Sheepdog Tip of the Day

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Martin Seligman developed the concept of inoculation from stress from his
famous studies of learning in dogs. He put dogs in a cage that had an
electric shock pass through the floor at random intervals. Initially the
dogs would jump, yelp, and scratch pitifully in their attempts to escape
the shocks, but after a time they would fall into a depressed, hopeless
state of apathy and inactivity that Seligman termed "learned helplessness."
After falling into a state of learned helplessness, the dogs would not
avoid the shocks even when provided with an obvious escape route. Other
dogs were given a means of escape after receiving some shocks but before
falling into learned helplessness. These dogs learned that they could and
would eventually escape from the shocks, and after only one such escape
they became inoculated against learned helplessness. Even after long
periods of random, inescapable shocks, these inoculated dogs would escape
when finally provided with a means to do so. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On
Killing
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We have a person enter a scenario playing an armed off-duty officer or an
armed citizen and announce their presence. But the good guys only see the
gun and many times the person gets shot, so to speak. It is for this reason
that we recommend that whether you mean well or not, you need to announce
your presence from behind cover and expose minimally when arriving on a
scene that is already hot. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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Have you ever sat on the edge of your bed at night with your mind spinning,
your heart pounding and your body raring to go? That is what residual
adrenaline does to you. To burn it off you need to conduct calisthenics, go
for a long run or lift weights. Afterward, take a shower and go back to
bed. Often that is all you need to fall fast asleep. Lt. Col. Dave
Grossman, On Combat
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If you're in a fair fight, something is seriously wrong. In most cases,
there is nothing wrong with waiting until you have overwhelming odds.
Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, The Bullet Proof Mind seminar (paraphrased)
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Gunpowder's superior noise, its superior posturing ability, made it
ascendant on the battlefield. The longbow would still have been used in the
Napoleonic Wars if the raw mathematics of killing effectiveness was all
that mattered, since both the longbow's firing rate and its accuracy were
much greater than that of a smoothbore musket. But a frightened man,
thinking with his midbrain and going "ploink, ploink, ploink" with a bow,
doesn't stand a chance against an equally frightened man going "BANG!
BANG!" with a musket. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Killing
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Goals require you to make plans, to work hard, and, even more importantly,
to work smart. Goals will help you to organize for success. So what exactly
is a goal? A goal is a statement of desired endstate. A goal describes only
a thing that you can control. The key thing that a goal must be is
performance-oriented. The endstate that it describes must be an element of
performance that you can control; that is, the goal must be in
fact "doable." The test for whether a goal is doable is to ask the
following question: "Great advice, coach, but how?" Linda K. Miller and
Keith Cunningham, Secrets of Mental Marksmanship
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Most participants in close combat are literally frightened out of their
wits. Once the arrows or bullets start flying, combatants stop thinking
with the forebrain (that part of the brain which makes us human) and
thought processes localize in the midbrain, or mammalian brain, which is
the primitive part of the brain that is generally indistinguishable from
that of an animal. It may be that in conflict situations this primitive,
midbrain processing can be observed in a consistent trend toward resisting
and avoiding the killing of one's own species. During territorial and
mating battles, animals with antlers and horns slam together in a
relatively harmless head-to-head fashion, rattlesnakes wrestle each other,
and piranha fight their own kind with flicks of their tails, but against
any other species these creatures unleash their horns, fangs and teeth
without restraint. This is an essential survival mechanism, which prevents
a species from destroying itself during territorial and mating rituals.
Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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One of Gavin de Becker's trainers: Realism meaning, most people in my
opinion, military or not, rarely point or get a real weapon pointed at them
where they know something is going to come out and hurt them or the
individual. In the military most soldiers use blanks where they know no one
will get hurt. In Simunition, we use our personal weapon, the same exact
weapon we are going to use to protect our principal, our family, and even
ourselves. We know it will kill an individual and we know it will kill us.
So when one of the students actually picks it up, points it at someone, I
notice how much they hesitate to pull the trigger when their stress level
is heightened and their muscle memory tells them that this is a real gun,
that something is going to come out, and someone is going to get hurt. I
mention this because, I think it is one of our beginner class benefits. I
believe it will save them if a situation ever arises and they have to use
their weapon to defend their principal or themselves... Lt. Col. Dave
Grossman, On Combat
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Who decides how much force the warrior has to use? Who ultimately makes the
decision that deadly force is needed? The suspect does. The enemy does. The
threat does. He fights, you fight. When he uses deadly force, you use
deadly force. He makes that decision for you. He has the option to
surrender, and your job is to respond with what society says is your right
and responsibility to do. This is why it is paramount that you resolve
in your mind whether you can do it ahead of time. Only when you know you
can respond will you have the ability to truly deter people. That is the
great paradox of combat: If you are truly prepared to kill someone, you are
less likely to have to do it. That person will look into your eyes and see
the steely determination to kill him, and be less eager to attack and more
likely to surrender. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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The enemy who fights to a "noble" death validates and affirms the killer's
belief in his own nobility and the glory of his cause. Thus a World War I
British officer could speak admiringly to Holmes of German machine gunners
who remained faithful unto death: "Topping fellows. Fight until they are
killed. They gave us hell." ... These are "noble kills," which place the
minimum possible burden on the conscience of the killer. And thus the
soldier is able to further rationalize his kill by honoring his fallen
foes, thereby gaining stature and peace by virtue of the nobility of those
he has slain. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Killing
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