Welcome to Episode #96 of the Fight for a Happy Life podcast, “Decision and Action.”
It’s common in self-defense training to focus on the speed of your punches and kicks… but how fast can you make a decision and take action?
Like it or not, no matter how good you are at performing your martial arts techniques, they won’t help if you freeze up or hesitate under pressure. That’s why we must train to pull the trigger and make things happen as much as possible.
Join me for a story about taking action and, more importantly, some tips on how to maximize your safety and success in self-defense and life.
In short–reflect, recreate, and rehearse!
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Decision and Action in Self-Defense
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This podcast builds on a theme from Episode #72, “Are You Ready to Fight?” You can find that discussion here.
As always, if you’d like to keep the conversation going, feel free to leave a comment here or through my Contact Page.
TRANSCRIPT
Howdy, howdy. Ando here from Happy Life Martial Arts. Welcome to episode #96 of Fight for a Happy Life, the show that believes even a little martial arts makes life a whole lot better.
Today’s episode is really a follow-up to episode #72. That episode was titled Are You Ready to Fight? And in that podcast, I talked about this young man who walked into the dojo one day and was calling me out to fight, wanted to test his Jeet Kune Do.
I talked him down. We did not end up fighting. Sorry to disappoint any violence lovers out there, but the wise way was to walk away on that one. However, that whole episode, the theme basically broke down to preparation. It was asking you as a martial arts student, if you’re living a lifestyle of a martial artist, or is it just a hobby to you?
The big difference being, you can train techniques a couple times a week. That’s one way to go. Or you can be preparing yourself at all times to defend yourself from anyone, any place, at any time. And once you go through that deep conversation with yourself about preparation, that’s going to affect how you dress, how you eat, where you sit, how you move through the world, how you deal with people, how you speak.
That’s when martial arts really becomes your lifestyle, becomes part of who you are. And I wish that for you, because I do think the habits that you get in a martial arts context will only help you in real life, outside the dojo, outside your school.
So train hard and then take those benefits and carry them with you everywhere. When you do that, you’re always training. And that’s the secret to being great at things. You’re always training.
Now, like I said, we only really talked about preparation in that episode. And I didn’t really talk about how to take the next step into action. You can prepare all you want, but when the moment comes that you have to do something, if you’re not able to make a decision and execute, well, then you’ll just die very well prepared. You didn’t do anything with those tools. They sure were sharpened very well, but you never swung that axe, and you never killed the monster.
So today I want to go into a little detail on a simple way you can practice how to make decisions and how to take action more effectively.
And to do that, I have a big story about taking action, and then a little story that I think will lead into some advice about how to practice taking action. So let’s get into it.
The big story. Okay. This happened a few years ago. A couple holidays ago, my family met for a holiday dinner. So we were at, I don’t want to disclose actual locations, in case there’s anyone looking for us. But trust me when I tell you, it was a family establishment. This was not a place people go looking for trouble.
It was also broad daylight, very happy environment. But there was a restaurant portion of this place, and then there was the kind of the waiting area, which was like a lobby/bar. So definitely have a couple of drinks before you go in to have your meal. You get the idea.
So anyway, the place is pretty packed, and there’s one guy who just did not fit the scene. He didn’t seem to have any family with him. He was on his own, which was already unusual. He was kind of scruffy looking, whereas this was kind of a nicer place. Most people looked kind of put together. And he was drunk. And this was in the middle of the day, like I said, broad daylight, and he was already having his own party, let’s say.
Now, I’m not judging his drinking, but I am judging his belligerent behavior, because this guy was going around and being inappropriate with every female he could spot. So that meant he was testing boundaries with my wife, my sister, my mother, and every woman in the place.
The bartender, not much security, he’s still serving him drinks, no policing going on there at all. So, let me get to it.
At some point, dinner was coming close, this guy was being obnoxious, and we decided to move our family outside to wait instead of being inside. Because no one was doing anything, and it was just annoying to see this guy and hear this guy.
