Alright, welcome to season five of Inside Mike and New Head. This is the Canadian podcast that's all about the integration of leading an incredible awesome life, individual responsibility, individual emergency preparedness, and how do we navigate life's incredible, wild disruptions that we see among us. Sit back, grab a beverage, and enjoy the episodes. Alright, welcome back to Auto Studios Inside Mike and New Head.
This week, it's all about coffee. We love coffee, we drink coffee, we lay in bed in the morning waiting to get up, dreaming about our cup of coffee. And what is the relationship between coffee and emergency preparedness? You might ask, well pour yourself a cup of coffee, let's get at it.
Alright, we start off this week by thanking everybody who continues to put in some wonderful suggestions about episodes and ideas that you think we should talk about here at Inside Mike and New Head. Thank you for the increased frequency over the website at www.tripplewinsidemycanoohead.ca. I appreciate all of the effort that you're putting in to support this channel, to tell us what you want to hear, and to tell us when you don't like what you hear, which I think is interesting and just as important as any accolades that may come my way. So very much important in today's world is preparedness.
Obviously, that's why we're here. 2020s, as we've discussed before, are going to be a disruptive to be polite decade. If you consider that, you know, as we've said before, about every 70 or 80 years, humanity goes through a reorganizational cycle of leadership of nation states and tribes who at that time will insert themselves, fight their way to the top however you want to phrase it. And then they'll run and organize the world for the large part for the next 70 or 80 years.
Everybody's been doing this probably for millennia, but definitely in recorded history since the 1400s in the Dutch. So 2020s is going to be an exceptionally disruptive decade. What it totally entails, I don't think any of us are arrogant enough to think that we understand all of that. But knowing that preparedness is very, very important.
And considering that coffee, we love very much, is the third most traded commodity behind oil, which is the second most, and your personal data, which is the most traded and valuable commodity on the face of this earth. We thought today that I'd sit back and talk about how your choice of methodology to make your cup of coffee might be somewhat related to your methodology for attacking and discussing and considering preparedness. So here we go. I mean, come on, let's be frank, for all of the military folks out there, you don't operate unless you have coffee.
For the entrepreneurs, you remain fueled. You need to remain fueled right until the 20th hour. I mean, for the emergency manager out there, your ability to focus on the status board is directly correlated to your ability to take in caffeine. And the young parents, I mean, we're all young parents at one point.
When you're a young parent, you function just above the screen. You're at level knowing the coffee won't yell, scream, curse, poop, or otherwise ruin your three minutes of calm as you hold that beverage. So there are many ways to prepare coffee each with a different time, money, and process investment. The outcome looks similar.
Largely has a somewhat familiar aroma, but one sip, and you'll be fully aware of the different product quality. So preparedness is no different. You can invest or seek a quick remedy to the problem, but generally effort equals outcome. Is it transformational thinking or online acquisition that leads your to preparedness decision-making?
There are many pathways to a prepared life, not dissimilar from your morning cup of coffee. So let's explore the options as they exist. And number one, one that I've used many times in my life, instant coffee. I mean instant coffee is freeze-dried and it lasts forever.
It is the most frugal option for acquiring coffee and it tastes just as such. It is bold. It is bitter and aroma that is unquestionably bad. However, it is quick, requires little to no external planning, equipment, process, or education.
It is simply add boiled water, even cold water if you wish, and you'll meet the minimum acceptable standard of a caffeine intake and you'll hate the outcome. In preparedness, there's a system that's not much different from that. You can find a myriad of preparedness kits online designed to meet your family size for 72 hours or 14 days, whichever you prefer. Simply provide your credit card, shipping information, and this magical solution will arrive in days.
I mean, literature and evidence and everything that we know about emergency preparedness tells us that no one group of humans has ever experienced a better outcome from a disaster as a result of acquiring or utilizing a prepackaged preparedness kit like ever, nowhere. These provide you with the feeling of being prepared until you actually need to use them. Very much like instant coffee, the prepackaged preparedness kit is easy, simple to acquire, requires no education or thought, but provides a bitter taste and a bad aroma when you actually attempt to use it. Now, if you want to be a little bit more sophisticated and I put myself in this category, you have a pod coffee machine.
Whether you're a curry or an espresso nerd, it is a remarkable diversity, the available coffee flavors, all acquiring one simple device. Only additional thought is you have to make as your machine selection. Are you team, a curry team espresso, not much different than your choice between team apple or team Google and peruse the available flavor options order or just pick up at your grocery store as you're grabbing your pasta and whatever else you grab at the grocery store. It's quick.
