The School of Greatness - 29 How to Escape Fear, Defend an Attack and Turn Your Mind Into a Powerful Weapon with Tony Blauer

Episode Date: September 6, 2013

Learning to master oneself and achieve greatness has often been the domain of martial artists. These great warriors develop skills in maximizing their potential and managing their fears. This week on the The School of Greatness we have a modern day warrior on to teach the mindset improvements one learns when studying self defense. He has been […]

This is episode number 29 with self-defense expert Tony Blauer. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. What is up, greats?

Hope you are doing fantastic today. I'm super pumped about this guest. His name is Tony Blauer, and he is one of, if not arguably the top, self-defense expert in the world. The guy's been on over, I think, 100 magazine covers on personal defense and self-defense and all the different mixed martial arts stuff, the techniques, the strategies. He's worked with military, corporations, athletes, everyone in between. This guy is a guy you do not want to mess with. Let's just put it like that. You definitely don't want to try to rob him because he's probably the guy who knows how to defend himself in any situation possible. And a super cool guy. We've got to know

each other over the years, actually through another guest. some of you guys may remember Kyle Maynard on the show a while back. He introduced us at the last year's CrossFit Games. We've been reconnecting this year's games and through social media and at different events. But awesome guy and has some amazing things to share about in his two, three decades of learning about self-defense. about in his two, three decades of learning about self-defense. And we're going to be talking about the importance of understanding psychology and emotional intelligence today. Also, how does one prepare themselves for a sudden attack? And a little bit about fear management. Is fear real or is it a lie that our brain tells us? Also, we're going to talk about some mental and visualization practices that anyone can use for taking their game to the next level, how all this applies to business,

sports, life, and any situation that you go through. So this isn't just about teaching you self-defense strategies and how to defend yourself, but really how to manage your life for an optimal life. And I'm very pumped about this. So before we jump into this episode, I want to give a quick shout out to the fan of the week and it's on Instagram. It's Jen Sue Lee and she says she posted a picture of the treadmill and with her iPhone with a screenshot of the School of Greatness on there. And she says, personal best today. I know it's not great for you runners out there,

but the School of Greatness pushed me to take three minutes off my last PR, feeling accomplished. So there you have it. I guess if you're trying to get it faster, bigger, stronger, then listen to the School of Greatness and it's going to drop your PR. So I love it. Thank you so much for the picture and posting. And if you guys are listening to this, please post a picture on Instagram and tag me wherever you are in the world. Let me know what you're doing while you're listening to it.

And maybe we'll give you a shout out of the week in the next episode. So with that, guys, super pumped for Tony Blauer. Get ready to go to school. What is up, everyone? We are back with another episode on the School of Greatness. I've got one of the scariest men alive in the studio today is Tony Blauer. What's up, man? Hey, how are you?

I've never been introduced like that. That's awesome. Maybe not one of the scariest, but one of the guys I would never want to get in a fight with, that's for sure. Probably more so than any MMA fighter, just because you know all the tricks and tools to getting out of any fight, it seems like. Or at least hurting someone really badly. any fight it seems like, or at least hurting someone really badly. Well, you're portraying me as some sort of violent monster. Now, you know, self-defense and sport fighting and MMA,

there's relationships and correlations and all that, but I'm really, I'm not that type of badass. I appreciate that. and all that, but I'm really I'm not that type of badass. You're a soft heart and you just have a hard mind. But it's interesting. There's a famous Marine Corps quote that said, you know, be nice to everybody, but have a plan to kill them too.

You know how to represent them. So I kind of laid back like that, but I'm always thinking about my escape sure sure I love it so Tony you're like uh you're like the man in the personal defense world you're like but featured in over 100 magazines and the cover of many of them you've trained military army police officers crossfitters mma entrepreneurs everyone in between about personal defense that's the main thing right yeah i mean most most people hear about me through that word of mouth connection so you know in the case of let's say uh business people

hey we travel a lot we got expatriates we We're moving down here. We're opening in Brazil. We're opening in Europe. You know, what can we know? And that's usually the connection. What they find out after is there's a lot more to what we provide. And basically, you know, the tenant that we follow is the mind, navigates the body. And then if your scare ship is unconscious or dead,

it doesn't matter if I showed you some secret jiu-jitsu move or you know some you know some pressure point that spot doesn't even know about me right so at the end of the day you've got to have the the mental fortitude the courage the mindset and you've got to almost draw that line in the sand before a confrontation you know you don't put your seatbelt on during an accident. You know, you decide, I'm going to wear my seatbelt. Right. You know, and so approaching it, approaches like that.

But we are real excited by the fact that the system that we put together has transcended, you know, all these boundaries where I can work with women in a women's shelter, business people, MMA fighters, sport fighters, crossfitters. There's, you know, what is it? Because when you think about it, you know, that adaptation and that type of, like, you know, crossover doesn't work for most stuff. You can't just transcend communities. So that's kind of a neat thing. Now you talk about understanding how to uh navigate the

mind to the body is that what you said yeah mind navigates the body in other words um you know you're you're a fit guy you're an athlete you have never kind of woken up and your foot was putting on the shoe right you're going hey and you're like what are you doing and your your quad said we're going for a run, dude. When are you getting up? In other words, people joke about muscle memory, muscle memory, and there really is no muscle memory. What there is is there's awareness and there's your brain, your attitude, your motivation, your personal directive and your goals.

I didn't want to work out today. I had a crappy night's sleep last night. I had a lot of things going on. Driving up to L.A. to meet you today. I didn't know if I could. And I said, no, you're going to work out. But it wasn't my bicep or my hamstring that did that. It wasn't your muscle memory doing it.

