Mental Readiness

Mental readiness is the state of being mentally prepared – this can either mean you are ready to learn from the situation you are in OR can put your knowledge skills and attitudes into practice to optimally deal with the situation you are in.

As a firearms instructor, I try to learn from coaches and other trainers about all manner of sports medicine and performance enhancement – I was recently reading an article on mental readiness from Watt Works that gave some great tips on how to maximize mental readiness through training for an upcoming event – while this is not exactly prepping or self-defense, it does have some very close parallels.

First off, I noticed that he uses a key concept of my coaching style – which is to use positive mental talk – instead of “don’t jerk the trigger” instead focus on what you want to happen “press the trigger smoothly to the rear until the shot breaks”

As I read more on his coaching article, I saw many more items that translate directly to preparing for the high stress situations caused by personal disaster – self-defense shootings all the way to catastrophic grid down economic collapse.

You need to identify gaps in skills and knowledge so you can work on specific things that will make a difference in your response

Once you have identified your shortcomings, have a specific plan on how to acquire the solution – more time on the range, for example, may help you with a jerky trigger squeeze caused by anticipating the shot.

Practice and refine your skills, but have your end goal in mind – what is acceptable for you.  Make your goal specific, realistic, and achievable – maybe something like being able to draw and fire 2 aimed shots into a 9 inch circle 15 feet away, in less than 2.5 seconds.  If you can do that, then you have mastered your rigger squeeze.

Plan for the likely scenario so that you can control as much as can be controlled – by definition – disasters are outside the scope of what can be controlled – but the more knowledge and skills you have perfected, the more control you can keep in rapidly changing disaster situations.

If you do this, you will have to admit the potential for disasters to occur, which in itself is a large part of mental readiness – if you are not a victim to the common problem of normalcy bias, then you can react quicker and more smoothly to changing situations

A key to survival is to be able to decide to act soon enough, and then act aggressively enough that you don’t get bogged down and lose the ability to respond.

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