Credit to Alex Sansone (The Suited Shootist) for his competencies diagram, shown above as the featured image.

Welcome, friends.

Military strategists and philosophers have preached the tactical and spiritual benefits of self-knowledge since time immemorial. As self-defenders, we’re required to dabble in both of those worlds to some degree. Although our mission is not martial per se, and what you find soul-searching should be put in its proper mental place before the gun goes inside your waistband and you venture out into public, it still serves a person well in life and violence to know who they are, what they believe, and what they’re fighting for.

Achieving that level of self-awareness is worthwhile but does require navel-gazing. No, that does not mean staring into your belly button.

If you feel like you truly have no baseline understanding of yourself, popular models or theories of personality like the Big Five personality traits, Myers–Briggs type indicators, and the Enneagram can be a good place to start, so long as you understand that they’re probably better used as tools to facilitate self-reflection than the keys to profound knowledge of human existence.

For the self-avowed nerds, roleplaying games also offer some breakdowns of practical ability that may be appealing. One example is the six main stats of Dungeons & Dragons: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. The Fallout video game franchise uses a similar attribute system with its primary statistics Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck.

All of these can be thought of as different lenses through which to view ourselves.

I’m not here to ‘sell you’ on one of these over the others, although I will necessarily be focusing on a particular system that I know well for this blog post. While there are certainly simpler alternatives—and probably more complex ones, as well—my objective is just to offer one possible method for taking a healthy look in the proverbial mirror.

To that end, I’ll be presenting what my late boss called the TRANSACT philosophy. This system was created in 1977 and is based on the transactional scheme of human development proposed by psychologist Dr. Arnold J. Sameroff.

It holds that each of us is characterized by the constant interplay of various intrinsic constitutional traits and dynamic environmental factors. Some of these things are constitutional and based on a blend of biology and genetics. Others are circumstantial and beyond our control. Some are more amenable to change, while others are more or less fixed.

TRANSACT breaks down this collection of internal and external factors into 8 dimensions that we can use to take an inventory of our strengths, weaknesses, relevant experiences, and the idiosyncrasies that make each of us who we are. Some of the following come into play as you develop your defensive mindset, make decisions about what equipment to purchase and what classes to take, and engage in training and practice. Others are critical considerations for before, during, and after The Fight. All have a great deal to do with living long and living well, which is ultimately our reason for having a Mission at all.

Temperament

Temperament can be divided into nine different fundamental traits, each of which exists as a continuum on which everyone falls from birth. These nine categories are based on the work of Dr. Alexander Thomas and Dr. Stella Chess in Temperament and Development.

These nine areas can and do overlap. Moreover, they work together not only with one another, but with the other 7 major components.

Activity Level: Activity level refers to a person’s natural inclination towards either movement or sedentarism. Some people are predisposed to frequent physical activity and motion, while others are more idle and tend to prefer quiet, seated activities. You may have to overcome more inertia than others; tasks like exercise may feel like a chore. Or, exercise may feel like fun, but sitting still for the parts of life that require it may feel like pulling teeth.

Rhythmicity: Rhythmicity refers to the regularity and predictability of our general daily routines and of normal pattern for bodily functions such as falling asleep, waking up, eating, and going to the bathroom. This is most important for us in terms of what keeps a person sharpest—both mentally and physically—and healthiest. Some people eat whenever, sleep whenever, and can make it work. Other people need a full breakfast and drag ass the next day if they miss an hour of sleep compared to their usual. So, think about it. Are you an early bird or a night owl? Do you need that morning coffee to survive? How do you prefer to space out your meals, and do you feel the need to snack in between?

Threshold of Response: This refers to the lowest amount or intensity of physical, emotional, tactile, visual, or auditory stimulus it takes to get a response out of a person. At one extreme are people annoyed by the texture of certain foods, a scratchy tag in their clothes, or the flickering of fluorescent lights. At the other extreme are people who will wear cargo shorts in blizzarding, zero-degree weather (you know the type) and seem not to notice, shrug off or fail to even notice injuries, and stay cool as a cucumber during a tense argument. Think about where you are on this continuum. How much, or how little, does it take to bug or upset you?