Yeah, it was me, my attitude, and my mindset. So we always say, you know, the mind navigates the body. And a lot of people, it's it's somewhat controversial sometimes with you know certain people that have bought off on this whole muscle memory yeah um you know i consider it a myth but the bottom line is uh you know you tell your body what to do and the the habits or the the kinetic chain or motor patterns that you create are effective or ineffective based on how you program that. Right.

Interesting. So I'm a big believer in emotional intelligence and really understanding awareness, like you said, how you think and how you feel about certain actions or reactions that come to you. And it sounds like that's pretty much what you teach, but you teach it in a physical sense, which is really how to understand the awareness around you,

what's happening, how to react to it with your technique, with the spirit. Yeah. So, you know, the spirit part, spirit, just for your listeners, is an acronym for spontaneous protection, enabling accelerated response. And it's really been a two-decade study of the body's physiology. And, you know, our thesis statement is, what does your body want to be prior to any training does that have some sort of organic protective or combative benefit to you if not why aren't you using it because that's what

will be there at 3 in the morning God forbid you know you're awakened by you know you know bad guy in the night right but as far as going back to emotional intelligence years ago I wrote I think think it was like 1993, I wrote this article for the law enforcement community for Caliber Press and Street Survival Seminars, big, big, big law enforcement training. And I wrote an article called Presumed Compliance. resume compliance. And it was basically a cerebral kind of treatise on, you know, why bad things happen to good people in close quarter fights.

Why is it? Well, it's a lack of awareness, the totality, not just situational, but the attack specific. And so it's kind of like, you know, the books, when the book comes out, what they don't teach you at the Harvard School of Business, right? And so you've got to go out there and you really, you know, what's the difference between an entrepreneur, I read something last night on Instagram, and an entrepreneur is somebody who has decided he'll work 80 hours a week so he doesn't have to work 40 hours a week. Right.

For the rest of his life, he'll work 80 hours a week for a few years. Or that's just what we do. I know that on any given day, you're up at 3 in the morning thinking about your business and you can't sleep. Exactly. But we're not watching crap on TV. Our brain, we're either sleeping or we're thinking. But the emotional element is everything. There's a few things that are neat with respect to self-defense.

And the crossover to dealing with, you know, your family, relationships with your business and stuff like that is huge. The connection is this. There are three arsenals. There are three toolboxes that you need to bring to any type of situation, whether it's a street defense situation or starting a business or what have you. They are an emotional, a psychological, and a physical toolbox. Everybody needs them. Everybody has them, but they overdevelop.

One, they don't realize that it's a tactical trinity, that they're all interconnected. In this article that I started talking about, Theory of Presumed Compliance, I said this isn't you know in a real fight it's not as right as who's left and so so we need to you know we need to you know so if you're kicking the crap out of me and i'm on the ground and you're stomping on my head and i go you know those aren't really good kicks really technically you know you're kicking me wrong you know that person isn't situationally aware they're getting their ass kicked right so we talk about this and the the more elegant way to explain it is that how you feel your emotions influence how you think your psychology how you think you know the psychology portion influences your emotions how you feel both of them affect your tactics or how you move. Okay, so, you know, in a seminar, we'll say, hey, how you think affects how you feel,

how you feel affects how you think. Both of them are going to dictate your tactics. So if you're a fighter and you got a bad feeling about this fight coming up, you start to think negative thoughts, suddenly you're pulling your punches. You're breathing differently. If you're a businessman and something's askew and emotional, psychological, you're going to make a bad decision whether it's an investment or a partner or when to pull the plug or when to go for it. You're not going to have full confidence in a pitch or whatever and you're going to fall short.

You go in there and voice is quaveravering you don't have all your other yeah you know I do that all the time is like it's a as a CrossFitter you know I'll look at a weight come as I hear myself going that's heavy what if I don't do this and then I catch myself hey dude you're in the field and so we teach the neural circuitry fear it's a big big thing in our seminars before we teach anybody a physical move we take them through an emotional, psychological experience. And we teach them a map I call the cycle behavior of the neural circuitry of fear. It teaches people that for every scenario, you need to understand.

It's kind of like a personal GPS. Where am I on this map before I get to an act and actor become one? And that could be, you know, I got asked recently, is it possible to avoid every single confrontation in your life if you chose to? And I said, yes, it is. But there's a difference between tactically avoiding through the intelligent use of emotion, psychology, and decision-making, and avoiding because you're scared. Because if it's the latter, then what ends up happening is you're creating your own PTSD,

your own post-traumatic stress disorder. I coined a new thing for the industry last year called pre-traumatic stress disorder. They'd never heard of it. I said, you guys, what's PTSD? Scholars put something in their hands. Oh, it's post-traumatic stress disorder. They'd never heard of it. I said, you guys, what's PTSD? Scholars put something in their hands. Oh, it's post-traumatic stress disorder. I go, what about people worrying about shit? Oh my God, what if this happens?

That's pre-traumatic. Because that can also be a value. Think about that. How many people worry about it before anything ever happens? You probably, it happens in self-defense, but think about how many people you know in your community as a mentor, say to your partner or have the courage to go, holy shit, I'm in the fear loop. I'm really scared to do this right now.

Because if you talk about that, what will come out of that is, hey, you shouldn't be in this business. Or that's an unrealist or a reasonable fear. And you can move. So what is the fear loop? How do you recognize when you're in it and then how do you get out of it? If you find yourself, you know Hiding in the corner of a bathroom stall with your thumb in your mouth If you notice that yeah, so so the fear loop is really subtle because we rationalize stuff.

