One of my “stranded on a desert island” books is The Book of Five Rings by 17th century Samurai warrior Miyamoto Musashi (Stephen Kaufman’s interpretation is outstanding, by Tuttle Publishing, 1994—there are a few quotes from this book that follow).
Musashi outlines his profound philosophy of strategy in combat. It is not for the faint of heart, as it’s written by the consummate Samurai warrior. His concerns were life and death, literally.
I hesitate to cheapen his writings by doing what so many have tried—applying them as business strategy. War is not business—sorry Mr. CEO.
Nevertheless, his philosophy is compelling in so many ways as we consider living a successful life, whatever that means. I can’t resist.
So forgive me, Master Musashi, if I’m trivializing your philosophy in any way by applying it to such comparatively mundane concerns as how to succeed in life.
Go Straight In!
Anyway, Musashi says repeatedly that when confronted by the enemy, we must go straight in:
- “you must have the courage to go into the attack . . .”, p. 37
- “you must train hard to be able to move into the attack and stop it before it even occurs. This takes great courage.”, p. 40
- “The attitude of destroying the enemy with one cut is based on the attitude of ‘going in’ to the attack.”, p. 45
There are many more statements like these, but we’ll stop here—you get the idea. It’s one of his core principles.
When we’re faced with a problem, we need to go on the attack—going straight in. Meaning what?
Be proactive, not reactive. Jump into action. Don’t wait around. The one who hesitates is often the one who loses. There are windows of opportunity that snap shut if we don’t act decisively.
Be ready. Don’t get caught flat-footed. Problems can come along like a sucker-punch and knock us over if we’re not paying attention. So pay attention!
Obviously we can’t anticipate every problem and attack from the “enemy”. But we can be tuned-in and attentive to what’s going on around us--good old situational awareness--so that if something does “jump off”, we are ready to take action!
Early recognition of problems vs. late recognition of problems is what I’m talking about here.
Be courageous. It’s not easy to move into a problem, just like it’s not easy to move into a literal physical attack. We might get hurt! (ok, you obviously have to have some skills to move into an enemy’s attack, but you get the point).
But the faint of heart will stay stuck at best, continuing to sit in his problem, and at worst will “get his head cut off”, whatever that may mean.
Some problems can unwind pretty darn fast. You can’t play around with a cobra.
Be ruthless. In self-defense, the ideal is to end the altercation with just one strike—of course, it doesn’t always work out that way. Some problems are scrappy. Sometimes we need to execute a number of strikes. But we keep attacking until it’s over.
When taking action to solve a problem, we may need to keep applying the pressure of our solutions until the problem is truly solved, and this may take time! So get aggressive in attacking your problem, and see it through to the end.
By the way, in case anyone is confused, I’m not advocating actual violence. I absolutely am exhorting you, though, to (nonviolently) “attack” those problems in your life that are threatening to swallow up you and your loved ones, and “punch back”—fast and hard!
Be forceful and powerful as a problem solver!
The Lame Alternative
What’s the alternative to moving into a problem? Moving away from a problem! Here are some ways we can do that—they’re all different versions of the same thing:
- avoiding
- hesitating
- analysis paralysis!
- too much talking, not enough action!
- lack of confidence in our abilities
- “catastrophizing” (creating catastrophes in our head)
- holding onto unrealistic worst-case scenarios
- excuses
- lack of focus, too much distraction
And so forth.
What’s the consequence for moving away from our problems? They get bigger!
Application
*What problem that you are currently facing do you need to move into?
*Identify for yourself a time you avoided a problem and it grew bigger and stronger and became a much bigger problem.
*Identify a time when you went on the offensive and proactively dealt with a problem successfully. Feels good, huh?
Stay on the attack my friends.