Tony Blauer has written his 10 Commandments of Street Survival.

It’s a pretty good piece, and really works to present and create a warrior mindset. And in some ways, it’s a mindset that’s good for life in general; I could see folks wanting to apply it as self-help strategies or ways to succeed in business. It’s all good stuff towards helping you create a solid mindset and attitude.

Thing is, I had this bookmarked for a couple of weeks, intending to eventually write about it. As I reread it this morning, it stood in contrast to something else I wrote about a few days ago, Claude Werner’s piece on “how much training do you need?”.

Tony’s piece sounds like you must dedicate your life to being a warrior, eating, sleeping, breathing, and living 24/7/365 this way in order to have a chance of defending yourself. Claude’s piece says that lots of people defend themselves every day without much of any formal training, and are we Trainers perhaps constructing a bigger boogeyman to justify training?

It’s a bunch to think about… lots swirling in my head regarding both pieces individually and the compare/contrast of them.

I’m not sure the two are in complete opposition to each other; in parts yes, but I think in others they are orthogonal or even complementary.

What do you think?