Now, when we moved outside, there was only a very small little patio. I think it was just for smokers, which was fine, my mom smokes, so great, we’ll go outside. But really, this was like a very tight space. Maybe a couple of cafe tables, maybe could fit a dozen, fifteen people at most out there, and there were already people out there. They had already escaped this belligerent guy by just kind of sitting outside. They weren’t even smoking.
So anyway, we squeeze outside. And I should say, it’s my wife, my sister, my brother, and my mother. Okay, my brother, let me just back up. His name is JD. You may have heard my interview with him in episodes 26 and 27. Cool guy, he’s a fighter. He’s bigger than me. He’s probably the reason I got into martial arts. Because as the older brother, I was losing a lot of my food.
Anyway, we’re together. And so we’re all squeezed out on this little patio. And you could see through the window what this belligerent guy was doing. And sure enough, he follows us out. I don’t mean personally targeting us necessarily, but he was already getting bored perhaps inside.
So he follows us out. And like I said, there’s really no room out here anymore for anyone else. Everyone could see this guy coming, and you could just feel a collective groan, because nobody wants to deal with this guy.
So the guy comes out, and there’s really almost no room for him even to step into the space. So he’s kind of in the door, out of the door. There are people behind him. They don’t want to be near him. We’re just down about six feet over this way, seven feet this way.
And again, he’s being, again, belligerent. He’s just being inappropriate and obnoxious. So I can already feel my brother kind of getting a little fluffed up, a little bothered by this. We all are. But he’s a little quicker on the trigger. And I mean that in a positive way. He’s someone who has worked in law enforcement.
Actually, go back. His first job, I think, was as a bouncer. Even before I think it was legal for him to be working, he worked the door at some bars back where we grew up. So he had done bouncing. He was a prison guard. He was a sheriff’s deputy. He’s been a fighter his whole life in martial arts. So he’s seen this kind of situation happen before. I have not had that career path, so I’m a little slower on the draw.
Anyway, guy’s in the door. Belligerent. Nobody wants him there. Someone must have complained though inside because finally a representative of the restaurant came outside to handle this guy. But wait, they sent out a five foot female with a walkie talkie. She was only armed with a blazer, a very nice blazer, and a walkie talkie.
She was about five feet high and must have weighed, I don’t know, 110, 115 pounds. So this was not a formidable voice coming out of authority. And this guy was bigger, you know, he’s probably 6’1, something like that, and taking a lot of space.
So she comes out and she says, Sir, you know, leave these people alone. Please step back inside. Please come back inside. She keeps repeating this message, but there’s nothing to back it up. She’s just standing there, kind of like a mouse, beep, beep, beep, beep. And he’s just talking over her, looking over her, and just disregarding it.
So at this moment, I’m thinking like, Oh, someone has to do something now. This has gone too far, right? He’s bothering everybody, who knows where this is going to go? He’s being belligerent, he’s starting to get in people’s space, and he’s ignoring authority. This moment is just frozen, nobody knows what to do.
So I start saying to my brother, as we’re kind of making our wall of don’t come over here, I start to say something like, so how do you want to play the–
And it’s too late. My brother’s already stepped forward, locks up the guy’s arm, grabs him, marches him right back inside the restaurant, deposits him in a big empty space, and lets him go.
Now, this all happens very, very fast. While my brother’s marching him back in, the security guard or employee or hostess, I don’t know what her title would be, definitely not security, she’s yelling at him, Hey, hey, let him go! You can’t touch him, sir! Let him go.
Which is the same thing that security guards yelled at me and my wife when we held down that guy breaking into cars a couple of podcasts ago. So this seems to be a theme. Even the people who are sent as authority figures don’t really know what to do when something bad happens. They’re not bad people, but they’re not trained for this.
They don’t recognize the dangers, they don’t make decisions, and they don’t take action. That’s why I want to talk about it. The only person around there that recognized what was going on, made a decision and took action, was my brother, JD. And, oddly enough, can you believe this? He then got treated like the bad guy.
We ended up staying for dinner, they didn’t kick us out, they didn’t go that far. But suddenly, this giant chef appears. Much bigger than my brother. This big guy comes out, and during our dinner, just to glare at us and stand up against the wall and watch us eat dinner. As if we’re the troublemakers, as if my brother was the one who started the trouble.
