Episode 10: Sunzi’s Five Full Send Commitment Tactics for When We Hit the Wall!

Summary

In Episode 10, I share Sunzi’s (Sun Tzu’s) five full-send commitment tactics for when we hit the walls of life (and we will). They are:

1. 貴勝: Visualize the Value of the Victory

2. 久暴: Don’t Delay: Avoid the Atrophy of Indecision – Take Decisive Action Now!

3. 力屈: Eliminate the Entropy of Failing to Fully Commit – Stop Chasing Your Own Tail

4. 攻城: Stop Throwing Yourself at the Wall – Try Something Different

5. 拙速: Commit Quickly: No Second Guessing Your Decision, Backing Down, or Looking Back

With inspiring quotes by Bill Hybels, Henry Ford, Leonard Ravenhill, Napoleon Hill, Marie Forleo, and Matt Hogan, this episode is replete with profound imagery and powerful insights to help us get over the walls of our limiting beliefs and chase our dreams!

Soundtrack by Sentius

Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/david-boyd3/support

Transcription

Podcast Intro

Welcome to Warrior: The Art of War for Life – A Podcast for Those Who Want to Win!   Leadership Lessons, Motivational Mindsets, Empowering Principles, Success Strategies, and Transformational Tactics from Sunzi, the Master of Victory

I am your guide on the side, David Boyd, award-winning educator, transformational speaker, and Certified Life Coach.

It’s time to start winning at life!

Episode Introduction

Hey!  Hey! Hey!  Welcome everyone!  Thanks for joining us!  I am so glad you are here listening!  Last week, we discussed “Sunzi’s Three-fold Questions for Calculating the Cost & Committing to Accomplish.”  I gave you a lot of questions to ponder.  How did that go?  I’d love to hear from you!  So please shoot me an email at artofwarforlife@gmail.com or send me a DM on Instagram @artofwarforlife, and please join the Art of War for Life Facebook page.  Next week, we’re going to discuss Sunzi’s Three Tactics for Effective Execution, so stay tuned. This week, we are talking about “Sunzi’s Five Full-Send Commitment Tactics for When You Hit the Wall.”  So let’s go!

Sunzi’s Five Full-Send Commitment Tactics for When You Hit the Wall

In Chapter 2.2 of Sunzi’s Art of War, we read:

其用戰也貴勝, 久則鈍兵挫銳, 攻城則力屈, 久暴師則國用不足。夫鈍兵挫銳, 屈力殫貨, 則諸侯乘其弊而起, 雖有智者, 不能善其後矣。故兵聞拙速, 未睹巧之久也; 夫兵久而國利者, 未之有也。

In deploying troops in combat, value victory. When a costly campaign takes a long time, it blunts the weapons and grinds down the troops.  When besieging walled cities, their strength will waiver, like they are chasing their own tails (but it’s not there).  When the brigade is dehydrating in protracted combat, the state’s capabilities will be insufficient.  Now, when the weapons are blunt and the troops are ground down, when their strength is wavering from chasing their own tails and the supplies expended, then the feudal lords will seize the opportunity to take advantage of your vulnerability and revolt.  Even if you have wise leadership, they will be unable to excel in the end.  Therefore, I have heard of awkward rapid deployments, but I have never seen a skillful protracted campaign.  In general, there has never been a state that benefited from a protracted war.

From this passage, I have identified five full-send commitment tactics for when we hit the walls of life.  They are:

1. 貴勝: Visualize the Value of the Victory

2. 久暴: Don’t Delay: Avoid the Atrophy of Indecision – Take Decisive Action Now!

3. 力屈: Eliminate the Entropy of Failing to Fully Commit – Stop Chasing Your Own Tail

4. 攻城: Stop Throwing Yourself at the Wall – Try Something Different

5. 拙速: Commit Quickly: No Second Guessing Your Decision, Backing Down, or Looking Back

1. 貴勝 Visualize the Value of the Victory

The conceptual pair Sunzi uses here is gui4sheng4 貴勝.  The Chinese word gui4 貴 (ancient form: 䝿; simplified: 贵).  As a verb, it means to value, prize, honor, and esteem.  As an adjective, it also means valuable and expensive.  The character is a depiction of two hands holding or grasping 臾 above a cowry shell 貝 (simplified: 贝bei4). 

