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SELF WORTH - The First Rung of the Self Protection Ladder |
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Recently I’ve been researching and putting lots of material together for some new Women Only Self Defence Days. As it has often been said, the best way to learn something is to teach it to someone else, and it’s been during the research and presentation of this material that I have discovered new insights and new foods for thought. For example, we all now understand what is meant by the “Soft Skills” of self protection. “Soft” in the sense that they are the non-physical elements of self protection, and most certainly not soft in their application or implementation. In fact, I would argue the “soft skills” of Awareness, Assessment and Avoidance are often more difficult to put into practice than the physical. Certainly the action of Avoidance takes a lot of self control and will invariably leave you with a personal battle with your ego that will go on for far longer than the actual event would have done if you’d chosen the physical route. Then we get to the 3A’s of self protection, as I have just mentioned, the Awareness, Assessment and Avoidance. I will go into each of these areas in a lot more detail in future articles but I guess it’s sufficient for me to say that I am now taking the 3A’s a few steps further into 4A’s and 5A’s and beyond, but again, this is for another article and I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise of what all of those other A’s could refer to. Peter Consterdine talks about Expectation in his Street Safe book. Before we will ever consider putting into place our Awareness and Assessment skills, we must first have an element of Expectation. I have termed this “Acceptance”, not only to fit into my alphabetical? ‘A’s’ analogy, but also because it’s imperative that we Accept that today could be the day we are attacked. Now this needs to be kept into perspective and not allowed to escalate into paranoia. The last thing I want anyone to do is immediately become scared of their own shadow and lock themselves away for fear that today WILL be the day that they are violently attacked. However, without some element of Acceptance, we will never have a reason to implement good awareness skills as we will simply believe that they are not required. When we get into our car we all, almost out of habit, put on our seat belt. I, for one, certainly feel like something is not quite right if I drive without “clunking and clicking before every trip”, as the advert went. Yes, I am showing my age now. However, when we put on our seat belt, we don’t then set off on our journey in a state of paranoia that we’re going to crash at every turn or that the next car to pass us is going to drive straight through us. It is a passive way of protecting ourselves should an unfortunate event happen. And of course, we then use our constant awareness and assessment measure to ensure we avoid accidents throughout the course of our journey. My point is however, that, we must still have some level of acceptance that it is possible we could have a crash at some point and that the application of our seat belt is a good precautionary measure. This is no different for having an Acceptance that today May be, and I use the word May rather than WILL, the day that we are confronted and need to act. So, Acceptance is a vital state of mind and a pivotal element to good self protection. Without it, we subconsciously have no reason to apply any of the other A’s of the soft skills. So why have I wittered on about Acceptance, when I titled this article “Self-Worth”? Well , hand in hand with Acceptance, there must live a good reason Why. I don’t mean that we need to understand Why someone would want to attack me. I mean we need to develop a very strong reason WHY we would want to protect ourselves. It may sound a strange thing to say, but without a reason why, we will not place any importance, or urgency, in the act of protecting ourselves, and as we have just said, the first act of self protection is Acceptance and then Awareness. You’d be surprised how many people I meet on seminars who struggle to switch on raw, naked, aggression when asked to do so. It’s very difficult to learn to turn a level of aggression on and off like a tap. One trick I use to help people focus the mind and get into that state of pure emotive aggression is to give them a good reason to do it. Allow them to make up an internal story that demands extreme aggression, such as, getting them to think their children are going to be severely attacked or their partner is going to be raped or murdered if they don’t step up and switch on. Why does this work so well? So what I am saying here is that, as individuals, we need to learn to have the same levels of self-worth. Nietzsche said something like:- What he means is, providing we have a big enough reason why we should defend ourselves, we can suffer and face any amount of odds and challenges. This too can be translated to absolutely anything you want to do or achieve. For example, if I have a big enough reason Why I should lose weight, then I will be able to handle and deal with any amount of craving or discomfort or effort required in dietary and exercise control. By using the trick of defending your loved ones as the thing you need to do, then immediately you have a big enough reason why, which is the love and worth you place on them. Ask your loved ones would they do the same for you and I’d like to think the feelings would be reciprocated. This means that someone else feels you have sufficient level of worth to put you first, so by default, you must actually be worth that much. Confused yet? What I’m trying to say in all of this waffle is that, to have a successful self protection package we must first have Acceptance that it can happen to us, and then in parallel to this we must have self worth, which is our reason Why. With both of these elements in place you have the basis for great personal security. You can now proceed with your awareness and assessment drills and, should the worst happen, you will have a big enough reason to give you the powerhouse of emotive energy to act and survive the event victorious. Self worth can literally be the difference between curling up in a ball and taking the hiding of your life, once it gets too frightening and painful, or gritting your teeth, digging in and crawling your way back to your feet and fighting with a ferocity that scares their ancestors. Self Protection, Begins with the Self, and when you start to value yourself, then you have your reason to defend yourself, or more importantly, you will have your reason to avoid the confrontation and fight with your ego instead.
Stay Safe and Have Fun Al x
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