This will be the first part in a multi-part series about what “readiness” means to me. I’ll cover everything from my views on the mental and physical side of readiness to clothing, guns, home, vehicles, and even throw in some international travel. In the world of AI content, the one thing AI can’t do is provide personal experience. So my goal moving forward is to do more personal experience-type articles. The benefit? You’ll get to learn a little more about me, pick up a tip or two, and you’ll know it wasn’t written by a bot. Like everything else, take my opinions as one data point. Always do your own research and adapt what you like and discard the rest.
Ready? Okay let’s go!…
As anyone who knows me knows, I’m a big fan of 5.11 clothing. It is typically my “go to” choice when picking my wardrobe. I’ll admit I’m not very stylish and tend toward the “tactical” side of clothing choices. (I’m a bearded gun guy in Idaho, what else do you expect?) One thing that appeals to me about 5.11 is how functional their clothing is. For example, the pants I’m wearing today have cargo pockets and inside of those cargo pockets are two smaller pockets – perfect so that my metal Ridge wallet doesn’t flop around as I walk. I joke that even my pockets have pockets! Who doesn’t like that? Oh and many of the 5.11 pants I have also have an extra hip pocket that is perfect for an AR15 mag. While I don’t walk around with a PMAG in my pocket, I COULD if I wanted to. Last thing I’ll mention, then I’ll stop talking about my pants… I just discovered this recently, it is so cool: the bottom seam of the pants near my shoes has a spot for a handcuff key! Would I ever need that? Probably not. I don’t even own a handcuff key – but I could stash one there if I felt like I needed or wanted to. 🙂
[I’ll talk more about clothing and the intersection with concealed carry in a future article. For now, I just wanted to use it to illustrate something about lifestyle and the readiness ideology.]
Readiness as a Lifestyle Choice
There are so many different aspects of personal “readiness”. In fact, there are entire books written about it that go into far greater detail, analyzing various scenarios and what you should do for each. I won’t go into that kind of depth. I want to give you my thoughts and personal preparations, and more importantly, the reasoning behind them. I’m not a SERE expert or GWOT veteran. I’m just an average guy in our society who maintains some semblance of readiness as I go about my life. I’m not a deep woods prepper. I live in a house in a subdivision. But my lifestyle probably fits 70% of most average people. I commute to an office most days. I have some intermediate-level firearms skills and various other courses under my belt. The one thing I can say is that I’m aware of my surroundings, and I make a “plan B” everywhere I go. I analyze the “if this, then that” type scenarios, and I try to be ready in mind, body, and equipment for those scenarios.
My clothing choices revolve more around utility and less around style. To me it is all part of a lifestyle of readiness. What do I need to be ready for? Anything. In fact, that is another aspect I like about 5.11 – their tagline: “Always Be Ready”. (Personally, I would have used that for Ammosquared’s tagline if it wasn’t already taken.)
I like the tagline we decided on, though: “Your Readiness, Our Mission”. It gets to the heart of what we’re doing as a company. It is our way of serving the gun community and the greater good. We’re helping our customers to always have ammo there when they need it. Having ammunition is a vital part of protecting yourself, your family, and your community. Staying “ammo ready” means you have ammo to go to the range, to put in your carry gun, and your home defense gun – no matter what the ammo market is doing, shortage or not.
In other words, we’re playing a part in helping you stay ready for anything life throws your way. And that is the point of this article – staying ready for anything.
Physical and Mental
I’m sure you can agree, the foundation of any sort of readiness plan should be physical and mental readiness. Your mind and body are your primary tools in any situation. No matter what the situation, you’ll at least always have those, so it makes sense to try and keep them in peak condition.
But what does that mean?
Physical Readiness
Let’s start with the physical and move to the mental side of the equation. Peak physical condition doesn’t mean you have to work out like David Goggins. It can mean something different for everyone. Physical conditioning should be determined by your goals. If your goal is to join the Navy SEALs, your workout routine will be far different from the 74-year-old grandpa who is just trying not to lose muscle mass so he doesn’t break a hip. Regardless of your objective, there is a workout routine for you out there somewhere. It is up to you find something that works for you. But being serious about personal readiness means exercising regularly. There is no escaping that reality. Trust me, I’ve tried…
To be honest with you, I’ve always been one of those people who had a love/hate relationship with working out. Danielle always seemed to do it without much fuss and even got grumpy when she didn’t work out. But me? I could go weeks without working out, then only get back grudgingly. I would then often hurt myself from working out too hard, too quickly, which caused me to stop for a while. It was a vicious cycle. I always KNEW I needed to work out, I just didn’t WANT to. I didn’t have the motivation I needed.
Then I discovered the power of routine.
