Warrior Mindset: Mental Toughness Skills for a Nation’s Peacekeepers

Warrior MindsetWarrior Mindset: Mental Toughness Skills for a Nation’s Peacekeepers by Michael J. Asken, Ph.D., Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, and Loren W. Christensen, with a Foreword by bestselling author Brad Thor, is an outstanding book for all military, police, martial artists, and anyone else wanting to develop the mindset to deal with high stress situations in order to perform.  As the title suggests, it is aimed at those in the military or law enforcement, the warriors of our society.  However, I do believe the lessons contained in this book will help those outside of these fields as well.

In Thor’s Foreword, he quotes General Patton, “If you are going to win any battle, you have to do one thing.  You have to make the mind run the body.  Never let the body tell the mind what to do.”  I agree with Thor, that this is so true.  When I taught at the 2nd I.D. Scout Sniper School, we used high fatigue to help train the mind, because when the body gets tired, the mind sometimes quits thinking.  This book would have been a great resource back then.  I wish it had been available back then, and am glad it is available today.

The book is extremely well researched, and there are numerous pages of references.  The authors have taken the best from these sources and condensed it down to make it relevant, practical, and easy to digest for those that want to incorporate mental toughness training into their training regimens.  And if you are a soldier or law enforcement officer, you must incorporate mental toughness training into your program.  Your life, and the lives of those you work with, may depend on it.  If you are in athletics or business, these techniques will also help you perform, even though it might not be life or death.

Some of the information in this book will be new to people, and some such as breathing and imagery will be familiar. (Read the book to see how they differentiate imagery from visualization, something I really liked and shared with my Hapkido class one night to reinforce some of the solo training exercises I tell my students to perform when they don’t have training partners available.)  However, even those topics that are familiar are presented in a refreshing and practical way that is directed toward those in high risk occupations, those positions that really need these techniques and strategies to perform at their highest.

I really can’t recommend this book enough.  For any law enforcement officer, soldier, or martial artist, this book is a must read.  For those of us who teach to the above, this book will enable you to be a better instructor as you incorporate mental toughness lessons with your physical teachings.  Highly recommended!

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