The belligerent guy, I don’t even know what happened to him. After he got marched in, I think he just stayed in the bar. But I’m not kidding, we got followed through the lobby, into the restaurant, and then the whole time we sat there for dinner, that chef stood there, or sous chef, or whoever he was, this big dude, just staring at my brother, like, Don’t start any more trouble. So, bizarre.
But my point here is, the edge that my brother had over everybody was that he had already seen this situation play out, I don’t know how many times, way more than me. As a bouncer, how many times do you see somebody drunk, being belligerent, and needs to be escorted out of the establishment? That’s part of the job.
Whether you’re a prison guard, a police officer, any of these types of jobs, where you’re dealing with people who have crossed social boundary lines, they’re not being polite anymore, they’re beginning to show some types of threatening behavior, and they’re not responding to authority, they’re not listening to social cues or direct commands from the owners of an establishment or their representatives– that’s a problem. And we all know it.
Inside, everybody’s thinking someone should do something. If you have training, you’re the person who’s supposed to do something. Like I said, the staff at the restaurant did not have that kind of training. There was no bouncer to be seen, except for this mystery sous chef who shows up after the fact. Great.
The only person who had a clear picture of what was going on was my brother. And the speed with which he could recognize the situation, make a decision about what needs to be done right now, and then to execute, to take the action, to grab that guy and move him in, didn’t hurt him, no problem. He was the only one who was ready to do all of that.
But it gets you to think, I hope, gets me to think, well, what if the situation had been even worse? What if the guy had pulled a gun? What if the guy had pulled a knife? What if he suddenly put his hands on you or someone in your party?
Let’s just keep playing out the scenario. At some point, you, everybody, would take action. The question is, how far does the situation have to go before you finally say, that’s enough? And again, I’m not saying you have to wait until it’s the worst case scenario. Well, now he’s got a gun to my head, I guess I’m going to do something now.
I think a lot of martial arts make a big mistake. Because that’s kind of where they start their scenario training. All right, you’re on the ground and they’ve pinned your hands, go! Well, how did you get there?
I’d like to think that with awareness, you can prevent most problems, right? This goes back to the other podcast. Just living a lifestyle of a martial artist, so that you can recognize danger, sense danger, and prepare for it sooner than all the people who are not training for danger, right?
Outside in that little patio, my mother doesn’t train in self-defense. My sister doesn’t train in self-defense. These other people apparently had no background in anything. So we’re all just quiet, waiting to see what happens, even if it happens to us.
So at some point, if you’re a martial artist, I think you should be separate from the rest of the people in the world who don’t train, because you should see danger faster, decide what to do faster, and follow up and take action faster.
That is the speed that will save you and save people around you. That all makes sense, right? Okay. So now the little story.
Let me tell you how I think you can practice this type of thing. Because it’s not easy. Most of us don’t have career paths or lifestyles that encounter bad guys often. You probably don’t have to raise your voice very often. You probably don’t have to punch people in the face very often or wrestle people to the ground and handcuff them. Most of us don’t do that.
Yet, if you’re a martial artist, you’re practicing for what happens if all the safety systems fail, and now you’re on the ground, how do I get out of a choke? How do I choke them? But what happened to all that other stuff? All the chances that you had to talk your way out of it? Or to escape the problem? Or to bring in allies and try to form a coalition of some kind? To overpower the other person?
Watch out for this danger in the martial arts of only preparing for worst-case scenarios. That’s it. Because then you’re only going to think like that. And the problem there is that there’s a gap. There’s a gap between here’s you living your normal life, everything’s fine, and now here’s you on the ground trying to remember which technique is going to help you get out of a choke and reverse that situation and get back to your feet.
This gap in the middle, that’s what we’re talking about today. Being able to not just see a bad situation forming, but make the decisions that hopefully can prevent it or de-escalate it. And then if you can’t do that, being able to make the wise decision to do what to do and let your body move and do it, whether that means punching or running. Right?
