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There is a saying ‘Always be selling’, but I think ‘Always be preparing’ is a better saying.
It doesn’t just apply to everyone, it also is more useful.
There’s a quote famously attributed to Alexander Graham Bell: ‘BEFORE anything else, preparation is the key to success.’
Today’s parents, today’s people don’t think they are unprepared. I have read about a woman who homeschools her children, and decided that they don’t need to learn basic maths…
To be prepared, you need to have the attitude of always preparing for what is coming. Not scared… prepared.
My students and clients share just one thing, and that is: they aren’t, they haven’t been preparing.
This is the reason I always ask: ‘to what end?’ That question can tell you what you are actually preparing for.
Knowing that you are preparing, having preparing as the context, changes your attitude…
It’s a unique human ability to always be ready to be surprised… and not in a pleasant way.
And to be sure, I share this with you, to a certain degree.
The difference between you and me, in this regard, is that I have dethroned my mind a long time ago.
The mind has a tendency to be sure that was it is what remains. How it is is how it remains.
And that the saying: ‘the only thing that is constant in the universe is change’ the mind poopoos it…
And this thinking is the source of a lot of tzores… troubles… suffering.
People think a feeling remains. Whether it is love, hate, they make decisions on their temporary emotional state.
If you don’t believe me, get excited, get inspired, and then check in with yourself next morning… it will be likely gone. If not the next day, then a day later.
Maybe hate will pass slower… but that too shall pass.
Preparation is what makes you responsive to change
The best time to prepare for anything is when you don’t really need it.
It is too late to dig a well when you are thirsty.
But you cannot foresee that you’d be thirsty… or more precisely, the mind cannot foresee it. So you while away your days… and when you are thirsty, you go into a panic.
One of my students makes a living as an Uber driver.
He needs to have a clean operating vehicle to do that.
But cars have a way to poop out. And did you notice, that whether it is your way to make a living, or it is your way to go to work… cars tend to break down unexpectedly?
So this dude’s car just broke down.
He is in the Reframing Challenge.
This challenge, like all my challenges, allow you as if you were my children, reporting daily, and letting me know what’s happening.
The guy has absolutely no savings, and has built absolutely no skills to fall back on. And he has exhausted his family’s generosity.
But not mine.
Back in January he gave me a large enough sum to change my mind about my life… when I was in the dumps.
I know Buffet doesn’t want to depend on the kindness of strangers, so he has a large sum of cash available… because he is prepared… But often you can prepare to activate reciprocal altruism… by investing in it.
It is a kind of preparation. I give you what I don’t need right now, so you can be OK. And more often than not, when they have what they don’t need right now, they will reciprocate it.
So I offered the dude that donation back to him… hopefully enough to get him out of the mess he is in, so he can earn a living.
Now, had he been preparation minded, he would have at least one more way to make money. At one point I asked him to learn writing emails… at some other point I asked him to learn writing bullet points, the easiest and most persuasive part of a sales message…
He said yeah yeah, and he didn’t do it.
And that is how the eight billion is… never prepare, or when they do, they make THAT their lives… the preppers… ugh.
Every time the proverbial sh!t hits the fan you have a marvelous opportunity to see what kinds of things you need to prepare for.
Preparation often scares the thing you are preparing away. But at the minimum, it gives you readily available tools to handle it.
Of course you can’t prepare for every eventuality.
But you can prepare, regardless, for a lot that can happen.
One of the things I have found to prepare for anything is developing skills…
For me skills that a shut-in needs. For me skills that I have demonstrated that are needed but didn’t have.
So this week I figured out a way how to handle companies that count on all of their customers to have a car or at least have a friend who has a car… to drop off a package at a UPS store. Returns. I have neither…
It took me three hours, but next time, and there will be many next times, it will take me 2 minutes…
So I called my local UPS store and asked them to reship my package to Spectrum… the darn cable company that cost me three hours on the phone, and still didn’t get them to take care of me…
Little annoying things like that.
Always be preparing… Prepare for cold, prepare for hot, prepare for no water, prepare for no internet, prepare for what you can FORESEE to happen.
