#like how is spending hundreds of dollars on books that youre basically just hoarding better then just going to a library

[sp00ky-scary]

I can't remember the exact wording but I saw some fucking booktok tiktok or reel or whatever that was basically saying "I'd rather kms then have to borrow a book from the library" and it's just like why ???? What is wrong with borrowing from a library ? Like please explain to me how buying hundreds of books you'll only read once or twice is better then borrowing from a library and how borrowing from a library is so awful, like I'm actually curious

[logan-after-dark]

Law of Attraction

Or abundance or whatever it is :P Going to talk on that today since it’s been on my mind.

A few weeks ago now, I signed up for this free webinar that was advertised on one of the ASMR YouTube videos I use to fall asleep. The only reason I signed up for the webinar was because it was free, and because I’ve been in a rough spot financially for a long time now and figured I had very little to lose. An hour out of a Wednesday afternoon seemed like an okay trade for something that I could maybe potentially use.

My attitude towards folks who promote or advocate for this idea of an abundant universe and the law of attraction and things like that has been rather negative in the past. Oftentimes they strike me as snake oil salesmen - folks who sell books titled ‘how to get rich quick’ and things like that where the answer is ‘write and publish a book titled “how to get rich quick” and wait for gullible saps to buy it’. My ex had a few of those books on topics like how to become a millionaire through real estate and the like, and his mother was a realtor so, he had no shortage of support there. But, like I said, in the process of pursuing those kinds of get-rich-quick schemes, you’re really just lining someone else’s pockets while obtaining information that may not even be useful to yourself in your specific situation. So I viewed folks pushing this idea of the law of attraction in a similar way - just very sketchy, negative, snake oil peddlers that really just wanted to sell me on more such talks and line their own pockets while mine became increasingly more barren.

Well, let me tell you how the webinar actually went down.

It was on a website called Mindvalley.com, with Harv Eker and Vishen Lakhiani. I decided that, it seemed to have a sort of spiritual/psychological bent to it from the ad seemingly, so that if it had advice that would help me build up my self-esteem or something like that, just overall improve my mental state by a fair margin through this talk, then it would 100% be worth my time. And like I said before, I had very little to lose spending an hour watching a free webinar on abundance.

At the end of it, they did offer some courses - extremely pricey ones that had been ‘discounted’ like 95%, but 5% was still something like three hundred dollars. I had little doubt in my mind that those might help someone else watching, but I was not interested and I wanted to come away from this having invested only my time anyways. And I didn’t, and still don’t, have a spare $300 lying around.

But I felt amazing by the time the webinar wrapped up.

Literally amazing. Spiritually empowered, ready to take on anything, incredibly emboldened and like nothing could stop me, nothing could hold me back anymore. It was an exhilarating feeling that rocked me to my core. I went into it having spent nothing and came out of it feeling like I’d just won the lottery, in spite of my bank account still showing negative digits. Nothing could crush me at that point - the reality of my situation hadn’t left me, but I felt markedly different about it.

I had to get on Discord and tell Mike about it right away. Mike, though he’s my best friend for life and I love him dearly, instantly had some negativity of his own to share re: the american political system and how the rich get richer while the poor get worse all the time - And that’s real life, unfortunately, and I’m not going to dismiss that. But that’s entirely the wrong attitude to have.

Here are some key concepts/key ideas that I took away from the webinar and would like to share with you folks:

1. Your attitude towards money is all wrong.

I’m being totally serious, and I think that this is something that a lot of people struggle with throughout their lives. If you aren’t born with it then you feel like you’re constantly scraping by. Your parents are always talking about debt and how they’re always scraping by too - I know mine were. I could write a book about all the wrong things my parents did just relating to money. Maybe someday I actually will :)

Your relationship with money is a major factor in how much you receive or what you have to do to get it. If you believe you can only make a lot of money by working hard, then that’s what you’ll have to do. If you feel like you’re always drowning in debt, then you will always be drowning in it. If you believe deep down that you’re unworthy of a lot of money, then you’ll never have a lot of money. You subconsciously reject money if you believe deep down that you’re not worth it. This can manifest in refusing a job promotion because you don’t think you’ve earned it, not applying for a job in the first place because you don’t meet the qualifications, or deciding against some action related to business (current or one you haven’t started yet) because it’s a lot of time investment, will keep you away from your family, a lot of money invested, etc. etc. etc. These really are excuses, because there are always affordable business loans, way to maintain work/life balance and family time, or accepting that promotion because it may just be a stepping stone towards something even better. You can’t know where it’ll take you until you try.

