THE SOLUTION

The difference between being a victim and successfully extricating yourself from a threatening situation is often only the knowledge that you can do something to help yourself. You may not be able to avoid a violent assault, but you can certainly alter the outcome. You don’t have to be a victim. It’s a choice.

No one has to live with fear, insecurity or victimization. In this ever-darkening world of increased harassment, intimidation, terrorism, violence and sexual assault, there is a solution to personal security and peace of mind for both the individual and the family.

By developing an environmental awareness, learning a few simple techniques, practicing self-improvement through acquired skills and a confident attitude, anyone can become proficient in self-defense. And anyone includes you. Through education and training, women, children and men alike can leave behind the “victim mentality” and become more comfortable and secure in any environment.

Knowledge is power, and the Gift of Power Foundation can provide the knowledge to develop and use the power each person already has to be strong, safe and secure. Many of the assaults, rapes and murders that occur every day could be prevented if the victim had even a bare minimum of quality training in self-defense.

Self-defense training works!

An article in the June, 2004 edition of Black Belt Magazine titled “The Violence Project,” a study of the parameters, dynamics and results of 1,000 acts of violence, states in part: “Female students of self-defense with no previous fighting experience successfully defended themselves 75% of the time.”

PREVENTION:

I don’t know how to be blunter than this: You just have to stop acting like, and believing that it won’t happen to you because, as the statistics clearly show, for millions of you, it will. You need to become proactive and develop your personal self-protection plan. Here’s how:

Step 1 in your self-protection plan is prevention. There are many things that you can do to “harden the target” and make it much more difficult for an assailant to victimize you. Knowing what to do to avoid being targeted for a violent personal attack is perhaps the single most important thing that you can do to protect yourself.

In my latest book “Making it Out Alive, protecting women and children from violence,” I go into some detail on the nine essential skills that you need for your own personal self-protection. Those nine skills are:

• How to harden the target (strategies and tips on prevention)
• The importance of awareness (your early warning radar system at work)
• To resist or not to resist – that is the question
• When to fight – when not to fight
• How to overcome your fear and persevere in the face of deadly peril
• You must be willing to die
• Determination, the indispensable ingredient
• The power of emotion
• I’m such a klutz

All of the skills noted above are important but arguably, the most important of these is awareness.

You must, literally, know where you are and what’s going on around you at all times. You must learn to pay attention to that little voice in your head that’s telling you that something is wrong. That poking feeling in your gut. The hairs on the back of your neck standing up. The sense that you get telling you that you are in danger. All of these feelings are nature’s early-warning radar system kicking in and screaming for you to act. AND IT ALWAYS HAPPENS FOR A REASON. You may not know what is wrong, but something IS wrong, and you can count on it.

Listen to that voice.

Many of us don’t listen to that voice, especially women, because we don’t think that we have enough information. We think, “I must be mistaken or overacting.” NOT! God gave you that little voice for a reason. It’s your fight or flight instinct trying to get your attention. When you get that feeling, get away, tell someone else and document it. Even though nothing may happen from one specific incident, be aware that it could very possibly be a precursor to a very serious episode of violence.

Details on how you can get the important information contained in “Making it Out Alive” can be found in the “Membership” page on this site.

PREPAREDNESS:

O.K., nothing worked and you are now facing a violent physical attack. What now Coach?

As I have stated previously, there are millions of women who find themselves in this very position every year. Most, if not all, have no clue of what to do to save themselves and, as a result, become victims. This is in spite of all the laws, all the rules and regulations, all of their company’s policies and procedures, all of the efforts of law enforcement agencies and all the good will in the world.

You must realize that when the monster comes for you, you’re on your own. There is no outside agency that is going to intercede on your behalf. Superman is not going to fly through the window and save you. There is you and only you and you must be the instrument of your own salvation.

The good news is that you can.

At the risk of sounding repetitive, remember that your goal in any physical confrontation is to get away unharmed and you must exhaust all of your options to do so before the confrontation turns into a physical assault.

Physical combat should be your last resort.

TO RESIST OR NOT TO RESIST – THAT IS THE QUESTION:

There are those who believe that a female faced with a violent assault should not even think about defending herself physically at all. The thinking here is that by offering resistance, you’ll just make him angrier and motivate him to more violence and perhaps even murder.

There is some truth here, but it depends to a great extent on the type and relative effectiveness of the resistance that you are offering. If, on the one hand, your resistance consists of valiantly pounding your little fists on his chest, kicking him in the shin and other kinds of totally ineffective responses, then yes, you are probably just going to make him angrier. If, on the other hand, your resistance consists of actions that are effective deterrents, then he will not be able to escalate the violence against you because you’ll be gone before he can recover.

To resist or not to resist is a question that you must answer now. You can’t wait until you are faced with an eminent violent assault to answer that question, because then it’s too late.

If you choose not to resist and therefore adopt the “please don’t hurt me, I’ll do anything that you want” mode of operation, then understand that probably the least that will happen to you is that you’ll become a victim.

If you choose to be a doormat, don’t be surprised when you get stepped on.

If you choose that you will defend yourself physically, you must do so with total commitment and as aggressively as possible. Your goal remains exactly the same, which is to get away. However, now that it has become physical, in order for you to get sufficient time (literally a matter of seconds) to make your escape, you must be able to temporarily disable your assailant with overwhelming pain and/or fear. If you disable his knee, for example, you can walk away secure in the knowledge that he won’t be able to escalate the violence against you because he’ll be on the ground and you’ll be gone.

YOU MUST BE WILLING TO DIE:

You cannot successfully defend yourself in a life or death situation if you’re concerned about being hurt, injured or killed.

I guarantee that if it were your child whose life you were defending, you would, without hesitation or thought, fight King Kong to the death to save your child’s life and never think twice about your own safety.

Isn’t that true? Of course it is.

My question to you is, what makes you think that your own life is less worthy of being saved? Why not fight just as hard to save yourself?

You know, the weakest animal in the world will fight as hard as possible to save itself and never once be concerned about getting hurt.

You are infinitely more important than any animal and you are totally worthy of being saved.

So, bring your coffin to the fight and you probably will never have to use it.

BUT I’M SUCH A KLUTZ:

No one is born with the innate ability to function successfully in an alien situation. Being violently assaulted is an alien situation of the worst kind.

Have you ever said, or heard someone else say, “I have zero coordination, I stink at sports and I’m such a Klutz?” Well, you’re probably right. You are a klutz and you stink at sports. Do you know why? Because, unless you are disabled in some fashion that would preclude physical activity, you have learned how to move badly and you have learned how to move badly very well. You have trained yourself to be a klutz.

If you think about it, you will realize that everything that you know how to do is, in one way or another, a direct result of training. Good, bad or indifferent, you learned how to do the things that you do and what has been learned can be relearned.

It’s a matter of proper and effective training. You need to get some of that.

Only you can be the architect of your own protection. Please, make the decision that you will do something to protect yourself.