Motivation: Protect What You Love
Rob PincusDescription
When it comes to establishing a defensive mindset and considering personal security, the thing you may be missing is motivation. Some people may be reluctant to establish in their own mind the idea that they are willing to use force to defend themselves. Some people are unaware of the idea that they even need to establish boundaries when it would be appropriate to defend themselves.
Protect What You Love
The idea of “protect what you love” tends to resonate, especially with people who are less inclined to be physically defense oriented. Protect what you love could simply mean your family, and that comes naturally to people, especially women. To a women, the idea of protecting her children may come to her mind long before the idea of protecting herself does.
Protect what you love could mean protecting your children, your mother, your spouse. Maybe it’s protecting your friends. It could mean brotherly love as well as parental love or romantic love. Any of these can be the type of love that inspires people to take protective action, assertive, aggressive action to keep those they love from harm — even violent action. Start by getting the self-defense training you need to protect them.
Thinking Beyond the Family
The idea of protect what you love should extend beyond your nearest and dearest. What motivates you? What keeps you wanting to protect yourself? Seek that motivation — for example, things you will never be able to do again if someone harms you. Your job, your hobbies, your contributions to your community, opportunities you are planning for in the future, such as walking your daughter down the aisle at her wedding.
The bottom line is, respect and value yourself enough to defend yourself from harm. Protect what you love is not only external — it means you too.
Why do you worry about personal defense? Why do you practice and prepare to defend yourself or your family? Well, I like to think about the Protect What You Love concept as one that can drive your training, or maybe help you convince someone else that they should take their training, practice and preparation for personal defense, more seriously than they currently do. the idea behind Protect What You Love is that there's something that you love, that you care about that only you know will motivate you, in that worst case scenario moment. You know, in our armed professional training, we talk a lot about mindset. We talk about the idea that you may be injured, you may be shot, you may be bleeding out, you may be about to die, but you aren't out of the fight until you are absolutely incapable of fighting. And this idea of Protect What You Love is what a lot of guys think that they will have flash through their minds, or that they will focus on, in that moment when they have to take one more shot, get back up on their feet, grab that suspect, take him into custody, finish the battle, finish the mission, protect their buddy, or protect their family member. Maybe it's something as simple as getting somebody out of the house when your lungs are filled with smoke, your house is on fire, and they've collapsed. And you need to find the energy, find the resources, find the commitment, to pick yourself up, pick them up, and drag them out of the house to protect what you love. Maybe it's a family member. Maybe it's your future. Maybe it's your hobby. I don't really care what it is. I want you to think about what you love, I want you to think about what motivates you, and I want you to focus on that. The next time you think about your defensive firearm, your other defensive tools, your practice, your training, your dedication to actually carrying the gun, and not just owning the gun and keeping it in a safe. Your dedication to staging the gun responsibly in your home, and not keeping the gun over there, and the ammo over there, and imagining that you'll be able to use it in an emergency. Protect What You Love is the mantra of those of us who don't just worry about guns for shooting sake. We aren't hobbyists. We aren't the people that just want to go to the range and compete, or enjoy our gun collection. We actually are doing this for a reason. and it's the best reason we can think of. And that reason, it's an individual one. What do you love? How are you prepared to protect it?
To me self defense is the most important thing. However, I think the firearms industry has it wrong. When I train in hand-to-hand martial arts or even baseball, the practice is every week. In the firearms industry no one seems to offer that. It's a session here and there and videos. If we're serious about anything, it should be an every week training culture in order to have true growth and stay honed.
I feel as though it's sad that some folks might have the perspective that self preservation is unwarranted, but I love how Rob contextualizes some of the fundamental values of self worth as an individual. I have heard two schools of thought on the subject, stemming from spiritual perspectives, and I believe that a devine creator would undoubtedly and logically want each of us to protect and respect the millenia of hardships that our forefathers have persevered to pass on the legacy to us.