We make excuses to refuse money all the time, even if we don’t realize it. What about flipping the script for once and reasoning out with ourselves why we deserve money instead?

2. Jealousy and envy will do nothing but hold you back.

This is a tough one, but it ties into point one that attitudes about money are all wrong. If you hold it inside yourself that people who have a lot of money don’t deserve it, and spite and scorn them for having it, then you will never have it for yourself.

Harv said something that I thought was rather beautiful - “If you see someone with a big beautiful house, bless that house.” How wonderful that that family should have such a nice place to live, no? How wonderful that they have new, safe cars to drive for them and their children. No sarcasm involved. If you think positively about it for them, then this allows you to open yourself up to having those beautiful things as well.

3. Money is not evil.

Think about it. We talk (and Mike talked) about how guys like Jeff Bezos have enough money hoarded away when they could instead just snap their fingers and solve global poverty just like that.

If a construction worker decided one day to brain his coworker with a hammer, would you blame the hammer? No. Money is like the hammer - nothing but a tool to be used by the person wielding it. Money cannot make conscious decisions for itself, is not sentient, and is in fact entirely neutral as to whose hands it comes into.

It is completely possible to be rich and be a good person. One of my favourite random sayings that I carry with me when I’m looking for my next course of action is “Be the example”. Get your well-deserved money and then demonstrate it. Help you, because you probably need it, and then help those in need. You can absolutely be a good person with money because the two are not mutually exclusive, but of course don’t set yourself on fire to keep others’ warm. You can’t pull people up and out of their troubles if you’re still standing on unstable ground. Believe me, I’ve tried XD

4. Unfortunately, you don’t just magically get this money. You still have to do something for it.

In the webinar they talked about finding your life’s purpose and then living your purpose - something I still struggle with in spite of my elevated feelings immediately following said webinar. I am still not quite sure what my purpose is - I have a feeling, and I think it’s a good one (trying to build understanding between people and groups of people for everyone’s health and happiness), but I have other struggles that still block me.

The examples they gave related to business primarily. Harv was trying to start up businesses that didn’t work and were geared towards one thing, and Vishen was just struggling with his existing business. I think the important takeaway from their individual talks about it though is this: Work your passion. Find out what your passion is, get good at it, and then live and work your passion. They say that if you love your work then you’ll never work a day in your life, right? This idea is basically that in practice.

5. There is no such thing as having too much money.

Least of all when it comes to yourself :P

I used to do this thing where I’d play the lottery (yes I still play every week, shut up) and I would think to myself “I only need a million dollars to live comfortably the rest of my life. Anything beyond that is too much.” That was because I couldn’t appreciate the scope of having more than a cool mil. There is a factor of scale that just boggles my mind. A million dollars is already a lot of money, an almost unfathomable amount. The only frame of reference is that my house is probably worth about a quarter-mil right now. I could buy four of my house with one million dollars.

Well, I refuse to impose limits on myself like that anymore.

Bring on the 60 million dollar grand prize! This is my attitude now. There is still a part of me that sort of recoils at the idea of that money, but then I internally try to push that back with a follow-up thought of ‘just think about the number of people I could help with that money’. If Jeff Bezos won’t single-handedly solve poverty world-wide, then maybe I can. Give me that cool 60 mil, I am open to it and down to receive any sort of excess the universe wants to throw at me. I’ll make use of every single cent :D

6. I saw immediate results after embracing this way thinking.

This is absolutely true, and I have witnesses who can attest to that :)

After watching this seminar, within a few days of doing so, I had a room listed for rent online on a local classifieds website. My inbox exploded. I can’t even fathom how many responses I got, but it was easily upwards of fifty different people replying to my ad. Not only did I get the room rented, I got a second room I didn’t even list rented as well.

I also received some amazing and generous donations to my main blog’s Kofi from some amazingly generous friends of mine from here on Tumblr. I didn’t even ask, they just showed up and I was so thankful I cried.

A good long-time friend of mine was also generous enough to offer me a loan of $1000 USD in order to cover my bills and some other upcoming expenses. Initially I refused the loan, but after taking a second look at my finances, I decided to accept it and hope to pay it back in full by Christmas.

