In 2018, I had an opportunity to take the bullying prevention course, there’s an online course given by the Center for Disease Control. And I want to talk with you all about something that I talked to some of my parents and students about a couple of days ago inside of my dojo. And I do believe that bullying is an issue, I do believe that bullying is a problem. I have to deal with bullying prevention all the time. I have a different approach at times to bullying than other people do.
I use a base things off of the ASR model in psychology, which is the stimulus-response model, that there’s a certain stimulus that is provided, that then provides a certain response. Here’s what I want to talk to you all about. I gave the example to my class, I said if there was a roach on the floor, I said, Would you all go over there and step on the roach? They said, Yes. No problem. We are going to go step on the roach. Did I ask Why? They said because I can kill the roach I can. I’m bigger than the roads. I asked If there was a tarantula on the floor, Would you go over there and step on it? they said no. I asked, why not? They said because the tarantula might jump on me and bite me. I said, but the transit is smaller than you too, but the difference between the tarantula and the roach is in their presentation.
I said your presentation sometimes causes people to bully you. I don’t mean that in such a fashion that the presentation of how you look, I mean that what you come with and how you walk. The tarantula has a walk, turn has poison. What we put inside of you is not poison we put inside of your confidence. So your ability to present yourself is based upon your confidence. So when you’re confident, you don’t walk into the room as a roach. You walk into the room as a tarantula. No matter how small you are, your presentation is such that the people who are around you know that you aren’t to be messed with. They know that no matter what happens that the faith that you have with you on the inside, you are willing to jump on them if you had to, not because you want to.
As martial arts instructors, we’re trying to change the presentation of our practitioners by giving them more confidence, more self-confidence, more self-awareness. I tell my parents all the time, I say if you come into me because your child was bullied, I say Where is your responsibility within the relationship? I said I got it. Society doesn’t want to deal with the responsibility of the victim. However, you are in martial arts because you believe that you have some responsibility as the victim. I’m not talking about fairness, I’m talking about what’s correct. I’m talking about the reality of the situation. The reality of the situation is people don’t want to be victims. So what do we do so that we don’t become victims? How can we strengthen our resolve strengthen our presentation so that we don’t become victims? What type of things can we do?
First and foremost, we have to look at the animal kingdom. People want to reduce the importance, I hear a lot of internet coaching gurus who want to reduce the importance of looking people in the eye and it’s okay because kids are on their devices and they don’t look people in the eye. But those things might be good in the business space, where you don’t have to communicate with people you can text. But in the real world where you have to meet people and go face to face and talk. You have to be able to lock eyes on people.
In the animal kingdom. There are two types of animals as predators and as prey. Prey have their eyes on the side so they can always look around, defend themselves and leave just think about it. Predators have their eyes in the front. Why? Because predators don’t care about what’s going on on the outside. They lock in on their target and then they go. When you begin to look in another person’s face, especially when two men are locked in an engagement and you start darting your eyes and looking down you Turn yourself psychologically on an animalistic level into prey. When you turn yourself into prey, you immediately have changed your presentation, your ability to be confident, and what it is that you have, the poison that you bring to the table. But the subject matter that’s going on, allows you to look someone dead in the eyes without moving.
If you cannot do this, and you have a problem with this, and you started doubting your eyes. That my friend is an issue for you because you’re going to present yourself as prey to a predator. You have even seen it such that one person will start doubting their eyes and give their power over to the other person, they turn themselves into prey and turn the other person into a predator. You’ve seen this in sports, you’ve seen it in martial arts, you’ve seen in wrestling when one kid starts crying, the other kids looking across the line, he’s about ready to cry too, or she’s about ready to cry too. But when the other kid starts crying and starts looking down, they give all their power over to the other person and the other kid just starts pouncing.
Giant cats like lions and tigers. They run when you run. If you start running towards them, they stop. When you show fear because you don’t have any confidence in your abilities, you turn yourself into prey, A Gazelle is no match for Cheetah, a Gazelle now has to run. A Cheetah doesn’t have to run from another Cheetah, because they have the same skill set. When you walk into the situation with more skills and more confidence than the other person, you have no reason to run. You will change the dynamic of the situation.
When you’re in a situation when you’re in some type of dynamic, there will be an A and a B, there will be an alpha and a beta, there will be a male and a female, there will be a predator and prey that is how it is.
We train you such that you can come out of an altercation without having to damage yourself without having to damage the other person by understanding that you need to present yourself in such a fashion that you can come out on top based upon your confidence and basically what You bring to the table. Does that mean you won’t ever get cyberbullied? No, it doesn’t mean that. Cyberbullying is, it’s very unfortunate when people do it because it’s hard to catch the people. But it has to be the toughest form of bullying to stop and the weakest form of bullying to implement. I do feel bad when parents come to me and they tell me that their kids are being cyberbullied.
Being the alpha does not mean you always fight. If you’re locked in a room, in a small room, in a bedroom with a tarantula, and the sun goes down in the evening, and you can’t find out what that is. I guarantee you at night that transit was not worried about you. You’re worried about it. You are the apex predator in the room. But the reason why you’re worried is that you don’t have the skills that the tarantula has. Until you develop those skills, you are going to be scared that tarantula will have turned you into a beta-human being inside of that room, because you do not have the skills.
If you don’t have any faith, you’re walking into the situation with nothing anyway, You’re empty. This does not mean anything until two lions meet. When two lions meet and they roar, One finds out the other one doesn’t have any teeth, then that lion is in trouble. There’s a level of presentation and is a level of reality. You need to have a quality presentation. But then you need to have some confidence and you need to walk with the faith. And if you don’t have any faith, you don’t have any teeth and your bite.
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