Intensity of Response: Once someone has been stimulated to their threshold of response, the intensity of that response can vary greatly from person to person, both in degree and proportionality to the stimulus that provoked it. Some people get mildly irritated. Others explode. For many people, their intensity manifests only or mostly internally: nail-biting, skin picking, complaints of chest pain, stomachaches, headaches, or a stiff jaw may be our only hints as to what is going on inside them. Some people might be more like flashbangs—lots of external but little underlying or residual effect. Low-intensity folks may have a flat affect and appear almost apathetic regardless of the situation, which can make them very hard to read.

Frustration Tolerance: Frustration tolerance refers to a person’s ability to resist feelings of anger, annoyance, or discouragement in the face of unresolved problems, delayed gratification, or unmet goals. If this seems closely related to threshold, intensity, and persistence, that’s because it is. This matters because so much of self-defense is learning, and unfortunately learning requires being bad at things for varying lengths of time. While our baseline is partly genetically and biologically determined, never fear: this can be improved with mental and emotional work! In the meantime, though, ask yourself: are you short-fused and irritable, or stoic and unflappable?

Mood: Mood refers to the overall range of emotions a person tends to experience from one day to the next. In this context, the definition of mood is not just ‘whatever emotion you happen to be feeling at a given time.’ Mood in this sense is more inborn and partly habitual.

Some people are more positive, others are more negative. Both have pros and cons. People on the positive end of the spectrum spend the majority of days in a pleasant mood, tend to ‘look on the bright side’ of bad situations, and are generally more optimistic, preferring to think of problems as challenges rather than crises. Unfortunately, their positivity can sometimes lead them to refuse to acknowledge significant problems. Pessimism is probably the more common extreme, but luckily—like frustration tolerance—positivity can be trained. This becomes super important when you enter the realm of mental management.

Approach-Withdrawal: This is very similar to the familiar ideas of extroversion and introversion, but extends to places and ideas as well as people, and as such incorporates a dimension of openmindedness or closemindedness. Are you a natural skeptic, or do you embrace innovation, new concepts, or radically different views? Do you crave novelty and lust after new places, people, foods, and experiences? Will you introduce yourself to strangers at a party, or hang back and hope someone else initiates a conversation first?

Adaptability: Adaptability refers to the amount of time and effort it takes someone to adjust to change after their initial approach or withdrawal response. Being totally rigid and maladaptive isn’t healthy, but there is such a thing as being too adaptable: there are times and places to go with the flow, but others to object to deviations from the plan and insist upon things being a certain way. Adaptability is a huge asset, so long as you don’t fall into the habit of people-pleasing.

Are you able to roll with the punches, switch gears quickly, and accept last minute-changes of plan? Or are you a creature of habit who takes a while to adjust to new people and environments, and likes to know about appointments and engagements well in advance? Some people are infinitely flexible and thrive on unpredictability. Personally, I am very wedded to routine and do better when my day-to-day is consistent. What about you?

Persistence: Persistence refers to a person’s ability to continue executing a task or working towards a goal. Some people are highly persistent despite tremendous difficulty or fierce opposition; they persevere until they have accomplished what they set out to. Others are more likely to spend only a short amount of time on a challenging task before giving up and moving onto something else or taking a break. Persistent individuals resist the urge to quit and will practice a task repeatedly until they have mastered it. People with shorter persistence tend to shy away from activities that require consistent practice and effort in order to achieve proficiency or see results. They are more apt to grow impatient or bored during longer, more complex tasks.

Skills, education, and aptitudes

This category includes both hard skills, like driving, and soft skills, like verbal communication and empathy. Of course, academics are also included. You can also think of these in terms of book smarts and street smarts, although I wouldn’t say that that quite encompasses everything I’m talking about. Many of these things are constructs assessed by the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB).

Allow me to highlight a few areas of interest.