Now, I’m not sure how I feel about the idea of an abundant universe - I went into this as a skeptic and I came out still a bit skeptical - but there are definitely attitudes within me that can change so I can provide myself with more opportunities to find abundance in my own life. I went into this thing looking to boost up my esteem and got that in spades.

It all exemplifies something I already believed going into this, to be entirely fair; What you believe becomes reality. I have a few beliefs about my character that have helped to shape me as a spiritual person that initially may not have been true. I am confident, strong, and powerful. All of those things are absolutely true about me today. Put another way, you could say that manifesting abundance is very similar to the idea ‘fake it ‘til you make it’ XD

If I can find out whether they’re still running the webinar (I feel like it was definitely pre-recorded, but I doubt there’s a video just laying around), I’ll share it with you folks on here <3

Thanks for coming to my TED talk XD

[thecoroutfitters]

Written by Guest Contributor on The Prepper Journal.

Editor’s Note: This post is another entry in the Prepper Writing Contest from Chevyguy. If you have information for Preppers that you would like to share and possibly win a $300 Amazon Gift Card to purchase your own prepping supplies, enter today.

The more articles and prepping books I read and the YouTube Videos I watch I find a very obvious question that I don’t think people are asking themselves. The more I start to question if these people have anything valuable to say or worthwhile to show. What is this huge imposing question? Are these preppers being honest with themselves?

//

Now I realize in the Survival lifestyle there is a lot of ways to break it down. From bugging in or out, which kind of food storage to have, how to defend yourself, which weapons to own the lists can go on and on. But the word Survive itself is where I think people are completely missing the point. Survival! It’s not a TV show, it’s not a video game, there are no restarts and no second chances. You do or die, make the right call or fail, eat or starve. It’s not glamorous it’s not pretty and if it happens to you,  it won’t be the Hollywood version you have seen on movies. With these thoughts in mind, I have compiled a selected few topics I think people should reevaluate in their lives and make and give yourself a prepping reality check.

Why are you prepping anyway?

First and foremost what in the hell are you prepping for and why? Do you live in area prone to floods or hurricane alley? Is your home in a place that has regularly harsh winters or some other kind of recurring natural disasters? If so, then you have an easy to envision goal to strive for. When part of your normal life could be that you’re snowed in and can’t get out for two months, its nice to have food, water and heat that you can provide for yourself. If you live in flood zones its nice to have sand bags handy that are all ready filled and ready to go and other natural methods of water diversion. But then I read of people who prepare for this TEOTWAWKI and I take a step back and wonder what that means to them.

For my wife, the end of the world as we know it is a world without Facebook. To a guy at work it’s no TV and no way to charge his vape batteries. To others it’s a nuclear holocaust as is portrayed in the Fallout video games. Before you start prepping, you need to have a vision of something realistic that you are preparing for. I find it easy to think of a certain problem, for example how will I stay warm, and go forth from there. Find a simple problem and then find several different ways to fix that particular problem. Keep your problems small and you can tackle them more easily. Don’t start with how to heat your house, focus instead on how am I going to stay warm – how am I going to keep my safe room warm? Because honestly you don’t need your whole house to be warm. You don’t even need your room to be warm, all you need is your body to be warm to survive.

Once you start breaking basic problems down you’ll see that you are a lot better off and better prepared to face your challenges. This is also great for somebody who is just starting out in prepping or maybe have been doing it for a while but feels like they are missing something or there is a giant hole in their supplies. Focus on the little things because you start adding a bunch of little things up and they become a very big thing. Would it be cool to have NBC gear and gas masks for Nuclear Fallout, to have full body armor and a diverse array of weaponry at your disposal? Sure it would be but that’s all it would be, cool. For most people, it would not be practical. When you’re wearing all that cool gear starving or dying from dehydration you will wish you would have used that money to prepare for something that could have been used not something tacticool.

Your supplies won’t last forever.

Second, realize that everything you hoard will run out, it’s not a lifeline, it’s a buffer. There is no way the average person has enough room and space, let alone money to stockpile roughly 50 years of food and water nor have the ability to move it around if needed. The most common responses I get from people when asked what they’ll do in an emergency is, ‘we have rice and beans well be fine’, or ‘we’ll just garden we won’t need the grocery store’. The problem with these people is that they don’t consider the amount of water for rice and beans or the amount of time food takes to grow.

