Preppers: Do You Fear Not Having Enough?

Restarting my preps leaves me with a distinctive worry – namely, the fear that’s mentioned in the title: of not having enough.

No matter how much we stock up, no matter how much we have on hand, how much we learn, or how much we are able to do, there’s always the possibility that it just isn’t enough. That just a handful of things we could have had on us in a survival situation would’ve make life a lot easier, that if we’d known to do just one or two things – in a specific situation, doing those things would’ve make the difference between life or death.

This fear of not having enough – not enough gear, food, knowledge, skill – whatever it is we think we’re missing, should be ground zero for helping us to figure out where we should start or continue with our preps.

If you feel like you really don’t know enough, and that fear overwhelms you, figure out what frightens you the most about your lack of knowledge. Is it that you worry you don’t know enough about personal security specifically? If so, learn more about that.

If you feel like you don’t have enough of a specific thing, and that fear makes it hard to sleep at night, that’s where you should start pouring your stockpile efforts.

Your intuition is telling you something. And you should be listening to your intuitions, because they’re often right. You fears are good indicators of what you are missing or needing the most when it comes to preps.

Now, this fear of not having enough is almost certain to never disappear completely. Unfortunately, no matter how much prepping you do, you can’t prep to survive everything because there will always be situations you physically could not have prepared for (due to constraints of money and time), or that are to freak and random for you to have been able to predict and hence prepare for. But that’s okay, because if you have the basic groundwork covered, you can prep to survive quite a lot of things, and considering how very unlikely it is that you’ll be in an emergency situation to begin with, if you’ve prepped for emergency situations that are likely to take place, you’re on very solid footing and probability is on your side that you’re likely to get out of most things alive.

In cases like these, where your experience, skill, and gear is enough in most circumstances, you should no longer be too worried. Prepping should bring you peace of mind at night. It’s one of the main reasons prepping is beneficial, even if no crisis ends up happening in your lifetime.

If it isn’t bringing you peace of mind, if you’ve done a lot of work toward your preps and you can safely say that you have enough gear, food, knowledge, and skill to get you through the vast majority of things that could happen to you in your present location and situation, then honestly, there’s a disconnect there that needs to be resolved.

Because at a certain point, the fear becomes detrimental.

One of the most valuable assets you could ever possibly have in a crisis is a level head and a calm, cool composure.

Why? You make better decisions in this state of mind, you are more observant in this state of mind, and ultimately that boils down to you being able to get the right things done when it’s of vital importance to do the right thing.

So what happens if you’ve prepped and consider that logically speaking, you should no longer experience a great deal of fear regarding not having enough?

You need to sit yourself down and have a chat with yourself – because at this point you’re getting in your own way.

Take some time to evaluate your goals and aspirations as a prepper. What is it that you’ve always wanted your preps to look like? Do your preps look anything like that now?

Chances are the answer is no.

Now – re-evaluate. Is what you’ve always wanted your preps to look like necessary in anyway to your survival?

Again, chances are, the answer is no.

Is it true that, in most cases, you the preps you currently have will actually benefit you to the extent where they can get you through nearly all the probable emergency situations that your dream preps would be able to get you through?

If the answer is yes, it’s likely your idea of success as a prepper is what’s holding you back from really being free (or at least mostly free) from this fear of not having enough.

And if that’s the case you need to re-evaluate your way of seeing success as a prepper.

Because being a prepper is about being practical. It’s not about that amazing island in the middle of nowhere where you have your own homestead and need no one and can survive nearly anything just by yourself with your family. Yes, that’s a great fantasy, but we preppers live in the real world, and in the real world that fantasy is highly unattainable for most to achieve. Because there’s this little thing called money that stops the vast majority of us from being able to make all our dreams come true.

Prepping is practical. And if you let your dreams get intertwined with that practicality, it can look and feel a lot like you’re worried about your survival, worried from the angle of needing to be more prepared.

But this isn’t quite true – as a lot of the things we dream about are unnecessary to our survival.

Re-evaluate your needs and what will get you through nearly any crisis that’s probable.

Evaluate your preps on the basis of whether or not they’ll get you through those most probable crises.

And if your preps pass the test, realize it’s time to let go of your fear of not having enough as much as possible.

You should still continue prepping, continue learning more, growing your stockpile, training yourself to have better skills, but here’s the important part:

You should not longer be prepping out of fear.

Security. Safety. Peace of mind.

These are the reasons you should prep. But if your fear is getting in the way, it’s time to re-evaluate your priorities.