Because every situation is different. I’m not here to judge your decision, but I am going to tell you that it’s really important that part of your training includes decision-making and action-taking. It’s not a guarantee you’re going to survive.
Does it mean you always win? Absolutely not. But I really do fear freezing up or waiting too long and then getting hurt because of it. You prepared for decades as a martial artist, technique-wise, but you didn’t prepare to make a decision to trust your judgment, to move forward with that plan, whatever it is.
So now here’s a little story. A little story that led me to practicing exactly what I’m talking about and hopefully you can do the same thing. So I was here, my final days in this dojo. And I was alone in the building. It was nighttime. I was locking up for the day.
There’s a window out in the back. And the only thing back there is my car and the dumpster. That’s it. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the two apart. So there’s no reason for anyone to be back there. It’s just a place for me to park my car.
But out through the window, out of the corner of my eye, I saw some motion. So I kind of, like a ninja, tiptoed over to see what was going on. And sure enough, there was a young dude in his 20s, and he was standing behind my car right next to the passenger window.
He was kind of hunched over, fumbling for something like this in his hoodie jacket. So I’m aware that this is not usual. He shouldn’t be there. And I made a decision to step outside, to confront him. Okay, I didn’t say fight him, but to confront him.
So I make a rustle with the keys that were in the door. So maybe that would scare him off. Maybe that would be enough. That’s a nice warning.
I jangled the door a little bit and I opened it up. And I chose to put on kind of my Batman face and use my Batman voice. And I said, Hey! Something like that. Can I help you with something?
And he jumped. Very jumpy. He was startled. And his response was odd, but he said this. I’m just trying to get something out of my pocket. Right. That’s an odd thing to say. I can see that you’re getting something out of your pocket. I’m not sure if I want to know what’s in the pocket. I really just want to know why you’re behind the building where I’m working, standing next to my car.
Did you just break into the window? Are you about to break in the window? What are you doing here, man? This is private property.
So anyway, he says, Oh, I’m just trying to get something out of my pocket. So I just keep staring at him. That’s my choice. I stand my ground. He’s maybe, I don’t know, 15 feet away. And I just keep staring at him and staring at him. And he’s kind of fumbling. He moves back around the car and he walks off.
Not a super exciting story, but that’s the story. What happens to the guy? Well, he ends up just walking over to the next parking lot, gets into a corner. I see him pull out a paper bag, some kind of spray paint or something like that. He’s huffing. He’s just looking for a quiet place to do some drugs. Sorry to see that, but at least I didn’t get shot.
So anyway, at that moment, I’m here in the dojo. I’ve got some punching bags here. And in that moment, I recognize, like, Whoa, okay, hang on a second. My heart’s beating a little bit faster. I had a little bit of that feeling in your stomach because I don’t know what’s going on here, trying to figure this out. And I realized, as always, this is the best moment to practice right now.
It’s the end of the day. I’m already tired. I already taught Zoom classes for the day. But I know that this was a lesson. So immediately, I start playing out that scene right there in that parking lot where the guy was standing. And I just start walking it through again.
How did I come out? How was I standing? What was my tone of voice? What was the effect? And would I have done anything differently?
In this case, everything worked out fine. So I was happy with my choices. But as I was standing there in the parking lot, I realized, Ah, you know what? I never really looked over to my left.
He was on my right. Door was there. I never really looked this way to see if maybe he had a buddy. Maybe there was a group of these guys doing drugs. I didn’t really notice that. So that pointed out to me, Yeah, you should have a little more awareness. If you’re going to step out and do that, I should also be scanning the area.
So that was just a good, in the moment, little quick lesson. Don’t forget that. The other things I felt pretty good about, I was watching him closely. I was very careful about watching his hands in case something came out. But again, I got lucky. Nothing bad came out.
But in that moment, while I still felt that vibe, I imagined like, well, what if he had a knife? What would I have done right from here? Well, I’m still holding the door and I can feel it. All right, if he had a knife, I could have shut the door, try to lock it really fast. That’s one option.