The character sheng4 勝 (simplified: 胜) means victory, conquest, or winning.  It is comprised of the character for moon, depicting the lunar cycle 月, beside two hands using a plough beneath fire 火.  In traditional agrarian societies, life revolved around the agricultural cycle.  The window for military action was following the harvest, when the fields were burned in the fall and before the fields were ploughed and planted in the spring.  Taken together, these elements reveal that in ancient China, the concept of victory was represented by working with all your might and strength to achieving victory over one’s enemies without impacting the livelihood of the people.

As we begin to make changes in our lives and pursue our “Big Deals” we are inevitably going to hit the wall.  It’s going to happen.  When we hit the wall and the resistance and opposition, internally or externally, feels insurmountable, we need to hold onto our vision of the value of the victory that we are fighting for!  Last week, I invited us all to get in touch with the vision of what we wanted in our lives, for our lives, and out of our lives.  I want us to get back in touch with that now. 

Can we see the value of what we want to create?  Can we envision the benefits that will come into our lives and the lives of others because we achieved this?  See, as Bill Hybels has said: “Vision is a picture of the future that produces passion.”  When we hit the wall in our lives, the first thing we need to do is get back in touch with that vision and hold on to it with both hands, to treasure and value it because that passion is what motivates us to keep pushing, keep trying, and find a way.  In Episode 3: Sunzi’s Five Strategic Success Factors, I shared the idea that: “Vision guides decision, decision determines direction, direction leads to destination, and destination creates destiny.”  So, hold on tight to your vision and visualize the value of the victory you are winning! 

2. 久暴 Don’t Delay: Avoid the Atrophy of Indecision – Take Decisive Action Now!

The second strategy is to avoid the dangers of delaying by taking decisive action now.  In Episode 6: Sunzi’s Six Pitfalls of (Self)-Deception and how to Avoid Them, we talked about the problem of procrastination.  The Chinese character Sunzi uses here is jiu3 久, which simply means “a long time.”  It also means to let linger.  Sunzi was adamant about the dangers of delaying decisions, not fully committing to campaigns, letting legions linger in limbo, and the problems of prolonged battles and protracted wars.  He notes that protracted campaigns blunt our weapons and grind down our troops.

The longer our forces are out there in the field of battle exhausting themselves, the more likely things are to literally blow up in their faces.  The character Sunzi uses here is bao4 暴, which means to explode, to dry up, dry out, dehydrate, or erupt into violence.  The character depicts the sun 日 (ri4) above two hands 共 (gong4) spreading rice 米 (mi3) out to dry.  Interestingly, sometimes as the grains of rice dried in the hot sun, some grains would spontaneously “pop” like popcorn, which is where we get puffed rice from.  This must have been quite a surprise to ancient farmers!  There is also an older variant of this character that depicts instead a slain buck hung out to dry in the sun.

The longer we hang our troops out there to dry, the longer we put off the deferred maintenance of the military machinery, the warrior’s wounds, and soldier’s soul, the more likely they are to “pop” or snap out in the sweltering heat and smoldering flames of war.

As it is with warfare, so it is with us.  See, there is an atrophy in indecision.  Nothing kills momentum and enthusiasm in our lives quicker than just letting problems drag on, unresolved, unaddressed, and unimproved.  I am speaking from painful experience here.  So don’t let things linger in indecision or persist without progress.  The longer things drag on delayed without a decision, the more likely it is that things will blow up in our faces.

When I was a kid, my family used to go to Lake Powell every summer.  We’d swim, camp, explore, and boat with my cousins.  I have such fond memories of those trips!  One of our favorite things to do was to jump off the beautiful sandstone cliffs into the water.  We’d do it over and over again.  For an 11-year-old boy wanting to prove myself and impress his older cousins, this was gut check time.  Time to face my fears, silence my doubts, and commit – just take the plunge!  I never regretted jumping but there were times, I didn’t get there.  There were some cliffs that seemed a little too high, some jumps that felt a little too far, and sometimes when for whatever reason I felt a little too small and I walked away.  There is nothing worse than the feeling of walking back down to water’s edge from our jumping off point knowing that we let fear, doubt, and indecision win the day.  This is something I learned from cliff jumping: The longer we stand at the top of the cliffs of challenge and choice peering down at our problems below in perpetual paralysis, the less likely we are to take the plunge!  But only by doing so can we reach the vast possibility and endless potential beyond.

When we delay, communication breaks down, frustrations mount, resentment builds, tempers flare, resources dry up, interest wanes, determination waivers, windows of opportunity shut, doors of possibility close, and capabilities decline.  Our will to win weakens with every second we stand motionless; our attitude atrophies into inaction, and we often end up aborting before we’ve even begun, failing to launch, walking away from what we really wanted, cut our losses, accept defeat, and just settle for: “oh well …”

So what can we do?  As I’ve said before, when we find our Way, don’t delay, seize the day!  Dive in!   Take the plunge! 

