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Life did not take over the world by combat,
but by networking.
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Lynn Margulis (Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Microbial Evolution)
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White Exceptionalism: The idea that "I'm one of the good one" puts you in a mindset that you are not racist and therefore you do not have to do anything more to practice antiracism. Exceptionalism gives you a false sense of pride that is really white apathy in disguise.
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Layla F. Saad (Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor)
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Success is end result of many combats.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind)
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From On Combat (2004) Do not expect the combat fairy to come bonk you with the combat wand and suddenly make you capable of doing things that you never rehearsed before. It will not happen.
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Michael J. Asken (Warrior Mindset: Mental Toughness Skills for a Nation's Peacekeepers)
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Getting left of bang requires two things. The first is a mindset and mentality to actively search your area for people that don’t fit in. The second is the knowledge to know what causes someone to stand out from the crowd. I
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Patrick Van Horne (Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life)
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When we understand how these underlying pathways trigger, reinforce, or redirect anxiety’s arousal, then we can combat bad anxiety and make conscious decisions that enable us to steer our own path. When we learn to cue in to our own feelings, thoughts, and behaviors, not only can we shift from bad to good anxiety but we can shift our energy, attitude, mindset, and intentions.
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Wendy Suzuki (Good Anxiety: Harnessing the Power of the Most Misunderstood Emotion)
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There are no guarantees in life, but train in a system that will give you the best chances of survival and then allow your controlled and aggressive combat mind-set to do the rest.
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Paul R. Howe (Leadership and Training for the Fight: Using Special Operations Principles to Succeed in Law Enforcement, Business, and War)
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If your intent is to throw a barrage of dozens of strikes, thinking that an accumulation of tens of strikes will drop the opponent, you have the wrong mindset. GM Maranga is one of the few short stick fighters with the right mindset. He counters with a single strike, but most importantly, his intent is to drop you with that strike. And trust me, he hits very hard. I have a saying: “My goal is not to hit the opponent, but to drop him. Hitting him is a means of achieving that goal.” It's not enough to hit him. It's not enough to hurt him. Getting him to yell “Ouch!” is not going to stop a meth addict with a blade. My aim is to shut him down. So if I'm hitting him but not incapacitating him, my strikes are ineffective. In my mind I am crushing his kneecap. I am fracturing his skull. If he raises an arm or stick to block, I am committed to blasting through it like a runaway dump truck. In my mind I am breaking any upraised arm.
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Darrin Cook (Big Stick Combat: Baseball Bat, Cane, & Long Stick for Fitness and Self-Defense)
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With the importance of resetting the entropy each time a steam engine goes through a cycle, you might wonder what would happen if the entropy reset were to fail. That’s tantamount to the steam engine not expelling adequate waste heat, and so with each cycle the engine would get hotter until it would overheat and break down. If a steam engine were to suffer such a fate it might prove inconvenient but, assuming there were no injuries, would likely not drive anyone into an existential crisis. Yet the very same physics is central to whether life and mind can persist indefinitely far into the future. The reason is that what holds for the steam engine holds for you.
It is likely that you don’t consider yourself to be a steam engine or perhaps even a physical contraption. I, too, only rarely use those terms to describe myself. But think about it: your life involves processes no less cyclical than those of the steam engine. Day after day, your body burns the food you eat and the air you breathe to provide energy for your internal workings and your external activities. Even the very act of thinking—molecular motion taking place in your brain—is powered by these energy-conversion processes. And so, much like the steam engine, you could not survive without resetting your entropy by purging excess waste heat to the environment. Indeed, that’s what you do. That’s what we all do. All the time. It’s why, for example, the military’s infrared goggles designed to “see” the heat we all continually expel do a good job of helping soldiers spot enemy combatants at night.
We can now appreciate more fully Russell’s mind-set when imagining the far future. We are all waging a relentless battle to resist the persistent accumulation of waste, the unstoppable rise of entropy. For us to survive, the environment must absorb and carry away all the waste, all the entropy, we generate. Which raises the question, Does the environment—by which we now mean the observable universe—provide a bottomless pit for absorbing such waste? Can life dance the entropic two-step indefinitely? Or might there come a time when the universe is, in effect, stuffed and so is unable to absorb the waste heat generated by the very activities that define us, bringing an end to life and mind? In the lachrymose phrasing of Russell, is it true that “all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins”?
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Brian Greene (Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe)
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In his Close Quarter Defense School training, Duane Dieter tells the platoon SEALs, “The truth of combat is; to fight is to risk death.