So-called verbal judo is particularly important to our lifestyle. It’s our best tool for reducing social friction to avoid confrontation, deescalating brewing conflicts, deselecting ourselves as victims, and—as a last resort—feigning compliance and creating deception to launch a counter-ambush. Most critically, though, it’s the only tool we’ll use daily: chatting with the stranger at the gas pump across from you, getting along with that one coworker you’re not terribly fond of, and being polite to the overworked cashier or waitress is a big part of life. Not only will you navigate the world easier, but you’ll probably be happier while doing so. Plus, it helps keep you out of trouble.

Both receptive and expressive language, as well as pragmatics (the contextual nuances of language in use), are very relevant to us as self-defenders. But let’s face it: not everyone is good at understanding others, at translating their internal thoughts into readily understandable speech, or at picking up on what’s appropriate or inappropriate in a given situation. For instance, online, I can fool you into thinking I’m reasonably articulate, but in person you’d hear me groping for forgotten words, losing my train of thought, and being generally awkward. Others have natural charisma. What about you?

Although soft skills are probably more valuable on the whole (at least in a defensive context), I can think of a few hard skills like basic life support, automotive troubleshooting, and financial savvy that some people might have picked up through work or education and that could prove very useful to a self-defender. Professionals in the fields of psychology and neuroscience may also have a leg up on some of the topics that prepared individuals should have a working knowledge of. Book smarts could also help you identify common ground with someone to then leverage your interpersonal skills.

The good news is that skills can be learned and practiced. The bad news is that not everybody starts from the same baseline. Know where you stand.

Take stock of the skills, knowledge, and talents you’ve been gifted with and that you’ve accumulated in life thus far. Do you know any other languages? Can you make people laugh?

Cognitive abilities

This might sound abstract at first glance, but I promise things like attention and executive functioning, memory, processing speed, and impulse control (inhibition) have very practical uses and bear consideration.

Can you remember a face? An outfit? A license plate number and car make/model? If you happen suddenly upon an ambiguous and possibly dangerous situation, how quickly can you work through what you’re seeing and act? Keep in mind that there is such a thing as too fast when it comes to drawing conclusions and making decisions.

On one hand, you have people who are impulsive, make snap judgements, and operate on intuition. On the other, you have excessively reflective, deliberate people who can be overly cautious and indecisive. Neither is always good or bad in every situation. Both in preparation and in a defensive encounter, each can either get you into or keep you out of trouble.

For example, some people like to thoroughly and meticulously explore their options when planning a big purchase like a firearm—that could potentially save them money and help them avoid making a choice they’ll regret. But, it could just as easily lead someone to hyperfixate on what seems like the ‘best’ handgun for their perceived needs (even if they have zero frame of reference from which to make an informed decision, as is often the case) when that time and energy would be better spent shooting the gun they have or simply picking one and running with it for a time.

While there are plenty of times where the better choice is to slow your roll, there are plenty of others in which putting off a decision is really just procrastinating. For instance, I’ve heard it’s common for people to want to ‘get in shape’ before starting a martial art like BJJ. But almost everyone who rolls will tell you that you should just go for it. One of my amazing coaches Andy Anderson recently said something to that effect on The Relentless Project podcast S2E4.

Of course, no blog post would be complete without at least one mention of everyone’s favorite self-defense shibboleth: situational awareness. As Craig Douglas has been known to say, “aware” is not a verb. Personally, I’m fond of the verb phrase “pay attention” as an alternative, which I’ve also borrowed from my boss. The trouble is, not everyone has the same amount of attention to pay (so to speak). I would know: I worked extensively with and spend a lot of time around neurodivergent people. If you or any of your stakeholders have diagnosed or suspected ADHD, you’ll have to make a greater effort to pay attention in contexts that warrant greater situational awareness and avoid being distracted by proverbial squirrels when it counts.

Duration of a task is also a consideration, hence attention span. Some people can focus well enough for a period of time but can only sustain it for so long. Structure your dry and live fire practice accordingly. It isn’t productive—much less safe—to hit the metaphorical wall and revert to going through the motions, half-assing, or daydreaming.

Sustained focus, or lack thereof, often goes hand-in-hand with frustration tolerance. For me, dominant- and support-hand-only dry fire practice is a perennial exercise in controlling my temper that, admittedly, I often fail. If you start to get irritated with yourself like I do, recognize it, catch yourself, and take a deep breath. You can always come back to it or even wrap up a few minutes early. It’s not the end of the world.

