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The last few weeks we’ve discussed the first three of Sunzi’s Five Butt-Kicking Bootcamp Strategies to Become Battle-Ready for Life, which are:
- Becoming Undisturbable and Imperturbable in Amidst the Chaos of Life
- Becoming Undefeatable Amidst Change and Setback
- Bring Order to Chaos
This week we are discussing the fourth of Sunzi’s five butt-kicking boot camp strategies to become battle-ready for life, embrace encouraging beliefs and sending fear fleeing.
Returning to the first half of chapter 5.4 of Sunzi’s Art of War, we read:
[Enemy] chaos is born from our good order,
their cowardice from our courage,
their weakness from our strength.“
亂生于治, 怯生于勇, 弱生于強。
Sunzi states that we instill cowardice in an enemy through our own courage. At the same time, courage is born from facing our fear. If we want to become battle-ready for life, it is absolutely critical to embrace beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and actions that encourage and empower us.
Strategy 4: Encourage: Become Brave: Embrace Empowering Beliefs 怯生勇
The fourth of Sunzi’s five butt-kicking boot camp strategies to become battle-ready for life is to embrace encouraging beliefs and send fear fleeing.
Let’s start with fear. We all feel it. It is embedded into our DNA. It is a survival instinct, part of our flight, fight, freeze, or fawn response system. If we let ourselves react and respond at an instinctual level, we are no better than animals devoid of our higher faculties. We will fear the instinctive response, that biochemical reaction to potential threats in our environment but we need not constantly let it dictate our actions.
It’s not the acute rush of adrenaline from a momentary shock of fear that discourages us. No, it’s the chronic doomsday storytelling, the negative narratives that we choose to assign to our festering fears and debilitating doubts!
Remember, fear is not a phenomenon that exists anywhere outside of our psyche – it burrows into our hearts and minds but it is an enfeebling illusion, a false façade. So how do we move from flinching to facing fear?
To become brave, we need to embrace empowering beliefs about ourselves, each other, and the world. That is a choice each of us can make at any time. It doesn’t matter what we’ve believed before or how much evidence from our past we’ve amassed to support that belief system. If it isn’t serving us and isn’t getting us where we want to be, or empowering and encouraging us to show up in our lives with power and passion and purpose, then it’s time to change it. We can change our story starting right now!
Previous Episodes Referenced in this Episode:
Courage: Episode 4: “Level Up Your Leadership: Sunzi’s Five Attributes of Great Leaders and How to Develop Them.”
Face your FEARS Exercise: Episode 23: “Warrior Mindset Unscripted: Five Attributes to Level Up Your Life in Two Minutes!”
Raise the bar on your beliefs: Episode 9: “What it Going to Cost Me?”
For more information, tools, and resources to help you in your daily battles, for questions or to work with us, visit our new website at www.theartofwarforlife.com, shoot us an email at artofwarforlife@gmail.com and follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Art of War for Life Facebook page and @artofwarforlife.
It’s finally here! Planning to Win, the first Art of War for Life publication is now available for purchase! Drawing on fifty-two timeless truths from Sunzi’s (older: Sun Tzu’s) Art of War, this transformative guided journal presents leadership lessons, motivational mindsets, empowering principles, success strategies, and transformational tactics to help you get from where you are to where you want to be in any area of your life! Recover what you’ve lost on your journey through life, uncover what still lies buried deep within you, and discover your destiny as a powerful being with a profound purpose on this planet. For more information visit our website or check out Planning to Win on Amazon.
The views expressed in this podcast are my own and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the United States Air Force Academy, the Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the US Government. Thank you.
Warrior: The Art of War for Life - A Podcast on Winning 