3. 力屈: Eliminate the Entropy of Failing to Fully Commit – Stop Chasing Our Own Tails

Full Send Commitment Tactic #3 is to eliminate the entropy of failing to fully commit to something in our lives.  Not only is there an atrophy of indecision and a danger of never getting started, there is also the risk of entropy in failing to fully commit.  In English, the word entropy refers to the gradual breakdown of order into chaos, the disbursement of energy to a variety of other interests and responsibilities, and the overall tendency for things to get messy and complicated over time.  Entropy is the enemy of clarity.  In Sunzi’s terms, prolonged campaigns blunt our weapons and grind down our troops, stalemated sieges sap our forces of their strength and cause our will to win to waiver. 

The imagery Sunzi uses here is rich and insightful.  The term “waiver” is qu1 屈 (ancient form: 𡲬), which means to bend or flex.  It is a depiction of tail 㞑 above footsteps going out 出 (chu1) or going after.  It is literally a depiction of a dog running around in circles chasing its own tail.  Amusingly, the Shuowenjiezi 说文解字, one of China’s oldest dictionaries dating back to the Han Dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE) notes that 屈 can also mean “tail-less,” further conveying the exhausting sense of futility that comes from running around in circles chasing a tail that is not even there!  Eventually, the dog just gives up and lays down exhausted having gone nowhere.

Have you ever felt like your wheels were just spinning?  That you had no traction?  That you were just running on the endless hamster wheel of life?  That you were getting nowhere fast?  That you didn’t know where you were going but that you were making good time?  That is exactly what Sunzi is talking about here.  How have often do we get worked up, spun around, and waste our time and energy chasing after things that aren’t there or that will only end up in us feeling spent or hurting ourselves?  We need to stop going round and round in circles like chickens with our heads cut off, forever frantic, perpetually busy but not accomplishing the things that are most important to us!  I’m calling myself out here!  I do this so many times …

You know, one of the benefits of doing a podcast like this is, guaranteed whatever lessons are on tap for the week invariably end up being the ones I need to work on the most.  It’s like the universe is reminding me through struggle and placing me in the trenches as I prepare to record every week – and honestly, I need it!  I need the reminders because in really trying to think through what Sunzi was saying, how the Art of War can apply in our lives, and how to help empower all of you in your daily battles, I learn and relearn what I need to do.

In the Air Force, I see planes practicing touch and go’s, where the pilot repeatedly practices taking off, circling around, and then landing again.  It is an essential part of their training so that they can master these two critical skillsets.  It is also a significant investment in terms of time and fuel.  From pilot friends, I’ve learned that taking off, getting that plane into the air and up to altitude burns through the most fuel – about 30-40% of the total for a typical flight.  For example, during takeoff, a Boeing 747 Quadjet burns about a gallon of gas each second during takeoff!  That is a lot of fuel!  While touch-and-gos are necessary training for safe and efficient take offs and landings, if that is all pilots ever did, they’d never get to their destinations and the planes would have empty gas tanks before they knew it.

There is a profound principle here.  Getting things started in our own lives, pursuing our Big Deals takes the most energy.  And yet far too often, we start something and then we stop and then we recommit and then we decommit; we accelerate, then we decelerate.  No wonder, we sometimes feel like we have no momentum or motivation and that we are running on empty!  How many times have I started a new health and fitness program or a new routine and then let myself get distracted and forget about it only to recommit and return to it and start again, only to get derailed by something else – and the cycle repeats.  It is exhausting and ultimately, a lot of times, I end up not following through, leaving a trail of unfinished projects and half-done dreams in my wake. 

Often in our lives, half measures do not yield half results.  If we follow half the steps to make a cake, we don’t end up with half the cake.  We end up with all the mess and none of the delicious rewards!  Again, calling myself out here.  I have dozens of half-read books on my shelves.  My home renovations are notorious for having multiple half-finished projects underway and what I am learning from that is to avoid half-measures at all costs!  Finish the job!  See the journey through to its end.  If it’s worth starting, it’s worth finishing!

