PETERSON: A Green Beret’s take on building relationships to thrive in difficult times

We had a series of outstanding speakers at our most recent series of meetings at GSL chapters across Illinois.  Here’s one from Charleston, a former Green Beret medic and team leader.

It’s terribly relevant for those people who practice preparedness (or want to becoming more preparedness-minded).  In short, you can’t do it all on your own and it’s a lot harder than putting some food and supplies on your credit card

Doug Peterson, a career military man with most of those years as a US Army Special Forces medic, discussed the importance planning and networking for emergencies. It’s a message we’ve heard before but Peterson did an exceptional job putting his spin on it.

“Men who think of themselves as an island die lonely, bitter and sad.” This goes directly to those preparing for emergencies by buying guns, ammo, food and supplies without building relationships with others. Without working together and helping like-minded folks, you will die alone. “Because you’ve gotta sleep sometime.”

As a guy who has lived and served in a lot of foreign nations, Mr. Peterson told us nothing compares to America. At the same time the world can change in an instant.

He coached people not to spend a lot of life energy worrying about stuff outside of their control or influence. Instead, work on things you can control to make things better there, be that financially, self-improvement (to include health and fitness), socially and emotionally. Around that, work on people/organizations/things you can influence through your leadership, integrity, training and character development. If you do this well, your sphere of influence will grow dramatically.

For things beyond your influence or control, you may have concerns about them, but don’t put a lot of energy into that aside from perhaps trying to direct influence upon decision-makers where you can.

Doug Peterson.

The former Green Beret also recommended an accountability partner to keep you honest and motivated about hitting goals.

For the really bad times, you can survive, thrive… or become food for someone else. That ammo fort you painstakingly created, food stores, etc. will be the “food” for someone else. By networking and building a “community” of like-minded friends, family and neighbors, you and they can thrive in really bad times. With good friends you can turn life-threatening adversity into an inconvenience. But this requires some effort.

He closed by saying when the zombies come “you got what you got.”

[Editor: GSL meetings are one of the great places to meet outstanding people and build those relationships.]