Another Doomsday Prophecy Come and Gone. Finding Meaning When the World Does Not End

September hasn’t exactly been a stellar month for hopeful events. In the last month, our economy came close to buckling (and in many other parts of the world), the CDC issued a nationwide “heads up” about the bubonic plague, an asteroid was going to hit Earth, and the notorious Blood Moon Prophecy sent many into a state of panic. In fact, there were some Mormons who believed this Blood Moon was a sign of the end times and caused church leaders to issue a public statement on the matter. Leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints told its 15 million worldwide members that they should be ‘spiritually and physically prepared for life’s ups and downs,’ but urged them not to take speculation from individual church members as doctrine and ‘avoid being caught up in extreme efforts to anticipate catastrophic events.” Note: Not all Mormon congregations believed this, but the statement did cause a stir and prompted a widespread shortage of dry goods at many of the LDS food pantry warehouses across the country because members felt they needed to prepare.

It’s hard not to jump to conclusions when events such as these occur so closely together. I have been prepping for many years and have seen many prophecies come and go that tested my faith and my resolve. They caused me to prepare more earnestly and to get the message out as best I could. In all honesty, on more than one occasion I really worked myself up about these impending dates and went into full on doomer fatigue. I withdrew from family and friends, I had anxiety and couldn’t do daily functions. I remember just wanting to sit on the couch and do nothing. My articles even reflected a very negative line of thinking and a bleak mental outlook. I was in a state of shock and allowed myself to go to the “dark side” (Thinking that the world will end will do that to you).

Pulling Yourself Out of the Dark

“Every man thinks, lives and acts in exact accordance with the belief which is rooted in his inner most being.” – James Allen

After those TEOTWAWKI dates that I had worried about in the past came and went, I breathed a sigh of relief and was ever so thankful they didn’t happen. Of course, the hard part began; I had to find a way of pulling myself out of that negative thinking cycle. I think we can all agree that the bunker mentality is a difficult mindset to stay in and has a lasting effect. After all, if you believe that the world is ending and humanity has no future and that there is no hope, what can you believe in?

It’s hard to turn off this line of thinking. After all, your thoughts dictate your world and your actions. To make matter worse, the mind does not realize the stories we play in our head are not real. So if you are imagining a 24-hour SHTF event in your head, your mind will live, believe and feel it as if it is actually happening. Living in a constant state of impending doom will cause depression, paranoia, anxiety and even a self-imposed post-traumatic stress disorder. You can’t simply turn this thought process off when you want to. It is a mental process that takes time to turn on or off, so you must give yourself time.

To prevent this from happening, you must prepare your mind and spirit before a disaster occurs because if you don’t, your fears will suck the life out of you. One way to mentally prepare for situations that can cause extreme stress is to practice rehearsal drills. This rehearse-to-be-ready concept creates muscle memory and is how many emergency personnel train to condition their mind and body for disaster events. This could make all the difference when stress is sending your neurotransmitters out of whack. Choosing to use daily or minor disasters as a way to train your mind to perform under pressure could give valuable insight into your mental and physical reaction to stressors.

Continue to Empower Yourself

So the world didn’t end, but we should face the facts that our world is exponentially changing. In the last ten years, it has changed so dramatically that many of us do not recognize it. Riots, extreme climate changes, epidemics, unemployment, political upheaval, I could go on, but I think you get the picture. These changes are the events you should prepare for. Preparing for a singular event is impractical and will leave you exposed and with gaps in your preparedness plan. That said, if your preps were well-rounded enough, you can insulate yourself from many different forms of disasters: natural, personal, economic, societal, etc. Once you are prepared for a multitude of events, you don’t worry as much. There are always events that are out of our control. The only control we have is to be ready for them the best we can by being prepared, self-reliant, not depending on the system, and changing our perception about disasters.

To those of you who prepared for doomsday events in September – do not feel your actions were in vain. Feel empowered that you rose to the occasion to better prepare your family for turbulent times, that you made the realization you were not prepared for these disasters and educated yourself, invested in and made the goal to get your family ready no matter what. You made a choice that your family would have what it needed to thrive; and when the next unforeseen disaster rears its ugly head, you will have a plan in place and be able to keep your family safe from harm. That is more than what many citizens will be able to do when the next event occur.

Be thankful that you have more time to prepare and to iron out your plans. As well, take comfort in knowing that by the very act of preparing you are choosing to be optimistic – to have hope, peace of mind and security in knowing that in the most direst of circumstances, you and your family will be ok. This is the first steps to being mentally and spiritually prepared. As Michael Snyder from the Economic Collapse Blog writes,

“Those that accuse me and others like me of “spreading fear” have got it completely backwards.

We are not “spreading fear” at all.  We are spreading hope.  There is hope in understanding what is happening and there is hope in getting prepared.

The preparations that are being made right now all over the nation are going to save countless numbers of lives.  Those that are mocking preppers and that are telling everyone that everything is going to be just fine are going to deeply regret doing so someday.”

If you were to take one aspect of this article with you, it would be that today is a new day, and a new opportunity for hope. Take heart in knowing that you are prepared and continue on the journey. Find the joy in the days to come and remember that we are not living in a TEOTWAWKI world yet. Don’t let your fear dictate how you live your life. Living in a perpetual state of fear will cause you to lose sight of those special moments in our lives; and those small moments are what makes our lives worth living.