Reserve Your Sense of Urgency for When It's Required

Preparedness, by nature, is about anticipating (and getting ready for) significant trials and challenges. So it's no surprise when those of us who choose to incorporate crisis planning into our lives occasionally become wrapped up in ominous threats that seem to be barreling down on us ... though their actual position and course over the horizon is much more remote than what we believe.

Put another way, there are many who, after investing some time and money into being prepared for whatever may come, actually start to overextend themselves in finding daily justification for their preparedness activities. And taken to the extreme, they even start to hope for realized doom and gloom.

Is that a problem? Well, I say that yes, it can be a problem when the quest for new urgent scenarios becomes all-consuming and balance is lost in being able to actually comprehend the more benign side of our reality equation.

"Fear Du Jour" Planted by the Media

The media sells advertising and product by trying to connect emotionally with an audience. The only way to do that with many today is via fear and violence. Thus, among all the other ramifications of that, the news media must regularly come up with scary and appalling stories--"potential" stories will do when reality falls short--but they must be made "real" if they are to touch a nerve.

So we of course, are extremely well informed today about every bad turn our world takes and could possibly take, and some of us lose a grip on the probabilites for a relatively non-eventful future vs. the various long odds out there for any of those pumped-up worst-case scenarios to actually come a calling.

As the World Turns

My point--that every single day of my life, I would bet the mortgage on the fact that the sun will rise and fall as it always does for almost all of us on the planet. Most of our lives will probably be lived out in relative peace and tranquility, and few of us will ever be seriously challenged to survive in unusual fashion by a calamity. (No, I do not at all minimize the threat of war or great disasters, and I am ready, but those threats must remain in context of the world as it is at the moment if one wants to have a healthy life reflecting some level of normalcy.)

Understanding the odds allows me to keep on keeping on with my day-to-day existence. Enjoying it. Appreciating it.

If you can keep your approach to preparedness in balance, preparing for possibilities, but not becoming consumed by them, then you'll actually be best situated for not only your day to day life, but also for any eventuality that might arise.

That is because your easy mental stance will allow you to recognize and react when a threat actually materializes as being imminent. Believe me, swinging and missing over and over again does no good in helping you to connect when the game is on the line.