confrontation and you’ll be ahead of the game if it happens.  Remember, acceptance of the possibility doesn’t mean it will happen, so don’t become paranoid and fearful of everything.

Fortunately, preparing for other events, such as disasters, etc., improves your self-defense preparedness.  After all, a primary response to any developing situation or crisis is relatively similar.  When you’ve accepted and pre-planned for the possibilities, you can react much more positively when something occurs.

Overcome the Fear

Once you have mentally prepared for a violent situation, you should overcome the fear of it happening.  Being fearful of violent situations is normal.  However, do not let fear control you.  If you do, you reduce your chance of responding to a problem in a positive and favorable manner.  Conquering your fear can be done through the mental preparedness mentioned previously and by pre-planning for a possible encounter.

Plan for It

Now that you’ve accepted that you may be attacked and are dealing with your fear, you need to plan.  Planning doesn’t mean coming up with a super detailed plan for everything.  It means to think of various situations and to think through your initial response.  It’s thinking through the “what if” moments.  What if a bad guy runs up from behind?  How will I handle the situation if X happens?  Planning means getting yourself prepared to survive the initial encounter.  Then, over time, add in follow-on steps as you role play the situation in your mind.  Adding in follow-on steps slowly builds up well thought out responses that allow you to have the faster OODA Loop to come out on the winning side of a less than desirable encounter.

Maintain Positive Situational Awareness

The next step to self-defense is maintaining active situational awareness.  Situational awareness includes lifting your head out of your smartphone and paying attention.  It means observing your surroundings.  When you observe your surroundings, you should look for things that do not seem normal or are out of place.  When you notice something, listen to your gut and take action.  The best action is avoidance, which happens when you increase the time and distance between you and the problem.   Unfortunately, not all of us have developed excellent situational awareness skills.  If this is you, don’t worry; I wrote this post to help you improve your situational awareness.  Improving your situational awareness will allow you to react and spring into your OODA Loop faster than your opponent, which is always a good thing.

Train, Train, Train

Finally, now that you are ready to notice a developing problem due to your situational awareness, you’re willing to deal with it.  As mentioned earlier, the best action is often avoidance.  If avoidance isn’t possible, you need to address the problem.

Dealing with it may include a physical confrontation. Because of this, it’s important to ensure you are in as good of shape physically as possible. If you’re not in good condition, see your doctor. Once your doctor gives you the thumbs up, start training. Remember, training doesn’t mean you need to go to the gym.  What it means is pick up the pace.  Start going for walks.  Find out self-improvement methods on the internet. Whatever it is, take proactive steps to improve yourself.

Another proactive step is self-defense training.  Many towns, martial arts studios, etc., offer self-defense workshops, especially for women.  Take advantage of these and work on improving yourself.  Don’t be intimidated because you’re new to it or because don’t know anyone there.  Use the uncertainty as the first step in building the self-confidence to overcome a violent encounter, should it happen.

It’s important to know that every step you make towards improving your security, safety, and preparedness is one step closer to a successful outcome.

Lastly, never forget, you’re just one prep away.

If you have any other prepping history information, suggestions, or thoughts about this post, please leave a comment below.

Stay safe, secure and prepared.

What Is Disaster Preparedness for Families?

Disaster preparedness for families doesn’t require rocket science. What it does require is planning, implementation, and training. When completed, proper disaster preparedness for families helps people prepare both mentally and physically for challenging emergency and disaster situations.

Prior Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance

Making a plan establishes a baseline for you to operate from when disaster strikes. To establish this baseline, you must first identify the potential risks facing you and your family. Once you’ve identified the various emergency and disaster scenarios, you need to think through as many potential responses as possible. With your potential responses thought out, you will be set to create your plan.

Plan Creation

Creating your plan is the meat and potatoes of improving your family’s safety and security. The first step to creating your plan is to review your potential responses and consolidate those into an action plan. One key to creating your action plan is to keep it flexible so you can efficiently respond to changing and unpredictable situations.

Another key is to ensure your family understands what to do if separated when an emergency or disaster happens. Separated family members need to know how to get ahold of each other and should consider disruptions to communication systems. Depending on the situation’s size, they should also know how to get to pre-selected local and distant meet-up locations.

Lastly, with your plan set, you need to determine what supplies are essential to your success. Once you know what you need, you’ll need to know how much is needed. After all, planning for a Hurricane Katrina-type event does you no good if you don’t have enough food and clean water to last for several days.

Implementation

Implementation is critical to ensuring your plan runs as smooth as possible. The most important aspect of plan preparation is discussing it with your family. When reviewing the plan, you need to talk about the various types of disasters that may affect your family.

You will also need to explain why the plan is necessary. Doing so will help everyone understand why you are planning and preparing. Keep in mind, when discussing this with your children, it is important that you avoid scaring them. Also, don’t forget to ask for your family’s feedback about the plan. You just never know—they may add an excellent idea.

Another important part of implementation is to discuss your plan with others whom you may rely upon during an emergency or disaster. For example, if your plan includes heading to Uncle Bill’s house in the mountains, you may want to discuss it with him first. When doing so, you will resolve potential problems and possibly identify ones you didn’t know existed.

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. ~ Aristotle

Once your plan is ready to go, it’s time for you to train, train, and train some more. Training provides you with the opportunity to test and evaluate your plan. As you do so, your family will also become more familiar with it. When they do, they will be better able to deal with the situation when it happens.

Remember, when training, you should follow the crawl, walk, run philosophy. Begin your training by talking through the plan and asking your family questions about the details of the plan. Doing so will reinforce the plan in everyone’s mind. Next, conduct a walkthrough of the plan so everybody sees it unfold in slow motion.

Finally, practice the plan at a safe but faster pace with less warning. The trick is to ratchet up the stress, so when a real event happens, everyone is ready to leap into action.

Don’t forget to practice with any supplies and equipment that are part of your plan. After all, waiting until a disaster happens to find out that you don’t know how to use your supplies and equipment exposes you and your family to increased risk. It’s a risk that is easy to overcome with little effort. So, make it happen.

Lastly, never forget, you’re  just one prep away.

If you have any other information, suggestions, or thoughts about disaster preparedness for families, please leave a comment below.

Stay safe, secure and prepared.