Physiological and neurological status

This includes things like your strength, cardiovascular health, visual and auditory acuity, any preexisting medical conditions, and your stature, build, and gait. Your nervous system is responsible for your gross and fine motor skills, which encompass balance, agility, dexterity, hand-eye coordination, and so on.

While I’m reluctant to overemphasize fitness, since it’s possible you may be pursuing the armed lifestyle precisely because you may not be the most physically capable, the fact is that it’s critical not only to self-defense but to that quality of life I discussed in the post on budgeting.

Thanks to Claude Werner’s popularization of the phrase breaking contact, most of us already know it’s in our best interest to disengage or otherwise escape from an attacker in a critical incident, if possible. ‘Just run away’ is a strategy, but can you hack it physically? It’s okay if the answer is no: but know the answer.

Strength and stamina are also crucial for anyone who practices a martial art, which—if you carry a firearm—should be you, if at all possible. Grip strength comes into play when shooting and manipulating a pistol, as well. If you are arthritic or severely limited in this area, you may want to lean towards something like a Smith & Wesson M&P Shield EZ. Or, if you have gorilla grip strength, skip the UpLULA and spend the money on an extra pistol magazine instead.

On an even more basic level, how big are your hands? How good a prospective pistol ‘feels in the hand’ may not be a great metric to base a purchase on, but a person does need to be able to reach the necessary controls like the trigger, magazine release, and any safety or de-cocker.

Also, how is your vision? Do you have astigmatism, or just aging eyes? It might be necessary to upgrade your iron sights to a fiber optic front, or to a pistol with a mounted MRDS. Do you have prescription lenses or reading glasses for near vision? If so, it may be worth investing in custom lenses like those made by TacticalRx.

To the extent that we can, we should make a conscious effort to avoid looking like prey. Our mobility, posture, and gait are not always things we can control, though, and unfortunately, they do play a role in our potential appeal as victims. Vulnerable populations such as women, children, the elderly, and people with physical disabilities can be at greater risk of being victimized. The same can probably be said for the wheelchair-bound and people with prosthetics, crutches, or who walk with a cane.

Keep in mind, though, that as Varg Freeborn has pointed out in his work, violence isn’t unilaterally directed towards the old, weak, and infirm: in prison, inmates are surrounded by nothing but jacked, battle-hardened criminals with the violence equivalent of PhDs, and yet there are still fights, beatings, hits, and murders. On the street, a physically fit male giving off an air of confidence may be perceived as an overproud wannabe macho man, and his deliberate eye contact could be interpreted as a challenge to the criminal who is not afraid to defend his ego with force. There is something to be said for deterrence, but know that being big and intimidating doesn’t make you untouchable.

What are you saying with your body language? Is it saying what you intend?

Some people drew the short straw when it comes to neurology: if you have two left feet, are all thumbs, or don’t have the same dexterity you used to, this may affect the way you train, practice, and accessorize or perform routine maintenance. If you habitually fall up the stairs or trip on flat surfaces, there’s nothing wrong with practicing movement (as in walking from point A to point B while exercising safe gun handling, not running suicides) with a blue gun. You might also want to enlist the help of a younger or spryer friend, family member, or mentor to do things like mount optics or replace small pins or springs.

Finally, knowing yourself entails being familiar with human performance under stress and the attendant physiological and cognitive phenomena like pupillary dilation, peripheral vasoconstriction, tachycardia, tunnel vision, auditory exclusion, and tachypsychia. Dr. Alexis Warthol makes mention of the lattermost of these in her chapter of Straight Talk on Armed Defense, although she doesn’t use that term.

Stresses

Circumstances could be as broad as socioeconomic background, housing status, or as specific and incidental as having just gotten a parking ticket. Stressors could be longstanding, recurring, or acute. Maybe it’s tax season. Maybe you had a bad day at work or even a death in the family. Heck, maybe you just got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning.

Because these things affect our emotional states—and have physiological secondary effects in both the short and long term—they affect our judgement. When they rise to the level of trauma, they can fundamentally alter our mindset and outlook on life, especially when they occur in a person’s formative years.

