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Principles-Based Teaching, Part I – Rory Miller

 

Part One Laying the Foundation

Managing conflict can be approached as a huge and complex field. You can find books of techniques, lists of indicators to watch for. You can fill your mind with endless datum and detail. This approach, whether in a verbal communication class or a martial arts class, is common. It is also, in my opinion, largely ineffective. It is teaching and memorizing trivia so that one can give the impression of understanding. This gives the student reams of knowledge and completely bypasses understanding. This approach is the downfall of much of the technique-based training in the martial arts, producing people that can throw a visually perfect punch, but can’t fight. Useless to the student, but the teacher has nice clear lesson plans and infinite detail to correct.

Conflict management can also be ignored: “It’s a natural part of your life, something you see every day. You don’t need to be taught this.” This approach leads to improvement only through trial and error, and error can be expensive in conflict. It doesn’t even require a teacher, and I have seen it used as an excuse not to teach critical skills to rookies.

And conflict can be deliberately mismanaged and mistaught: “I don’t need to learn how to manage conflict! Everyone else just has to learn to be nice to me.” Which is not just an expression of pure selfish ego, but designed to keep anyone who takes that stance as helpless and dependent as possible.

All three of these approaches are easy to teach. I mean that the process is easy for the teacher. They are not good ways to develop complex skills in the students.

Principles-based teaching is more challenging for the instructor. The instructor can’t get away with just parroting what he or she was taught. It requires a depth of understanding.

“You must turn your toe out at 45 degrees in this technique,” is sufficient for technique-based instruction. The foot position is part of the technique, defines whether the technique is correct or not. The teacher and student can both see it. The teacher can grade it, and if it is taught consistently, the foot position will be part of the system far into the future. A tiny bit of information is all that is necessary, and no real thought whatsoever.

You must turn your toe out at 45 degrees either has a mechanical advantage or it doesn’t, simple as that. There is a simple law of physics or physiology that makes that foot position important (in that position/time/situation) or there isn’t. And if there is, that 45 degrees will be completely wrong in a different situation.

Technique based: “You must turn your toe out at 45 degrees in this technique.”

Principles based: “Generally, you want to keep your knees bending over your toes to keep your knees from getting injured.”

Learning your principles is getting into the “why” of things. Why do techniques work or fail? What are the physics of techniques in general?

The “why” leads to the “how.” Once you understand the principles and start learning how to apply them in action, the “whats” (the techniques) flow from that. They don’t need to be taught, because they can be automatically derived.

That may seem counter-intuitive, and it would be if the training methods of rote training were applied. More on methods later.

You need a few things to get skilled at this way of teaching:

  • You need to understand the principles of your system inside and out
  • You need to understand the goal of your training
  • You need to have a way to gauge (I did not say measure) progress towards that goal
  • You need to know your audience/students
  • You need a thorough understanding of how humans learn complex skills
  • And you need humility, because your students will get good, maybe better than you, very quickly

After outlining this teaching method to a very successful school owner in another country I got one of the best compliments of my life. “I see what you’re doing, but you couldn’t keep a school running that way. The students will get too good too fast. There’s no way to make a living at it.” Cool. But I don’t think he meant it as a compliment.

Understanding principles will come in a later article. If you want homework, though, here it is: Sit down and derive a list of the principles critical to your system.

How do I define a principle? Principles are the underlying things that make techniques work. It’s a principle if it applies to striking, grappling and weapons and there are no exceptions. Leverage, for example, is critical to all three and good leverage is always superior to poor leverage. Now, I went with my hand-to-hand core there, but you can pick anything– business, gardening, negotiations, auto mechanics– and there will be a solid core of principles.

Understand the goal of your training. This one blends with gauging, knowing your audience and humility. Quite simply, many people are not teaching what they think they are teaching. They intend to teach self-protection but put hours into how to win a one-on-one sparring match against a friend in a controlled environment.

Gauging your training. People like measurability. “That which gets measured gets improved.” But in certain fields, measurability has almost no correlation with applied ability. The arrest and control techniques taught at police academies are often complex, multi-step locks. Very easy to grade the students in class, almost impossible to apply in real life. In high school or college, were the people getting A’s in English or Communications the ones getting dates?

For physical skills, and particularly self-defense, there is no way to measure. The only applicable measurement would be whether someone survived, and the possible range of dangers makes survival in one situation likely irrelevant to the next. You can’t truly measure it, but you can and should develop ways to gauge progress and to see what progress is needed. Conflict management is an open-ended skill. Neither you nor your students will ever get to the end point where you know it all.

You need to know your audience/students. In my mind, the biggest division between martial arts and self-protection is that in MA I am teaching subject matter, and in SP I am teaching students.

