1. Soak stained bandanas in salt water before washing to help eliminate the stains.

I had to chuckle picturing someone salting down their basket of sweat-stained bandannas. Honestly, my bandanna needs have never been that pressing, but who am I to judge–maybe this guy goes through a lot of bandannas, even if I can’t imagine how. But if you are the type to wear that many bandannas, are you seriously that worried about sweat stains? Or is that tip just for your formal bandanna attire?

The general survivalist/preparedness community is interesting and has a strong online presence. The members appear either conservative or libertarian in their politics, and often Christian. If you accept on faith, as they do, that an apocalypse is coming, then you’d be foolish not to practice the rites of the prepper.

There is an attractiveness to many of the practices: I like martial arts, firearms, self-sufficiency, and many of the other topics they discuss. But there is something insidious about the whole movement that I’ve been trying to put my finger on.

All of the survivalist blogs and websites think that an apocalyptic event is likely, if not inevitable. But, like talk radio, they feed off one another’s fears in a way that reinforces the idea that an apocalyptic event is not only inevitable, but imminent. In other words, it’s easy to think that if all these other folk feel like I do about this happening, it must be true that it’s going to happen.

Too much of that mindset and the next thing you know all your big decisions are overshadowed by the looming doom. Just like anyone who may need their funds quickly, they avoid the stock market and plenty aren’t thinking about retirement. Their long term planning often goes no further than buying and stocking a dream retreat.

Whereas to me, a stock market crash just means it’s time to buy, not that it’s a sign of the End of Days. Maybe my concern is that continual exposure to the survivalist message leads to long-term planning for something that, while catastrophic if it does happen, is still at a low risk of occurring. The impression I get is that the normal long-term planning, i.e., for life events at a high risk of occurrence, such as obtaining health insurance and saving for the kids’ college fund and your retirement, etc., is being sacrificed for more guns and freeze-dried food.

Of course, if they turn out to be right, they’ll be the ones laughing as they grab their bug-out bag, fire up the 4wd and flatten zombies on the way to their self-sufficient retreat in the Ozarks.

Don’t buy that? Well, tell me this related post of his doesn’t sound like it came straight from a martial arts blog: How to Build Confidence and Destroy Fear.

In fact, J. D.’s failure post derives largely from John C. Maxwell’s Failing Forward, a book about success in all fields, not just finance, and here’s J. D.’s summary of the principles put forward by Maxwell:

1. Reject rejection. Successful people don’t blame themselves when they fail. They take responsibility for each setback, but they don’t take the failure personally.

2. View failure as temporary. “People who personalize failure see a problem as a hole they’re permanently stuck in,” writes Maxwell. “But achievers see any predicament as temporary.”

3. View each failure as an isolated incident. Successful people don’t define themselves by individual failures. They recognize that each setback is a small part of the whole.

4. Have realistic expectations. This one is huge. Too many people start big projects — such as paying off their debt — with the unrealistic expectation that they’ll see immediate results. Success takes time. When you pursue anything worthwhile, there are going to be bumps along the way. And remember: The perfect is the enemy of the good.

5. Focus on strengths. This was one of the biggest lessons I took away from Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek. When I interviewed Ferriss last year, I asked him to expand on this idea. He told me: “Focus on leveraging and amplifying your strengths, which allows you to multiply your results. Fix any fatal weaknesses to the extent that they prevent you from reaching your goals, but perfection isn’t the path to your objectives; finding ways to cater to your strengths is.”

6. Vary approaches. “Achievers are willing to vary their approaches to problems,” Maxwell writes. “That’s important in every walk of life, not just business.” If one approach doesn’t work for you, if it brings repeated failure, then try something else. Maxwell is saying that to fail forward, you must do what works for you, not necessarily what works for other people.

7. Bounce back. Finally, successful people are resilient. They don’t let one error keep them down. They learn from their mistakes and move on.

Check out the full post: I think it’s a mental pick-me-up of the kind we all need occasionally. I don’t know if achieving a more positive outlook can be learned or is something innate, and I further don’t know how much reading an essay of this sort can help anyone with the inevitable failures we all face, but I figure reading something like this once in awhile can’t hurt.