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If you follow the Action Principles, you are going to be tough. You are going to be kind. You are going to be rich. You are going to be respected. You are going to be loved.Following the Action Principles means becoming a person of action. You don't just talk about improving yourself and helping others, you make self-improvement and generosity your life. You work in a business where your efforts are acknowledged and you are fairly compensated. If that isn't happening, you start your own business. You invest in stocks in fields in which you have intimate knowledge or you buy local investment real estate or both. You listen to your spouse and kids and friends and employees and you care and they love you for it. You set strict standards for yourself and reasonable boundaries for those in your charge. You are confident to walk away from annoying jerks while ready and able to attack an attacker if the threat escalates. What if everyone followed the Action Principles? Wouldn't everybody be tough and kind and rich and happy? I think so. Yet, less than four percent of the people who read these materials take the actions recommended. You have to put yourself among this elite and only you can do it. You have to want it. Not your mother, father, sister, brother, wife, husband or kids, YOU have to want it. You need the same level of self-confidence as my little nephew learning to walk in from Lesson One. You fall and sometimes you laugh and sometimes you cry but you get up again and you try again. No one can ask more. You can ask no more of yourself. Only YOU can do it. Stop talking to people about what you can't do. Think solutions and not excuses. Start building upon all that you can. If not now, when? God has given you one life. Make the most of it. Improve yourself and help others. Let's review. Ninety percent of self-defense is awareness and alertness and avoiding trouble. Ten percent is physically defending yourself. Self-confidence backed by education and practice becomes your personal security. You don't stop training. You start training and continue training. Like the Navy Seal, you don't quit. Bullies are looking for victims and not challenges. Fighting back will surprise them. When you don't defend yourself, you are empowering a bully to abuse you further. Criminals choose the crime scene so you can expect that conditions will be most advantageous to him and least advantageous to you. Property is replaceable. Give it up. Call the police. Your body isn't replaceable. Don't give it up. Do whatever you have to do to end the violence so that you can escape. Call your lawyer. Listen to your instincts. They are your best early warning system. Think in terms of the Color Codes of Combat. Condition White is unaware. Condition Yellow is ready. Condition Orange is set. Condition Red is go. Generally, whenever you are outside your home you are in Condition Yellow. Practice your awareness skills. Make awareness a habit. Ask yourself: I enter a room. How many ways are there to get out?Wimps live in a hopeful world, a fantasy world, where there are no bad people. There are some, but not many, bad people with evil intent. We must not stand idly by and let evil reign. For the first time in human history, a country that could take over the world will not. SAS = Speed, aggression and surprise are how you will survive a violent encounter. You were chosen as a victim. In four seconds, the attacker will find that he made a very very bad choice. To defend yourself, you must accept the fact in many cases to escape, it will be necessary for you to put your attacker in a state of pain. You hurt the person intent on hurting you. You hurt this person before they hurt you. Whether you do this armed or unarmed is not important. Whether you shoot, stab, pummel, punch, kick, bite or scratch is not important. You stop the violence. You escape to live long enough to tell stories to your grandchildren or grandnieces and grandnephews. If you are a follower of the Action Principles, you are a good person. During your quiet time, you have considered various attack scenarios and your ethical response. Along a reasoned Force Continuum, you are going to do what it takes to survive and escape and no more. You aren't vengeful. You have more important things to do than "fight for spite." You like making a good living. You like investing. You love many things in life. You are a good person. You help others. We can learn valuable lessons from the elite warrior. He is aware, focused and alert. He takes care of himself and his equipment. He is mission oriented. He is a serious person. He is quiet. He listens. He doesn't waste time on foolish assignments and foolish people. He trains and trains some more. He is self-reliant. He is comfortable working in a team or by himself. He doesn't look for excuses. He accepts and deals with reality. He looks for practical solutions. He is willing to put forth the effort necessary to win, whatever it takes. "You won't quit." Think like a burglar. Why would you target your house? How would you get inside your house? Are there clues to tell about the occupants? Perform an annual security inspection of your property. Make and take recommendations from others knowledgeable in the home security field, such as certain LEOs. Take action to make your home a safer place. Burglar alarms do deter burglars. Smoke detectors do save lives. If in doubt, ask a firefighter how to make your home more fireproof. Craft a fire evaluation plan for your family and your house. Make sure that every one living in the house is aware of, understands and concurs with your escape plan. Once or twice a year, hold a fire drill. Make sure that your home always looks occupied and well maintained. Go through the Red Cross Disaster Relief Supply Checklist so that if you need to be ready, you will be ready. If he looks like a creep and sounds like a creep and acts like a creep, he is probably a creep. Lots of people have drug and alcohol and sex and family and emotional problems and most of these people are employed. You can't change other people. If you are a boss, you can warn them and encourage them to get help. You can set strict performance and behavior guidelines. Some troublesome employees can be fired. If the situation is more complicated, it may be cost effective to "buy them out." Save your breath and your stress level and give them money to leave quietly. This may be rewarding bad behavior and worth every cent. If you aren't a boss, your options are more limited. You can put up with the person. You can ask for a transfer. You can quit and get another job. Work in Condition Yellow. Take all threats seriously. A troubled child just doesn't spring from nowhere. There is often a long trail of warning signs. Disciplining a young child is difficult but the job only gets more difficult as the child gets older. Many ineffective