By cognitive dissonance, we make shit up. No, no, I'm okay. Hey, are you okay? Because you're biting your nails and your leg is vibrating. No, no, I'm cool. It's interesting. So having worked with fighters, professional and amateur, just people in self-defense,

everyone has a different ritual before a fight and some people you can't tell and so their way to manage fear is cavalier and robust and they're like you know hey yeah man let's get this happening let's you know but there's just that's just not that person's normal demeanor um so everyone's different but the so what i created was kind of a map that just says, this is a map for you to look at and see where you are. And it starts off with identifying your scenario. So it's a generic map.

And then it goes to motivation, expectation, visualization. And if someone's really interested in this, they can just Google Tony Blauer cycle behavior. There's a bunch of stuff online that we've done, a video of it. There's a JPEG of the map. There's a little article on it. And you just read it, understand it, and then kind of reverse engineer your scenario into it. But basically we say, hey, for you to engage yourself 100% committed to any scenario, you need to be motivated.

And what we remind people is that their motivation is something you keep in your head. It's not an app on your smartphone. It's not something you keep in your pocket. And so, you know, in a live presentation on the way to keep your motivation, we have a discussion about that. When we go through the whole cycle of cycle behavior so the next one is expectation what are your expectations so i can go hey man let's you're fired up let's go we're gonna go for a run today louis you go yeah i got my new shoes on let's go where are we going well i thought

we'd you know we'd run over the canyon back down into the valley then loop around burbank and you're going whoa whoa whoa that sounds like how far is it i I'm going, well, that's 15 miles, but we'll just run at a slow pace. And in your head, you don't talk about this, is what if I get shin splints? What if we get mugged? What if I can't go that far? What if I throw up? What if my back goes out? What if, you know, it's a what if, what if, but you never talk about that.

So you've got this, like, what I call you, talk about that so you've got this like what i call you you see unnecessary unconscious concern because you're not bringing up you're not discussing it um sidetrack for a second i'll come back to cycle behavior i grew up skiing and i was cross country down and i did both but i grew up you know so i grew up in canada and in canada you're either a hockey player or skier i was a skier and both my parents were in the Canadian Ski Patrol, high level, VP, president. And so I literally grew up on skis. And by the time I was 13, I was one of the top skiers in Canada. People thought, like, wow, this kid's going to the Olympics.

I also grew up having more fear about everything that could go wrong, but I didn't have an outlet So like even as a kid if I walked around a corner, I expected a bully to be there Hmm, and as I walked around kind of with this negativity and this fear, but you know If you see pictures of me, you could see that You know that look in my eyes that that still there that you recognize but they'd be like this happy Oh Tony's laid back. He says that but but I'm always waiting for, you know, Cato and the Pink Panther to jump out.

And so it doesn't surprise me. And I embrace the path I'm on of, yeah, you know, like, of course I teach self-defense, right. You know, that's my cathartic expression of how to get my shit together. Right. And I'm passionate about it, as you know. So here I am, I'm 13 years old. It's And I'm passionate about it, as you know. So here I am. I'm 13 years old.

It's a zone race, a real big race for us. I'm at the top of the hill, one of the best skiers on the team. Or is this Calgary, Vancouver? No, I'm living in Quebec. So I would say Montreal. And my coach is beside me. I already go out to the bathroom like five or six times. I'm nervous.

I want to projectile vomit. I'm so nervous. I've like five or six times. I'm nervous. I want to projectile vomit. I'm so nervous. I've got butterflies in my stomach. I'm 13. It's 1973. There probably wasn't a book on sports psychology in 1973. I'm scared shitless. My coach is rubbing my knees to keep, you know,

howling up at the top of the hill. And he says, how do you feel, kid? And I look at him and I go, great, coach. I mean, like, that's the answer. I go down. This is a giant slalom race. Skip to the bottom. Three gates from the bottom.

I'm blazing. I catch a tip. Wipeout. Massive wipeout. And, you know, you get different coaches, you know, timing you at different intervals. The guy comes up to me. Hey, you okay, man? Oh, look, you ripped your binding out of your ski.

Good thing you didn't break anything. Hey, man, bummer that up to me, hey, you okay, man? Oh, look, you ripped your binding out of your ski. Good thing you didn't break anything. Hey, man, bummer that you caught your tip on that gate because you're almost two seconds ahead of the guy that ultimately won the race. So you know this as an athlete. Two seconds in a giant slalom race is like a mile. It's a long time. It's a long time. And that was the story of me as an athlete.

I almost won. I almost won. I almost won. And so I am so fiercely focused on getting people to understand how fear afflicts performance. And I was so worried about letting down my team, letting down my parents. Am I really this good? How come I feel like shit if I'm this good? Right?

So there are so many subtle nuances that, you don't know if you've ever heard of Howard Gardner. He's a... this is probably a decade or two old, two decades old. He's a social science researcher, wrote a bunch of books, wrote a book called The Frames of Mind. I heard him on PBS being interviewed. I'm just driving, listening to this interview, and he and he goes he says I believe from my research over 20,000 people or whatever was that 80% of our motivation is derived from our expectation hmm and I was driving it's like what and he says

it again like like I was talking to her. It was one of those weird pregnant pauses. And I said, what was that? You know, he goes, 80% of our motivation is derived from expectation. And I went back to my office. We didn't have whiteboards like the cool one you have in your office. And, you know, so just like it was one of those giant day planners on the desk, you know. So I wrote down motivation expectation and then i wrote 80 20 and i said yeah we can be motivated yeah yeah and i'll take that fight on short notice who am i fighting right oh you're fighting this guy who killed you know his last 11

moments with his stare right you know and so suddenly you're like, oh, yeah, I'll fight him. But you went from, who am I fighting to? Okay, yeah, I can be ready for that. So you've seen, you just see that. I want to start my own business. I want to do this. I want to do that. And then you've got quick motivation, but then you can't sustain it.

