Charm School

For most of my life, my associations with the term "charm" have been positive. Shocking at it may be to those that know me well, I was often described as a "charming" person when I was younger. I had always considered it close kin to "pleasant", "kind", and "genial". Call it a bit of egomania if you will, but because the term was pointed at me, I always considered it to be a positive thing. In fact, I went out of my way to be charming. It is a behavior that I studied and honed over time. It became one of the primary tools in my toolbox in terms of dealing with people.


I recently read a very interesting defensive tactics book by Rory Miller. His description of charm is an interesting one. While he describes it in the terms of a tool that predator uses to get close to a victim, he makes an interesting discussion of charm as a whole.


The short version of his theory: charm is not a natural behavior for human beings. It is a goal-oriented manipulation tactic. The goal need not be nefarious. People use charm to calm tense situations, fit into new social groups, and advance their careers. While these may seem different from the rapist trying to get close to a victim, I think Miller has right about the underlying mechanics being the same.


Charm is a subtle attempt at controlling another party.


This theory jives with my own life experience. I am not charming when I am taking out the garbage, doing the laundry, or buying groceries. I am not charming to people who do not have anything that I want. I don't really describe any of my close friends as charming, and I find that I do not (these days) employ any of my childhood tactics on them to "win them over". With those that I feel safe around, I simply do not exhibit charming behaviors.


(Here's a fun exercise: ask my wife if I am charming. Report back here with the response.)


While charm does work to an extent, I think somewhere in our lizard brains, humans recognize these attempts for what they are and either reject them or dole out a heavy dose of distrust to the would-be charmer. While I think some people are more susceptible to charm than others, I think this natural resistance is something common to humanity.


My reliance on this behavior has waned over the years. I understand why I did it as a child. I had a lot of uncertainty and anxiety in my home life, and I did not have any other tools at my disposal (wasn't faster, stronger, bigger, smarter, or better funded), so I used charm. It became a compulsive habit, a manifestation of my inherent insecurity. I controlled with charm for not reason other than that control made me feel safer. I did it unconsciously.


The first place I encountered where my charm hit a brick wall was martial arts. My teacher, and to a greater extent, his teacher, recognized the behavior for what it was immediately. Both made damn sure not to let it work on them even a little bit, openly pointing out my subconscious attempts to control situations. I ended up looking like an ass quite often. (We tend to adhere to our childhood safety strategies well beyond the time when they stop working.) Time passed, though, and instead of charm, I tried honesty, sincerity, commitment, and willingness to be vulnerable. Those worked a lot better, and infected the rest of my life. (But that is another book, in and of itself.)


In the earlier days of my law practice, I leaned on the charm tactic heavily in front of juries. After prosecutor gave a relatively dry and exhaustive voir dire to a jury pool, I'd get up and make them laugh. I'd joke about the free coffee, the boring nature of the process, and the bizarre little world the potential jurors had been thrust into. I used to attribute some of my victories to that charm, but in light of the revelations above, I've changed my mind.


Like my teachers in law, I've come to the conclusion that evidence wins cases, plain and simple. (I once had a juror tell me, after finding my client guilty, "You made a fine speech, son, but that guy was as guilty as the day was long. Better luck next time.") I've seen a mediocre attorney easily win a case against a magnificent one because of the evidence. If a lawyer's personality has something to do with an outcome, it is a very, very small percentage of that outcome.


Interestingly, a lot of professional jury analysts and behavioral scientists agree. I have recently started studying the scientific research that has been conducted regarding the jury system and why results happen the way they do. While I do not agree with all of it, these conclusions seem to keep repeating themselves in the literature:


1. There is a powerful negative stereotype about two types of lawyers - criminal defense lawyers and plaintiff's lawyers in injury cases. Criminal defense lawyers are hired guns that will get any hardened criminal off for a buck, and plaintiff's lawyers are parasites that grow rich the suffering of others. (Having been both, plaintiff and defense, I'll tell you that this is horseshit, and you'll get an earful from me if you suggest it around me. Regardless, this is the public perception, whether I like it or not.)


2. The hours or days you have for jury selection will not be enough to counteract this stereotype, no matter how persuasive you are.


3. Utilization of charm and other overt manipulation tactics in picking juries just confirms the negative stereotypes, and harms the attorney's credibility from the outset.


I've tried to tailor my approach to one that is more of a "just the facts" approach. I think this is helpful, because it builds credibility and, more importantly, allows the jurors to draw their own conclusions based on the evidence. I think this is a much more powerful and engaging approach. It goes back to what I was taught in law school: "Never tell, always show."


