How to Be Prepared for the Future Without Losing Your Cool.

📍 Coordinates: Bitcoin Jungle, Costa Rica.

📖 Reading Time: ~6 minutes.

🏴 Vibecheck: This piece has sat collecting dust for almost 3 years! I wrote the core list years ago on a train ride into Toronto. Finally polished it off and happy to share it with you today. Last article I asked about frequency, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hoping for this result. Going forward, I’m going to turn this into a regular weekly newsletter (likely on Thursdays), and for those who want daily doses – stay tuned! I’ve got something coming for you next week. 🔥

Anxiety is the epidemic of our times… 

A gnawing sensation that chaos is around the corner, lurking behind every turn in the road of life.

This chronic tension incubates a host of neurotic tendencies to combat uncomfortable thoughts of the future. We hoard possessions, food, relationships, and commitments as a bulwark against the coming onslaught. 

We accumulate immaterialities like money, status, and connections. Scrambling frantically, hoping at some point a long-lost and forgotten feeling of safety will return.

We flit through an endless labyrinth of hypothetical futures. This constant back-and-forth is what causes anxiety. We oscillate between the future and the present. 

Surruptiously, the low-level hum of anxious paranoia rises.

This is the burden of a self-conscious creature. That you can understand your fate, and project into potential futures, none of which are grounded in reality.

How can we deal with this? What is someone who wants to be prepared for the future to do?

Spiritual Acceptance and the Erosion of Agency

While people hoard anchors, things that tether them down and give them a false sense of security, others take the opposite approach: passive acceptance. 

You might call acceptance ‘self-abandonment’, as the outcome is the same. 

They put their energy into accepting all things that come their way, no matter what they are. This is the modern self-help and spiritual community. 

The outcome of this acceptance is a complete erosion of agency.

The response is always a schizophrenic and disjointed explanation around ultimate metaphysical truths that no agency exists, no self to be agentic exists, and that all control is an illusion.

We can sit and debate philosophical standings all day, but you’re riddled with anxiety as we have that conversation. 

Nothing is as effective at stoking the flame of anxiety as a loss of agency. Knowing that you are at the whim of anything or anyone who crosses your path creates a prey response—hypervigilance—and is counterproductive, even toward the goal of radical acceptance!

Where is the middle ground between neurotic hypervigilance and passive acceptance? 

Preparation.

Imagine a dancer or martial artist. They have no control over their sparring or dancing partner, but they train a repertoire of skills and moves so that as life moves, they move with it. 

They have agency because they’ve prepared.

What we’re looking for is minimum-viable competency in a host of meta-skills.

These are skillsets that when cultivated, allow you to respond, and indeed even dance, with the whims of fate.

You are training your ability to perform on demand.

Performing on demand is no small task. Spontaneity requires practice. What would you do if someone said “Now, do something funny!” to you? It might take you a minute. Whoops. Too slow!

“We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.”
― Archilochus

Dismantling the ‘Should’ Monster

My partner Chloe is an advanced language teacher. We were talking about ‘shoulds’ one day over dinner. She brought up something important:

Should is always conditional. You need an ‘if’ at the beginning if it’s going to make sense. 

A favourite fallback of the spiritual community is that ‘there are no shoulds,’ there’s nothing you “should” be doing in life. It’s a coping mechanism for feeling less developed or put together than they ought to be at their age. 

• IF you want to get strong, you SHOULD be lifting weights.
• IF you want your project to succeed, you SHOULD be working.

IF you want to be free from anxiety; IF you want to develop agency and be a useful member of society — you SHOULD build your meta-skills.

I have created a list below of things you should be able to do on a moment’s notice, without any preparation. 

These will take a good deal of training to be able to do on demand. I’m sure there are many more things we could add to it, let me know in the comments if you’ve got any. 

It is subjective, but it crosses a variety of competencies and aptitudes, and is challenging enough to be holistically robust.

If you can get to the point where you can do this list on demand, at any time, in any place — there is nothing the future will bring that you are not prepared to handle.

When your body realizes this, you become untouchable. This is the embodied knowing of the strength of your character, the strength of your will, and the capacity of your Being.

Without any further need to fear the future, anxiety disappears.

• You should be able to fast for 3 days.
• You should be able to run 10k without stretching.
• You should be able to submit someone in hand-to-hand combat.
• You should be able to lift & carry an adult.
• You should be able to fend off an attacker.
• You should be able to kill.
• You should be able to meditate for an hour.
• You should be able to entertain yourself without electricity.
• You should be able to use a weapon accurately.
• You should be able to face death and die with honour.
• You should be able to survive in the wilderness for a week by yourself.
• You should be able to say you are an expert in a domain.
• You should be able to ask interesting questions and give interesting answers.
• You should be able to stay awake for 24+ hours under mild exertion.
• You should be able to fall asleep in <10 minutes.
• You should be able to find, grow, or harvest food, shelter, and water.
• You should be able to dress wounds and provide basic first-aid/CPR.
• You should be able to get to know someone deeply.
• You should be able to speak for an hour about something you know/like.
• You should be able to discern what is true/important information.
• You should be able to suffer silently.
• You should be able to lead.
• You should be able to follow.
• You should be able to tell a good story.
• You should be able to heal yourself and others, mentally, emotionally, and physically.
• You should be able to make people laugh.
• You should be able to increase and balance your energy levels.
• You should be able to support your lifestyle financially for 3+ months.
• You should be able to make money in the free market using your labour/skills.
• You should be able to console, support, and hold space for someone.
• You should be able to check your thinking and correct for bias.
• You should be able to speak confidently, articulately, with high signal.
• You should be able to give and remove meaning from things.

If you can master this list, you are unfuckwithable.

This list is a set of milestones that train meta-skills like communication, survival, fitness, interpersonal relationships, usefulness, confidence, and leadership.

You no longer need to guess and plan for the future, because you are ready for it. 

No matter what it brings — stress at work, rocky relationships, natural disasters, emotional turmoil — there is nothing that can cross your path that can throw you off course.

This allows you to settle deeply into the present moment because you no longer have to worry about the future or remember the lessons of the past. After all, they are sewn deeply into your bones.

No, school didn’t teach you any of this. No, your peers can’t do more than 3 things on this list. Yes, you are likely behind. None of these are valid excuses.

Let’s get to work, and become capable, high-agency, grounded-in-the-present humans.

And from this sovereign center, you are now ready to take on the future.

Love and power,
EB. 🦁