The one, single, solitary thing that will keep you alive are skills. Having a stockpile is great and I myself am working on creating one, but you must have the skills and the materials to replenish that stockpile before it’s all gone. Many people who garden, rarely stockpile plain empty canning jars and lids or know of or have the skills to persevere garden harvests from spoiling. Folks who plan to hunt either haven’t done it in a while or only know how to use a firearm. They’ve never used or considered a bow, traps, snares or other methods. They are just planning on being able to go hunt and survive. They don’t consider how skilled (and lucky) you have to be to even see game, let alone how much competition from other people trying to survive they will encounter.

Another huge problem with stockpiling is people become targets to looters. Chances are someone has seen you unloading your massive amounts of beans and rice at one point or another. Or someone you know is aware of that root cellar you have outside. When you have so much crap that you can’t easily hide it, others are going to look at you as their lifeline or their target. Last note on stockpiling is stop stockpiling crap. Will a hundred empty peanut butter jars be helpful, probably not as much as you think because there going to be so many other empty peanut butter jars out there. Will a hundred cheap flashlights from the dollar store be the cure-all for lights? Good reliable gear is not cheap. I am not saying you have to spend a million dollars to have decent gear as a lot of it is way over priced but have something that’s quality built not just crap. You will appreciate it one day.

How much is too much?

Good reliable gear brings us into our third topic, don’t be a gear whore. Is having some back up gear nice to have, yes, but don’t we all get that momentary high from getting new things? All that gear you have stocked away is great but do you know how to use it? What good does it do you to have an AR and all the ammo in the world if you don’t know how to shoot it? Can you properly tear it down, clean and lube it? What usefulness does a fully loaded medic bag do if you don’t even know basic wound care, CPR or even what’s in the bag?

I find a lot of people will buy these “ultimate anything bags” and throw em in the corner and think they are good to go without ever really knowing what’s in them. They have never used any of the supplies before, hell sometimes they haven’t even unwrapped some of the components inside. The best way for gear to assist you is if you have the skills to use it properly. You want a sure-fire way of knowing what gear you need for a 72 hour bag? Throw in some minor stuff and go survive out of it for 72 hours. Try and build a shelter by testing out that weirdo from YouTube’s latest and greatest shelter design. Try and build a solar still and see how much water you get. Live in an urban environment? Pack a bag and try to leave the city. See how fast and how far you can get each day on foot. Find safe places to hole up for the night.

There is a reason why highly skilled military operatives go through so many mock training courses, because that is the only way you’ll know how you will react in that situation. You train over and over and then reflect back on the experience. It builds muscle memory. Do you really need that 400-dollar ultra light tent or is a tarp that much better to use? Sure flint and steel are a good idea but should I have some matches to use too? Only by going out and trying out your gear will you know if it fits your plan of action and if it actually works for you. Most of you will probably be pretty disappointed.

What shape are you in?

You don’t want to have your health working against you in an emergency.

Now lets talk about physical fitness levels. I work on my feet for 8-10 hours a day -eat like a typical mid twenty year old and weigh 150 pounds. Can I throw on an extra 20-pound bag and walk for 15 miles a day, then sleep on the cold ground and eat crappy food and walk another 15 miles the next day? The answer is no, and if you asked yourself that question, your answers still probably the same. Everyone has the crazy idea of running to the mountains and living like the old school mountain men. The problem is that most mountains are a few hours if you are lucky in a vehicle and a few weeks by foot. Can you make that distance?

I’m not saying that you need to spend 8 hours a day in a gym working out getting ready for SHTF but a few hours a week is probably not a bad idea for anyone. Getting to know your body’s physical limits is a good idea but pushing them is even better. Once you think you know how much you can take, it allows you to start breaking down those mental barriers that are preventing you from achieving more.