Because their unconscious expectation is not it's not going to work out why not well this could be how they were brought up it could be social conditioning it could be you know that person goes you'll never make it you know look where you're from you you know and you know that like that the rag to riches story right you know you happen most people don't they don don't, you know, you, you've met people that have like never even gotten on a bus outside their neighborhood. Yeah. Right.

So, so I think a lot of that's belief themselves or. Yeah. It's, it's so in self-defense, if you're a female listening, how many women have been told you can't fight back? You're a female.

You're not a strong enough athlete, more Victorian values. Women can't beat man, you know, in business and fights and what so a lot of it is is the the depth and the hold that belief so interesting you've got beliefs because how the chart goes is you know you start off with your scenario you plug baby then you ask yourself let's make a scenario what looks like someone's mugging me on the street or you mean now let's go

through the list first and then and then reverse engineer scenario. So how it goes is I've got a scenario. Whatever the scenario is, it's something I need to do. I could go to the dentist, defend myself, start a business, ask somebody out for a date. Does it matter? Am I motivated? Yes.

Okay, there's that hot chick at the bar. Go ask her. And you go, yeah, okay. Hold on a second. I just need another drink. Well, you know, something in the expectation. So how goes this expectation, visualization, and then the fear loop starts. So, you know, visualization, fear loop is belief systems systems which is interesting that you said belief um neural association how your brain links up symbols then we have two two strong acronyms for fear false expectations appearing real false evidence being real true seen before uh and that creates all of the components of the fear loop the last one is the challenge of threat door and it's kind of just a metaphor for three to one go for if you're a crossfitter for you know uh you know on your market set go if you're right so um and i prefer three two one go because because go is imminent you know yeah you know

you're counting down and so the um so you catch yourself in the fear loop by if you if you have a negative expectation that just unconsciously or consciously manifests itself, it will be, it will have a visualization assigned to it. Yeah. So, you know,

um, I'll go, Hey, how would you like to be rich and famous? Yeah. What do I have to do? You have to work your ass off for years. And then,

yeah. And then you go, Oh, I thought you were just going to give me money. Right. And so the person's tone and now I go, what are you thinking about right now right now well I'm just thinking about like you know having a beer and watching TV and not doing it right or what what

do I have to do and you can tell by someone's body language in their tongue you know I say to somebody hey this can be a lot of work like what as opposed to you know what do we have to get done? Right? And so let's do it. Let's go. Come on. Come on. We can't move fast enough. Right.

And so I really believe there's like an entrepreneurial gene, you know, and obviously not literally, but somebody who's predisposed to that. Desire. Yeah. And you see it in work ethic. Yeah. You see it in how people figure shit out. Exactly.

So we're in the fear loop. Everyone goes in the fear loop everyone goes in the fear loop I've never met a person who doesn't go through the fear loop the trick is recognizing that you're in it and how excuse me he's got the green juice I gave him

kale tower so we can listen to Tony choke today on the show you know the thing about being in the fear loop is everybody goes through it So we can listen to Tony choke today on the show. You know, the thing about being in the fear loop is everybody goes through it. The trick is to recognize. Everyone goes through it all the time, right?

Yeah. Every day. Yeah. I mean, there's something, you know, it's funny. I'm driving up here.

I hit way more traffic. I'm a real fanatic about punctuality and it bothers me that I'm late. So you got like three texts from me. Hey, just letting you know where I am. I'm at Olympic in here. And by the way, sorry, I'm late. So you've got like three texts from me. Hey, just letting you know where I am. I'm at Olympic in here. By the way, sorry I'm late. But I'm the guest on the show.

I could also have like a pompous attitude going, hey, are my red M&Ms ready? And I hope you've got some champagne on ice because I'm a busy guy. So a lot of it, so what it is is like I'm in the fear loop. Not that it's going to be a bad show or you're going to, you know, you're going to be upset or anything. Just it's, it's about my reputation. It's the way I present myself.

Right. But I recognize it. And instead of letting it, you know, take on its own life, I can have a conversation with it. So that's really the, the,

the message here is that when we understand the neural circuitry of fear, we understand how it can influence our behavior, then you stay more present. You're more zen about everything, ideally. But most importantly, you're not in denial about what things you're doing and how you're feeling. I think that's huge. I think people can guarantee happiness, but I think people would be, I can't guarantee happiness,

but I think people are just, they're more real. They're more centered. Right. Going, hey, you know, hey, Lewis, I'm really scared about this. You know, and maybe I'd alter the word depending on the presentation. Guys, I've got some real concerns about this presentation. You know, I probably, you know, don't want to get a phone call from one of my coaches.

Dude, I'm scared shitless about this next course. I'm going, whoa, dude, you're teaching a bunch of SWAT. What do you mean you're scared shitless? I don't want to hear that. Hey, you're sure we should open with that slide because this group is, right? Let's get creative. Right. Now, what is fear important for people, or is there a way to eliminate 100 the um

you can't well you wouldn't want to eliminate it right so certain types of fear many types of fear keep you alive yeah right you know i'm going to read the back of this label before i take this pill or drink this thing or right i'm going to check the speed limit here. I'm going to, you know, I, you know, you just came back from Europe.