Each student is different. They all have different abilities, strengths, talents, resources and weaknesses. They will be targeted for very different types of conflict. Further, they will each have different learning styles.

Understand teaching. Most of what we know or what we think we know about teaching comes from our own experience as students in schools, primarily grammar school and high school. Those were places of regimentation, top-down training, with huge power disparities between the instructor and student. Measurability trumped applicability. And everything was aimed at teaching children, not adults.

It would be hard to design a worse model for teaching assertiveness or conflict management. You can’t teach people to be strong while demanding that they obey.

Principles-based teaching has to be applied with principles of teaching. And principles of learning.

Humility. In conflict training, the instructor’s ego is probably the student’s most dangerous enemy. The instructor will be trusted, will be seen to have the answers. If the instructor needs or desires a sycophantic relationship, it will be toxic to the student. If the instructor is too prideful to acknowledge what he doesn’t know and makes shit up to answer questions, he actively endangers his students. All of teaching is about creating students who will be better than you. If you can’t emotionally handle not being the best, you have no business teaching.

This is the end of Part One, laying the foundation. I’m going to make a suggestion. If you can get a copy, watch my video “JointLocks” available from YMAA.com, Amazon and, I believe as an app. It’s not really about the locks. My stealth purpose for shooting that video was to get a solid example of the principles-based approach in front of people. Locks have a reputation for being difficult. The method we show in the video has gotten untrained rookie cops improvising locks under stress in one hour of training. If you get a chance, watch the video, but for the training method, not just the locks.— Rory

 

Knowing Your Audience – Richard Dimitri

As a self defense teacher/instructor I believe it is important to remember what it was like when we first started learning along with a good understanding of who our audience is when it comes to teaching certain tactics and technical applications as we tend to often get locked down on absolutes.

For example, and this one is very popular amongst the self defense crowd who, for better or worse, seem to be divided on the issue of which is better; striking with an open hand or a closed fist? There are of course sub-arguments within the said argument such as the ‘open hand neck up, closed fist neck down’ but that also is kind of absolute isn’t it?

It doesn’t have to be this particular bone of contention either nor does the argument have to be about a physical response, it could be about any strategy, tactics or tool for that matter such as ‘In a knife attack, is it better to stabilize the weapon hand or fuck stabilization and just ‘attack, attack, attack!!!’?

It does indeed depend; as to eliminate either or restrict anyone of either based on the factual statements made on each could very well be limiting someone’s natural or already trained capacity at doing so and who are we to tell anyone that what has worked for them before all of a sudden won’t, and worst, could cost them their lives?

This is where knowing one’s audience in this field in my opinion, becomes critical.  For example, if a very average 70 year old woman concerned about an immediate potential threat in her life was to learn self defense, it would be somewhat ignorant to believe that teaching her any kind of closed fisted striking (to go back to the original example) would render her effective at such strikes, assuming of course the threat she is facing isn’t from an older, blind and paraplegic woman either eh?

Now if a 30 year old, athletic strong female was interested in learning self defense based on the same concerns; offering her the options of both while also explaining the pros and cons of each, and allowing her to figure out for herself which tactic is most natural, suitable and sensible to her being, and then allowing her to experience each in training to ease her decision would be the way to go.

Switch that to a 25 year old male, heavy weight golden gloves champion, who is interested in learning self defense. To take his natural and proficiently trained ability to strike with a closed fist and ask him to change it to open handed striking as the main and only method of defense doesn’t make sense either.  

The same approach should be taken as of the one of the 30 year old athletic female.  Teach both, show the pros and cons of each, and allow the student to experience them in real time/real speed via training to formulate what is best for them.

How do you do that in a large and varied group consisting of young teens, seasoned fighters, elderly folk and everything in between? Always cater to the weakest link in the chain.  The mechanics for a lead palm strike are the same as that of a boxing jab. The mechanics of a horizontal elbow strike are the same as that of a hook punch, etc. The tool itself is incidental and preferential.  

Here is where the argument heats up however.  Once on close quarter/grappling/wrestling range; striking becomes obsolete for the most part as striking requires 3 integral elements to make it functional: 1. Distance 2. Grounding, and 3. Torque. Remove even 1 of these elements and you’re left with at best 70% capacity of whatever chosen strike.  

Now, perhaps the athletic female and golden gloves champion could end the confrontation before it got extreme close quarter with a precise strike, but the average 70 year old or early teen? Generally, not so much.  

The lack of expertise, power, training, timing, precision and clarity in the moment once the initial strike didn’t end the fight, but instead escalated it by bringing it closer quarters would make their punch at best; a distraction. Relying on any kind of striking at this point (or grappling submission for that matter) wouldn’t be functional simply because boxing and grappling require regular training and practice to upkeep the functionality of it.

