This Prepared Life
Welcome to This Prepared Life, a podcast for women where preparedness feels peaceful, practical, and possible. Hosted by Allison Michael, this show is about creating a calmer, more resilient life through everyday preparedness and intentional living. Inside the episodes, you’ll find realistic food storage tips, Allison’s Three Layer Food Storage system, preparedness skills, homemaking rhythms, and encouragement to help you care for yourself and your family with more confidence and less overwhelm. From emergency preparedness and food preservation to homemaking and building a well-stocked pantry, this podcast offers practical guidance to help preparedness feel more natural in your everyday life. Whether you’re filling your first pantry shelf or have been preparing for years, you can expect simple action steps, honest conversations, and a reminder that preparedness does not have to come from fear. Here, we believe in being prepared, not scared — one pantry shelf, skill, and intentional step at a time.
This Prepared Life
Prepared Not Scared - Proverbs 31 Woman - Ep24
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Not my typical content; skip it if this isn't for you. Today, we are talking all about being Prepared, not scared, and how it relates to the Proverbs 31 Woman. Join the discussion on what fear is, how to move from a place of fear to a place of focus, and what it might look like in our preparedness journey.
Episode 2 is mentioned https://www.thispreparedlife.com/podcasts/this-prepared-life
Proverbs 31 is mentioned https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Proverbs%2031&version=NIV
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Hi, welcome to this prepared life for homesteading in the apocalypse minute. If you follow me over on Instagram or are a regular listener to the podcast, you have heard me use the phrase prepared, not scared. And I want to talk today about what does prepared not scared mean? Let's start with a little bit of a disclaimer. I am not a mental health professional. When I am talking today about fear and the action steps that we can take to combat that, I am not talking about severe anxiety or depression. If those are things that you struggle with, I encourage you to reach out to a mental health provider and get assistance with that. There is no shame in asking for help and getting assistance as we work through those things. Our mental health is a prep too, and that is something that we all need to take into account. You know, where am I at and what am I working through? So let's jump in. Prepared, not scared. It's an easy phrase to say. It nicely rolls off the tongue, but what does it mean? Let's start with defining what is fear. So the dictionary definition says that fear is an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain or a threat. Fear is not bad. Fear is a normal and healthy survival response. Fear has a purpose, it protects us from legitimate threats, it motivates us to take action. Fear is not just in our brain. It's also a physical response. Our body has a reaction when we are afraid and when we have fear. This is our fight or flight response. It can negatively impact our mind and body. It impacts our immune system. And a lot of us start there. We start prepping from a place of fear, a place of what if? What if supply chains break down? What if this happens? What if that happens? That's okay. It is okay to start prepping from a place of fear, but you can't stay there. Instead, we need to move that place of fear to a place of focus. And so let's talk a little bit about what that might look like. Prepping from a place of focus is asking ourselves, what are the things that I can control? What are the things I can't control? What can I do about them? And what steps can I take to mitigate these things? If you are prepping from a place of fear, the likelihood of you spending money that you wouldn't otherwise spend is higher. You might possibly buy food items your family doesn't even eat. You might buy things you don't even know how to cook. We buy things in quantities that we cannot realistically consume before they go bad. We buy preps that we don't know how to use, or maybe we don't even need, or maybe we already have. So figuring out what I can control, what I can't control, and focusing and coming up with a plan can really help us take control of that fear when you're first start getting started prepping. Being prepared but not scared is about thriving, not surviving. And prepping from a place of fear is about surviving, not thriving. Just take it slow, one step at a time. You've probably often heard me say that slow and steady, prepping is not a race. If you follow me over on Instagram and you see, you know, my grid and my pictures and the things that I'm doing or the things that I have in my different food storage layers, those did not happen overnight. That is years and years and years of actively planning what am I gonna prep next, and just slowly taking it one step at a time as our budget allowed and as our time that we had available to devote to our preps allowed. So we really take an intentional focus and plan in our preparedness journey, and I really encourage you to do the same. If you go back, I believe it's episode two, is all about making a preparedness plan, and I will link that in the show notes. So step one is to take it slow and one step at a time. To make a plan if that helps you focus. Some of us need a written plan to just consolidate our thoughts. Another step that you can take is just take an action. Pick something and do it. Just one thing. And if you are feeling overwhelmed, that one thing doesn't even have to be anything prep related. Take a step back and take a break and go do your dishes and go play with your kids. Those little things matter a lot more than you think or believe. So take a step back and a breather and focus on those things. Turn off the news if you need to. Take a social media break. Your mental health is as much of a prep as your food storage is. I typically don't go here in my podcasts, but I really feel that this relates. And I am a believer, and some of you are, some of you are not. I'm gonna read a little bit of Proverbs 31, and I feel that whether you are a believer or not a believer, we can learn a lot from the Proverbs 31 woman and how she lived her life, how she took care of her family and just ran her household. So I'm gonna read Proverbs 31, and then we are gonna dig into just one sentence that is in here and how it relates to preparedness. So Proverbs 31, the wife of noble character, and some people absolutely detest Proverbs 31 woman, and I thoroughly love her. I believe that, you know, she's this large mental picture of the span of a lifetime, not do all of these things in one day. Starts in verse 10. A wife of noble character who can find. She is worth far more than rubies. Her husband has full confidence in her and lacks nothing of value. She brings him good, not harm, all the days of her life. She selects wool and flax and works with eager hands. She is like the merchant ships bringing her food from afar. She gets up while it is still night. She provides food for her family and portions for her female servants. Pausing there. She has servants. We have servants too. We have washing machines and dishwashers. Verse 16. She considers a field and buys it. Out of her earnings she plants a vineyard. She sets about her work vigorously. Her arms are strong for her tasks. She sees that her trading is profitable and her lamp does not go out at night. In her hands she holds the distaffs and grasps the spindle with her fingers. She opens her arms to the poor and extends her hands to the needy. When it snows, she has no fear for her household, for all of them are clothed in scarlet. She makes coverings for her bed, she is clothed in fine linen and purple. Her husband is respected at the city gate where he takes his seat among the elders of the land. She makes linen garments and sells them and supplies the merchants with sashes. She is clothed with strength and dignity. She can laugh at the days to come. She speaks with wisdom and faithful instruction is on her tongue. She watches over the affairs of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children arise and call her blessed, her husband also, and he praises her. Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all. Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. Honor her for all that her hands have done, and let her works bring her praise at the city gate. Let's go back to verse 25 and specifically the second half of that part B. She is clothed with strength and dignity. She can laugh at the days to come. She can laugh at the days to come. So a couple of the things that I take out of just that one small verse is she can laugh at the days to come because she knew how valuable she was to God. She knew God would meet her in any hardship. And she was proactive. She took action. All through these verses, we can see the different action steps that she took that allowed her to laugh at the days to come. That does not mean she wasn't afraid. I am sure she had fear, just like any mother does about her children and her family and caring for them. But she put her faith in God and she didn't just sit there. She was proactive and she took the steps that she felt and her husband felt were the next best steps for her family. So as I close today, I just want you to think about what are my next best steps for my family. Just today. Just think about today. What can I do today to further my preparedness journey? Maybe that's you take a break and you turn it all off, and you are spending time with your children and getting household chores done because in a power outage, you want a tidy household. Maybe that's five extra cans of food at the grocery store that you are adding to your long term layer or your short term layer of food storage. You know best what is your next step for your family. As always, prepared, not scared.