Did you stop off and you've been to England? Yeah. You know, look right. Right. Exactly. So it's like, I don't want to get hit by a double decker.

Right. So there's lots of fears that, that, uh, keep you alive. Right. So fear is good. Yeah.

Fear is good. The pejorative fear, the one that, that prevents you from paralyzes us yeah and so there's a thing I coined called emotional inertia you know so inertia the body's inability to move emotional nurses when you get when it gets stuck there you blow that you blow that emotional fuse comes back to your emotional intelligence intelligence and you know most, a lot of people are stuck there. You know, I could say that. They're stuck in the mind. Yeah, they're stuck in their mind, but they're stuck in that emotional.

You know, so on the cycle of behavior, we talk about this whole GPS and getting out of the fear loop. The visual looks like an electrical flowchart. So if you pop up the.'ll put up the the image on the show notes as well yeah so pop that up because it's a good map so you can see each one of those blocks motivation expectation visualization you know belief systems neuros you know and it goes all the way through to uh challenges right door then it goes to a goal, action, result, your next block. Then it's a plan.

Then review the plan. And then your last question is, are there any conflicts between past and future? Because each one of those is a metaphor, represents an electrical flow chart. And the metaphor here is that each block is a fuse in this panel that you created. And if you blow a fuse anywhere along the way, the current can't complete.

So you're disempowered. You have no power. So it's a nice metaphor for I need to be empowered. I need to, if I'm embracing all this school of greatness, let's go. Being disempowered anyway or you know running on you know one cylinder instead of eight yeah you know still just you know eating my way through that that meeting or presentation or or work is it's not gonna work right so so the map is is is a useful tool again you could plug in

anything to it and what we're talking about when we say get out of the fear loop to go back to you know saying, saying can you live without fear? I prefer to refer to it as understanding there's biological fear and psychological fear. If you feel biological fear, there's a good chance something's wrong. Your body's survival system rarely errs on the side of danger. You know, I'm going to hang out on this thing. I know this is loose and shaky and I'm 20 floors up, my survival system says that's good that'll never happen right if you hit a golf ball you know into the tall grass and you're looking for it and there's a stick kind

of hidden by some grass you will always flinch and jump away thinking it's a snake yeah you'll never go that's could be a stick but i think it's a snake and move towards the ball is so your body always errors on the side of survival the trick is to not get paranoid about it so every time you get a little little meter be like a little fear spike yeah now you turn that into something real no I heard something so for sure somebody's trying to kill right you know no paralyzer stuff yeah or yeah so you don't you don So you don't manufacture shit to support it. What you do is you address it as quickly as you can. I did this fear management seminar in New York City years ago.

It was about five hours long. Shared a cab back with one of the attendees. You know, he was staying in a hotel near me. And he looks at me in the car and he says, what's it like to have no fear? So I look at him him and hopefully your audience gets this but this will date how old i am i look at him on a yellow cab driving back i go you talking to me you're looking at me you're talking to me you look at me i started doing deniro from

taxi okay so you didn't get it you're 20 years old and so i listen Led Zeppelin you was Britney Spears okay so give me baby one more time yeah nice and that's appropriate for you know self defense exactly my team so so so what happens is I look at him I go you talking to me and he got Alaska's you know this was contemporary taxidermy. And I go, when you say Mr. Blower, are you talking about me or my father? So he laughs.

And I say, listen, are you afraid of a saber-toothed tiger? I know they don't exist right now. They're extinct. Jumping off a rock and eating you and mauling you. If that could happen, would that make you fearful? He goes, well, yeah. I said, me too. I said, how about, you know, we're in New York City. We're

stopped at a light here. We're walking out. You see those guys there? If we were walking down the street and they put out their cigarettes and pointed at you and me and said, let's get them, would you be afraid? He goes, oh, yeah. I go, me too. I said, the difference is, and you need to understand this, I feel the exact same fear you feel. The spike ostensibly starts at the same time. But then I go, oh, shit. And then I start to download a plan and you cover your head and go fetal

and get your ass kicked. That's the difference between being trained, having a plan, having an idea, understanding how to manage fear. So when I get an adrenaline dump for something, I don't go and start typing harder and faster. I go, why did that email upset me? What's going on here? Or why is my heart pounding

in this phone call where how am i interpreting this or what did that person just say to me and what i try to do there so it'd be like if i'm in the ring fighting with somebody and i step forward and throw a jab and i get a shin kick in the leg i immediately pain is the mother of invention right and so pain being a metaphor for something's not right i got a bad feeling uh-huh you know i immediately step back and go okay i need to conceal my move or i need a different strategy i gotta move angle you know it just becomes feedback right and and bio feedback is pretty and what you do with the feedback is how you get to the next place or how you overcome the fear or how you get the results you want or how you save your ass exactly under attack or you know feedback a lot of it especially the motion

intelligence let's say it's not an attack physically but it's an emotional attack usually it's our ego that spikes that adrenaline or that helps us react really fast or email or some business conversation it's ego that's's hurt or harmed or we're feeling whatever attack that way, right? I mean, it could be. It could be. You can get an email, you know, you're waiting for an email from the most important person

in the next chapter of your business career. And you realize the email comes in and goes, who is this? That would be like ego. God, he doesn't even know who I am. I run into parties. and you realize the email comes in and goes, who is this? You know, you know, that would be like ego.