It's often the same time frame to make as a cup of instant, a slight bit of additional education, but it's not a huge reach and the quality is just that little bit much better than some instant coffee. Preparedness, we're not much different from that. When we look at preparedness literature, it's wildly available from your municipal site to a myriad of experts on social media and some really incredible podcasters. There's a number of options to provide you as a guide to your planning of preparedness, downloadable forms, PDF form fillers, checklists, they're all out there and they're all available.
Little thought is required, simply follow the instructions, do as you're told and you have a created preparedness plan. I mean, you've gone through the effort of choosing the author. You've either gone with a bold, not crazy psychopath or a municipal emergency manager or something in between, not dissimilar from your coffee machine selection and you've just accepted the outcome. You've completed the program and you've sat with your coffee, feeling prepared and ready for life disruptions.
I mean, the outcome of adopting a predetermined preparedness plan from the internet is less than ideal. It likely doesn't fit your family's needs. It's neutral to at best on your local hazard profile and by design intentionally it's vague. You'll be left wanting and wondering what could have been never certain where your selection is best, much like a pod cup of coffee.
You'll be leaving. Is there better out there? How many options could I have done better in my cup of coffee? And now we get to your time-tested generational system, you're pour over.
You appreciate a good cup of coffee. Understanding that it requires a series of educated choices from your choice of filter. Is it bamboo, paper, reusable? To the ground coffee selection?
Is it a store label? An international? Is it a private, you know, veterans label or something you support online? You might even consider the methodology behind grinding the coffee.
How you grind it? Is it automatic or hand ground? Is it the age of the bean? The course or fine grinding schedule?
Or have you considered the roasting schedule? How long ago was it roasted? The type of roasting? There are a few methods available to provide a more diverse selection of options with an equally broad potential outcome.
You've likely honed your coffee creation over time and experience. You value quality outcomes and you're willing to invest the time to learn, to practice and focus, to create a wonderful cup of goodness. You love your coffee. More over coffee requires you to be present, aware and actively participating in the creation.
Beyond boiling water, there is little to no automation. So when we look at preparedness, researching preparedness and understanding the constituent parts to creating a preparedness plan is an investment in time and effort. To understand your family, their needs to research and become aware of your location's unique hazard profile, to create an evacuation plan that has a destination prearranged and secured, to educate yourself on your exposure to critical infrastructure and implications of short-to-medium term loss, all of these elements facilitate the construction of a preparedness plan. You invest significant time, research, you ask questions, you seek advice and guidance, you read literature and remain aware of your local emergency management team and their plans, processes and intent.
This is a living process, consistently researching, learning, experimenting, failing and returning the trusted processes. A pour over coffee drinker is focused on the best possible outcome and never assumes they've reached the pinnacle of their pursuit. Pour over coffee lovers, you know who you are and you very much are dedicated to your task at hand. Now let me tell you, there's an alternate group here and we can't remember them.
Let's call them the freaks. Among us are coffee lovers, people like you and I are the statistical outliers, those with so very specific requirements that a substantial investment both in research and money is required. These are your barista-enabled connoisseurs that have these weird one-off, one-only concoctions is acceptable. And D'Alange or Giragiga owners, these people, I mean, you're a great person.
You require access to a Starbucks or an equivalent to make that perfect cup of Joe or you've purchased a $1,500 to $20,000 home system. There is no known explanation for your choice. You simply rock your world and scoff at us minions who do not understand. You are the lone wolf of preparedness, the survivalist, the folks upon which movies are based.
Preparedness on a nuclear scale is rare but present. You might be someone who has indeed built a shelter in their basement, is actually capable of complete time immemorial self-sufficiency and is prepared to survive, to ensure survival, irrespective of the actions of mankind. I mean, there are freaks of nature out there. We want to cross them and you hear them in Starbucks.
If you're in line there and you listen to people who have one of those weird concocted three and a half minute long orders, you're like, number one, that sounds incredible. Number two, how did you ever figure out that those combinations of six things made your preferred drink and how do you survive if this place shuts down? But I mean, taking the references for all your different types of way of coffee, I mean, the choice about this is a prepared life. Wherever you sit on your coffee spectrum from instant to freak, it may be correlated to your preparedness.