Take a moment to identify a few of the past and present stressors in your life. Consider any of the following:

• Financial difficulties
• Legal problems
• Job loss or unemployment
• Abuse or trauma
• Marital problems, separation, or divorce
• Chronic health problems
• Mental illness
• Academic struggles
• The death of a loved one, friend, or pet

These things not only have tremendous impact on our quality of life, but they change the equation for how much time, money, and mental-emotional bandwidth you can and should be taking up with defensive preparations.

See my blog post on budgeting for a bit more commentary on that topic.

Attitudes

Call it your system of beliefs, values, morals, standards, code of ethics, or philosophy. A person’s outlook on life is a major influence on their lived reality. These include your views on mortality, safety, and responsibility, willingness to commit violence, attitudes about money, and overall beliefs about what’s important in life.

One of the best reasons to reflect on our own beliefs is because it’s a prerequisite for recognition of the fact that not everyone shares them, as the late Dr. William Aprill might say. But Varg Freeborn would (and does) rebut by reminding us that just because they are ‘not like you’ doesn’t mean they’re necessarily unlike you. He points out in Beyond OODA that “the ‘bad guys’” are also human, with their own “fears, insecurities, attachments, values, experience, mythos…stories, archetypes[,] and heroes.” This is true of strangers on the street just as it is of violent criminal actors. Hopefully you can begin to see why empathy is such a valuable soft skill for self-defenders.

Attitudes also include one’s spiritual or religious beliefs. Whether you’re agnostic, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist, make sure you’ve said all that you need to say to your loved ones and made your peace with the afterlife. You may lose The Fight and should be prepared for that possibility…But that’s no reason not to fight in the first place.

On that note, consider also those negative outcomes to which even death would be preferable. Mark Smith urged my fellow students and I to think about this during his 2-day Performance Pistol class in August 2023. He described a hypothetical scenario: a little old lady is being mugged, and you step in to help, only to wind up crippled, confined to a hospital bed for life as your family grows to slowly resent you for the emotional and financial burden you have become in their lives. With his characteristic South Carolina twang, he declared emphatically, “I’d rather die.”

As I recall, he also provided a few examples that echoed those of Varg in his book Violence of Mind: the “living death” of limbo in prison, where you rot in a cell as your spouse fills your vacancy in bed, and another person becomes the mother or father to your children. There’s also the possibility that, while trying to save the day, you fuck up catastrophically and maim or kill an innocent and take someone’s child, sibling, parent, or spouse away from them forever. Again, these are not reasons to not defend yourself, but realities you must acknowledge and strive to avoid through training and practice.

Defending yourself successfully comes with a price of its own. If you carry a firearm, you should have already spent some time in deep contemplation about your willingness to end another human being’s life if circumstances call for it.

On a lighter topic, what are your beliefs about money? What are your spending habits like? There’s a certain type of person who buys an expensive golf club to drive the ball farther, opts for supplements to lose weight instead of diet and exercise, and ‘needs’ a better pistol to shoot faster and more accurately. This is a nuanced topic: there is a time and place to invest in new equipment and upgrade your tools, but don’t shortchange yourself by searching for a quick fix when one doesn’t exist.

Comparisons

Collectively, comparisons are the yardstick by which we measure the behavior of ourselves and others to judge what is appropriate, expected, and ‘like you.’ They include your sources of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, willingness to ask for and accept help, and the expectations set for you by yourself and others.

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This is where the concept of self-image, as Lanny Basham used it, comes into play. Self-image isn’t his proprietary invention, but its centrality to shooting is a legacy of his book With Winning in Mind, which I’m currently reading. Because we feed the self-image with our self-talk and visualization, you need to carefully monitor what you input and the kind of perception of yourself you’re engendering. I’ll probably come back to this post and expand this section with another sentence or two once I’ve finished it.

Another important concept in this realm is what is called locus of control. Per the APA, locus of control is “a construct that is used to categorize people’s basic motivational orientations and perceptions of how much control they have over the conditions of their lives.” People with an internal LOC have a greater sense of agency, personal responsibility, and acceptance of their actions’ consequences. By contrast, when people with an external LOC are faced with a problem—even one that they themselves created—they may blame others or conclude outside influences have conspired against them. If that person’s behavior upsets people around them, that’s their problem.

