Luck [運]

In recent postings it has become known that in relation to the experience threshold, i.e. “According to Ken Murray in 'Training at the Speed of Life', the Air Force set ‘ace’ at five dogfights because there best research showed that no one—no one—remembered their training for their first three to five dogfights.  Personally, I would set the threshold for unarmed encounters closer to twenty. Grasp that.  With the best training in the world, you still got through your first 3-5 on instinct and luck.” - Rory Miller, Teaching, Training, Conditioning and Play. Chiron Blog dtd May 9, 2014

This might be perceived as disheartening to those who practice a MA for SD or those who are taking SD because they feel they need the protection because of the possibility of it taking up to twenty encounters to finally pull up training in lieu of surviving on “luck.” Well, luck maybe what you get when you do all that training and practice. Consider this, would you rather have to deal with violence cold and without any exposure or knowledge, i.e. where you simply roll up into a ball and hope you live, or would you rather have it there where the lizard may or may not extract it for your survival?

For me, after hearing all this in regards to that experience threshold I thought that maybe taking MA or SD for defense is fundamentally not worth the time or effort since, expect for those professionals who deal with conflict and violence on a daily basis, almost all civilians will never encounter violence in their entire life times and even if they do then it sure is not going to reach a level of three to five encounters with the additional seventeen or so for empty hand per the Mr. Miller’s estimate of empty handed experience threshold. 

I also believe that in most cases you make your own luck. I believe that even with the experience threshold that one with that kind of luck is due to all the hard work, hard training, sweat-blood expended that when push comes to shove that luck will be based on the created mind-state of the practitioner. Yes, you may not drop into your kung fu posture and apply those cool combinations necessary to apply SD but what ever you do if you have the history in training and practice and if your experience threshold is currently at zero that luck that leads to your survival will be there. 

Don’t use the perception of the experience threshold, especially for empty hand, as an excuse to stop training and practicing because it will contribute to your “luck.” Remember, “The Mysticism surrounding any good martial art is not so much religion as mindset.” - Unknown Focus in that mind-set or mind-state because that is what will help you make the leap even if that leap is a lot of luck while you build toward that experience threshold. 

Experience Threshold is a phrase used by Rory Miller, and possibly many others including Ken Murray, that is about getting to that point where your training and practice actually reach the point where it pushes luck to second place right behind or inter-connected to your efforts in MA, SD and/or both. 

Note: these are my thoughts and theories and mine alone, I just used others phrases and terms to create a viewpoint that may provide MA/SD practitioners more to think about in their training and practice and most of all, application of MA and SD. 

Addendum:

Luck: where success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one’s own actions; chance to find or acquire. One looks at luck as something that comes from nowhere and for no reason when in fact luck is about preparation, knowledge and experiences. Every day of our lives is about accumulating experiences, skills and knowledge that adds to our so called “luck.” Luck is more about pulling the right decisions and actions from deep down in our lizard brains, i.e. the instinctual level of our brains serving mankind since the beginning of man’s time for survival. It is that which rises up from our unconscious that is often perceived as magic or inspiration when in fact it is the human ability to take a bunch of apparent unrelated experiences and knowledge to form theories, ideas, actions and new knowledge to tackle obstacles and find answers to life’s questions in providing growth of humans, both personal and societal. Make your own luck, seek out knowledge; seek out experiences; seek out all those out of the box things that will bring about the type of luck that will mean “survival.”