When we feel stuck, like our wheels are spinning and we aren’t making any progress it is easy for competing priorities and conflicting agendas to emerge, creating distracting difficulties, pushing our plans to the sidelines, and squeezing our goals out of our lives.  So, we need to avoid all the running around in circles, all the starting & stopping – because every time we do, we run the risk of losing all our momentum and progress and having to start all over again!  See, the real danger is not that we might try and fail, stumble out of the gates and fall on our faces.  No, the real danger lies in never fully committing to doing what needs to be done to succeed and achieve our Big Deals.  Leaving our personal passions, great gifts, and masterful music trapped inside, forever frozen in a cryochamber of fear and a decelerator of doubt.

4. 攻城: Stop Throwing Yourself at the Wall – Try Something Different

Closely related to this is Sunzi’s fourth full-send commitment tactic is to stop throwing ourselves at the wall and try something different.  In Sunzi’s day and age, siege warfare was difficult and costly.  They didn’t have explosives and bunker busting bombs, they didn’t have air power.  As a result, he often spoke against impulsively besieging a fortified city and getting locked into timely and costly stalemates.  In his list of priorities to defeat an enemy, besieging their strongholds was last.

Though times have changed, there is still something we can learn from this – it is still applicable in our own lives.  Not every problem can and must be solved or resolved right now.  Some things can wait while others cannot be put off.  This requires some clarity.  One of the best lessons that I’ve learned from my wife about parenting is that we don’t always have to correct a child in the moment.  It is often counterproductive, not getting us the outcome we want and can lead to escalation, antagonism, and damaged relationships.  It is the same with our lives.  Sometimes it is better to wait and look for an opening instead of launching an all-out frontal assault and pressing the attack at all costs!

At the same time, as I mentioned in Episode 7: Eight Tactics to Transform Your Life!, Henry Ford (1863-1947) said: “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”  That’s great if it’s getting us what we want, that’s what Sunzi would consider “Systematizing Success,” which is one of his “Five Strategic Success Factors” we discussed in Episode 3.  However, if what we are doing is not getting us the outcomes that we want, we can’t just keep constantly circling the fortress of futility and wonder how to break in!  We also can’t just keep throwing ourselves futilely at the walls of resistance, doing the same things over and over again hoping for different results.  That is the very definition of insanity.

There are no benefits to letting bad situations continue unchanged, to letting persisting problems perpetuate, or not dealing with immediate dangers and matters close at hand.  However, sometimes the walls of resistance are just too high for us to get over without help or a tactical advantage that can transform the battlefield and shift the balance of power in our lives, as I discussed in Episode 5: Four Keys to Tip the Scales of Life and Shift the Balance of Power in Our Favor.  If we can’t smash through the walls, maybe we can tunnel under them, or we can fly over them, or we can go around them.  If not, we will need to access some strength greater than our own, like a catapult, a trebuchet, or better yet, how about a B-2 Spirit stealth bomber – Sunzi never saw that coming!  Although, come to think about it, he did talk about the need for stealth … that’s a topic for another podcast … anyway … 😛

The point here is to work smarter not just harder, to mix things up, the last of the “Eight Tactics to Transform Your Life” that I discussed in Episode 7.

5. 拙速: Commit & Move Quickly (Even if it’s Awkward)!  No Second Guessing Your Decision, Backing Down, or Looking Back

The fifth and final tactic Sunzi identifies is to deploy rapidly even if it is awkward and imperfect.  The Chinese pair used by Sunzi is zhuo1su4 拙速.  Zhuo1 拙 means awkward, unskilled, or clumsy.  It is a depiction of a hand 扌 next to a two outbound feet 出.  Taken together they convey the idea of stumbling hand over foot toward something.  The character su4 速 means swiftly, quickly, or rapidly.  It depicts a sheaf, or bundle of grains tied together, 束 (shu4, which also serves as the phonetic) on the road 辶, conveying the idea of getting our product to market.  Before refrigeration, more advanced preservation, and cold storage techniques, the shelf life of perishable foodstuffs was far shorter and the need to act quickly was essential, which brings us back to Leonard Ravenhill’s (1907-1994) idea that I shared in Episode 3 and Episode 6 that “The opportunity of a lifetime must be seized within the lifetime of the opportunity.”  While there are always possibilities and opportunities in our lives, any particular possibility is perishable and any specific opportunity can become outdated if not acted upon.

In Episode 5: Four Keys to Tip the Scales of Life & Shift the Balance of Power in Our Favor, I discussed the concept of engaging or getting out there (wai4 外).  We get out there quickly and engage knowing and expecting that our sometimes fumbling and bumbling efforts aren’t going to be perfect and sometimes barely passable – but in the getting out there we gain invaluable experience, momentum, resources, and insights to power improvement.  So get out there!

