Rethinking how we conceiver of mindset in self defense.
I’m reading the second book written by Maija Soderholm. She is associated with Rory Miller and his group of people among self-defense and martial arts circles.
Thing is a very common talking point in self defense circles is attack first, attack hard before they do it to you. Then when caught in shit, don’t give up, have an unbeatable mind.
What is interesting about Maija’s book is that yes, she does talk about and advocate unyielding force and will power, to be a predator that ambushes someone who attacks you.
But she asks the question: What if I attack hard, attack first, but he weathers it? And what if I have a strong willpower and I never give up, but his will is stronger? What do I do?
Her strategy largely is about learning to fight in a way that is dynamic and realistic but with a focus on minimizing damage, because your willpower can’t resurrect a broken body. Someone with inferior willpower may have a bigger body that simply can take more damage than your own, or their will and body is greater.
So what do you do?
You make sure no matter the scenario you avoid damage in the middle of a fight, and your think more dynamically, learn to read the person in front of you. If they have a strong will, that doesn’t mean they aren’t predictable. The flexible mind can be greater than the strong mind.
What’s ironic is the very argument that tells the reader to make the mind more flexible rather than strong is actually making it easier to have a strong mind, a mind that doesn’t give up. Because if you are attacked, or you feel a threat and you pre-emptively attack, you can stay calm and keep fighting because you may never stop thinking or problem solving.
Because if you experience anything, whether conflict or life and death, if your first instinct to always be unpredictable and figure things out in your training or natural instinct, your not surrendering. Your active, your making decisions.
Someone who has a weak mind may find a way to have an attack mindset.
On a similar but seperate point, her strategy on how to think when “Strike hard, strike before they do, be a predator,” fails against a superior predator, applies to her sense of awareness and danger management, prevention.
Because frankly, if you get jumped or you have to jump someone before they jump you, you’ve already failed on many levels in self defense.
The proble solving mindset, what she calls the “Hustler” is constantly reading people, constantly figuring out how they think, how they tick. What culture and what made them who they are.
Thus scenarios even anti-social or dangerious situations someone finds them in is constantly being analyzed, read, and if you’re smart something always trained for.
The result is a constant state of awareness without any effort, it’s a default way of being. Very hard to really screw up in get in the wrong place at the wrong time, and when you are, you recognize it’s the wrong place and the wrong time, and you act decisively. Either you become the predator, or things grow wrong and you hustle the predator. But your always hustling, always figuring things out, always problem solving.
Always READING people and situations.
Because the hustler reads. Maija’s books, including the one on fighting techniques is heavily about reading.
The First book:
Filipino martial arts is about accepting gifts, and Maija’s style is no different for sword play. But she always gives false gifts or puts the in places people don’t think about, while she is adept in making sure she never accepts a false gift, she reads her opponent well, only taking the gifts that are real in a context of violence where misdirection by attackers is common. Training is about problem solving and awareness. Through reading. Have I used the word reading enough yet?
The second book is also about reading, but not attacks or evil intent before an attack, but is about reading the environment and the people. The entire world view, the examination of the different styles of violence and how to think of them, the motivations for them. It especially talks about violence holistically. The predator mindset it a part of self-defense circles, but she says it’s only a piece of violence. A very big piece, one of the most effective, but a piece.
This has turned a little bit into a rant. I’ll come back and edit this again.
But Maija’s books are worth reading for anyone interested in strategy, cunning and self defense.
I’d close off in saying that some people would say “PROBLEM SOLVING IN SELF DEFENSE? YOU DON’T HAVE TIME TO THINK!”
Yes you don’t often have time to think, but you can think and problem solve during training, and you can develop instincts to be dynamic and unpredictable during danger. You can walk around the world being aware without even trying to be aware, without paranoia. Because your always seeing things as they are, or trying to at least.
Maija and many other people say those that are ‘violence professionals’ have a switch. Some people have to build up to violence, a slow burn. But the best could go ‘dark’ in an instant. Part of that is the dynamic mindset, to recognize a threat right away, to understand it as a solution to a problem.
I don’t get the impression Maija is at all against a predator mindset, to ambush and overwhelm with numbers and pressure, tactices.
SHe’s simply saying sometimes the person your dealing with is a better predator.
She simply says human beings have beaten the shit out of predators meaner and more sneaky than us, because we’re more aware, and we’re more crafty.
Lions, Bears and any other animals will keep fighting until they are dead. Many of them have hunted and stalked people, ambushed human beings. But they were on the endangered list, because of us. It’s by our whim they made a come back, no matter how strong their will to survive and fight. We won because we understand them better. We don’t even get in the position where they can sneak up on us and hunt us, because they are predictable.
But from an animals perspective, humans are very unpredictable. They can’t read us.
But we have entire books on their behavior and habits, even their eccentricities.
They often have stronger wills to survive than us. Predators are kings at mindset. But we have the more flexible minds.
What's the deal with Adeel? 