So, that is why I thought Miller's description was so interesting. It helped me articulate a revolution that has been going on in my own life, as well as my professional practice. I encourage you to look at your daily behaviors, and see if you utilize charm, or one of its cousins, as a habit.


And I'd further encourage you to see what happens if you stop. You might be surprised.

The Race

When I first began training in Japanese Budo, I was totally consumed with it. I could not stop thinking about it. When I wasn’t training with others, I did solo practice. When I did not do solo practice, I read books. When I could not read books about it, I would think about it or, if I could find a willing victim, talk about it. At twenty, my responsibilities were virtually non-existent, so I had all the time I wanted to pursue my passion.

Missing any training was agony. Any missed training somehow registered as “losing ground” in my brain, and it would color everything that I did. Irritation would hang around me like a cloud for days on end. Everyone around me felt it. I would be short and waspish with anyone that I had to deal with.  I was like an addict without his fix. It only dissipated when I got back onto the mat.

I clung to the practice desperately. In retrospect, it was a lot like a new relationship for me. When two people fall first fall in love, they cling to each other, unsure if the whole experience is just a temporary sensation that will quickly fade away. Touching is constant, as if to reassure themselves that what they have is real and lasting. There is a lot of insecurity there.

 In my mind, the practice was a race. I had to get as good as possible, as fast as possible. I constantly compared my performance with everyone else that I trained with. I kept a careful mental tally of whether or not I succeeded more than they did, on any given night, in a thousand different ways. I had to exceed my training partners, and if I didn’t, it bothered the hell out of me.

Fast forward a decade. My responsibilities have expanded quite a bit. I am the father of a little boy, someone’s husband, and a lawyer. My father is disabled, so I have to help Mom look after him. I have a great group of friends, and they need me too.  And of course, there’s always work to do and bills to pay. I don’t have as much spare time as I used to, and by the time I do get to the little spare time I do have, I’m often exhausted and unable to muster much in the way of mental focus.

In short, I don’t train nearly as much as I used to. For a while that bothered the hell out of me. I was “losing the race”.

But my relationship with my practice has changed. Like the one I share with my wife, it has grown and matured. It is not some ephemeral thing, likely to fade away at a moment’s notice. I have faith in it. The practice is part of who I am, just as much as being a husband, a father, or a lawyer. I don’t have to touch it every waking moment to make sure that it is there.

After a decade, I know that I’m in this training for life. It isn’t just something fun to do. It is the prism through which I view the world, and the tool I use to shape my interactions with the world.

That’s the “do” part of Budo. It is a “way” or “path” because it continues, and traverses all things and places in one’s life. And each place along the path presents its own unique difficulties and rewards. I’m sure there will be places on the journey where I will have more time to train again. At any given point in my training, my intention is the same: to do the practice to the absolute best of my ability, with everything I have to offer at that point and time.

I’m not racing with anyone anymore, because that is not the point. I do want to get as skillful as I can, do the practice as best I can, and when appropriate, transmit it to others as best I can, so that future generations can reap the same rewards and use the same tools I have. I do those things because they are worth doing, not because I am competing with anyone.

Maybe it comes to this: I’d still get on the mat every day if I could. But somewhere along the way, I realized that even when I’m not on the mat, I’m still on the mat. That’s the path.

Introduction: Safety First Posts

One of the byproducts of training in martial arts for about a decade is the periodic "Will you teach me basic self-defense?" that I get from friends and family. What these seekers inevitably have in mind is an investment of an hour in which they can learn some "stuff" to use in a situation where they are threatened. My general policy has been to respond politely, but firmly, in the negative.

It ain't cause I'm worried about giving away the magic.

I've inherited some of my teacher's beliefs. He always called these little self-defense primers "bag of tricks" sessions and condemned them pretty strongly.  His reasoning was fairly simple: martial arts isn't simple. A martial art is a collection of complex skills that have to be honed over time, through a process of intensive, focused repetition. Retaining access to all the education you get in martial arts while under the influence of stress takes years of exposure and desensitization.

Ever heard the phrase "a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing?" In few places is this more true that martial practices. The worst thing I could do for someone would be to give them a few extremely rudimentary skills, and endanger them with a false and unrealistic belief in their own ability to defend themselves in a violent situation. It would be like sending someone into a gun fight armed with a feather duster. Thus my firm "no".