Too internal a locus of control can also be a bad thing. Ask me how I know. Make no mistake: forgiving yourself, learning from your mistakes without beating yourself up, and having confidence are survival skills for life.

The kind of distorted perception these extremes create can sabotage motivation for training and practice and could even be dangerous from a defensive standpoint.

For example, you may believe that you were minding your own business when a stranger got in your face and started shoving you, causing you to respond with force…But if the incident is captured on video and that video tells a different story, you’re in big trouble. You may well have felt that you were in danger, perhaps even feared for your life, but if the objective facts are not on your side, you will be penalized accordingly.

By that same token, self-doubt does not pay during or after a defensive encounter, when hesitation could mean death, ‘diarrhea of the mouth’ will get you in legal hot water, and brooding on whether or not your actions were justified will deplete your already taxed mental and emotional resources.

Temperament of significant others

These are the same nine elements of Temperament described above, but applied to your significant other(s). This could mean your wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, child or children, parents, close friends, or coworkers.

For better or for worse, the people you surround yourself with on a regular basis have an impact on your behavior and mindset. The more time you spend with a given person, the more they shape who you are. Even people with whom we only have occasional contact influence our mood and emotions when we interact with them.

Obviously, we don’t want people in our social circles who are apt to get us into sticky situations where there’s a greater chance we might be forced to defend ourselves. This is one tenet of instructor John Farnam’s rules of stupid, as amended by Active Self Protection: don’t go stupid places, associate with stupid people, or do stupid things at stupid times.

But well-meaning people can still create social friction in other ways, even if they don’t necessarily qualify as stupid.

In her book Calling the Shots, Jenna Meek shares a few anecdotes that illustrate this. She mentions an acquaintance who introduced her as, “‘my friend, Jenna, who is probably packin’ heat right now.’” How would you like to hear that at the office Christmas party? After learning that she was an instructor, a different friend of a friend even went so far as to give her a pat down upon entering the room (possibly as a ‘joke’?). Needless to say, that kind of behavior cannot be tolerated.

Basically, be conscientious and selective of who you bring into the fold regarding your self-defense preparations. A well-crafted concealment rig and cover garment can be rendered transparent by an off-handed joke, if listeners-on are inclined to take the ‘humor’ seriously. At the very least, such careless remarks can invite uncomfortable questions.

Think also of your responsibilities and commitments. If your wife is giving you the cold shoulder for neglecting your kids and overspending, it’s probably not the best time to skip little Sally’s dance recital for open mat or bring home a shiny new gun.

Our loved ones not only constitute practical and logistic obligations, but very strong emotional attachments. If the worst should happen and you are required to use deadly force, they can provide the ultimate motivation, or distract you from the task at hand.

Other Resources

Thanks for bearing with me; I know I touched on about a dozen topics that would require book chapters for coverage in sufficient depth.

Here are some videos and I articles I referenced while writing this post:

On ‘Buying Performance’

Guide to Prescription Safety Glasses – Options and Recommendations

Thanks for reading!

At the end of the day, the ideal strategy here is to build up your strengths and minimize the impact of (or compensate for) your weaknesses. Accept that you’re a work in progress. Keep carrying the fire.

I’ll leave you with a few more questions for introspection:

Are you the type of person who…

• Gets drunk in public?
• Loses their temper?
• Tries to correct people’s behavior?
• Butts into other people’s conversations?
• Always has to have the last word?
• Riffs on, teases, or makes fun of people, even in what you consider to be a lighthearted way?
• Takes pictures or videos of strangers?
• Enjoys being the ‘center of attention’?
• Overshares, either in real life or online?
• Uses your car horn in a punitive manner? Brake-checks tailgaters? Flips people off other drivers?
• Approaches strange animals to pet them?
• Talks animatedly on the speaker phone in public? Blasts music while driving with your windows down? Cuts in line? Parks in the handicap spot? Doesn’t clean up after your dog in public?