The Mental Side
There are three things to keep in mind in regards to the mental part of self preservation: Mindset, Strategy, and Willpower.
When dealing with a violent situation it is important to develop the right mindset. Any time your life is in danger you must become more aggressive than the attacker. Indecisiveness, weakness and fearfulness can get you hurt or worse. Now fear is normal and is unavoidable but the goal of a self preservation program is to limit the effects of fear. Aggressiveness is stressed by every army in the world because it helps win battles. In fact, this aggressiveness is what makes soldiers such good fighters not any secret techniques.
Danger and fear bring out the fight or flight response, so called because when confronted one either runs or lashes out. The fight part is what we want to instill because if running was an option there would be no need to fight.
Aggressiveness is different than toughness in that it can be instill in someone who does not naturally have it. Some ways to do that are by training aggressively under realistic scenarios and by using aggressive terminology. You will notice that I will use the term self preservation instead of self defense on this site. This is because the word defense has a fearful connotation, where as, preservation is more aggressive, it conjures up images of doing what ever it takes to survive. This is what Jerry Peterson (founder of SCARS) calls Neuro –offensive Linguistics and comes from Neuro linguistic psychology. This basically tells us that the connotation of our words has an effect on our mindset and in fact the way we do things. For example, the words block and strike invoke two very different images in our heads although the action may be the same. (For more on NLP read Using NLP in Combatives training and Hypnosis, NLP and the Combative Edge)
Your mindset is so important that along with willpower it is more important than any other part of a self preservation system.
“Attack, attack, attack- come at your target from every possible direction and press until his defenses overload. Never give him time to recover his balance: never give him time to counter.”
That is a quote from Mathew Woodring Stover’s novel Heroes Die. It perhaps the best description I have ever read on what is needed overcome an attacker. Let’s analyze this:
“Attack, attack, attack…..” Well that is easy be aggressive.
“..come at your target from every possible direction and press until his defenses overload.” Every one has a limit at what they can do and how fast they can do it. To illustrate, grab some friends and a whole bunch of tennis balls. Have one friend stand a few yards in front of you and start under handing the balls at him, with him batting the balls away. Now increase the tempo and have other friend start lobbing the balls at him from different angles. Soon he will start to get hit then you will be able to hit him almost at will because his defenses, like a computer running to many programs, have overloaded. He can not get back on track because he is now being hit repeatedly; and, by pressing him you “Never give him time to recover: never give him time to counter.”
Remember that this isn’t a school yard fight where you trade punches to see who is tougher; the idea is to overcome his ability to harm you then to continue until he can no longer defend himself. Then you have created an opportunity to leave.
A moment should be spared here to mention the goal of Self preservation: To leave an altercation in one piece. Walking away in the middle of an altercation doesn’t always accomplish that. A friend of mine got in an argument in the drive-through lane of a McDonalds with some people from the car behind them. Before there was a fight he turned to walk away. He got a two by four across the skull for his troubles. He died in the hospital shortly after. Deal with the situation either by diffusing it or otherwise, then leave quickly while maintaining awareness of your surroundings.
The second thing to keep in mind when it comes to strategy is the KISS principle. KISS stands for Keep It Simple, Stupid. What this means is you must keep the techniques simple and easy to use. I am not saying a jump spinning hook kick can’t work, but if self preservation is your only goal you probably won’t spend the time necessary to perfect its use. Simple techniques used within the frame work of a simple and aggressive strategy are your best bet.
Willpower along with an aggressive mindset can not be stressed enough. Willpower consists of the desire to do the job regardless of the consequences. To use soldiers to illustrate again; the thing that separates the infantry from most other people and elite soldiers from the infantry is willpower. Most people have at least heard of hell week, the period during BUD/S (navy seal) training when most people quit. One of the things that make SEALS so good is that, after hell week, they believe that they can do anything if they put their minds to it. Willpower is different to toughness in that it can be developed.
A moment should be spent on toughness to help understand how it relates to combat. When I think of toughness, I think of the ability to withstand punishment. Like Rocky in the movies. Rocky was tough, he could take a beating and keep on getting up. Toughness is something that you’re born with or your not. Toughness can not be beat into you, it can not be trained into you. You have it or you don’t.
Luckily, toughness isn’t a requirement for self preservation; however, willpower is a necessity. You must be willing to take a punch to complete your goal. You must be willing to ignore the pain until you and your loved ones are safe. To understand the amount of willpower needed to be successful, ask your self this question: If your children were in danger of losing their life what will you be willing to do? Exactly! You would do anything regardless of the pain. That is the amount of willpower needed to survive. Some things make this process easier; for example, knowing that a punch doesn’t really hurt all that much will make you that much more willing to absorb it if need be. I am not saying they don’t hurt but consider the alternative. Maximize your ability to intercept the punch but learning you can take a little pain helps; that is one of the reasons I like combative sports like boxing and judo, you learn to handle pain in a controlled environment.