Of course, if you think worrying and anxiety are the same as foresight, you’ll have more reasons to worry… I guarantee it.
Another example: mine
When my business of coaching and teaching was drying up, I needed to prepare for when that work will produce no income to live on. I saw the writing on the wall…
My fall-back income has always been healing. Why not my main income? Because, believe it or not, healing is very hard on my body.
But at the same time when my student helped me out, I started to train myself to be able to do the hard part of healing for longer and longer time. Every day, every day, every day. One minute, two minutes, five minutes. I am up to 30 minutes.
All that so that I can replace my whole income… and be able to do it.
It is a skill… A skill like stamina. Strength. Like flexibility. Like thinking.
So I did what I recommend that you do. I prepared. And it is starting to pay off…
It is interesting, every single one of my teachers keeps on saying: prepare, prepare, prepare.
If people really heard them, they wouldn’t have to repeat it with regularity.
There are, maybe, things you can’t prepare for. But if you prepare for what you can, your life won’t fall apart.
You likely want to prepare for what you can’t be prepared for… But in my humble opinion, and it is really humble… the best preparation is to look where most of your mistakes come from.
For many they come from being unaware. Unaware of life, and unaware of yourself, your attitude, your behavior… and then the best preparation is to become aware, and remove the attitudes that cause the most trouble.
Without having people in your corner life will be hell.
For others the issues come from how you handle money. So wake up to your money habits, and prepare by curtailing the bad habits of spending… mostly.
And for many it comes from lifestyle, including how you eat.
I have found that what is the going health advise is dead wrong… and if you eat with your mind… then you’ll soon be ill.
Now, with all of them, your number one job is to train yourself to be able to do what you don’t want to do, and longer and longer, so you, like me, can become someone who can. And someone who will.
My base relationship to most things is: I don’t wanna!
Add the tone of voice of yelling it… You may have whining voice, or defiant, or whatever. I yell.
Start strengthening, regularly, yourself mentally, by doing the things you don’t want to do. Or just so the one thing… And it is especially important to do when you’d rather stab yourself in the eyes than do it… Every minute of that will be worth gold when you really need that mental toughness.
It’s preparing to prepare… lol.
My challenges are a great place to practice, by the way.
But not the only place.
If you are not sure what you should practice, the best way to see is what is your payoff in the racket machine. Here are the racket payoffs…
- If it is avoid domination… then you’ll practice doing things you said you would do, while you would rather avoid the domination of your word.
- If it is being right also known as KNOWING… then you’ll practice looking from a different angle, through other people’s eyes. And validate that.
- If it is looking good/avoid looking bad… your job is to see yourself from the outside. I bet you don’t look good trying to look good. You look pathetic… And use that as a guidance.
- If it is winning, every time, in every instance… then consider that you are short-sighted and ahem stupid… delusional. Maybe you want to be a rock star, but can’t hold a tune… Wake up! People laugh at you…
- And if you find yourself explaining, justifying, and talking a lot… your job is to say only what the other person needs to hear…
it will be hell for you, but that is the point. That is what will strengthen you so when real challenges come, you’ll be a match to them.
One of the tools I got is the five questions…
When it was MY homework, I found out, about myself, two things I didn’t know.
I found out that people considered me fun. And I found out that I was unreasonably demanding, and unkind as a boss.
Both served me well, because both pointed to something I can practice, doing more of, or eliminating.
Warren Buffet, and probably a lot of high achievers say the same: the best predictor of how you’ll do in life is awareness. Both self-awareness, and world awareness.
The more time you spend in your head, the less aware you can be.
And practicing getting aware is the most important practice you can do…
OK, here are the five questions…
1. what do you like about me?
2. what don’t you like about me?
3. And what do you see as my strengths?
4. what do you see as my weaknesses?
5. is there anything else you’ve ever wanted to say to me but haven’t?
Before you ask the questions of people, promise that you won’t get upset… People are afraid to give it to you straight.
This is so important that I have written many articles about it.
