SURVIVAL-28 STRAIGHT

By  Caroline M. Schloss, M.A.

28 straight. This is one technique every survivalist should know about and have in their equipment. It is vital to any other attribute of surviving in hard times. No matter what your age, where you live, the size of your family, the stash in your cache, or the people around you… ready or not, you have probably left
this one serious component out of your survival. It is a tool for your unconscious mind that does not require anything but an effort and opportunity. Now you might be thinking, ‘what in the world is she talking about? My unconscious mind is fine.’ Or is it?
Let me elaborate a little. As we know, the conscious mind doesn’t want to be bothered with keeping track; it just wants to know what you want it to do. So our unconscious mind sets up programs, or patterns, for the conscious mind to use. It builds and stores the information, habit, or pattern for the conscious mind to use when it needs it. Hence, this is the reason for practicing anything, to form an unconscious pattern, habit or behavior. It is called ‘learning’ as a general term. But, what most people are not aware of is that it takes a minimum of 28
straight days for the unconscious mind to set up a pattern of habit or behavior.

Thus, any pattern habit or behavior can be implemented or extinguished in 28 days straight. This has been proven many times through a process called ‘mental conditioning’. What is mental conditioning and how does it work? Here is an example: recite the alphabet out loud. Now when was the last time you recited the alphabet out loud? Yet, you use words everyday; words are formed from letters of the alphabet in combination to make a word. Funny thing is, you do not think of the individual letters that form the words when you speak, you simply use them. Yet, they remain a pattern in unconscious memory for instant recall when you want them. How you learned the alphabet, learned to tie your shoes, recite the pledge of allegiance,and anything else you perform, say or do in repetition, was done through mental conditioning. Armed with that information, let’s look at how it applies to survival. Suppose you want to learn to tie a Swiss seat knot. You get a rope, study the picture or text in a book and use the rope to tie the knot doing it repeatedly on your body until you can do it straight through. Maybe it takes you a few hours, maybe a day, or maybe even a week. Since it did not take you a whole month, once you got it, you let it go thinking you have it and have it learned. You set the rope down. Two weeks or two months later you pick the rope up and start to tie the same knot. Suddenly you realize you cannot remember if the right string goes over or under at a certain point, or if the lead line starts to the left or right, or if the loop takes a double or triple before the pass through. Attempt after attempt, you realize you have forgotten how to tie a Swiss seat. Frustration sets in as you continue trying to recall each step and figure the whole process, determined not to give up (as no one should ever do in a real life survival situation) you try and try again. After many efforts you finally realize you just can’t get it right. Then you start to wonder why you can’t remember the whole process as you did before. The answer; anything done with interruption before a 28 day straight cycle of repetition greatly reduces the chance of getting set up as an unconscious pattern and therefore is not stored in memory as a whole. That’s right. You did not give
the unconscious mind enough practice days to make it a whole pattern of habit. The same holds true for learning anything, whether it is making a fire from magnesium, a bow from the rough, CPR, or even imprinting a mental attribute.

Affirmations are a daily repetition which set up the same type of pattern.
If there is a physical or mental aspect of your survival that you want to get into unconscious memory, imprinting it for 28 days straight greatly increases your chances of retaining the information to recall days, weeks, or even months from now. Abilities are fine tuned by this type of learning process. 28 straight, one month, increases your chances of making anything an unconscious pattern or habit.

Here is how it works.Take something in your survival techniques that you want to get engrained unconsciously. If it is a physical application, such as suturing for a wound, tying a Swiss seat, starting a fire from scratch etc.; set aside the time to do it for 28 days straight in the same manner each time. Do it for those 28 days uninterrupted. Another great one to practice is making a water purification system
from memory. If it is something mental you want to ingrain into unconsciousness, record it on tape and play it before going to sleep or when waking up each day for 28 days.

On a personal note, I learned the emergency checks of an injured individual using a tape. I recorded the steps to take verbatim in my own voice (which the unconscious mind quickly tunes into) on tape, then played it with ear phones on each night for one month. I did a small relaxation session to get into more of a theta state for better learning. When I recite it out loud now, it comes directly from unconsciousness and is systematic. (This was one conditioned pattern I hoped I never had to use, but recently drove up on a bad motorcycle wreck- I performed it flawlessly under pressure, a true test it was there.) I have my children pop quiz
me at anytime and I instantly recite the steps, recalling them from unconsciousness much like you did when I asked you to recite the alphabet. If it is something you want to remember that you read, read it each night before going to bed. One important aspect to remember when doing this, the brain starts to drift after 30 minutes, so limit anything you are mentally conditioning to 30 minutes, whether it is physical or mental. If it is physical and takes you longer than 30 minutes, you might be surprised how fast that time shortens once you get past the first 30 days. Also, we have what is called ‘the critical faculty’, a part of our mind that censors information; so you cannot be made to do something against your will if you do not believe in it. So when you find yourself in a survival situation, believe in you, never give up and take it from 28 straight!