It is in your own best interest to have a solid set of survival skills; even if you never find yourself in a serious situation where your life is on the line, honing and improving these skills can improve your life on a daily basis!

Master of survival @quinneaker invests an ample amount of time sharing his experience of thriving in the wilderness for months on end with nothing but a knife in educational workshops throughout the world. In this multi-part series on survival, we are spreading his classic wisdom!

We began with a basic introduction towards survival situations in which some unforeseen event puts your life in danger. 

The most important factor towards survival in these situations is your MENTAL POSTURE.

To maintain a calm, alert, capable composure can be the difference between life and death, and there are many things you can do both preemptively and in the moment to maintain a solid mental posture. We shared the importance of getting healthy in our first survival post, and we continue to share our beneficial, easy, and accessible tips and tricks towards wellness in a series for this festive season to inspire you towards that goal.

While getting yourself healthy, prepare yourself by learning as much as you can about survival skills so you will be ready in case of disaster. Quinn's second tip towards prepping your mental posture for ultimate success in a survival situation is to

EDUCATE YOURSELF AND PRACTICE

Think about, read about, watch videos, listen to videos going to work, join workshops and groups, and explore the vast amount of experience and knowledge and wisdom that already exists on survival situations. Do you know how to start a fire? Build shelter? Find food? These are some basic topics to begin your research.

Don't waste energy in panic when you're lost in the woods and you're dripping wet and it's below freezing and night is falling, and you really, really need to start a fire--but you have no idea how to start a fire! Just learn how to start a fire NOW so when the time comes you are confident in your abilities:

Here, Quinn demonstrates how to light a fire in an earthen oven during an Epic Handmade Pies event sponsored by Epic Handmade Knives. This is a basic fire for cooking with stellar fundamental tips, but you can build a fire in many different ways depending on your purpose: do you need something smoky for signaling, or do you need something super hot to burn for a short period of time? You can nerd out as deep as you want on fire alone.

Apply the knowledge you gather and PRACTICE new skill sets; train your body and your mind. If and when the time comes that you find yourself in a survival situation, your body and mind will already be familiar with the skills you need. Your MENTAL POSTURE remains reasonable, rational, clear, decisive, and the flow of survival instinct carries naturally and effortlessly when it really counts. 

You can pack up some tools and gear and go out into the woods or the mountains or the desert, and you can purposefully spend time honing skills that would be beneficial in a survival situation. You're learning, training, practicing, and you're have a great time doing it! Make fires with flint and steel or with a ferrocerium rod.  You can fish, hunt, forage, learn to make shelter and fire, breathe fresh air, AND you can have a skill-building, learning, AWESOME and FUN vacation that costs you no money whatsoever! You can practice in a backyard or in a park, and it can be really fun when done with family and friends!

Read books on wild foraging in your area. Learn to distinguish edible from poisonous plants. Even if a plant does not kill you, if it makes you sick with diarrhea or nausea, that factor could be the difference between life and death. Also, if you know how to feed yourself in the wild, you do not need to have a stockpile of food. 

Preemptively explore possible emergency situations to be as prepared as possible. You don’t have time to get on Youtube to research gear or learn how to use it in a survival situation. Chances of surviving an emergency are much higher if you are prepared. 

We hope you are inspired to educate yourself and practice survival skills; this knowledge can truly be the difference between life and death should the unexpected ever happen. Being prepared is solid advice and will help you maintain a beneficial mental posture. In our next post in this series, we will address gear!

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