MENTAL
FORTITUDE
By
The most important element in regards to survival in any situation
is Mental Fortitude. When broken down by
definition with “mental” dealing with knowledge, understanding and things
related to the mind, and “fortitude” dealing with strength and security, we are
pretty much talking about strength of mind or the “survival mindset”. The warrior/philosopher Sun Tzu, in the book
of his compiled works “The Art of War” states, “A victorious Army
first wins and then seeks battle.” In other words, you have to visualize victory
before it can be achieved.
There are
many factors involved in being victorious whether it is a sporting contest or
the ultimate competition of life and death in a combat scenario, in the
venerable words of one of Clint Eastwood’s roughneck cinema characters, “A
man’s got to know his limitations”.
The same applies to your opponent as Sun Tzu further states, “Know
yourself and know your enemy and you will not be imperiled in a hundred
battles.” Some of those factors to
be considered are Tactical Awareness (refer to our article from the last issue
of The Dedicated Professional) dealing with your surroundings, environment,
terrain, lighting, positioning, etc., and Practical Ability – the apparent
physical and technological capabilities of your opponent compared to those same
elements that you posses yourself.
Next is
your ability to react to any given stimulus in what I refer to as The R.I.P.P.
Cycle of Reaction™. First you must Recognize a stimulus through sensory
input dealing with the 5 standard senses of sight, sound, smell, taste and
touch with the sixth sense being a combination of any of the five listed that
is enhance through perception; Then you must Identify whether or not that particular stimulus is a threat to
you, your team or anyone else involved in the situation. The third step in the cycle is to Plan and position yourself to properly
respond to the stimulus in order to Perform
the chosen action that you planned for completing the cycle. Keep in mind that this process takes anywhere
from a quarter to two seconds depending on your current level of health and
fitness, your level of training in various technical and tactical areas and
your level of awareness at the time a given stimulus is introduced.
The last
thing I’ll talk about in regards to this topic is the adrenaline dump when one
is faced with an exhilaration causing stimulus (this can be life-threatening
excitement or a high adventure type of excitement). There are mainly two phenomena that occur in
this “state of mind” if you will; one is the tachi psychi effect whereby your
eyes process thing much faster that gives you the “seeing things in slow
motion” and “tunnel vision” affect and
the other is auditory exclusion where your hearing ability may seem to decrease
or things may sound like you are under water in a swimming pool. These effects are mainly caused by the body’s
biomechanical response to danger (fight or flight) whereby the normal sequence
of blood flow is diverted to the core in order to beef up the vital organ in
order to survive. The adverse affect to
that is the loss of dexterity and control of the extremities. That is where training in gross motor
movements comes into play (more on that in the next article).
When you
can fully grasp and understand this concept, you are well on your way to
developing and enhancing an impenetrable Mental Fortitude!