Now that we have all – in one way or another – experienced full-scale retreat mode, it’s time to begin thinking about how we are going to re-engage. How much information do you need, for yourself, in order to determine what your personal (or family) re-engagement will look like?
Government and local managers will provide varying frameworks for how to behave in public, but the more agency you embody as you develop your own standard operating procedure, the more flexible and adaptable you will be as this environment evolves at a pace. This is resilience.
I believe the strategy you will craft for this re-entry (or if you have been on the front lines, crafting your continued engagement) has the potential to be a proxy for your ongoing strategy for the way you will identify, interpret, and consume life for the next era. Start now with as much confidence as you can muster. Confidence promotes resilience.
Seriously. Your measure of success will be directly proportional to the degree of assurance that dominates your waking thoughts. Get used to feeling assured.
Have you heard one of the many iterations of this phrase: Life has never moved this fast and you’ll never experience it as slow as it is right now. (?)
I love it. And I believe the take-home message of high speed changeability calls for a plan that is ridiculously simple and universally applicable.
And here it is in TWO PARTS:
PART 1: Get Thee a contingency plan.
PART 2: Start living your dream life.
PART 1 Discussion
Do you know what a Go Bag is? Loosely explained, it’s a thoughtfully packed bag you will grab to head out the door if the shit hits the fan. It’s the “don’t look back; just survive” bag.
The Go Bag is a contingency plan. I’m a big fan of contingency plans.
These days, when I find myself in a rabbit hole, it’s because I intentionally ducked in with my whole heart and I can spend anywhere from 6 hours to 6 days there. I have no military background, but I have spent years at a time in uniquely extreme environments. As a result, I am smitten with tactical survival gear. What’s more, the lesser number of objects (i.e. multipurpose) the better. That said, and to be clear, I wouldn’t consider myself a prepper. I’ve always rather liked adaptable.
In observing society’s general state of adaptability over the course of the past 6 weeks, I can’t help but think that most people, prior to the shelter-at-home orders, had been actually LIVING their contingency plans; just not expressly from their Go Bag. Instead, their gear was all over the place. I’ve observed all sorts of people in some stage of survival mode by consistently focusing on the safest, and least dreamlike life. Not only a marginally satisfying job that required 80% of their waking hours, but the belief that this sacrifice would fund the other 20%…and that only working out maybe 5% of the time. Seems like an attempt at living out of the Go Bag.
Do yourself a favor and actually assemble a Go Bag. Go as spartan or as crazy as you like. Just pack it and put it in a sensible place and really be honest with yourself; that if the shit ever really hit the fan you will – with a whole heart – grab that bad boy and commit to surviving.
PART 2 Discussion
Do you know what a Dream Life is? Once your Go Bag is successfully packed and you’ve set a calendar reminder to change the batteries in each of those gizmos on your birthday every year, I suggest you start investing 80% of your time in crafting your Dream Life. You’ll never have as much time as you do today.
Paz.
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