It is amazing what a difference a small change can make. For me, it was when I decided to start working out at home, in the morning. Before establishing a routine that worked, I would procrastinate and not go to the gym before work, saying that I would go after work. Once that time rolled around, I would say I was too tired. Or I always found more work to do instead (as a business owner, I can ALWAYS find more work to do!).
The morning routine that finally got me to stop being a procrastinating slug…
First of all, I’ve learned that if I try to get up too early, I resist it and hit the snooze button too often. So I needed to find a “happy medium” time that was early enough to get stuff done but not so early that I wanted to stay in bed. For me (and my wife Danielle), that time was 6:30am.
Here is the key though: we found that we can’t jump out of bed into a workout right away. Some people have success with that, but we found it encouraged us to stay in bed and snooze past our workout time. Instead, we get up and have our coffee. (BTW: Coffee is Danielle’s love language!). It is a low-stress commitment to getting up early. Don’t think about the workout, just get up and have a cup of coffee first. Then, after an hour of chatting (we talk about work a lot – probably more than we should) and scrolling through the news, we both get our shoes on for our respective workouts. At that point, there is no getting out of it. Every day, five days a week. It has worked like magic for the past three months.
Oh, another tip: We discovered that if we put a little creatine and collagen in our coffee, it serves as a decent pre-workout! Gives us that brain and body kick we need to get moving. (Black coffee before or even during a weights routine is an old school bodybuilding hack – or so I’m told).
So that is challenge number one for the average person – finding a routine that will get you to working out regularly. You have to actually prioritize your physical health and fitness over sleeping in, working, or scrolling on the interwebs. There is no shortcut here. This is the foundation of personal readiness. To paraphrase Pat Macnamara (TMac), fitness is for Life Saving and Ass Kicking! (Tmac is my spirit animal BTW – I want to be like him when I grow up…)
Mental Readiness
Exercising gets the blood flowing to the brain and gives me more energy for the day ahead. By having a set routine in the morning, I know that I won’t get distracted and there are less excuses to skip a workout. So if there is a “part 1” to readiness I would say that is it. This then forms the foundation for your physical and mental wellness.
After that, I focus on the mental side of readiness in a few different ways: learning, introspection, training, and awareness.
For learning, I typically just read. A lot. I usually have two or three books going and one audio book. I’ve set a goal to read 26 books this year – one every two weeks. While I read mostly business books, I’ve mixed in the occasional fiction or biography. Right now, I’m working through “The Art of Thinking Clearly” by Rolf Dobelli, “Systemology: Create time, reduce errors and scale your profits with proven business systems” by David Jenyns and Michael E. Gerber and “The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper” by Roland Allen. I also have a also have an audiobook I listen to when I’m jogging, in the car commuting, or doing yardwork: “Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution” by Uri Levine, co-founder of Waze.
By feeding my brain new information, I find that I can think clearly and more deeply, which helps in every area of life and business.
I am also part of a number of business groups (in person and virtual) that help me get exposed to new topics and “process” issues I’m struggling with. Having an experienced sounding board is important in all aspects of life. I can say it has dramatically changed the direction of my company for the better.
Of course, just bringing in information is one side of the coin; the other side is synthesizing information and adapting it to your unique needs. You need to think about the world around you, bring in different information sources, and organize your thoughts into a plan of action.
A while back, Danielle asked me how I do “deep thinking” work. After I pondered on it for a while (haha), I realized that is what I usually use my journal for. If I’m trying to make a decision or work out a problem, I’ll draw it out in a journal and “think” on paper. I do this for personal stuff and business-related topics. I don’t always come up with a solution right then and there, but it gives me more ammunition to keep pondering on things until I come up with a solution.
I’ll also use my business groups and co-workers to bounce ideas off of. I’m testing ideas here but not being committed to any one course of action. It is important to be okay with not making a perfect decision every time and leaving your ego at the door so you can adjust as the situation develops. There are many times I’ve had to backtrack and try a different approach. This goes for your business and personal worlds but also, especially in emergency situations.
You’ve heard me talk about the OODA Loop. This is exactly what I’m referring to here. Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. Work on practicing this every day with decisions small and large, quick and slow. Gather information (Observe), think on the problem (Orient), make the best decision you can (Decide), take the appropriate action (Act) and then adjust as necessary by running the cycle over again.
The situation will dictate the speed at which this process needs to happen. If you are buying a house or putting a warehouse in another state, the process should be slow and deliberate. If you are in the middle of an armed robbery, the decision-making and action phases need to happen much faster.
This Part 1 is already much longer than I intended it to be, so I’ll cover the remaining two topics, “Training” and “Awareness,” in the next article, along with other aspects of readiness from my experience and perspective.
Read the full article here