About a year ago, I decided to say "yes", but on my own terms.

My friend asked me the inevitable question regarding my "stuff", and in that moment, a devious plan formed in my mind.

Instead of turning her down, I said, "Sure thing. I'm up in Tampa on Saturday anyway. There's a place I go up there to work on my stuff. We can meet up there at 6:30, before I'm set to meet everyone else. Just wear comfy clothes."

She agreed and I gave her the address.

I pulled up in front of the place and leaned against my car. I took out my phone and waited. See, she is a total gadget-lover, and I knew that her smart phone would be dictating the directions to her. I knew that at some point, she would figure out the problem with my plan. The phone buzzed in my hand.

"Pat, I think you gave me the wrong address!"

"I might have," I said, "Go ahead and read it back to me."

She did. "Nope, you've got it perfectly."

"But this is a Starbucks!"

"Exactly. I'm out front in my red pullover."

"I thought you said you came here to do martial arts sometimes!"

"I said I come here sometimes to work on my stuff. The beauty of the term 'stuff' is that it is inclusive... it is martial arts, but it is also a lot of other things."

"You're going to throw me around in the Starbucks parking lot?"

"Even better. I'm going to talk about some stuff that will make you safer."

I could tell she was disappointed, but she agreed to humor me. She pulled into the parking lot and we went in and got some coffee. (Well, in truth, I got a latte.. I think Starbucks has terribly burnt coffee. I can't remember what she got.)

We sat down at that point, and I talked to her. I think it took about an hour to peg down all the details. We went through all of her daily habits and I gave her some safety advice. I suspect I did more good in that one hour than I could have done with a few days of teaching her how to crank on someone's wrist or bust them in the face.

This began the evolution of a process. I've now shared this information in a similar fashion (minus the Starbucks ruse) quite a few times now. It was, in fact, just such a sharing that prompted me to write this in the first place. ("You really ought to write this down somewhere!") The following is a collection of information which I think is useful safety information, which frankly will probably keep you safer than even the fattest "bag of tricks".

Who am I to share it? Certainly no expert of any kind. I'm not an expert in martial arts, criminology, sociology, psychology, or military strategy. What I am is a guy who spent half a decade dealing with street crime as part of my job, and spent more than a little bit of that time talking to criminals in a very candid nature about what they did and why. This advice is the embodiment of a lot of the very predictable, over-arching patterns I saw in civilian criminal violence in this country.

All of the posts related to this topic will carry the label "Safety First".

The Flailing Bear Effect

Tell me if this sounds familiar. You have been training in martial arts for a few years. You have devoted hours and hours of your time and energy to developing a "toolbox" of effective practices and techniques that stem from the system that you have studied. In fact, in your regular practice, you have gotten to the point where these things work fairly reliably. You start to think of yourself as having ownership of these things.

Then something changes. You are doing free practice with your teacher. As teachers tend to do, yours starts throwing a few wrenches in the process. Maybe the speed is faster than you are used to. Maybe the intensity is a little higher. Perhaps he starts doing things that you don't expect, and aren't used to feeling. Educational "pops" become real hits that hurt. Maybe it is as simple as saying things that really, really piss you off. Even better if he does it in front of an audience.

Regardless of the methodology used by your teacher, he has effectively tilted your world in the middle of the exchange. Suddenly, you transform from a somewhat competent martial artist into a flailing bear. All those subtle shades of technique leave you, and you find yourself forgetting even the most basic of lessons. When you finally sit down, you are feeling seriously frustrated with yourself. You start to doubt your competency. If it is a bad enough experience, maybe you even doubt the validity of your training as a whole.

I know that I have had this experience a ton of times in the course of my training. Luckily, some years and a lot of frustration have yielded some insight on this subject, so I'll share it here, in hopes that it eases similar trials in other students.

Consider this: you didn't leave the womb knowing how to do a martial art. What you had were your physiology and what comes instinctually to you as a human being. Your body is a machine that has evolved over thousands of years. Most of that evolution took place well before humans were sophisticated enough to come up with complex systems of martial arts. Therefore, our body is more suited to the conflicts of animals than the more complex, tactical situations that we can find ourselves in as martial artists.

Think about the adrenaline response. Your heart rate elevates. Your body becomes super-oxygenated as a result. You get faster. You get a bit stronger. Your pain tolerance experiences a quantum leap... your fine motor skills go all to hell. Your ability to engage in linear, sophisticated thinking goes out the window as well. Suddenly, your mind seems like it can only think one or two steps ahead, and it is extremely prone to getting caught in behavioral loops, that is, developing a fixation on one action and doing it over and over again, irregardless of the result. In short, you lose many of the important things you need to do martial arts well.