Whether you're looking for or have adopted a quick fix, pursuing the isles for choices or you've completed the necessary research. I mean, everybody looks at it with a different level of effort. We're not talking financial investment other than the freaks. We're talking effort is directly correlated to your actual not perceived preparedness level.
And I think this is an important part to highlight. Research clearly indicates that a significant difference exists between an individual's thoughts on their preparedness level and their actual ability to navigate disruptions in normal operations. It's the perception gap that exists. And it's a struggle through most of our lives.
It's from it's a difference between perceived and actual, our ability to play a sport, to pass a competency exam, to understand and argue about the economic systems that are currently present in our nation or the problems that we face. Moving to a prepared life is correlated to your investment of time, research and trial. It's a quality of your coffee. It's a choice you make.
Like all of us, you live with the consequences. I have a friend who is a fabulous unquestionable addict of instant coffee. He knows it's bold, bitter and disgusting, but he gets his instant coffee at the most frugal way anyway he wants. It never goes bad.
And quite literally, he never runs out because he's never competing with many people in the grocery store. But wrapping this together, we're talking about adopting preparedness within your life. You know, whenever we're faced with a need, whether it's coffee or preparedness plan, you have options, right? You have a quick fix, which provides you with something but results in a bitter outcome.
You can have a mild investment to secure a consistent outcome, which is likely results in an outcome that is probably less desirable than overall expected, but at least it may meet the minimum acceptable standards. A thoughtful process of defining your needs wants and being present and active throughout will result in a quality product on which you continue to research and refine to create a better product. Call it a living experiment, right? It's an ongoing thing.
Now it doesn't become so exhaustive that it overpowers your life. You don't want to become one of these people who consistently are always in need deep in their preparedness plan and they're always watching everything that happens in the world considering their preparedness plan. They're just crazy in that case. You don't want this to encompass and overwhelm your life because you don't want to become an outlier, a freak of nature and go nuclear with an outcome that is more predictable and certain.
Though if you do that, you're likely to be alone wearing a tin foil hat. I mean, you're going to you're going to excommunicate yourself from society. None of us really want to do that. We want to rock an incredible life.
We want to chase our dreams, but we want to do it by adopting preparedness. So I mean, all these options are open to you with an investment of time, research, thought, and consideration that a great cup of coffee considers while you contemplate your rock solid individual preparedness plan. And I would argue then and only then have you begun to transition to a prepared life? Because remember, adopting a preparedness lifestyle is transformational thinking.
And that's the first and foremost. And that's when I talk about the book that I'm writing right now, my frugal book that is going to be going to my wonderful editor probably in a month or so. It starts off in chapter one is about adopting a prepared life. It's about your mindset.
It has nothing to do with stockpiles whatsoever. It's about understanding that you need to set the appropriate mindset if you're going to take responsibility for your own outcomes, if you're going to adopt a preparedness lifestyle, if you're going to frame your decisions in life through that lens, you need to first adopt and accept transformational thinking. And that's why chapter one of my upcoming book is just that. It's all about that.
Before we get into anything related to preparedness itself and initiative skills, et cetera, it is all about you understanding it. Because again, the most important question emergency preparedness is who is responsible for your outcomes. And if your answer to that is not you and you're reliant on the state to rescue you in some time of an emergency irrespective of whether it's a mild to considerable disruption, you set yourself up for failure and in transferring that responsibility to somebody else, even if it's not the state to some other human being, again, sets you up to be grossly disappointed in your time of need. So hopefully this quick conversation on preparedness and coffee, put a bit of a smile on your face.
I don't know where you fall, whether you are a poor over individual, you're a freak, you like simple and accurate pod coffee, or you're just one of those frugal simple folks who loves a cup of instant coffee. It doesn't matter. But the point being is is how you approach your preparedness plan looks probably a lot like how you approach other things in life. Are you after the quick and dirty solution?
Or are you willing to invest the time, effort and research it requires to get the best possible outcome that you can? So thank you very much for taking the time to listen to us this week on Inside My Canoe Head. We're going to continue up these episodes on this subject. We are going to launch season six in the new year after a short pause in the coming holiday season.
So keep your ear to the ground. We've got a couple of more in this series and then we're going to launch something pretty incredible in January. So thank you very much. Drop by our website at www.insidemycanoehead.ca.
Drop by the Buy Me a Coffee link and Buy Me a Coffee if you appreciate what you hear here. Take care, stay safe and enjoy the coming season.