Mentally Prepared
We have touched on this topic in past blogs posts like “Training To Win” (October 2021), “Tactical Mental Training” (June 2021), and “Automaticity” (October 2019), just to name a few, but I think this topic is worth revisiting again.
Emotional Control
There is no doubt law abiding citizens can get emotional when it comes to dealing with criminals that want to steal their stuff. Unfortunately, that emotion usually perpetuates as anger or frustration. Allowing these emotions to control your actions can lead to irrational or unpredictable behavior. Think about it, when have you ever reacted out of anger with a spouse, child or family member and didn’t end up regretting it? If you let these emotions control how you respond in a criminal encounter, you may find yourself injured, killed or facing legal issues.
Keeping your emotions in check during a potentially dangerous encounter helps you to think clearly and respond appropriately. It is also an important aspect of being able to prevail in a violent encounter. The importance of emotional control is detailed extremely well in John Hearn’s “Who Wins, Who Loses and Why” lecture. This lecture has also been included in several self-defense books including “Straight Talk on Armed Defense: What the Experts Want You to Know” edited by Massad Ayoob. This book should be a must ready for any serious self-defender. If you come face to face with a violent criminal and there is no other alternative, you have to flip the switch and be mentally prepared to respond with overwhelming force. This may be hard for the law abiding citizen to accomplish. Most of us don’t engage with violent people on a regular basis and we naturally try to avoid confrontations. So it is hard for us to imagine becoming physically violent and killing another human being. Good, moral, prudent people just don’t think like that, but we may be facing someone who does, and that can put us at a huge disadvantage. In hopes of leveling the field, we need to be mentally prepared to meet violence with violence.
How to Mentally Prepare
Fortunately, we don’t have to engage in violence in order to mentally prepare for violence. Our brains are remarkably suited to visualize a situation in order to better prepare for action. This is evident in every sport where athletes use visualization to physiologically prepare for competition. We can do the same thing in self-defense. If you have attended a formal firearms training classes you may have heard of the color codes of awareness. These classes usually present a watered down version of Colonel Jeff Cooper’s Mental Conditioning. Cooper who is regarded as the founder of the modern technique in the use of a pistol for personal protection, covers how to be better mentally prepared in the video AT THIS LINK. In it, Colonel Cooper talks specifically about “mental triggers” and how to use them to be prepared to respond.
The topic of mental preparation often gets overlooked in firearms training classes. Partially because it is not the flashy topic that puts students in seats, and partially because time and resources for most gun owners is limited, and there is only so much information you can cram into a 1 or 2 day course. Cooper’s video linked above is from a Gunsite 250 course, a pre-requisite for all students wanting to attending the school. Cooper felt it was so important that he required every student to take the class first, which is a 5 full days in length. If Cooper included it in his initial class, then I think it is worth taking the time to watch. Mental training for self-defense could literally be the difference between life and death, so hopefully you will take advantage of the resources above to help be better mentally prepared if the need arises.