Not to mention, we’re talking about self defense here…. most people who come for self defense training do so because they feel an immediate threat, only a miniscule percentage of the population train self defense out of pure fun and passion or a possible/potential or imagined what if?  

Those that don’t are there for more pressing reasons and need strategies, tactics and tools that they could manifest fucking tonight if it was necessary. The arm bar taught and learned in one day to an average 70 year old woman won’t give her the ability to perform it under stress were she to get attacked the week after she learned it…. A primal scream coupled by a barrage of gross motor rip/tear/gouge/bite/strikes paired with her already driven adrenal state however most definitely can. and has on more than enough occasions to make it scientifically proven (for those deemed as victims, not necessarily just the 70 year old woman case).

And here’s why in a mixed group, the teaching of the strategies/tactics and tools aimed at those who are unfortunately perceived as the weaker/victims of our species, are paramount simply because if an average 70 year old woman could wreak havoc on a much larger and more violent assailant with these tools and tactics, imagine what the seasoned golden gloves champ could do with them?

One set of tools & tactics works for both individuals while the other set of tools (not necessarily tactics here) works for only the strong/athletic/attributed/attitude individuals. In many instances, it’s the ego of the strong and athletic that won’t allow them to acknowledge, perhaps, the tools and strategies aimed at the perceived victims, for in their mind, it places them in that category.  

Whatever the case, it doesn’t change the fact that they work and work well and are even more devastating in their hands as they also possess an athletic and sport oriented delivery system to back it.  

It’s all in the timing of it as well. Is it a 5 to 10 hour workshop? Is the individual in question taking regular and weekly ongoing private or group classes? How pressed are they to learn self defense?  What are their physical limitations if any? Answering these questions allows the instructor to formulate the class(es) to fit their audience.  

But to simply reject a strategy, tool or tactic, no matter what it is, even a spinning back kick for that matter, is ridiculous… prioritizing them as per the student, the level of immediate threat they are facing as well as taking into consideration their natural abilities, previous training and potential limitations (pointless to teach a spinning back kick to someone in a wheelchair for example) as well as the amount of training time they have should be how one constructs their daily curriculums and not on one’s own personal abilities and beliefs of what works and/or not.   That’s up to the individual in question.

What works for you may not work for all but what works for all will definitely work for you, at that point, it becomes matter of preference hopefully based on logic and sense as after all, this is self defense we are talking about, in the end, it’s your life on the line; choose wisely.

In my opinion anyway.  

The Warrior Legend – Kathy Jackson

We tell our children myths and fables. These are very powerful stories that carry the messages and core values of our culture. That’s how cultural knowledge passes from one generation to another. Humans are motivated by stories. Those stories, those fables, those myths, those legends – they all hit something at a very visceral level. They hit your gut.

Within the firearms and self-defense training community, we have often benefited from the Warrior Legend. This cultural myth hits something deep within the heart of every good man. It is the story of the strong head of household who defends his family. It is the story of the warrior who protects his people. It is the story of the knight who rescues the princess. The Warrior Legend hits a very powerful node in the best and the strongest among our men. And that’s good!

We have often used that goodness to our advantage within the self-defense training community. When we use the word “tactical,” that’s one of the words that strikes this same chord. We have lots of words and phrases that activate the same feeling: Sheepdog. Fighter. Warrior. Soldier. Protector. The man who runs to the sound of the guns. Or puts his own body between his beloved home and the war’s desolation. The strong man loves his woman and he faces danger for her sake. That’s the story we tell, in short form, when we use those words.

Within the training world, we’ve gotten very good at hitting that button, hitting it from a lot of different angles, over and over. And it’s been very effective in motivating male students to buy classes, to pay attention in class, to practice what they learn, to drive forward and learn more. It’s a very powerful message that draws many students into our schools and motivates them to continue their efforts to learn.

The problem is, this message – as powerful as it is – is not one that resonates with the average woman in western culture. Little girls don’t grow up being told that someday, they can ride up to the castle and rescue the enchanted prince. They aren’t encouraged to dream about slaying dragons. Nobody tells their baby girl, “A real woman stands between her husband and any danger that would threaten him.” That’s just not a message we give our daughters.

So this powerful legend that drives men into classes won’t necessarily hit potential female students in the gut. Nor will it encourage them to take their training as the serious business that it really is, or drive them forward to learn more. Culturally, women just don’t hear that message in the same way that men hear it. We’re more likely to react to it as a legend (a fantasy, a myth, a fairytale, an un-reality) than we are to be motivated by the emotion it’s intended to provoke.