parents don't end up disciplining at all but rather pleading, begging, negotiating and compromising with the Little King and the Little Queen. They, the parents, have created their own living hell. It does not take a village of teachers and counselors and policeman to raise a child. It takes one or preferably two good parents. College students tend to be naively unaware of their security. On college campuses, there is a lot of Condition White. Every college dorm has doors with strong deadbolt locks and every college building will have either an exterior door propped open or a smiling student who will hold the door open for any respectable looking serial killer. Women especially have to be in Condition Yellow when on Spring Break or attending the always-popular fraternity "Animal House" type party. Young women should make pacts to watch out for each other and to be wary of strange men of all ages. Always trust your intuition and instincts. Pack lightly. The more you travel the lighter you travel. The lighter you travel the less you look like a tourist. Criminals like tourists. More than a few tourists wander around in Condition White dazes with expensive cameras and video equipment ready for the taking. Criminals also know that even with the slim chance that they are caught, most tourists aren't willing to return for a trial. Check out your hotels, restaurants and general itinerary before you leave. Check for local security alerts and security recommendations before you leave. All of this can be accomplished in an hour or less on the Internet. If you are traveling overseas, be sure to check the State Department website, http://www.state.gov. Generally, people are the same all over the world. They will wish you well and help you in a time of need. You travel in Condition Yellow. A few people are bad everywhere. In some third world countries, poverty leads to desperation and, to some desperate souls and criminals, you are an opportunity. In the third world, you probably aren't traveling as a tourist but rather as a person with a specific mission to accomplish. You should travel in Condition Orange. It is probably only a matter of time before we all carry National ID cards complete with fingerprints and probably DNA. The day of the full body scanner that can check for weapons and explosives is near. These improvements should actually speed our passage through airport security. Until then, accept the reality of flight delays. Safe is better than sorry. Weapons are equalizers. Weapons are tools. Every weapon is a dangerous tool in the hands of an idiot. If you decide to carry a weapon(s), you've got to maintain it, learn its capabilities and limitations and be willing to train with it on a continuing basis.. A gun is a very good thing to have with you if you are being attacked. Responsible gun owners who are legally licensed to carry a firearm and who train on a regular basis tend not to be criminals. In fact, most responsible gun owners would come to your aid in a time of need and you'd be very glad to see them coming. Criminals are the problem. Criminals do not obey the 22,000 gun laws that are already on the books. When the issue is guns and criminals, we need more aggressive policing and less lenient judges. The American system of criminal justice is the problem with gun control and not the tools of self-defense. "Guns don't kill people. People kill people." After a gun, the next best weapon is a knife. Knives are easy to obtain and unobtrusive to carry. With proper instruction, they aren't complicated to use; you slash or you stab. However, you can't be a ninety-pound woman and brandish a knife in front of a two hundred and fifty pound thug. He will laugh. However, if you use your SAS training, he will not be laughing. As you do your thing, he will be screaming very bad words as he realizes that he really picked the wrong target. In the non-lethal category of weapons, pepper spray is a good choice. Presuming the wind isn't blowing in YOUR face, pepper spray can be shot from a distance of up to ten feet. Keeping distance between you and your attacker is good. You spray. He cries and falls to the ground. You escape, probably to the tune of those bad words again. If you are a physically strong person, an ASP baton is good for both offensive and defensive techniques. Anyone, a child or senior citizen, can benefit from carrying a cell phone, whistle or personal screech alarm. If you have a warrior mindset, you will see that almost everything in your environment including the environment itself can be used as a weapon. Once you can psychologically deal with the reality of self-defense, to stop the violence and escape, you will realize the benefits of weapons training. Lots of seemingly nice people can do lots of bad things to their wives, children and their dates. They prey on the vulnerable. Some people cannot not get it through their thick heads or immense ego that "No" means "No." Yes, the police and courts try to help, but the police and court personnel are trained to see two sides to a story and to be non-confrontational. The police and courts are trained to uphold every criminal's rights no matter how vile the acts. However, when you are alone and confronted and your rights are being violated, you may not have the luxury of therapeutic dialogue. You may be fighting for your dignity or your life! You must have the head, the heart and the stomach for direct action. Attack the attacker. Most abusive spouses, most delusional stalkers, most perverted pedophiles and most determined terrorists do not want your understanding. They do not want your counsel or your prayers. They do not want to change. They don't want to stop. They want to do what they want to do. You submit to their WILL or you WILL suffer the consequences. You cannot change them. Only they can make a decision to change themselves. Maybe in prison they will have a chance to reflect on the harm that they've done and repent and seek help. God bless them. You don't have to. Interim measures, appeasement and compromise rarely work. You can choose not to be a victim and that gives you two options: fight or leave. If you have been reading the courses and books on the website, you know that I genuinely want you to succeed. If you have found this course and the others on Success.org helpful, then I would ask you to make a contribution so that we can share these motivational materials with others. You can help us help others by ordering a diploma, a video, music CD, by distributing Action Principles books, by hanging Action Principle Posters or by making a direct donation. Your support pays for this website for the thousands of books we donate through social organization and prisons and for our mission in Nicaragua. If you are following the Action Principles, you will want to help. I thank you in advance for your generosity. Bill |
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