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Dick Couch (The Warrior Elite: The Forging of SEAL Class 228)
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It’s likely too late to get back everything that has been lost to the forces of pipikism—but there is one thing that we must never surrender, and that is the language of anti-fascism. The true meanings of “genocide” and “apartheid” and “Holocaust,” and the supremacist mindset that makes them all possible. Those words we need, as sharp as possible, to name and combat what is rapidly taking shape in the Mirror World—which is an entire cosmology built around claims of superior bodies, superior immune systems, and superior babies, bankrolled by supplement sales, bitcoin, and prenatal yoga.
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Naomi Klein (Doppelganger: a Trip into the Mirror World)
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Free-Play Training The next step that you, the commander, take is to make virtually all training free-play. The best way to train your unit is to replicate the conditions of combat as closely as possible. The best method for doing so is free-play training. One of the salient features of war is that it is a clash of opposing wills. Training that does not incorporate this will not be effective in preparing units for combat. On the rare occasions that troops get the opportunity to act freely as “aggressors” during current training exercises, they unleash their creativity and often cause great difficulty for their opponents. The philosophical goal for training light infantry is to make this “aggressor” mindset the mindset of your men all the time.
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William S. Lind (4th Generation Warfare Handbook)
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This book explores the causes and consequences of Iran’s dangerous increase in strength and aggression as it reacts to the dwindling presence of the United States in the Middle East and takes advantage of the favorable treatment the Iran nuclear deal provided. It will expose Iran’s role as an exporter of terror worldwide and its ultimate ambition to fulfill Shiite Islam’s apocalyptic prophecies of taking over Jerusalem for the arrival of the Mahdi. It will explore the implications of Islam, its tenets and its mind-sets, and will provide an overview of Sharia law, which controls the radical Muslim’s mind, whether he is the Grand Ayatollah of Iran or a foot soldier in ISIS’s jihadist army. Ultimately, however, this book’s goal is to reveal the existence, nature, and danger of the unholy alliance that has developed between Iran, Syria, Russia, and terror organizations around the globe. President Obama has consistently failed to name our enemy. He desires to create a modern international community based on mutual respect, international security, and global prosperity. This is a false narrative, plain and simple. How can these things be achieved when the United States faces a serious security threat? Only after we understand the true nature of the enemy we are facing will we be in a position to effectively combat it.
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Jay Sekulow (Unholy Alliance: The Agenda Iran, Russia, and Jihadists Share for Conquering the World)
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Nothing will hold you back because you expect the unexpected. With a clear vision for your life, you are better prepared to combat any opposition.
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Farshad Asl (The "No Excuses" Mindset: A Life of Purpose, Passion, and Clarity)
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Proper mindset is the most critical of the four pillars. In the simplest terms, people with the proper mindset devote a large volume of time and energy to protecting themselves and their loved ones from the worst-case scenario. Many people will learn to shoot a pistol or study a martial art but their skills decline quickly because they fail to practice every day. Having the proper mindset means being tough, determined, never cutting corners and taking every precaution to ensure survival. In a combat situation, having the proper mindset means being prepared to employ lethal force without hesitation and never quitting during the fight regardless of fear or pain. The training suggestions in this manual will help you develop the proper mindset.
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Special Tactics (Single-Person Close Quarters Battle: Urban Tactics for Civilians, Law Enforcement and Military (Special Tactics Manuals Book 1))
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Getting left of bang requires two things. The first is a mindset and mentality to actively search your area for people that don’t fit in. The second is the knowledge to know what causes someone to stand out from the crowd. I hope that this book and the webpages that accompany these pages help provide you with what you need to do both.
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Patrick Van Horne (Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life)
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Skill Proficiency Once you have the proper mindset and maintain good situational awareness, the next step is to ensure you have the proper skills or “tools” to protect yourself in a combat situation. When striving to improve skill proficiency it is important to choose the best skills and techniques that are simple, effective, easy to perform and can realistically apply to a real-life scenario. Then you must practice these techniques repeatedly until they become second nature. This will maximize the chances that you will respond immediately in a high-stress situation. The central focus of this manual is to help you build skill proficiency.