Boring

Here’s the awful truth: effective self-defense training is … boring. For those who want to use firearms for self-defense, we spend a lot of time drilling the basics. That’s sights, trigger, follow through. We spend time working on a consistent grip, on a safe and smooth drawstroke, on being able to access the gun from a variety of positions, on good gunhandling and efficient reloads. Students should learn these fundamentals to the point of automaticity. Simply being able to handle the tool without thinking about the tool itself goes a long way toward establishing good preparedness for everything else that follows.

When talking about the humdrum, practical matters that make up the bulk of reasonable self-defense instruction, firearms trainer John Farnam wryly observes, “Everyone wants to know when they get to jump out of the flaming helicopters.” So, thinking about the Warrior Legend that motivates good men, we write class descriptions in terms that would attract the people who want to jump out of those flaming helicopters. We do this because it works very well to attract adrenalin junkies and strong-hearted men, who make up the bulk of the self-defense community. We appeal to the Warrior Legend.

But then we’re surprised and a bit sad that more women won’t come to our classes or learn the skills that would help them learn to protect themselves. Don’t women care about staying safe? Don’t women want to have fun learning cool new skills?

We don’t write our class descriptions thinking about boring, mundane things like, “This will help you stay safe and keep your family safe.” That might be true, but it isn’t sexy. It doesn’t give the reader an adrenalin jolt and it doesn’t promise that they can be the hero of their own legend. It’s the steak without the sizzle.

Who needs this?

The problem is, strong men and adrenalin junkies don’t derive nearly as much benefit from defensive training as the people who aren’t motivated by the Warrior Legend.

The message that women want to hear and need to hear is that serious self-defense training is practical. This training will help you do the things you want to do, in the ordinary happy life you live right now. These skills and this mindset will fit into your everyday life. We don’t train, and we aren’t inviting you to train with us, just because we want to fulfill some virile fantasy, but because we’re concerned about simple reality. This is where the rubber meets the road. This will make your actual day to day life better. That’s the message that women need to hear, and in some ways, it’s almost the opposite of how self-defense training has traditionally been marketed.  

So we need to find more ways and better ways to get this message out to good women as well as to good men: Training is not a fantasy or a game. It provides you with important knowledge and experience on a very practical level that can help you take better care of the people you love. The hard work of learning how to defend yourself will help you enjoy the life you want to live. Learning how to protect yourself will help you stay safe and keep your family safe.

When we get that message to our potential students, they come to class. Better than that, they learn how to protect themselves and the people they love.

You Are What You ATE, Part I – Erik Kondo

Most people are familiar with the expression “You are what you eat.” It makes sense. Eat lots of high fat content greasy foods and you get obese. Eat mainly lean meats, whole grains, fruits, and vegetables and you stay nice and trim.

But you are also defined by your actions and by how you explain your actions to others. How you respond to occurrences and events in your life is a big part of who you are. What’s the difference between an accomplished expert and a bumbling novice? The expert both acts and communicates in an effective manner, whereas the novice does not.

Much of how a person responds to any given stimulus comes down to his or her individual ATE.

Where,

A = Attributes (innate abilities and hardwiring acquired from birth)

T = Training (what has been acquired from formalized training and education)

E = Experience (what has been acquired from life experience)

Think about it for a moment. Take different people, individually expose them to the exact same stimulus, next watch to see what happens. How the subjects respond is not random. They will respond in accordance with their ATE programming. People with a different ATE are likely to respond in correspondingly different manner in accordance with their ATE.

In terms of conflict management, let’s imagine for a moment that Person A is walking down the sidewalk and suddenly violently attacked from the rear. Person A is a 6’ 4” 220 lbs. physical specimen. He is an also a highly trained Navy Seal just back from his 3rd tour of duty in Afghanistan where he was involved in undercover operations.

One block over, Person B is also ambushed from behind. Person B is 5’ 2” and 110 lbs. Person B rarely exercises and works as an accountant for the IRS. Person B has had no training in any type of martial arts or physical self-defense. He has never been in involved in a violent incident in his life.

Person A and Person B are exposed to the same stimulus. But how they respond is determined by how they consciously and unconsciously perceive and assess the situation. While awake, people are in a state of continually assessing input from the environment. Most assessments are done automatically without conscious thought. We just do them as we go about our lives. Driving a car provides an example of a continuous stream of conscious/unconscious assessments, actions, and/or continuations of actions. These assessments come naturally from our awareness of the environment. For example, when driving, if you see a stop sign at an intersection, you decide to stop. If you don’t see a stop sign, you continue on your current course.

Awareness leads to assessments which leads to actions. Many times these actions need to be articulated. “I didn’t stop at the stop sign because I didn’t see it. It was obscured by a tree, Officer.”