God, he doesn't even know who I am. I learned in parties, you know, Oh, it's Lewis. Remember I was, you know,

you know, stalking you at the park. You know, you know, that would be where you might get an email from like his secretary where he goes, you know, Mr. So-and-so wasn't taking uh any applications or any proposals

at this time and you're like you you know you feel like this was the last shot and now you're you know it's not ego but you're you're debilitated because you start the cycle of behavior you now you've got this negative expectation you're're visualizing failure. You're in the fear loop. You know, so there's a bunch of triggers or stimuli that could actually attack you emotionally. But we tell people, again, I think I alluded to it earlier, that there are three arsenals, emotional, psychological, and physical. The first place every victim of violence. So, you know, my background, I teach. every victim of violence. So, you know, my background, I teach,

you know, the neat thing about our courses is, you know, I can be, you know, I can teach you all this stuff through understanding Tupperware, right? And you go, well, you know, I always eat out, so I don't really eat Tupperware, but this course is interesting. I teach it through personal defense. Personal defense,

if I said to you, you know, most people won't take a self-defense course but they'll take a first aid course and i go you got the timeline wrong there right right get that like save yourself yeah you know what i i want to know how to put a tourniquet on me like it's like no you want to know how to pick up danger in advance so you don't need the tourniquet right it's kind of funny when people yeah i don't you know yeah iiquet or the bandaid, right? It's kind of funny when people, yeah, I don't, you know, yeah, I just never got around to it. I always wanted to. No, you know, and so

you know, it's an interesting thing. So every victim of violence who lived to tell the tale said I had a bad feeling before the attack. Every single one. So, you know, if I came to you with a business idea and you thought it had a 51% chance of going big, you might, if I came to you with a business idea and you thought it had a 51% chance of

going big, you might invest some money. If it was 60 or 70, you really might consider it as 80, 90. You're like, I'm in. Because you, you know, you never look at anyone who goes 100% sure that you're getting your money back and this is right. But every victim of violence, if I told you, hey, 51% of all victims said they had a bad feeling, that'd be, you know, considering we're talking about, you know, grievous bodily harm to you or somebody in your family, you go, well, that's an important statistic, right? But it's 100%.

100% said I had a bad feeling. Well, feelings are emotions. People don't know how to identify, address, navigate emotions, not realizing that also at an unconscious level those emotions are are either motivating inspiring or wreaking havoc on the psychological ruminations right which is you know you know if i say hey louis did you read that document and sign it i need it back you know last week and you go and you go, and you've had that. I've had that where I won't look at something. You know, I do not want to read this. I don't want to see what it says. Right. And it doesn't matter. It could be, you know, a letter from, you know, somebody, it could be a legal thing. It could be, um, and it was, so whatever it is, but there's an emotional,

psychological barrier to the physical action. I'm reading it. And if we got to that place soon, and this was the story in New York with the guy in the car, I said, we both have the same fear about the same thing. The difference is because I have the ability, if I choose to go, why am I in the fear loop about this? You know,

is this legit or am I, am I manufacturing? This is not right now, you know, consuming my day worrying about this shit that's not ever going to happen? Or should I be concerned about it? So how do you get out of the fear loop quickly? How do you recognize it and get out when something is fearful and you're reacting?

You know, our magic answer is always the scenario dictates. So, you know, the neat thing is there's a lot of what I consider gimmicky formula. Sure. Formulating approaches to stuff. And they are in a part, you know, there's Barnes and Nobles filled with books on how to do this. At the end of the day, it's got to resonate with your personality. Yeah. It's got to make sense to you.

I tell people you got to blend the three I's, instincts and then combine that to create intelligence right it just doesn't you know you can't if you deny or you violate your instincts and you ignore your intuition i'm gonna bet that whatever happened next wasn't intelligent right so i try to find always this holistic blend uh it's huge in self-defense. So you asked me how do you get out of the fear loop fast. Sometimes you can't. So people ask me and they want that. Okay, so what happens when this happens?

My answer is I don't know. I'm paying you to give me the answer. I'm going, well, guess what? If this is like a lifelong pattern of yours, there's no fast way out of this. You know, if it's like, you know, if you're in a self-defense situation, you're going, look, if you stab me again,

I'm going to defend myself. Then you're not moving faster than me, right? You know, it's like things have to be happening faster. So the real answer is, what's the scenario? So, you know, someone says to you, hey, dude, we got to break your lease. I know you put in, you know, 20 grand in renovations, but we sold the building. And your heart starts pounding. You're like, oh, my God, are you kidding me?

Like, it took me like six months to get in here. You know, what about my money? And the guy says, sorry, man, just business. Wow. you know get in here you know what about my money and the guys say sorry man just business wow well you know like you might talk to a friend of yours who who's a billionaire he goes what's the big deal dude move it's 20 grand you know you know and and you know you call your mom up and she's like oh what's gonna happen you know when are you gonna get a real job and you're like and you're like whoa you know so it's the it's different for everybody perceptions really it's part of it is part of a huge

part is perception I agree with that what I like to tell people is like look we can give you the tools but if I say look this is the house you need to build and you're always building my house if I go this is the answer to this question and you're you know it's always my answer you gotta look within yeah you gotta recognize and be aware of every situation and then take action what what exactly what i what i try to do with our uh our research and our program is give people the tools to help them make their next decision and so somebody says well you don't teach them how to fish yeah exactly exactly exactly it's a good one and so you know you know i've had people at the end of my course shake my hand you know go oh my god this has

totally changed my life thank you and i've had other people who go to shake my hand and go yeah i want to thank you it was a very interesting course. And you can tell they're like completely still in the fear loop. When they signed up for the course in the morning, they didn't know they were in the fear loop. Now they know they're in the fear loop. Right. But they're nowhere,

you know, so like, should I refund the money? No, the material is legit. The information is good. If they choose to continue the self work. Because at the end of the day, it's, you know, you ask anybody who's been successful short of somebody who, you know, discovered a treasure or won a lottery.

