Why Helicopter Pilots aren't frozen by fear

Welcome to this week's Urban Survival Newsletter.

This week we're going to talk briefly about the difference between preppers who get paralized by fear and preppers who live rich lives. I'm also going to unveil the new forum & blog, and tell you how you can now buy individual lessons from the SurviveInPlace.com Urban Survival Course.

My father and brother are helicopter pilots...and if you know any serious helicopter pilots who have flown more than a few hundred hours, you know that they are a different breed. For some reason, they're willing to repeatedly go hundreds of feet in the air in a craft that has slightly better aerodynamics than a rock with sticks tied to it.

There are hundreds of things that can go wrong when you're flying a helicopter, and helicopter pilots have to be continually aware of these dangers, look out for them, prepare their responses for when one or several of them happen, and regularly practice their responses. As they're going through their training, they learn about more and more potential problems and how to identify and react to them.

The sheer number of problems are overwhelming for some new pilots. By no fault of their own, they aren't ever able to relax and enjoy flying...simply because they know all the dangers.

Amazingly enough, many keep flying. They don't bury their heads and ignore the dangers around them. Happy thoughts don't keep helicopters airborne...rather, seasoned pilots embrace the reality of the situation and learn to thrive in the potential for chaos. Their continual discipline of identifying, preparing for, and drilling to respond to risks makes an otherwise dangerous activity fun, enjoyable, and relatively safe.

Most importantly, they don't dwell on the danger. And if they want to live very long, they don't freeze up because of all of the potential problems that could happen.

In some ways, preparedness has a lot of similarities with flying a helicopter. We live in a fragile society that has a very thin veil separating order and complete chaos. Earthquakes, volcanos, terrorist attacks, viruses, economic collapse, cyber attacks, and more could easily plunge part or all of the country into civil breakdown at any time...any day of the year...without warning.

Preppers are naturally more aware of these threats, as well as everyday threats around them from criminals, accidents, and more.

None of this is new...man has always had uncontrollable threats to his existance...the threats just change slightly from generation to generation.

What's important is to approach these threats pragmatically like a seasoned helicopter pilot. Just like with a helicopter pilot, baseless optimism can lead to surprise problems that you're not prepared for. At the same time, dwelling on all of the potentially bad things that can happen causes people to freeze up, makes them depressing to be around, and needlessly robs their enjoyment of life.

If you find yourself either ignoring or becoming frozen by potential threats, try breaking them down into bite-sized pieces and find SOMETHING you can do to take positive action today. In other words, instead of trying to focus on EVERY disaster that could happen simultaneously, focus on one at a time. Then, instead of focusing on every aspect at once, focus on one aspect at a time, like shelter, then fire, then water, then food, etc.

One of my favorite quotes is by a clergyman from the early 1900s named Douglas Horton. He said, "Action cures fear, inaction creates terror." I can't agree more. It has proven itself valid for myself and thousands of others in business, athletics, hunting, and personal matters and it will work for you too.