But we all don’t have the same paradigm of awareness. Accomplished drivers know what to look for. Unaccomplished drivers will “see” a dangerous event unfold, yet not be aware of what is happening. A skilled driver has a different ATE than an unskilled one. The same goes people when it comes to conflict management. The ATE of skilled conflict managers differ greatly from unskilled ones.

In the earlier example, Person A and Person B will respond in vastly different manners due to their respective ATE. They will explain their actions also in accordance with their ATE. You are what you accomplish, and what you accomplish is linked directly to your ATE.

Someone who is “stuck” in life responds in accordance to a static script. This type of person’s ATE doesn’t change. Their knowledge says at the same level. Their experiences are viewed to be the same. They learn nothing new from them. This type of person has a fixed belief system. People with fixed belief systems and ATEs are living in an endlessly repeating loop. Like a pen circling on paper, the path becomes more and more entrenched into their mind and body. This static belief system is reinforced with stereotypes, bias, and closed-mindedness.

In contrast are those whose ATEs are under a constant state of evolvement. They seek out varied training and diverse experiences. Their belief system is fluid and subject to change. Their responses and scripts evolve with time. Since these people’s actions are constantly evolving, they are more defined by the sum of their accomplishments. Those with a static ATE are more identified by their belief system.

Unless you have somehow maximized your ATE at a very high level of accomplishment, you likely have much room for improvement. There is not so much you can do to change your inherited attributes. But you certainly can evolve your training and experience in order to reach a higher level of accomplishment.

An accomplished person effectively articulates what he or she does. What he does results from his assessment of the situation. His assessment is derived from his awareness of his the environment. His awareness, assessment, action(s), and articulation are all a function of his Attributes, Training, and Experience (ATE).

Part II

The Self-Defense Continuum, Part I – Teja Van Wicklen

This Self Defense Continuum is about perspective and context. It is a tool to help you break something big down into bit-sized pieces so it can be examined and followed and understood. The Self-defense Continuum is a combination of the ideas of two self defense analysts who were, at the time, working separately.

Erik Kondo came up with The Five Ds of Self Defense. These are five options you have for avoiding, disrupting or escaping crime in one piece. They are Decide, Deter, Disrupt, Disengage, Debrief. (You can find out more about Erik Kondo at ConflictResearchGroupIntl.com or Not-Me.org)

Marc MacYoung came up with The Five Stages of Violent Crime, which represent the stages a criminal goes through in order to commit a crime. They are Intent, Interview, Positioning, Attack, Reaction. (You can find out more about Marc MacYoung at ConflictResearchGroupIntl.com or NoNonsenseSelfDefense.com)

The fact that both men came up with five things that completed one another and formed a natural connection, was opportune and curious. When I looked closer I found they had come up separately and miraculously each with half of a whole.

Together these concepts form The Self Defense Continuum – the time line along which a crime occurs. Thinking of crime as something with a Before, During and After helps us view crime as a process and not just a sudden occurrence we have no control over. It helps us see how moments come together to form events. It helps us see where we fit in and possibly how and where we can affect the outcome. To be able to see a particular crime as a kind of story, can give us more power to affect how we play into it – in naming and understanding the individual moments of a crime, and seeing how one moment follows the next, we gain a bit more insight and potential control over circumstances.

Unfamiliar stories or processes seem to occur out of the blue or too quickly for our reaction time. When we are blind to a process we are unable to comprehend it, let alone, change it. How much time or notice there is before and even during an event has an enormous amount to do with what we perceive to be important information. We only hear or take in that which makes sense to us, and that expands or contracts the feeling of time. The process of crime or event prediction is very much about seeing more than we thought was there.

Let’s use baseball as an analogy. Imagine, you’re at the batting cage for the first time. That ball is coming at you at 65 or so miles per hour and if you’ve never been in a batting cage before, that can be reasonably hard core. How are you supposed to put a bat on a tiny thing headed directly at your head like that?

So you start with a formula. Where is the ball coming from? And where is it aiming at? Once you begin to understand the trajectory, you start hitting the ball. This is an intuitive process for some, and a calculation for others. Either way, you have to get it embedded into your reflexes somehow because you won’t have time to consciously tell your arms to tense up and swing. It has to just happen.

After you’ve had a bit of practice, you start to get the hang of it and you find you have time to dig in and get comfortable. Now that you know how it works, there seems to magically be plenty of time to process things and you start hitting a lot more balls than you miss. Hitting them well is another phase of learning, but hitting them at least means they’re not hitting you.

The first phase of The Self Defense Continuum is:

DECIDE To Spot Criminal INTENT
This is the Before Stage. Decide is the longest, most important and least explored area of self defense. It is where we live, it is where we work, it is where we have time to fortify our homes, our lives, our families, ourselves.

