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Personal Skills and Group Contribution: Why Community is important to your survival and resilience.



No man is an island.

No matter how good you are, how skilled, how knowledgeable, at some point you will reach an obstacle you will need help with.  This applies to survival, escape and evasion, operations and regular day-to-day life.  Sure, your skills and know.how can take you far, but to truly excel, you need a TEAM. A community.

Special Forces operators and secret agents are all incredible individuals, trained to exceptional levels of skill and fitness.  But what makes them truly formidable is their ability to leverage all of those strengths to super-humal-like heights to seemingly perform the impossible.  That level of mutual support, leveraging of skill-sets and strength in numbers can achieve feats that no individual ever could.

Some of the best “team” shows do this very well.  One of my favourites, Burn Notice, for instance, has 3 main characters – Michael (the burned ex-spy), Fiona (Michael’s ex-girlfriend and IRA operative) and Sam (ex-Navy SEAL).  By themselves, they are all formidable, capable and able.  But when one of them finds themselves in a jam, the other two are able to support the operation in ways that the solo member just couldn’t handle themselves.  The show The A Team also does a great job of this in using the team members’ individual skills to achieve the team goal with great efficacy.

This translates to life as well.  Regardless if you’re trying to learn something, build a business from scratch in your basement, whether a disaster or start a blog, you’ll only get so far by yourself.  Sure, you can learn everything about wilderness survival, but if you fall and break your leg, you will have no one to help you.

In building Tactical Beaver and True North Tradecraft, I have learned more and more that although personal skillets, perseverance, drive, sacrifice, dedication and a bit of luck will do wonders for growing a project, it’s the people you meet and connect with – the ones you build a COMMUNITY with – that will ensure your success in the long run.  I am thus very humbled and privileged to continue building our community of amazing people who are all “lone wolves” in their specific ventures, but together we all succeed.

Below, I have listed some of those community partners.  It is because of them, and many individuals, that we have been able to grow.

That is the power of team.  No individual could have gotten Bin Laden, or Hussein on their own.  It was a team effort.  There are always exceptions to the rule, but by and large, teams can accomplish feats unattainable by an individual.

The best team is one made up of lone wolves working together.

So whatever the task, challenge or obstacle, do your best by yourself, learn  and train and be the best you can be, and then find a group of like-people.  Then become a team.  Then you’ll be unstoppable.

Till next time,

Stay crafty.

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The Okichitaw Project

I recently came across this project. George Lepine is a driving force for the progress of the Okichitaw Indigenous Martial Arts. He is a man of great skill, knowledge and integrity. I have worked with him for many years.  He has worked tirelessly to structure, research and make Okichitaw accessible to all who want to learn.
Check out their Kickstarter campaign and support their amazing intiative to bring Okichitaw martial arts to the world. Not only is it an indigenously historic Canadian system, the but it is also effective.
 
Check it out and support it. It will help bring this piece of Canada to the world.

 

 

George Lepine