Armed Gang Attack Kills Guard in Dutch Village

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The Ready Brief #189

Practical preparedness for uncertain times

George Mumford taught Michael Jordan to meditate. Let that sink in. The most competitive athlete in history, a person who famously trash-talked opponents mid-game, sat still and focused on his breath before the biggest moments of his career. Jordan didn't need meditation because he was weak. He used it because it made his strengths sharper. If mindfulness works under the pressure of an NBA Finals Game 7, it works during a power outage.

Here's what I've got this Sunday.

Mindfulness: The Skill Behind the Skills

We covered box breathing (Issue 183) and flow state (Issue 185). This week introduces the broader framework that underlies both: mindfulness, the practice of non-judgmental present-moment awareness that improves every other preparedness capability.

Mindfulness isn't about emptying your mind. It's about noticing what's happening without getting swept away by it. During an emergency, your mind generates a torrent of thoughts: fear, worst-case scenarios, self-criticism, anger. Mindfulness creates a gap between the thought and your reaction to the thought. In that gap, you choose your response rather than being hijacked by your emotions.

The practical application during emergencies: you notice the fear without becoming the fear. You observe the racing thoughts without following them into a spiral. You return your attention to the present moment, the actual situation, and respond to what's real rather than what your anxiety imagines.

George Mumford taught this to Phil Jackson's Bulls and Lakers teams. His framework is simple: awareness of what's happening (internal and external), acceptance of the current reality (not wishing it were different), and action based on the present moment (not on past failures or future fears). Awareness, acceptance, action.

For preparedness, mindfulness improves three specific capabilities. First, situational awareness (Issue 24) becomes sharper when you're fully present rather than distracted by mental chatter. Second, decision-making (Issue 124) improves when you can separate facts from fear-generated stories. Third, communication with family and team members improves when you can listen and respond calmly rather than reactively.

The training is remarkably simple. Five minutes of daily practice: sit quietly, focus on your breath, notice when your mind wanders, and gently return your attention to the breath. That's it. The wandering and returning is the practice. Each time you notice the wandering and redirect, you strengthen the neural pathway that allows you to redirect attention during stress.

You're not trying to achieve a special state. You're training the ability to notice where your attention is and move it where you want it to be. During an emergency, that trained ability lets you focus on the immediate task rather than being overwhelmed by the totality of the situation.

Sit quietly for 5 minutes and focus on your breathing. Notice when your mind wanders. Bring it back.

That's the entire practice. Five minutes. The wandering isn't failure. The noticing is the skill you're building. Do it once. Then do it tomorrow.

FICO shares fell 15.30 percent on September 4, closing at $947.71, after FHFA Director Bill Pulte ordered Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to approve VantageScore for all lenders immediately, ending FICO's monopoly on mortgage credit scoring. Pulte says FICO has raised the cost of a mortgage credit score by 1,800 percent since 2020. Mortgage originations make up 71 percent of FICO's B2B scoring revenue, and Wolfe Research had already downgraded the stock in August, warning that more than 20 percent of the mortgage market was exposed to lenders shopping between FICO and VantageScore for whichever score favors the borrower.

Source: Benzinga, AskTraders

George Mumford was a college basketball teammate of Julius Erving who lost his athletic career to injury and addiction. His recovery led him to mindfulness, and Phil Jackson recruited him to teach it to Michael Jordan, Shaquille O'Neal, Kobe Bryant, and two dynasty teams. In The Mindful Athlete, Mumford writes that peak performance in any domain requires the ability to be fully present: not reliving the last play, not anticipating the next one, but completely engaged with what's happening now.

Mumford's preparedness application is direct: the person who is fully present during an emergency processes information more accurately, makes better decisions, and communicates more clearly. The person whose mind is scattered between fear, regret, and worst-case fantasy performs poorly regardless of their physical preparation.

Get The Mindful Athlete by George Mumford on Amazon

Armed Gang Attack Kills Security Guard in Dutch Village

Roughly 30 masked attackers, some carrying automatic rifles, opened fire before dawn on a targeted property in Overasselt, a small Gelderland village, in what police say was a dispute over a cocaine shipment. A 51-year-old security guard was killed and two responding police officers were wounded while being treated under fire. Dutch prosecutors have remanded 32 suspects: 16 French nationals, 11 Dutch, 2 Algerians, and one each from Belgium, Libya, and Ukraine, including two French minors aged 16 and 17. It fits a longer pattern. European cocaine seizures quadrupled between 2009 and 2019 as Rotterdam and Antwerp became trafficking hubs, with only about 1 percent of Rotterdam's 15 million annual containers physically inspected. The violence has previously reached a crime journalist and a defense lawyer, both assassinated. The Netherlands still ranks as the eighth-least-corrupt country in the world, but the direction is unmistakable.

Sources: NL Times, DutchNews.nl, The Nation

5-Minute Morning Mindfulness (No App Required)

For 90 days, I've spent 5 minutes each morning sitting quietly with my eyes closed, focusing on my breath. No app. No guide. No music. Just breath awareness and the practice of redirecting attention when it wanders.

Measurable changes: I fall asleep faster (anecdotal but consistent). I notice distractions sooner during work. And during two minor stressful events (a car alarm incident and a tense phone call), I caught myself escalating emotionally and redirected to calm faster than I would have previously. The causal link is unprovable. The correlation is consistent. Free.

Budget alternative: This is already free. If you prefer guided sessions, the Insight Timer app offers thousands of free guided meditations.

Overrated: Expensive meditation retreats and courses for building basic mindfulness. The skill is sitting and breathing. You don't need a $500 course to learn it. Five minutes, daily, for free. The consistency matters infinitely more than the method.

Underrated: Mindfulness as a preparedness skill. It appears in zero preparedness gear lists, zero bug-out bag checklists, and zero equipment reviews. Yet it improves every other skill on those lists. The most powerful preparedness tool you can develop weighs nothing and costs nothing.

Vinegar, oil, and shelf-stable fats. The pantry staples that transform emergency food from edible to enjoyable.

PS: Michael Jordan is widely considered the most mentally tough athlete in history. He meditated. Kobe Bryant trained with Mumford for years. The Navy SEALs practice mindfulness. If the hardest, toughest, most competitive people on the planet use this tool, the stigma of "meditation is soft" deserves reexamination. Mindfulness isn't soft. It's the operating system that makes everything else run better.