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Special Tactics (Single-Person Close Quarters Battle: Urban Tactics for Civilians, Law Enforcement and Military (Special Tactics Manuals Book 1))
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Physical Fitness Fitness is a critical but often overlooked factor that affects your chances of survival in a combat situation. Even skilled fighters with the proper mindset and high levels of situational awareness can lose a fight simply because they run out of energy. In order to maintain adequate levels of combat fitness, you do not need to achieve the same fitness level as a professional or Olympic athlete. Rather, the key is merely to stay healthy, maintain a decent level of cardiovascular endurance, running speed, functional strength and coordination. Popular commercial fitness programs don’t always focus on the most useful abilities needed for combat. For example, many people jog but how many also run sprints to build speed? Simply being able to run fast without falling is one of the most critical survival skills in a gunfight or emergency situation, yet most people rarely practice sprinting. For those interested in combat fitness, Special Tactics provides a range of books and courses on the subject.
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Special Tactics (Single-Person Close Quarters Battle: Urban Tactics for Civilians, Law Enforcement and Military (Special Tactics Manuals Book 1))
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The “four pillars” of survival are proper mindset, situational awareness, skill proficiency and physical fitness. These pillars form the basis for success in all combat situations. This manual is not intended only to teach specific techniques but rather to increase the reader’s actual chances of survival and success in a real-life emergency. An expert marksman who is not mentally prepared for the stress of combat and not ready to employ lethal force can lose to an untrained adversary. Lack of situational awareness, even for a moment, can cause experienced military and law enforcement professionals to fall victim to unskilled enemies. Therefore, any combat training program must rest on the following four pillars.
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Special Tactics (Single-Person Close Quarters Battle: Urban Tactics for Civilians, Law Enforcement and Military (Special Tactics Manuals Book 1))
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DEVELOPING A SINGLE COMBAT MIND-SET
I know I have said this before, but I will hammer this point home again: You must firmly believe in what you are doing and why you are doing it. It can be for your country, the organization, your team, or your buddy next to you. It can be that inner drive that says don’t quit and do your best. Whatever motivates you, you need to harness it and keep it strong in its place. Reflect on it as needed to keep your energies channeled for the time that will come for you to earn your keep. The stronger your belief, the stronger your mind-set.
This resolve or strength will also help ensure your survival. With it, you will train harder and push farther than someone who does not have it. Use this strength to develop your own personal beast and then keep it in its place.
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Paul R. Howe (Leadership And Training For The Fight: A Few Thoughts On Leadership And Training From A Former Special Operations Soldier)
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To combat the fear of vulnerability, you must first learn to love and accept your whole, authentic self” (Fritscher, 2021).
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Sydney Sheppard (A Growth Mindset For Teens: Practical Lessons & Activities To Build Confidence, Problem Solve, Grow Skills, And Become Resilient in 31 Days (You Are Your Mindset))
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The loss of reality in American society has a long history and an egregious reactivation in various twentieth-century movements that emphasized conspiracy theories and were summarized by the historian Richard Hofstadter as “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” In combating these assaults on reality we retain the advantage of working institutions that still apply reality-based rather than solipsistic criteria to their investigations, legal decisions, and journalistic probings. Cultist attacks on those institutions will not go away. But neither will our capacity for openness and truth-telling as alternatives to the closed world of cultism.
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Robert Jay Lifton (Losing Reality: On Cults, Cultism, and the Mindset of Political and Religious Zealotry)
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Military Mindset” copyright © 2022
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James Patterson (Walk in My Combat Boots: True Stories from America's Bravest Warriors (Heroes Among Us Book 1))
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You must be able to go from a defensive to an offensive mindset.
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Darren Levine (Complete Krav Maga: The Ultimate Guide to Over 230 Self-Defense and Combative Techniques)
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You can say that you want your partner to tell you about any problems in your relationship, or that you want your employees to tell you about any problems in the company, but if you get defensive or combative when you hear the truth, you’re not likely to hear it very often. No one wants to be the messenger that gets shot.
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Julia Galef (The Scout Mindset: The Perils of Defensive Thinking and How to Be Right More Often)
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there is one thing that we must never surrender, and that is the language of anti-fascism. The true meanings of “genocide” and “apartheid” and “Holocaust,” and the supremacist mindset that makes them all possible. Those words we need, as sharp as possible, to name and combat what is rapidly taking shape in the Mirror World—which is an entire cosmology built around claims of superior bodies, superior immune systems, and superior babies, bankrolled by supplement sales, bitcoin, and prenatal yoga.
”
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Naomi Klein (Doppelganger: a Trip into the Mirror World)
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I’d begin by washing dishes, go do laundry mid-way, and ultimately end up picking out weeds from my garden. On other days, I’d have a sudden urge to combat my bathroom, living room, and kitchen all at once, to then feel burnt out and like I hadn’t really accomplished much.