2,500 years ago, Sunzi had already hit upon what Napoleon Hill (1883-1970) observed as a secret to success when we reported that: “Successful people make decisions quickly and firmly. Unsuccessful people make decisions slowly, and they change them often.”  Successful people understand and avoid the atrophy of indecision and the entropy of failing to fully commit. 

So take swift action – make a firm commitment to ourselves and take action – even though it is imperfect!  Even if we need to change things later.  Even if we suck at first!  Keep Moving Forward, if something didn’t work, it’s just part of the process!  It’s not evidence that we are doomed to fail.  In the words of Marie Forleo: “Years will go by unless you get your butt out of your chair and go out there and be willing to suck and then trust that you are going to get good over time.  [If you don’t] 20 years will go by, and then you’ll be no closer than you are right now.”  So just get started today!  Learn some lessons, gather some experience, improve some processes, and gain some momentum.  Endless equivocation and hesitation, the constant back and forth, the starting and then stopping is exhausting, so let’s not wear ourselves out before we’ve even started and once we’ve begun don’t look back!  Keep moving forward!  Maintain momentum even if we need to adjust our course.

In order to do this, we need to stop second guessing ourselves.  While a certain amount of self-reflection on our decision making is healthy and necessary, constantly and chronically second-guessing ourselves is motivation murdering and strength sapping, it is the harbinger of hopelessness and the demon of debilitating doubt.  

As Matt Hogan of MoveMe Quotes so beautifully put it: “In life we do things.  Some we wish we had never done.  Some we wish we could replay a million times in our heads.  But they all make us who we are, and in the end they shape every detail about us.  If we were to reverse any of them we wouldn’t be the person we are.  So just live, make mistakes, have wonderful memories, but never ever second guess who you are, where are have been, and most importantly where it is you are going.” 

So make a commitment to stop second-guessing ourselves, give ourselves permission to act, even when its imperfect, awkward, and clumsy.  Grant ourselves the freedom to just move forward hand over foot, believing that we’re going to figure it out along the way and we’re not going to quit until we do – that is the warrior mindset!

Conclusion

Today, we’ve discussed Sunzi’s five full send commitment tactics for when we hit the wall in our lives.  They are:  Visualize the Value of the Victory, Don’t Delay: Avoid the Atrophy of Indecision & Take Decisive Action Now!, Eliminate the Entropy of Failing to Fully Commit & Stop Chasing Our Own Tails, Stop Throwing Ourselves at the Wall & Try Something Different, and Commit Quickly: No Second Guessing Our Decision, Backing Down, or Looking Back. 

When we hit the wall in our lives that seemingly insurmountable fortress of futility, with its bastions of belittling beliefs lined with legions of limiting lies ready to unleash their arrows of fear and doubt; when the walls rising up from where we are to where we want in our lives seem un-scalable and endless and we just can’t seem to find a hand hold or a foot hold to start climbing, we can choose to stop obsessing over the obstacles and start visualizing the value of the victory we are fighting for; we can reject all the reasons we can’t and remember our why.  No matter how long we have stood motionless atop our cliffs of personal challenge, we can stop peering down into the seemingly endless abyss of our problems, start mustering our courage, and take a leap of faith into our infinite untapped potential and possibilities!  We can stop wasting our lives, running around in circles, chasing our tails, and expending all of our time and energy on things that are not getting us what we want in life!  We can step away from the endless cycle of starting and stopping, refuse to stay forever stuck in the futility of half-measures and start committing to complete tasks – even or especially the small stuff, pursue our goals, and chase our dreams!  We can stop the insanity of repeating the same old patterns in our lives and settling for the same tired results!  We can do something different.  We can make a change.  We can choose to see ourselves, each other, and the world differently – and when we do, we change our thinking and our feelings, which transforms our actions, which revolutionizes our results and redefines our experience and very existence in this world!  We can move forward in faith, hope, and optimism, believing in ourselves.  We can refuse to give in, give up, or back down in the pursuit of our dreams, our “Big Deals” whatever they are!  We can look forward not backward.  Take a step.  Make a move and don’t give up!

Podcast Outro

Thanks so much for listening everybody!  If you found this podcast impactful, please like and subscribe, and join us for new episodes every “Warrior Wednesday.“  For more information, tools, and resources to help you in your daily battles, for questions or to work with me, shoot me an email at: artofwarforlife@gmail.com.  Most importantly, always remember: “The power to win resides within!  There is ALWAYS a Way!”