You become a great, lumbering oaf that is good at repetitive, gross flailing movements.

Believe it or not, that transformation is the apex of thousands of years of evolution. For most of our survival as a species, that kind of persistent, focused flailing was the best chance we might have at driving off a large, carnivorous predator. Things like the decreased blood-flow at extremities like arms and legs might seriously impair your fine motor skills, but this effect would be a godsend if said arms and legs were getting mauled by a lion. Basically, our physical responses to conflict have not caught up to our tactically-thinking, tool-using minds.

Like it or not, that is what we are stuck with. The frustration and doubt experienced by the student in the above exchange is, in part, a psychological gestalt. The very essence of a teacher pushing a student's buttons is that he is doing something the student does not expect. As a result, the student no longer feels safe and the adrenal response predictably ensues. When it kicks in, the student's very biochemistry robs him of many of the tools needed to practice martial arts well. The teacher does not experience it because, of course, he saw the whole thing coming. He is not surprised or threatened because he chose to do something different. As a result, he will not be struggling with those same natural barriers. In those situations, the already large skill gap between the student and teacher suddenly expands until it seems like the size of the Grand Canyon.

And the student's crisis of faith ensues.

But it shouldn't. Here is why.

To start, the student suffers from unrealistic expectations in the above scenario. Why should you feel bad that the adrenal response has affected you the way it affects nearly every other human being on the planet? It is entirely unrealistic to believe that, as a beginner, that you ought to be immune to your own biology just because you want to be so. Your biology is unbelievably powerful, and it will not be put aside lightly. Managing, circumventing, and at times harnessing these natural responses is a long conditioning process. It takes time and a lot of repetition.

People sometimes get the idea that they are somehow inherently "weak" because they don't do well when things get intense. A lot of old Westerns talk about special people who have "nerves of steel", and those who don't, like this is something that is entirely in the hands of fate. In my opinion, that is a load of B.S. I've seen all manner of people, in a wide range of personality types, learn to maintain their functionality in stress situations with the right training. (I should mention that I'm not only talking about martial arts here; I've seen it happen ten times as often in the training of trial attorneys.)

Sure, some people start off ahead of others in terms of managing these responses. Some come to the practice with other experiences that have taught them to monitor this response. There is some carry-over between different types of stress. Some lucky few, for whatever reason, may not feel the responses as strongly due to their biology. But whatever hand the universe has dealt you, I can guarantee you two things: there is a learning curve, and every human being out there will lose their shit if the right buttons get pushed. Therefore, we've all got to study just the same.

The experience I described at the start is such a valuable training tool. It shows you where your skill really is when the shit hits the fan. You can't put a price-tag on this type of reality check. Most people training never get lucky enough to get them, and only discover it to their horror when it is too late, and they are already in serious danger on the street. Any training that purports to be "realistic" or "combative" has to address these issues, if it is valid.

The continued exposure to this type of stress re-wires your brain responses. When exposed to the same stimuli again and again, the adrenaline dump becomes less dramatic. Also, you start to develop strategies for how to deal with it when it hits. This is one of the reasons that higher-level people seem so skilled. In the heart of conflict, they retain nearly their entire toolbox because the situation is familiar.

The desensitization process appears to be never-ending. My own teacher has thrust me into uncomfortable situations until they were no longer uncomfortable. Then he would change something, and I got to start (almost) all over again. The whole idea is to expose the student to as many "button-pushing" situations as possible, so that there is the highest likelihood that he will remain very functional in a real conflict.

This is a long, often uncomfortable process, but there are enormous possibilities for growth, not only as a technician, but also as a human being. A strange bi-product of this type of stress is that it dredges up thoughts and feelings that are often buried deep within your psyche. You really get to discover who you are. These times that you spend in "the crucible", so to speak, are the real spiritual practice of martial arts, in my opinion. It also says a lot about your character that you are willing to endure this type of discomfort and come back for more. Most people aren't that determined.

When you experience these trials, I hope you'll consider what I've mentioned here and see these experiences as the valuable gems they are, not the roadblocks our delicate egos often make them out to be. If you turn into a great, flailing bear, know that it is part of the process, and it is happening on purpose. Instead of wringing your hands and bemoaning it, it is far better to study it intelligently and deal with it in the best way you know how.