I could have shut the door, run inside, gotten a weapon, defended myself. Maybe I could have done that. Could have jumped inside, called the phone, called the police. I started running through options because that’s what training is. I’m running through options. What if, what if, what if.
After I got done in the parking lot, trying to figure out, well, where could I have run? Could I have run out this way? Where are the next escapes? Should I, could I have made it to that corner of the parking lot? Could I have scaled that wall if I needed to? If he had started shooting, is there, what’s the closest cover I could have gotten in between me and him? Just playing all that out, playing that stuff out.
But then the next level of this was I locked the door and I came back inside. There’s a mirror here and I got my bags. So then I just started rehearsing, again, the same situation, but with lots of different endings to it. I went over to the mirror and I practiced.
I mean, I do this a lot when I teach, especially with the little kids. Using your voice to set boundaries. But delivering it to this guy at that moment, I thought, let me just rehearse it again. So went into the mirror, started using my Batman voice a little bit.
My voice, right? Don’t make it your Batman voice, make it your voice. Practice saying different things. Back it up. You better back it up. Say whatever you want. I’m going to call the cops. Practice saying something.
Do you know what you would say? What would you say? That’s part of my point. As a martial arts class, you practice techniques a lot, I bet. But what about how you use your words? How about your de-escalation skills? How about scanning for exits and taking them?
There are so many other variables to a self-defense situation than just the actual fighting part. And I fear that some people don’t really do those, don’t practice those things.
So anyway, I’m screaming at myself in the mirror. Then I go over to the punching bag and I pretend the bag is the guy. I pretend he’s got a knife. I pretend that I have to escape the guy through one route or another.I pretend I have to dive and roll and get out of the way for whatever reason, because I’m making up scenarios.
Then I go into worst case, okay, I’m going to engage with this guy. How am I going to enter? If he has it in this hand, okay, let’s go over some of my knife defenses. What can I do? How can I attack from this way? What weapons did I have? Was there anything in my pocket? Let me practice throwing my backpack. You get the idea.
The point was, you should be practicing all aspects of your self-defense skills. Almost all martial artists that I know are nice people, and they almost all agree that they don’t want to fight. They don’t go out looking for fights. They swear that the martial arts is just something to make them as better people, and they’re not looking to hurt anybody. Yet, they’re not practicing how to avoid a fight.
You say you don’t want to fight. So have you practiced avoiding fights lately? Have you practiced talking yourself down in the mirror?
Imagine someone’s a little drugged up or drunk, holding a weapon, coming at you, belligerent. Have you practiced talking someone down lately? Because if you haven’t, you might find yourself in that worst-case scenario where now the guy’s stabbing you, or now you’re being tackled, because you let that gap get too wide. You knew it was a bad situation, you recognized that, but you didn’t practice making a decision of what to do about it.
So you should be practicing, scanning environments, looking for extra dangers beyond the danger that’s coming your way. Looking for improvised weaponry. Looking for a weaponry that’s on you. What can you use? Your shoe, your belt, your jewelry? Throw off your glasses?
You should be thinking about which side do you want to approach somebody on. How do you approach somebody? What’s your voice tone? What’s your posture? Are you looking in a mirror once in a while to see what you actually look like?
Have you ever heard your big voice screaming and yelling commands to a bad guy? Because even that will throw you off in real life if you haven’t rehearsed it. How many people, when they record themselves on video, say, Oh, I hate the sound of my voice. Oh, really? At your niece’s birthday party, you hated the sound of your voice when they caught you singing Happy Birthday?
Oh, imagine how you’re going to feel hearing yourself say, You in the red, call the police! Help, I’m being stabbed! It’s not going to be better. You’re not going to like the sound of your voice then either. In fact, it’s going to distract you because you’ve never heard yourself say things like that. Unless you train.
This is the big message today. I want you to be training. Not just what to do when things go bad, but before things go bad. Preparation is step one.
As martial arts students, we are constantly, I hope, looking for ways to prepare for worst-case scenarios. I don’t look for them. I don’t live a lifestyle where I’m worried about them all the time. I’m not paranoid. But I try to be prepared.
