Throughout my Army career, I had been told to, "embrace the suck," or "suck it up," countless times when dealing with frustrating or harsh conditions. For pretty much all of it, I thought they meant the same thing. I finally realized they do not. Both, however, are great pieces of advice. I had meant to write this article on my own blog but I decided to write it for you here instead. This isn't just advice that can help you if SHTF, it's advice that could literally change your life.

Let's break this down.

Preparing for emergencies, disasters, or even SHTF takes several avenues. Most people understand that you need to continually work on:

Gathering supplies

Learning survival skills

Learning how to defend yourself

Becoming/staying physically fit and healthy

Building a team you trust

Coming up with a way to communicate with your team when comms are down

Coming up with contingency plans

Did you see the most important thing on the list though? It's preparing yourself mentally.

Sucking it up

Another way of saying this is to just push through the pain. Sucking it up is great advice for most situations, and it's something that's kind of an acquired skill. What it basically means is to just quit b*tching and get back to the problem at hand.

It's what an EMT has to do when they come across a child who was hit on their bicycle or what a soldier has to do when their buddy has been hit and is starting to bleed out. You'll have the rest of your life to freak out if you need to – now is not the time.

By learning how to become less reactive to stressful situations in life that aren't so crazy, you toughen your mind a bit at a time. Some things that would freak others out become no problem for you. Things like waiting in traffic due to an accident ahead become less and less stressful and your life actually starts to improve. Eventually, situations that would have been debilitating to you previously become quite bearable.

Now, what does this have to do with embracing the suck and how are they different?

Embracing the suck

Sucking it up means to just deal with the situation even though you really don't want to. Embracing the suck means just what it literally says – embrace it. When you embrace your loved one, that doesn't mean you're just tolerating them or just accepting them, it means you're welcoming them into your life and your heart. You're asking them to be a part of you. Not only do you accept the situation – you want it.

Embracing the suck means to put yourself in situations that you normally wouldn't be in and to push yourself more than you normally would. It's a mindset. It's a whole different level of toughening your mind than sucking it up is, and is incredibly powerful.

A lot of people have survived incredibly dangerous situations without the skill or equipment they needed because they just flat out refused to give up. This is a skill that can be learned and improved. It's a skill that you can master.

Of course, this doesn't mean that you should run out and yell at a tornado but there's nothing wrong with just standing in a rainstorm and enjoying the experience instead of running for shelter every time.