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Abigail Shepard (Chaos to Calm: Cleaning and Organizing with ADHD: Simple Ways To: Boost Productivity, Eliminate Clutter, Harness your Hyper-Focus, Create Lifelong Habits and Empower your ADHD Mindset)
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The mindset in the Way of combat must be no different from one’s normal state of mind. In the course of your daily life, and when engaged in strategy, there should be no change whatsoever in your outlook. Your mind should be expansive and direct, devoid of tension, but not at all casual. Keep your mind centered, not leaning too much to one side, swaying serenely and freely so that it does not come to a standstill in moments of change. Consider this carefully. The mind is not static even in times of calm. In times of haste, the mind does not rush. The body does not carry the mind and the mind does not carry the body. The mind should be vigilant when the body is exposed. The mind must not be absent nor be excessive. Both the high-spirited mind and the lethargic mind are signs of weakness. When the mind’s exterior is weak, its interior must be strong so that the enemy cannot gauge your condition. A small man should be aware of the spirit of a larger man and a large man must know the mind of a small man.1 Both big and small must keep their minds straight and not become trapped by preconceived notions of size.2 Be sure to maintain a spirit that is untainted and extensive. Wisdom will settle in the seat of a broad mind. It is crucial to enrich your mind and your wisdom. By enhancing your wisdom, you will be able to sense what is reasonable and unreasonable in the world and will learn the difference between good and evil. You can then see commonality in the Ways of different arts and you will not be open to deception. This is when one can be said to possess the wisdom of strategy in one’s heart. Wisdom that is fundamental to the Way of combat strategy is distinctive. When you face adversity in the midst of battle and find yourself completely engaged, never forget to focus your mind on the principles of strategy as this will create within you a steadfast spirit. Study this carefully.
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Alexander Bennett (The Complete Musashi: The Book of Five Rings and Other Works)
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(1) About the Mindset of Combat (一、兵法心持の事) The mindset in the Way of combat must be no different from one’s normal state of mind. In the course of your daily life, and when engaged in strategy, there should be no change whatsoever in your outlook. Your mind should be expansive and direct, devoid of tension, but not at all casual. Keep your mind centered, not leaning too much to one side, swaying serenely and freely so that it does not come to a standstill in moments of change. Consider this carefully. The mind is not static even in times of calm. In times of haste, the mind does not rush. The body does not carry the mind and the mind does not carry the body. The mind should be vigilant when the body is exposed. The mind must not be absent nor be excessive. Both the high-spirited mind and the lethargic mind are signs of weakness. When the mind’s exterior is weak, its interior must be strong so that the enemy cannot gauge your condition. A small man should be aware of the spirit of a larger man and a large man must know the mind of a small man.1 Both big and small must keep their minds straight and not become trapped by preconceived notions of size.2 Be sure to maintain a spirit that is untainted and extensive. Wisdom will settle in the seat of a broad mind. It is crucial to enrich your mind and your wisdom. By enhancing your wisdom, you will be able to sense what is reasonable and unreasonable in the world and will learn the difference between good and evil. You can then see commonality in the Ways of different arts and you will not be open to deception. This is when one can be said to possess the wisdom of strategy in one’s heart. Wisdom that is fundamental to the Way of combat strategy is distinctive. When you face adversity in the midst of battle and find yourself completely engaged, never forget to focus your mind on the principles of strategy as this will create within you a steadfast spirit. Study this carefully.