Right. Right. You know, and they tell you, you know, all the jobs they had, all the times they wanted to quit, all the people that screwed them over, how hard they worked, you know, relationships that got messed up. And so I'm not talking about the workaholic who destroys people. I'm talking about people who are just really passionate about what they do in life, their art, whether it's expressed through business or music or sports or whatever. So at the end of the day, you know, there are tenets or pillars that you can extract from those performances of, you know, they were honest, they had integrity, they had good work ethic. You know, they were incredible perseverance in the face of great adversity.

I mean, everybody, you know, might sound grandiose, but, you know, if I started interviewing you and I go, what happened here? What happened here? Oh, you forgot about that. Remember that day you didn't get out of bed? So you're in the fear loop all day. But this is what this is the type of humane and introspective approach. I don't like, you know, I've read or glanced through so many of the fix it now, self-help, do this. And I like, I skim through them and I go, really?

You want me to visualize Cindy Crawford talking to me to help me overcome my fear? Like, sure, that would make me nervous, but how is that going to help me with this? Yeah. You know, so a lot of it's a scenario with, you know, everything is, if everything's on the line for you in that moment, it's different. If somebody is trying to rape you or take you to a secondary crime scene or mug you or if someone's stealing your business and now you're, I mean, there's hundreds of areas. I mean, there's hundreds of areas. And in your workshops, you teach the emotional, psychological, but also you teach it through the physical training.

You actually put them through exercises, right? Oh, yeah. And that's the kind of cool thing. The joke I made before about Tupperware, no offense to anyone who loves Tupperware or the Tupperware company, is this is actually a useful course. God forbid you're in a situation, you've at least got some mental blueprints for, oh my God, I can't. The joke I always make is this,

is that if you're smart, you have a fire extinguisher in your boat, or it's your business. But you don't look at a fire extinguisher and go, okay, I pulled a pin here, I just squeezed this hose. It's pretty straightforward. It's like using a hose,

and I spray it at the fire and then get the hell out of there and let the professionals take over. I don't know and I can't think that anyone in history ever or the world ever looked at a fire extinguisher and said, why hasn't somebody come up with like a martial arts fire extinguisher academy where I can get a black belt fire extinguisher, right? I want to do fire extinguisher drills every day, three times a week, and get my yellow. And I'm being facetious

that it's so simple to use. It's a gross motor skill. You pick it up, you point, you spray, you run. You do an assessment first in the scenario. Shit, you know, this is too late. I'm out of here. Or I can intercept. And it's the same with self-defense. So this is a metaphor for self-defense.

So you don't look at a fire extinguisher and go, I want to get a black belt fire extinguisher. It just doesn't occur to you. You go, I get how to use this. I read it. I get how to use it. If you're a little bit nervous, you buy a $10 one at Costco, and you pop it open and you spray it and go, oh, that was easy.

Okay, do you need to do another wrap? I don't think so. I got it, right? Here's part two of that visual and a metaphor. Have you ever looked at your fire extinguisher in your office, your house, glanced down and you went, that was a waste of money. And your buddy near you goes, why would you say that about a fire extinguisher? You know what?

The place never caught on fire. I was really hoping after I bought the fire extinguisher that I would be in a fire so I could use it. Right? How stupid would that be? Right. So the way I teach self-defense, behavioral-based self-defense is that it's like a fire. You don't want to be in a fire so I could use it right how stupid would that be right so the way I teach self-defense behaviorally self-defense is that it's like a fire you don't want to be in it but you want to have you want to be the fire extinguisher how do I put this out and get the hell out of here and then

stop on get out of there let the professionals come in with it's a fire department or police or whatever right so yeah we do do physical drills it's based on what I define as primal gross motor movements, things that are, to borrow language from Coach Glassman, elemental and fundamental to your survival. Our body moves in instinctive ways

so we don't teach complex motor skills. Simple moves. Simple movements based on the body's start or flinch mechanism. If I throw something at you, your hands are going to come up and protect your head. So this flinch mechanism to protect your head, to protect the command center, we then capitalize on this, the energy, the kinetic energy that's created. The speed of the flinch is insane.

If you think about this without getting graphic, someone goes through their car windshield without a seatbelt on, there's always trauma on their forearms. Ask any paramedic. What that means is the start of flinch reflex was so fast that it bypassed everything going on to protect the head before the head could hit the window. You think about that time. Wow.

Okay. So they're not just going to go torpedo with their head. Right. They're not going through, oh, shit. Yeah. The head doesn't go first. There's always trauma. They're bringing it up at least.

Yeah. So we had a woman at our CrossFit defense course recently that was amazing. I got an email from her and I got into an accident. She was driving into this course in Atlanta. I got in an accident. I don't know if I'll make it. Sorry. I'm so looking forward to it.

She ends up getting there. The rental company was able to switch out her vehicle. She skidded off the road in a rainstorm, totaled the vehicle, and got you insurance. I'm talking about all this. All of a sudden, I see her eyes light up. She was running up to me at the break, and she shows me her forearm. That's all got an abrasion and a huge bruise on her forearm. She said, oh, my God, this was from the airbag when it deployed.

Shut up. Yeah. She put her arm, wow. Yeah, so however fast an airbag explodes to protect your face. So fast. Yeah. She was able to still start a flinch mechanism, beat the airbag up, and her arm was bruised and grazed from it.