Once something goes wrong you are in the During phase where you have to act quickly. You no longer have time to prepare, make leisurely decisions or comb your hair. Before a robbery you can choose which locks to buy. You can compare prices. During, you can only make a phone call, fight him off, run, or put out the flames.

Before is where most of the work gets done. Until something goes wrong it is always Before. It is Before, right now. Right now, you are Deciding to read this article.

Decide then, is about Preparation. And preparation is the single most important step you can take before a journey. When you hike up a mountain, what you know and what you take with you are pretty important. When you study for the test, you ace the test. When you don’t, you scramble, second guess and reap the rewards of a job poorly done. But never get cocky, that’s how we become lazy. Hubris is often why seasoned swimmers drown and professional climbers fall.

Specifically, this part of the Continuum is about a Deciding to learn how to read or intuit the Intent of another to harm you.

The concept of Criminal Intent refers to a person’s readiness to commit a crime – a readiness that manifests itself physically in some way, because very few people are able to hide everything they’re feeling when something serious is on the line.

Intent is more than a motive. A motive is a reason to do something. We all have good reasons to do lot’s of things that we don’t do. You could have a good motive to quit your job, but you may not. Intent is imminent. He has moved from motive to plan. The barriers are down.

Why he’s chosen you may or may not be important, you may or may not ever find out. If you get away quickly and he escapes, you may have to live without ever knowing. The longer you engage with a criminal, the more you find out about what he’s planning. Is he tying to take you somewhere? Has he asked for something? Or does he want to hurt someone? Do you really want to know?

How do you thwart criminal Intent? Well, first you have to learn to SEE it. And the earlier you see it the better for obvious reasons. If your training and your senses are working for you, you may not even know if the situation was really going to be dangerous. He’ll be gone and moving on to someone else instead of you. There’s always the chance he was just a lonely guy looking for conversation and that he really is a friend of a friend of yours. But there are cues and clues to what people want and how invested they are in getting it. Everyone has a tell, and unlike the movies most tells are similar.

I won’t go into specific behaviors here, Gavin De Becker already wrote the book ‘The Gift of Fear’. And Desmond Morris wrote a number of books on human behaviour if you want to go deeper, just look him up. Then there is What Everybody is Saying and Lie Spotting. There is a ton of information on this stuff at your fingertips. Go forth and practice people reading. Do not, however, jump on your beginner abilities and start judging people. Just watch and over time see if you’re right about your preliminary thoughts. When it comes to danger it’s simple. If something tickles your spider sense, just opt out.

A guy once walked straight towards my car window. He walked in too direct a line and smiled the whole time. The smile looked too practiced and he came a little too quickly. My son was in the car. It was getting dark. He held his hand out like he had a question but I didn’t see any real question in his eyes. He looked too comfortable standing in the middle of a parking lot. Not like a person with a problem. None of this was thought out, things just seemed off and I responded to the discomfort I felt and the child in the back seat I was responsible for.

I rolled up my window before he got to my car, that’s all the time I had. My keys were in my hand but I couldn’t get them into the ignition before he was at my window. He said something like, “can I talk to you.” I smiled and pretended not to understand. I put the key in the ignition while he motioned for me to roll down the window. I smiled, nodded, and I pulled out.

He didn’t need me to roll my window down to talk to me. He also didn’t need to get so close to my car. If he had a question he could have gestured, pointed, stated his need clearly from a few feet away. Good men who live in this world know that you don’t get that close to a woman, especially one with a young child, especially in dim light or darkness.

I love to help people. If you really need something and I can help, I’m your girl. But those were not the words or the body language of someone in a desperate situation. They were the words and actions of someone with an agenda.

It’s arguable, of course. But my son was in the car and that’s what my instincts told me. I’ll never know, and that’s okay with me.

To Be Continued.

Next: DETER At The INTERVIEW Stage

 

Rage Control – Wim Demeere

The earliest incident I remember of my temper getting out of hand was over something trivial. My older cousin had been needling me until I snapped: I grabbed a scythe and swung it down at him as hard as I could. He jumped back and I missed, burying it deep into the ground, unable to pull it back out. He took me to the ground and into a judo choke hold until I calmed down. I was eight or nine when that happened, I’m not sure anymore.

This wasn’t the last time my bad temper got the best of me, nor the worst. Throughout my youth and early twenties, I flew off the handle many times. I’m immensely lucky that I didn’t seriously injure or kill somebody and end up in jail or dead. I’m even luckier in that I realized early on in life that I needed to control my temper or I would eventually mess up my own life. The pivotal moment came after I kicked somebody in the ribs and he was hospitalized. He didn’t deserve that, there was no reason for me to kick so hard, other than that I was angry. So I went looking for solutions to my anger issue.