Practical shoes. Not caring too much. Not flashing money around. Not getting drunk in front of strangers or anybody. What clothes I wear? What could be used against me? Do I have improvised weapons at hand in every room of my house, in every my car? How prepared are you if things go bad quickly? How prepared are you emotionally to run if you have to and not think you’re a coward or how other people are going to judge you?
Now, next step. Okay, here comes trouble. How much training can you do now to start making decisions to either run or stand your ground? To use your voice or use your fists? To hold someone, control someone, or end someone? These are all decisions that are going to come up. You may not be ready to make them, but please train to do so.
And again, I’m not saying it’s easy. Some situations are really gray. Should I hit this guy? Should I not hit this guy? Am I making too big a deal out of this? Should I run? Should I not run? Is this really happening? I don’t want this to happen.
Wow. So many voices in your head, especially when stress comes, but there’s not a lot of time, which is why we prepare to make decisions in the training.
So, today, if you can do that, prepare yourself by making decisions faster, trusting your judgment, and then also practicing taking action. If that means in sparring, you don’t hang back as much, but you throw yourself into that fire and just attack more, that’s a great way to exercise your spirit of just take action, even if you get countered, but practice taking the action.
Practice getting off that line and doing something. And that could be for anything. You got dirty dishes, don’t put them down for later. Just do them right now. Make a decision, say, I’m going to do that right now.
You know your car needs an oil change, that’s it. Get on your phone, find the nearest gas station, go get the oil change right now while you’re thinking about it.
Not sure what you want for dinner? Chinese. Live with it.
Practice making decisions fast. Trusting your intuition, trust your judgment, and then live with it.
Make the decision, follow through on it, order the food, wash those dishes, get that oil change, and then live with it. That is the emotional and psychological practice of self-defense every time you do that. And if you do have a stressful situation, you have to confront someone or someone’s confronting you, and you didn’t like the way you felt during that situation, as quickly as you can, if not right in that moment, as soon as you get home or as soon as you get to your next class, run the scenarios in that exact situation.
Use your imagination, have fun with it. This isn’t all about being scared, it’s the opposite. It’s about building up courage so that you don’t have to worry about these types of situations. That I know the next time this happens, I’ve practiced this.
I’m used to hearing my big voice. I have some ideas of what I can say. I’ve seen my body take these positions. I know what it feels like to run. I know what it feels like to fight. This is the benefit of training. And this is what I hope you’ll carry with you everywhere you go.
So that’s the big message today. It’s not enough to prepare. You also have to practice making decisions and taking action. So many martial artists worry about the speed of their technique. How fast can you punch? How fast can you kick? But those things are not going to save you if you’re not fast in your decision making, if you’re not fast in getting off that line and taking action.
Compared to your friends who don’t train, compared to your family members who don’t train, compared to strangers who don’t train in the martial arts, you should see trouble coming sooner than everybody. You should be able to make a decision about what to do for safety’s sake, for survival’s sake, for protection’s sake, faster than everybody around you. And you should be off that mark, either running or fighting or speaking up, faster than anyone because that’s what you do. You’re a martial artist. That’s the lifestyle.
So I hope that will show in everything you do. Be a decisive person who has a reputation for taking action. You don’t just talk about stuff. You don’t wait around hoping someone else is going to do something for you. You do things. You say you’re going to do it and you do it.
And even if it blows up sometime and even if it’s a mistake sometimes, well hey, that just means you learned your next lesson faster than the next person who didn’t do anything. While everyone else is waiting and worried, you took action, you learned from it. So now the next time that you make a decision and take action, you’ll be wiser.
Don’t let a worst case scenario be the first time you made a decision and took action. Let your training guide you to make lots of decisions and take lots of action in every part of your life. Preparation, decision and action. Train all three and I think that’s a heck of a formula for a happy life.
All right, enough preaching, time for practice. Let’s make a deal. You get up right now, I’m going to get up right now, find a mirror or find a bag, and start practicing some scenarios. Start closing that gap and start making some decisions and taking action.
Until I see you next time, my friend, smiles up! Let that smile be your shield and your sword. Keep fighting for a happy life.