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Alexander Bennett (The Complete Musashi: The Book of Five Rings and Other Works)
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Basically, when you are at an interval where your sword can strike the enemy, you should think that the enemy’s sword can also reach you.12 Forget your body when you are set to kill your opponent.13 Examine this carefully. (8) About Mindset (心持之事) One’s mind should neither dwindle nor be in an excited state. It must not be rueful nor afraid. It is straight and expansive, with one’s “heart of intent” faint and one’s “heart of perception” substantial. The mind is like water, able to respond aptly to changing situations. Water can be a sparkling hue of emerald green, it can be a single drop or a blue ocean. This should be carefully studied. (9) To Know the Upper, Middle and Lower Levels of Strategy (兵法上中下の位を知る事) Stances are adopted in combat, but a show of various sword positions in order to appear strong or fast is regarded as lower-level strategy. Further, refined-looking strategy, flaunting an array of techniques and rhythmical mastery to give the impression of beauty and magnificence, is regarded as middle level. Upper-level strategy looks neither strong nor weak, not irregular, not fast, not glorious and not bad. It looks broad, direct and serene. Examine this carefully.14
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Alexander Bennett (The Complete Musashi: The Book of Five Rings and Other Works)
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Basically, when you are at an interval where your sword can strike the enemy, you should think that the enemy’s sword can also reach you.12 Forget your body when you are set to kill your opponent.13 Examine this carefully. (8) About Mindset (心持之事) One’s mind should neither dwindle nor be in an excited state. It must not be rueful nor afraid. It is straight and expansive, with one’s “heart of intent” faint and one’s “heart of perception” substantial. The mind is like water, able to respond aptly to changing situations. Water can be a sparkling hue of emerald green, it can be a single drop or a blue ocean. This should be carefully studied. (9) To Know the Upper, Middle and Lower Levels of Strategy (兵法上中下の位を知る事) Stances are adopted in combat, but a show of various sword positions in order to appear strong or fast is regarded as lower-level strategy. Further, refined-looking strategy, flaunting an array of techniques and rhythmical mastery to give the impression of beauty and magnificence, is regarded as middle level. Upper-level strategy looks neither strong nor weak, not irregular, not fast, not glorious and not bad. It looks broad, direct and serene. Examine this carefully.14 (10) About the “Cord-Measure” (いとかねと云事) Always hold a cord-measure in your mind. By holding the cord against each opponent to size him up, you will see his strengths, weaknesses, straightness, crookedness, and tense and relaxed points. With your mind’s measure, pull the cord, making it straight so that you can quantify the enemy’s heart. With this measure, you should be able to know the round, uneven, long, short, crooked or straight features of the enemy. This must be studied.
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Alexander Bennett (The Complete Musashi: The Book of Five Rings and Other Works)
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About Mindset (心持やうの事) The mindset required [of the warrior] is to relentlessly deliberate on strategy, whether you are active or sitting down, with others or on your own. You must constantly reflect on this Way. Anticipate how to never lose to others, and with an expansive and straight heart act according to the circumstances within the model of the Way of combat strategy. Work out the mind of others and make sure that they cannot read yours. Do not rely on one thing but be aware of strengths and weaknesses, depths and shallows, leaving nothing to the unexpected. In normal times, and when you meet with the enemy, this mindset is to be maintained, with care taken not to jump to conclusions. Be aware of all things, knowing what is good and bad. This is the mindset for combat strategy. (2) About Gaze (目付の事) With regards to where one focuses the eyes, there is only the dual gaze of “looking in” (kan) and “looking at” (ken). Look carefully at the enemy’s face to figure out his heart and intent. When scrutinizing the enemy’s face, whether he be near or far, do not think of it as close. Absorb it all as if observing from a distance. Keep your eyes narrower than usual and do not move your eyeballs as you scrutinize him intently and calmly. That way you can see all the movements of his hands and feet and even [what is happening at] his left and right sides. The gaze for “looking at” is gentle whereas that for “looking in” is strong enough to peer into the interior of his heart. You will come to know him well as his heart is reflected in his countenance, which is why you should fix your gaze on the face of each enemy. (3) About Posture (身なりの事) You should hold your body in a way that makes you appear big. Your expression should be genial and free of wrinkles. The back of your neck should be slightly toughened, with your shoulders neither strained nor slouching forward. Do not jut out your chest. Project your stomach but do not bend your hips. Your legs should not buckle at the knees, and there should be no distortion in your body. Always strive to preserve this combat posture so that you do not need to change your stance when you encounter the enemy.
