The Mindset That Matters

[blairmacg]

(The following article originally appeared as content for Patreon backers on November 21, 2015.)
This is an odd article to write, and not at all what I expected to be writing.  After all, I've a fight scene break-down in the works, a post on chokeholds in the wings, and an interview set for after the first of the year.

But right now...  Well.

On the

Comments

[sartorias]

So true, especially about aim of training.

And people with PTSD from abuse will sit with their backs to walls without knowing a thing about how to defend themselves. One of their survival techniques is wanting to see danger coming before it strikes because it gives you that second to hold your breath and hunch into yourself and brace.

[blairmacg]

Sherwood, that makes SO much sense, even in the context of training experiences/intentions as well.

*thinks*

I wonder if working with abuse survivors in self-defense training forums would better succeed if teachers started with using those survival-geared physical behaviors while tweaking the internal perspective/purpose that drives them...? Bracing becomes grounding, the hunch becomes an evasion... That sort of thing.

[sartorias]

Oh, bigtime.

[haikujaguar]

I have been thinking about this essay since you wrote it, because I wonder if it explains some of the fear and frustration in modern society after terrorism. Because essentially, terrorism forces people who don't have a fighter's mindset to try to have one, and many people just won't or can't. Of those who can make the transition, some large number will hate and resent that they have to.

For every person like me, who calmly walks into the university Starbucks while studying everyone in it, wondering what position a shooter would gravitate toward to hit the most people, there are probably a lot more people who don't ever want to have to think that way, and want to know what failed that they have to.

[blairmacg]

I do that scanning as well and, because of mindset, I'm more relaxed for doing it--something quite a few of my friends find unbelievable. To them preparation is an indication and encouragement of fear rather than an answer to it. They don't want to think about bad things because they've never learned how to transition from the to the logical consideration to the effective preparation. Thus they assume a fighter lives always in fear.

And generally speaking, we so fear terrorism because its proximity to our lives is still so new and, frankly, rare. We least fear, and are least motivated to address, the most dangerous and most common threats, and are most terrorized by what we have rarely experienced.