Stress Control -
Survival Strategies:
Choosing Courage

Stress Control: Choosing Courage - survival strategies to help you choose between acting courageously or hopelessly. Choosing courage can make all the difference in surviving.

Evil Will Triumph if Good Surrenders

The stranger broke into the house while I was taking a shower. "Go away," I screamed. He told me to shut up. After a kicking, howling struggle, which took us from the bedroom to the living room, he ran off. He was gone, but I felt panicky and powerless. I had seen into the heart of reality and been permanently changed. What kind of fool would be nonviolent in a violent world? If I hadn't fought back violently, I believe I would have been raped, and I might have been killed. ... Before the attack, I thought it couldn't happen to me. Afterward, I lived in fear, suspecting all strangers, double-checking the locks and refusing to go out after dark.
Excerpted from Newsday (Long Island NY) – 02 June 2004

The typical dead strangulation victim is found with her killer’s skin-scrapings under her fingernails. She’d struggled courageously but futilely by clawing at his hands. Alas, she didn’t know the lifesaving tools in Fighting Options - Overview.

Ask yourself now: are you willing to kill or hurt an attacker if necessary to save yourself or a loved one? If a pacifist chooses to sacrifice her own life in order to spare a monster, then so be it. It’s her choice.

Or maybe you think the Fighting Options are too gruesome for you. You may think so now as you’re reading this under no stress, but if ever you’re fighting for your life, you’ll whistle a different tune. When your survival instinct comes roaring to life to save you, you’ll want the most effective fighting tools – gruesome or not - to augment your:

A bus driver kills his knife-wielding assailant. Teens chase a man who has just stabbed a woman and corner him until the police arrive. Two young women jump a man in a restaurant rampaging with three guns, a samurai sword, a box cutter, kerosene and a lighter. They are ordinary people, performing extraordinary acts of resistance. Is heroism catching? Is bravery viral? ... Ann-Margret Gidley threw herself at the madman – deciding she had to try to stop him, despite the risks. "When 9/11 happened, I was really impressed by the people who took the plane down," she said. "They knew they were going to die, and I was in awe of them and their strength under extreme stress. Sometimes you have to do what's right." ... Her co-worker, Annie Hubbard, helped topple their assailant – and hold him away from his gun and his lighter – until police could arrive. As they grappled for the gun, Hubbard was shot in her right shin, breaking the bone. Hubbard was defending her friend, herself and the others in the room. Gidley and Hubbard are my heroes.
Excerpted from the 05 July 2002 New York Daily News editorial by Karen Angel.

"Courage isn't the absence of fear. Courage is being afraid and still doing what needs to be done. Anyone without fear is either irrational or insane. It's about the management of stress and fear, not the absence of fear," said former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani of the police and firefighter heroes of September 11. He said he was inspired by Winston Churchill's leadership during the Nazis' blitz on Great Britain during World War II, whereby the former prime minister "created an illusion that we are bound to win."
Excerpted from The Dallas Star-Telegram – 09 April 2002

Desperation is the Mother of Courage
The all-powerful survival instinct – the ultimate inborn life force – is sometimes overcome by a heroic sacrifice for others, by a stunned paralysis, or by a death wish. Otherwise, our innate drive to survive under any stress makes the weak strong and the fearful brave. Everyone is innately capable of choosing to be heroic.

Determination to win – even if it’s born of desperation – usually decides the winner of a fight – which is a contest of wills. U.S. military Special Forces personnel believe that survival is 10 percent skill, 90 percent will.

"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward, it is not a compliment to say it is brave."
Mark Twain 1894

Rage is the Heart of CouRAGE
An American WW II veteran recalled his combat stress: Fresh out of basic training, his unit was thrust straight into the thick of battle in Europe – scared, wondering who'd be the first to lose a limb or die. Pinned down for days on end and picked off randomly, they finally got tired of being afraid and began getting angry at the enemy causing them such fear. He said that's when they became warriors, fierce warriors. Anger overcame their fear. Rather than shrinking when seeing a friend die, they became enraged. They then fought ferociously for the remainder of the war.

Acting is dictating the action. Reacting is scrambling to catch up. Thus, "the best defense is a good offense." And the best state of mind is a fierce but controlled rage. Rage is the heart of courage.

Fear Control & Survival Strategies

Enhancing Your Options

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