Cause-State vs Effect-State:
Controlling Fear Is NOT About An Aggressive Mindset Or Positive Thinking

I think this is probably one of the areas where TFT can really clear things up for you when it comes to protecting yourself.

There is this idea out there that you have to have a certain type of mindset to do violence. That you have to gear yourself up to be effective, that you have to think aggressively, that you have to be an offensive person.

There are all sorts of terms that people try to talk about. They actually write great volumes on this subject. Some try to color code it for you. They’ll tell you right now you’re living in a white state, then you go to an orange state, then when it’s a real violent situation, you’re in red state. I mean all this ridiculous stuff that has absolutely nothing to do with results.

The only thing that TFT cares about is results. And the only thing that you’ll care about in surviving a violent situation is the results that you get. Are we going to sit there and try to tell you that you’re not going to be scared in an imminent violent situation, one involving criminal violence? Absolutely not. You’re going to be scared. You can’t control fear. It’s physiologically impossible.

But what causes hesitation and what causes you to freeze is a lack of knowledge. That’s why what we give you in TFT is a knowledge-based system. We point out to you that there are 72 anatomical areas of the body that provide you over 200 different targets that get you a physiological reaction. And the great thing about it is you only need one of them to start off the process.

We know at TFT that you’re going to be scared. We know your vision is going to get narrowed. We know it’s going to get myopic. But what’s so great about having narrowed vision and myopic vision in a scared state like that is you’ll be able to see just one of those targets. And then, no matter how scared you are, no matter how much this caught you off guard, your thought process, because of your training, is going to allow you to take advantage of that one target area that some predators giving to you.

So even though urine might be running down the side of your leg and you’re scared to death, you still say to yourself, Well, I’m scared but I can still hit that target. I can get that one area. And that’s where the process starts.

So, we waste no time trying to play mind games with you, trying to puff you up with tough sounding talk or anything like that. That has nothing to do with surviving a violent situation. It’s all about Cause and Effect. The only thing that’s going to get you out of a violent situation is to cause an injury to the other guy.

And what does that tell you? That tells you that as soon as you have injured that other person, he is in what we like to call the Effect State. What does that mean? It means that I have caused an injury that requires him to physiologically respond whether he wants to or not. It is an objective injury on his body.

And that, by definition, puts me in the Cause State. Why? Because I caused that injury to the other guy. He is in the Effect State and he is responding to that injury.

Now, he may still be very aggressive, he may still be really mean but the critical thing is… he’s real busy responding to an injury. You might still be scared, you might still be a little bit taken aback, but guess what? You’re still in Cause State. Why? Because he’s responding to your injury.

Then you continue to injure him until he is no longer a threat. It’s just that simple. It has nothing to do with clearing your mind or playing some mind game with yourself and trying to psyche yourself up in order to use violence. Violence is available to you whether you’re scared or not.