Blink

If you read my recent article on implicit or explicit thinking, either the excerpt I posted here or the whole article in my website, you will enjoy Blink. It was written by Malcolm Gladwell, an insightful writer and a columnist for the New Yorker. I read his books, Outliers and The Tipping Point ,originally recommended to me by Teresa WestkaemperPennsylvania (Thanks!). Both were very interesting.
    The book is about how we make decisions, snap decisions in particular. They are made in a blink, hence the title. He posits that often our best decisions are the ones made quickly versus what we are taught, which is to gather as much information as possible, analyze it and make the decision.
   I think it's a good read for martial artists because that's what we have to do when applying our art. We must take in loads of information and react appropriately. He writes that it can take longer to describe a complex reaction(s) than it took to do it and cites many examples. A section on bodyguards is particularly interesting to me and will be to you, too, since it deals with personal protection.
   Gladwell researches his material well and gets top-flight professionals to fuel his information base. In this section on bodyguards he writes about Gavin DeBecker, who wrote The Gift of Fear. That book is now in a second edition and has been referred to as a book "any serious self-defense instructor" uses. I highly recommend it. Every woman I have urged to read it has come back and thanked me. Gladwell made a mistake in Outliers regarding aviation and I sent him an e-mail with the corrections and sources. I did not expect a reply. But he wrote and thanked me and assured the next edition would contain the correction. The items were minor but I felt they affected credibility in a book that I thought was outstanding. It was a pleasant surprise to get the response. Back to the bodyguards. When he gets into reaction time and examples of how your mind works he points out that we can be functionally autistic due to stress reactions. He refers to Lt. Col. Dave Grossman's books there, too. Grossman wrote both On Combat and On Killing, two more books you should read. I don't hear kenpo instructors talk about the effects of stress on performance or how it goes all the way down to the biochemical level. The chemicals released into your blood during a stress event differ depending on whether it's physical stress or perceived life-threatening stress. We always said that a hard physical belt test replicated the stress one would experience in a street altercation. Apparently that's not so according to studies. The book will provide some perspective on how we decide to do so much in our lives but when put in the Kenpo perspective, I think it will give you a lot to think about.