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Alexander Bennett (The Complete Musashi: The Book of Five Rings and Other Works)
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(20) About “Crushing” (一、ひしぐと云事) To “crush” is to see your opponent as weak and yourself as strong and smashing him to bits. In large-scale strategy, irrespective of their number, the enemy will show their vulnerability if they hesitate or are disoriented. At this point, crush the enemy from the top down. Overwhelm them with a burst of energy as if to push them back and obliterate them. If the crushing blows are insufficient, the enemy may recover. Crush them as if they were in the palm of your hand. Study this well. In the case of individual combat, if your adversary is not skilled or he backs off because his rhythm is disrupted, he must be crushed immediately and given no chance to breathe or look you in the eye. It is crucial that he is not afforded the slightest opportunity to get back on his feet. Learn this well. (21) About “The Mountain-Sea Alternation” (一、さんかいのかわりと云事) The mind of “mountain-sea”14 means that it is perilous to execute the same move three times in a fight. It may be unavoidable to employ a tactic twice but never do it three times. If an attack is unsuccessful, keep applying pressure and try again. If it still has no effect, quickly adapt and change your approach. If your next move doesn’t work, then try another. The mindset underlying this is when the enemy is thinking of “mountain,” attack him as the “sea.” If he is thinking “sea,” take him down as the “mountain.” This is the Way of strategy. Study it exhaustively. (22) About “Knocking the Bottom Out” (一、そこをぬくと云事) What I call “knocking the bottom out” is as follows. You may feel you have succeeded through application of the principles of the Way in battle when, in fact, in his heart the enemy has not yet yielded. On the surface that he is defeated but deep down his spirit is still very much in the fight. When this occurs, replenish your mind and raze the enemy’s spirit by ripping it apart so that he is defeated beyond doubt. Take care to confirm this. “Knocking the bottom out” [of his fighting spirit] can be accomplished by the use of a sword, with the body or with your mind. There is not only one way to achieve this. Once the stuffing has been knocked out of the enemy, there is no need to keep fixed on him. If this is not the case, continue to maintain vigilance. It is difficult to destroy an enemy who still harbors a residual spirit to fight.
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Alexander Bennett (The Complete Musashi: The Book of Five Rings and Other Works)
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Loop When we talk about mental aspects, or the survival mindset, it is important to look at the decision-making process. A concept that was applied to combat operations in the military, and is also applied to commercial operations and learning processes, is the OODA Loop. It’s a concept that is important when reacting to an active threat. The OODA Loop, also referred to as Boyd’s Law, was developed by military strategist Colonel John R. Boyd (USAF). OODA stands for Observation, Orientation, Decision, and Action (Sometimes Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act). This was Boyd’s way of quantifying reaction times in combat.
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Alain Burrese (Survive A Shooting: Strategies to Survive Active Shooters and Terrorist Attacks)
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This biomedical vision was part of a more general mysticism that was as described to me and observed firsthand by an American psychiatric colleague, Albert Stunkard, who, as a schoolboy, lived in Germany during the 1930s because his father’s scientific fellowship had brought the family there. Stunkard was astounded by the behavior of many of his student friends; formerly serious and rational adolescents, they became ecstatic Nazi supporters at rallies and in their everyday demeanor. Their intense idealism seemed to him to be transformed into a mystical sense of being part of a new movement that gave meaning to their lives and promise to the human future. (Stunkard was to learn, with some sadness, that most of his friends were eventually killed in military combat.) The larger truth here is that movements that kill great numbers of people are likely to do so with the claim to virtue—and that virtue tends
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Robert Jay Lifton (Losing Reality: On Cults, Cultism, and the Mindset of Political and Religious Zealotry)
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This biomedical vision was part of a more general mysticism that was as described to me and observed firsthand by an American psychiatric colleague, Albert Stunkard, who, as a schoolboy, lived in Germany during the 1930s because his father’s scientific fellowship had brought the family there. Stunkard was astounded by the behavior of many of his student friends; formerly serious and rational adolescents, they became ecstatic Nazi supporters at rallies and in their everyday demeanor. Their intense idealism seemed to him to be transformed into a mystical sense of being part of a new movement that gave meaning to their lives and promise to the human future. (Stunkard was to learn, with some sadness, that most of his friends were eventually killed in military combat.) The larger truth here is that movements that kill great numbers of people are likely to do so with the claim to virtue—and that virtue tends to be, as it was here, one of purification and healing.
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Robert Jay Lifton (Losing Reality: On Cults, Cultism, and the Mindset of Political and Religious Zealotry)
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Snape is reproducing the life-threatening tensions currently disrupting the school and tailoring the lesson to take that combative mindset into account. In sport, one hexes according to rules of etiquette; in fighting, such thinking will be a disadvantage. The skills learned under casual conditions may not transfer to true danger, but the reflexes and drilling learned from combat training can—if they are well managed—transfer successfully to any situation
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Lorrie Kim (Snape: A Definitive Reading)
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When we study and love collaboration over competition, we can attain outcomes that far surpass accomplishments stemming from an individualist mindset.
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Lisa Kentgen (The Practice of Belonging: Six Lessons from Vibrant Communities to Combat Loneliness, Foster Diversity, and Cultivate Caring Relationships)
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The mindset during combat should not be different from the normal mindset.
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Rajen Jani (Gorin no Sho & Dokkodo: Miyamoto Musashi)