Stay Cool To Defend Yourself

“The most important lesson.  Anger doesn’t give you an edge, it blunts it. Make your adversary angry. The madder he gets, the more chances you have he’ll make a mistake.”

• – Duncan MacLeod

This quote from the Highlander television series reminded me of something I wrote in Hard-Won Wisdom From The School Of Hard Knocks: How To Avoid A Fight And Things To Do When You Can’t Or Don’t Want To. When I was writing about the mind being the most important ingredient, I wrote about staying cool.  So here is an excerpt from the book:

Stay Cool

Often you’ll hear people say that you need to get mad when you’re in a confrontation. Or someone will say, “When I get mad, watch out!” We even saw this in Rocky 3, when Paulie said to Apollo, “He’s not getting killed, he’s getting mad.” I’ll agree with this train of thought to a certain degree. But it has to be controlled anger.

I went down in a pile once outside of my barracks in South Korea. I got into it with a few guys from a different platoon, and I was going to town. They had me outnumbered and were all over me, so I was hitting whoever I could. They were guys from my company, so this was a fight and not combat. I wasn’t throwing throat shots or trying to maim people seriously, and they weren’t out to kill me either. Naturally, it didn’t take long for some guys from my platoon to join the ruckus and start pulling bodies off of me (see Chapter 20, “Fighting More than One,” for more on this). The point I want to make is that I didn’t hit any of my platoon members. I was angry, but I was in control. I knew what I was hitting and refrained from striking any of those who were trying to break it up, and I had the sense to not throw blows that would seriously hurt people. You always have to remember the difference between fights and combat.

The out-of-control fighter with head tucked down and arms a flailing is always easier to beat than the fighter who keeps his cool and uses controlled anger to his advantage. (Assuming everything else is equal.) This self-control is not only used to control your anger but to control your fear also. Fighting is scary. When you’re outnumbered or outgunned it can be damn scary. I know tougher men than I who admit they soiled their pants in certain circumstances. (Dr. Michael Asken, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, and Loren W. Christensen write about this natural biological reaction in their excellent book Warrior Mindset: Mental Toughness Skills for a Nation’s Peacekeepers.) But you mustn’t show it – or let it hamper you in any way. You must control this fear and do what has to be done.

Learning to remain cool comes easier to some than others. It seems that some individuals just naturally face emergencies and difficult situations with a level head, and others freak out at the stupidest things. Just going through emergencies will increase your ability to remain cool. The first-time intern may lose it when an emergency patient is wheeled into the ER, but the experienced doctor just goes to work and does what he needs to do to save a life.

Athletic competition will aid a person in gaining the ability to stay calm under pressure. Joe Montana was definitely smooth and level-headed when he was out on the playing field. If he hadn’t had the ability to remain calm under the immense pressure he faced, he never would have led his team to so many victories, ensuring himself in a place in the Hall of Fame as one of the all-time great quarterbacks in the NFL.

Behavioral scientists have discovered that the mind cannot tell the difference between events vividly imagined and those actually happening. This discovery led to a lot of work in visualization to increase athletic performance. If you vividly imagine stressful situations and confrontations where you remain cool and level-headed, you will increase your ability to do the same when it’s for real. The key is to actively play out the entire scenario in your mind. Vividly see all of the happenings in your imagined situation. Visualize it realistically and work with possible solutions to things that may go wrong. Think of things your opponent may do to mess you up and what the realistic options in that case are. Don’t just visualize yourself Bruce Leeing a whole herd of attackers without a scratch to yourself. That’s not realistic visualization. For this drill to be useful, you need to do it like all other training. Train for realism and train for the Murphy factor – things will go wrong. This prior thought will better prepare you for an actual emergency.

Staying cool will enable you to think, and that is one of the most important things you can do in a fight. If you don’t think, you’ll wind up hurt or dead.

For more great stories and lessons on self-defense, check out the Revised and Expanded edition of Hard-Won Wisdom From The School Of Hard Knocks: How To Avoid A Fight And Things To Do When You Can’t Or Don’t Want To. Click here for more information!