I learned that there are many different types of therapy or approaches to fix this problem. I tried several and found behaviour therapy, reframing my thought process, progressive relaxation, meditation and humour to work well for me. These might or might not work for you, we’re all different.

After years of hard work, I progressively got better at staying in control and rarely if ever lose my cool anymore. I’ve come to the point that people who’ve known me for years have never seen me angry and say I am the calmest, most patient person they know. But here’s the uncomfortable truth self-help gurus don’t tell you: my temper never went away. It’s still there.  I have simply learned to not let it rule me.

Every day, I get up and tell myself to not be an asshole and hurt people just because I am pissed off. No matter how easy it would be to do so.

Every day, my temper gives me opportunities to beat people up and ruin my life with the consequences:

  • The idiot who cuts me off in traffic, I’d ram him off the road if I acted on my temper.
  • The arrogant bastard who gives a snarky comment in a meeting, I’d gladly slap him in the face until he starts crying.
  • The wannabe tough guy who eyeballs me at the gas station, I wouldn’t mind taking him on to see the look on his face when he finds out he can’t win and I won’t stop.

After all these years, my first reaction still tends to be the same: my temper wants to flare and take over. Then I tell it not to.

As I got older I got better at this, to the point where it has become automatic and I don’t end up with a big adrenaline dump anymore. I expect to always have to work, at it, until I die.

Why do I bring all this up?

Letting anger control you is a sure-fire way to get into trouble and attract violence.

We all know we’re supposed to avoid violence and de-escalate problems. Yet we continue to see CCTV or cell phone footage of people ignoring this advice and letting their anger get the better of them until fists start flying. If you take an honest look at your own violent encounters (or near misses), you’ll likely discover your anger and other emotions were a determining factor.

Violence takes at least two parties: you and the other guy. You are half the equation. The decisions you make during conflicts, regardless of what your monkey brain is screaming for you to do, are ultimately yours. Avoiding violence is easy in theory, but once a strong emotion like anger is thrown into the mix, it becomes much harder to stop from engaging the other guy when you should de-escalate. The consequences of that violence can leave your life in ruins or end with you bleeding out on a pavement.

If you are quick to anger, here’s an empowering truth for you:

Your temper is not a force of nature. You can learn to control it.

It isn’t easy. You have to question yourself, your motives, your emotions, your mind-set, your decisions, everything. You have to find a balance between doing that while at the same time avoiding “paralysis of analysis.” What’s more, you only get the benefits of self-control after you do all the work. But once you do, your odds of successfully avoiding violence increase and you can live your life more safely.

Reality, Belief and Tribalism – Rory Miller

There are very few facts. There are very few truths. There may be one best way to do a thing, but in an infinite universe the odds that your way is the best way is, roughly, zero.

There are very few facts, and no one gets emotional about facts. Diamond scratches talc, never does talc scratch a diamond. Longer levers increase power but cost distance. 2+2=4 (for all normal values of 2 and 4. That’s a math joke.)

Anyone have an emotional reaction to 2+2=4? Anyone? Nope. You may have an emotional reaction to the person writing the equation on the chalkboard. You may have such an intense reaction that you want the equation to be wrong, but there is no reaction to the equation itself.

So, rule number one: There is no feeling associated with truth. If you feel sure the only thing you can be certain of is that you don’t know. You can feel sure that your politics are righteous or that your religion is truth or that your system is best, but as long as you feel that way you know it is NOT an objective truth.

And our lives are filled with things we do not and cannot know. Not just the BS Philosophy 101 questions of “Do you really know if the sun will rise tomorrow?” Important stuff. You don’t know what anyone really thinks about you. You probably aren’t even aware of the differences between the values you feel and the ones you express in action. You don’t know who you will be under certain stresses.

And people hate being uncertain. Unknown is unsafe. Freedom is a nice idea, but historically people piss away freedom in a heartbeat if someone will offer security.

So, rule number two: People are uncomfortable-to-terrified by uncertainty and they are surrounded by it at all times.

This problem is compounded in martial arts and self-defense. At the high end of the conflict spectrum, there is a lot less experience. Everyone has been in an argument, far fewer have been in an argument that escalated to blows. Even fewer have been targeted by a predator or been required to use deadly force or participated in a riot. Some people spend years in martial arts, studying what to do if attacked. And they have no idea– it is impossible to know the first time– what they will actually do if attacked. You can tell yourself anything you want but until you pull a trigger, you cannot know if you are capable of it.

This uncertainty compounds with the high stakes of life or death conflict. But it compounds with something else as well: identity. For better or worse, violence has achieved a level of mythic weight in our society. The “wisdom” of a “warrior” is held to be more profound than the wisdom of a father, mother or schoolteacher. It’s not more profound, it’s simply more rare. And thus easy to fake, but that’s for another essay.

