Written by: Guest author
The prepping community is wide and varied, filled with people who each have different ideas about and aims of what they want to get out of prepping. Some are looking to simply be better prepared for hard times hitting, while others are laying plans to survive even the most apocalyptic of scenarios.
Prepping does not occur in isolation, lessons from everyday life can be applied to our plans. For example, the prepper philosophy of “do it yourself” is something that can be transferred into other aspects of life, such as cooking, education and finance. Lessons from other spheres can also be applied to prepping. Here is a look at what preppers can learn from American football.
Photo by Calle Macarone, License
Teamwork
Whilst it is important that preppers do not broadcast their plans in order to prevent them from becoming targets, teamwork is still a vital skill required to make prepping a success. Football players must understand their roles and perform them well; whilst each role is very small and defined, one break in the chain can be detrimental to the team.
This lesson is directly transferable to prepping. Working with your family or close friends, each person may be assigned their own particular area to prepare. For example, one person may be responsible for ensuring that food is continually stocked, whilst another may be responsible for maintaining fuel supplies. If one person doesn’t perform their role sufficiently, they will let down the others and the prepping work will be greatly devalued.
Perseverance Through Success and Failure
Whilst the New England Patriots, who are currently favorites to win the Super Bowl, are no strangers to success, they must be disciplined enough to handle both success and failure. Footballers have to learn, very early on, the best ways to handle success and failure. When things don’t go to plan, it can be very easy to blame others and begin criticizing. However, this can have a negative effect on those around us and ultimately compound the problem.
In prepping, these setbacks may come from difficulties in finding materials or struggles with learning new skills like sewing, vehicle repairs, or growing your own food. Learning how to handle yourself through these failures can be a useful skill in looking after your own mental health, and also benefit the morale of your group.
Goal Setting
Football is a statistics driven sport. This makes every element of the game measurable and manageable. One key element of management is setting goals, with the coach and the rest of the team holding each player to account for achieving them. Goals provide a target to hit, which in turn lays out a path that can be followed to achieve them.
It is important to set targets for your prepping. For example, you may have 3 weeks’ worth of food stored at the moment, but may wish to increase this. Without a measurable goal, it is difficult to plan how much food you need to buy. Instead, you may decide that 3 months of food in storage is the appropriate level, and you may give yourself 1 year to gradually build up these reserves. To achieve this goal, you will then need a plan, which could be broken down into buying 1 week’s worth of food every month for a year, enough to reach your target of 3 months by the end of it.
Discipline
Success in football doesn’t just happen due to the work put in on game day. It is years of practice and preparation, daily training, careful diet and exercise plans, and hours of reviewing game tapes to find areas of improvement. Discipline is vital for football players who want to succeed at the highest levels of the sport.
Discipline is also important for preppers. Without long term commitment to preparing you will be unlikely to perform well if your plans are ever needed to be put into operation. Lack of discipline may result in you not having enough food, fuel or equipment stored. It may result in you not remembering where you planned to travel to under certain circumstances. Preppers must therefore remain disciplined to continue their preparations over the long term, just like a football player commits to their training for many years.
Overall, there are many lessons that preppers can learn from football players. The key areas of discipline, perseverance, goal setting, and teamwork are applicable to both groups. Preppers that follow these lessons will find their work much more fruitful.
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