A part of overall fitness is physical health as well. This is especially important to those of you who are dependent on medications to survive. I am not talking about medications to just make life a little easier or lower risks of certain types of things but to physically stay alive. In a survival situation there is no drug stores, no pharmacy and there will be no way to renew that medication. If your health is dependent on these medications, in the short-term you die. Everything you have stockpiled will be of no help to you. I’m sorry but the laws of nature and natural selection are what a survival situation really comes down to. The strong survive and reproduce. The weak die off and the ones who have bad traits die off. There is no way around this problem. Now for those who take a blood pressure medicine to prevent risk of heart attack. You’ll probably die of a heart attack once your meds run out and you’re in a high stress situation. But you can still go on, still fight and survive because you are not dependent upon your meds to stay breathing. For those people who are in that category you need to seriously reevaluate your plans and your expectations as you’ll have the hardest and shortest of times.

It’s time for some to have a reality check

Last I want to talk about some people’s grand plans and ideas they have to survive a SHTF scenario. I’ll break this up into two sections bugging in and out.

Bugging Out

Lighter is always smarter.

Lets start with bugging out. A 72 hour bag, bug out bag is supposed to get you to a well supplied location within a 72 hour walking distance. It’s not meant to live out of for the rest of your life. It’s not meant to stock your bug out location. Its to get you from your home to your bug out location or some other safer location. People over complicate the hell out of a bug out bag. Light and fast should be the motto when building a bug out bag.

A lot of people will argue against this idea and try to pack as much prepping supplies as they can carry. If that’s you,  then you don’t have a 72 hour bag you have a INCH bag (I’m Never Coming Home) bag were you will need extra things to survive because you do not have a survival stash location. Your plan is that you are heading out the door and you will be forced to survive with everything on your back. Another question I hear frequently is ‘what if your location isn’t 72 hours away – what if its five or six days away?’ Well then you need to have a resupply location in between your home and your location, a temporary bug out location if you will that some people call a cache. A survial cache is a place that you have another fully loaded 72-hour bag ready to go, or at least additional items to resupply what you have used already. If at all possible, this cache location is also a place where you can rest for a little while and regain some strength and stamina. People might wonder why this is necessary and the answer to that is weight. If you have a resupply location, you can carry only the items you need to get you to that point. You don’t have to add-on the extra 3 days worth of water and food. Instead of having a 60-pound pack you can now have a nice 25 pound pack that you’ll be able to travel a lot faster with. Obviously stashing a pack takes some planning and thought process but its much easier on the back if the mind does all the work. Seriously reconsider what your bug out plan is I realize that sometimes 72 hours away isn’t far enough distance away from a problem so plan ahead of time.

Bugging In

Now lets cover bugging in. I like bugging in because it doesn’t involve as much walking plus there are softer beds to be slept in. But the thing with bugging in is security from a number of aspects. First, when you are on the road in a survival situation, you’re a target. Some loser will think he can come and take what you have and you will need to be ready to take a life if it’s required unless you want to jeopardize your safety or your supplies.

The Second risk is a theft situation, you and your supplies need to be locked up tight from anyone trying to break in which means a better built door and windows to start with. Whatever it takes to keep people locked out. Third is a smoked out situation, in the old days people would die from being trapped in a house because looters or a mob burned it down and they were trapped inside. The solution isn’t to have a secret escape route out of the house its to have a fire-proof house. They make metal roofs and concrete siding all of which are fireproof and if enough money is spent on windows not even small arms fire can get through them. Bunkers are nice but unpractical as the cost of construction and they pose their own set of problems with airflow and sanitation. Consider the construction of your house to determine the safety of your house, remember the home is your castle and that’s what needs defending and they sure didn’t build em out of wood back in the day. Maybe go back through the house and analyze how you would survive your firefight or a Molotov cocktail incident.

To conclude I just want to bring reality back to people. I myself get caught up with having a huge stockpile of stuff. The best gear I can afford in my BOB, and planning for a highly unlikely scenario when there’s a more probable one to plan and prepare for. I want people to be able to take away something positive from this article that will help improve their chances of life in a terrible situation. It’s easy to get caught up in all the hype and the latest and greatest survival gear but ultimately it comes down to you and your skills, mental ability and your planning that will let you see another day. If you take the time to go back through your check lists and evaluate with an honest heart, how well you have things together and have prepared I promise, you wont regret it.

The post Being Honest with Yourself: A Prepping Reality Check appeared first on The Prepper Journal.

from The Prepper Journal Don't forget to visit the store and pick up some gear at The COR Outfitters. How prepared are you for emergencies? #SurvivalFirestarter #SurvivalBugOutBackpack #PrepperSurvivalPack #SHTFGear #SHTFBag