But the idea of who we will be under pressure, in conflict, is a powerful aspect of our identity. The image in our own mind and other people’s minds of who we are. And if the conflict has only been imagined, a terrifyingly large chunk of that identity is also imaginary. If uncertainty is frightening, what level of fear and insecurity comes from the deep and denied knowledge that you don’t even know who you are? You are your own imaginary construct.

So, rule three: People like to feel sure, even if they can’t be sure. And the best way to feel sure is to surround yourself with people who agree with you and shun the people who make you question your beliefs. This is the first step into the insular world of “tribalism disguised as truth.”

It’s a sneaky worldview. You feel sure. You are surrounded by people who sound sure. The only evidence you hear confirms what you already know to be true. If someone with a different point of view somehow strays into your territory, the tribe has more than enough voices to shout her down, and if you can’t win on logic, you can win on volume (because lots of loud people equals consensus, right?) or you can always drive her away with personal attacks. And ad hominem is always harder to see when you are the one using it.

You never listen to what your opponents say, you listen to what your friends say your opponents say… and those arguments are always easy to shut down.

With only a few tactics, you can drive away words, opinions, or even facts that might challenge your tribal identity. Tribalism disguised as truth is a powerful and subtle thing.  http://www.lairdwilcox.com/news/hoaxerproject.html

And there is a nobility to it. Patriotism is tribalism. Taking a stand against all comers for the good of the team is classically praiseworthy. “My country right or wrong.” Generally, surrounding yourself with a tribe suppresses doubt. I believe it actually suppresses the part of the brain that analyzes doubt. But when the doubts well up, loyalty is a virtuous way to slap them down. Not thinking, not challenging, is not only easier, it will be reinforced and praised by the tribe.

And all the while the tribe will insist that the tribe and only the tribe is smart, is logical, is beyond and above politics and emotion. “So say we all.”

http://thespeaker.co/group-acts-love-group-hate-motive-attribution-asymmetry-explained-nu-research/

Rule number four: Groupthink is rewarded and thinking for yourself is punished. It’s not always that simple. Tribalism is at its strongest when you believe that you are a persecuted minority. If everyone is out to get you, solidarity is even more important. Viciousness in defense of “the truth” is warranted. And with this attitude it is easy to see anyone trying to be reasonable as an enemy, offering unwelcome data as an attack, and the most reasonable possible debate as oppression and persecution.

And maybe that’s rule number 4.1: From the tribal point of view, anything that doesn’t confirm the preconception is seen as an attack and anyone who disagrees is seen as an oppressor. And that fully justifies the tribe in attacking and oppressing even more, in “self-defense.” In my experience, weak individuals or groups who get the tiniest bit of power become far more vicious bullies than strong people ever do.

So here’s rule #5, and it’s a sad and horrible thing: The truth has no tribe. There are a lot of reasons for that. First and foremost, tribalism is based on difference and there simply isn’t any difference in the truth. I teach that flurry attacks result in an O-O bounce so that the threat’s OODA loop never resets and he freezes. Richard Dmitri teaches “The Shredder.” Long ago, when a boxer tried to take me out I shot both forearms between his attacking fists in a triangle shape into the side of his neck. It was a flinch that came from nowhere, it worked beautifully, and I’ve been teaching it ever since. Tony Blauer had a genius idea, researched his ass off, and created SPEAR. Whatever our backgrounds, however we name things, there will always be a convergent evolution towards what works. Because bad tactics get people killed. So many of us will arrive at similar truths, and if everybody is teaching the same things, it gets really hard to say, “We’re better than you guys.”

But the tribalism needs to say it. So if the techniques are same, you can focus on the research methods. Or the membership. Or the training methods. Or the buzzwords. To be different. And if you’re different enough you can call the other tribe wrong even if their stuff is just the same.

The second reason the truth has no tribe is because tribal identities are more powerful than individual identities and people who feel sure, in general, seem stronger than those who admit uncertainty.

It takes a lot of maturity? discipline? humility? to say, “I don’t know” or “I was wrong.” But the ability to say those words is the essence of seeking truth. It’s very hard to build a tribe around the embrace of ambiguity. Trust me– that’s exactly what I’m trying to do with CRGI (and that, right there, may be a sign of the tribal brain sneaking in).  But small numbers embracing doubt will always be at a disadvantage from big numbers embracing certainty.

Except– and this is an article of faith for me, I have no stats to back it up– except embracing doubt and seeking truth will most often have truth on it’s side. And I find that powerful. To quote Avi Nardia, “I’d rather be a student of Reality than a master of Illusion.”