13 Mar Wait Until It Reaches Your Fist
Wait Until It Reaches Your Fist
Mar. 13, 2020
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One day an expert martial artist was driving home.
While switching lanes, the marital artist accidentally cut someone off.
The other person didn’t like that.
So, the other guy sped up, passed the fighter, and angrily stopped his car diagonally across the lane.
Blocked off, the martial artist noticed the angry man had gotten out of his car and started screaming at him.
Calmly, the black-belt got out of his car too. Seeing the other man’s agitation, he took a wordless, aggressive stance in case there was a fight.
The angry driver stopped cold.
Seeing how ready and serious (and quiet) the black-belt was, the man quickly reassessed.
Thinking better of it, the angry man got in his car and drove away.
Two takeaways.
One, being ready makes a difference. The way to stop a fight isn’t always by being good at fighting. The way to stop most fights is to be quietly ready to fight. And show it.
Two, there’s always drama and danger out there, but we only need to be concerned when trouble finally gets within arm’s length, or fist’s length.
All the man’s antics and yelling and foul words meant nothing. Those could be ignored.
The only thing that really mattered is if that man moved close enough to get in the fighter’s arm-length circle.
Outside the circle, nothing.
Inside the circle, fight.
But most things in life never get inside our circle, especially if we stay calm and don’t escalate a molehill into a mountain.
There are a lot of scary things going on right now.
We need to be completely prepared for the worst case scenario.
But we also need to be calm until it enters our circle.
Be ready. Be prepared. Don’t escalate.
It’s how an expert handles chaos.
My book is called The Inevitability of Becoming Rich, and you can find that here.