I was like, wow. I was like, where's the camera? I need the testimonial right now. So it's amazing. So we use the speed and reliability of start-off lynching and kind of reverse engineer the self-defense system around it. It's congruent behavior for the Good Samaritan. The hands are going to come up going, please, I don't want any trouble.

If there's an assault on its way, like the movement Samaritan, the hands are going to come up going, please, I don't want any trouble. If there's an assault on its way, like the movements already happened, those hands are already coming up to protect your head anyhow. Then we teach you how to use your forearm and your elbow and your hands tactically because they're already locked. To defend yourself, to react back.

Think about this. The aggression locks and loads the weapon system. So there's no cognitive, oh, I should get into a stance. The stance that's triggered is very subtle. Yeah, exactly. Interesting. So where can people find more about these workshops?

I don't know if you're at Google. Where's your best website? Yeah, yeah. So the best way is there's three types of workshops that we do. So if you're law enforcement, military, go to our Blower Tactical website, TonyBlower.com, T-O-N-Y-B-L-A-U-E-R.com. All of our stuff links there. If you're specifically in the CrossFit community for the fitness side,

go to CrossFit's website. We have it all listed as well, but you can go to CrossFit.com. And if you just look in their specialty search, we have the listing there. You can just email my office info at Blauer Tactical. We're online.

Do you have any specifics for business professionals, entrepreneurs? Is there anything like that out there? We get asked we'll probably get some inquiries as a result of this show it's more it's more kind of a word-of-mouth thing like I've got some stuff or some some big big companies but what it was was like I remember this war on fortune 500 company that brought me a bunch of times their director of security was a martial artist who had

been reading about me in martial arts magazine, came to one of my seminars and said, oh my God, we need to do this for our traveling executives. You know, so I've done some stuff for some big companies like that where, you know, it's kind of this weird six degrees of separation. Nice. It's kind of cool. But again, it's the, it's like I said earlier. It's a seminar where you go, I hope I never have to use this, but now I did it.

It's nice to have. I got it. But wait a minute. There was all this other, what do we call it, value added. There's all this other stuff that I got out of that. I learned more about emotion, fear, psychology, how to make decisions under duress. That's day-to-day. That's the real value in my mind. Oh, yeah. I mean, if you think about it,

you know, one of the things, I wrote an article in the 80s, I said, you know, every day we have some sort of confrontation, and how you handle those confrontations determines the quality of your day. Your happiness. Yeah, and therefore the quality of your week or your life. So, you know, the therefore the quality of your week or your life. So, you know, the confrontation may or may not be something like a physical dangerous one.

We hope that it never is. But, you know, some people take traffic personally, right? And, you know, email and just, you know, the way people are. Understanding how to manage that stuff just, you know, helps, you know, regulate and balance you. Right. So everyone make sure you go check out Tony, TonyBlower.com, but also Instagram.

There's tons of cool pictures you got posted on there, beating people's asses and self-defense moves and other cool stuff. And your wife is cool. Of course. Tons of pictures of your wife and your kids. And what I eat sometimes. And what you eat. Yeah, exactly.

So last question is what I ask everyone. What is your definition of greatness? Wow. I think, let me answer that with an answer I just gave to somebody last week in an interview who asked me who my favorite superhero was and what superpower I would want to have. And I said to this nice lady, I refused to answer that. She went, oh, really? Why is that?

I said, because superheroes, the ones you're talking about, don't exist. My superheroes are real people who make shit happen, who overcome incredible odds, and their story's different. And I got a tattoo a couple weeks ago, and it says I've got a tattoo for everybody in my arm because it's personal to me, but I changed the expression. I'd seen this tattoo. I was going through my fear loop,

always going through it, but a year ago, some real rough stuff with some business and some other stuff. I was scanning Pinterest, and I saw this tattoo that said, I'm the hero in this story. I saved it.

That's what spoke to me. I'm the hero in the story. So it's like, Lewis, you know, get out of your bed. What are you going to do? You're the hero in this story.

Are you an extra in your life? Or are you the hero? You have to lead role. I changed the tattoo to, you're the hero in your story. So if I read it, it reminds me, I need to be great today.

And if you're reading it, and you go, hey, what's that tattoo? I go, hey, you're the hero in your story. And so, I shared that with this woman. And if you're reading it and you go, Hey, what's that tattoo? I go, Hey, you're the hero in your story. And so I shared that with this woman.

I go, you know, we're the superheroes. You got to be the superhero in your story. And, and if you're doing your best to do that, that's greatness. I love it,

man. We'll end it on that. Make sure to check out Tony flower.com. Also at Tony flower, everywhere online, pretty much right. Twitter, Instagram, out TonyBlower.com. Also at Tony Blower everywhere online pretty much, right? Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. You the man, brother. I appreciate it.

And we'll have to get some people at your next workshop soon. Cool. Thanks. Thanks, bro. There you have it, guys. I hope you enjoyed this amazing episode with my man, Tony Blauer. Please be sure to check out the show notes over at schoolofgreatness.com. I've got some cool stuff that we talked about on the show, some video, some images for you.

Make sure to check it out so you can get all the notes about this show. If you enjoyed it, please share it with your friends on Twitter or Facebook. And again, remember to tag yourself on Instagram where you're listening to the School of Greatness. And if you would hop over to iTunes and leave a review with some feedback, I would most appreciate that love. With that, guys, you guys know what you need to do. It's time to step up. It's time to take action. It's time to get the results that you want. So make sure to go out there, baby, and do something great.