All About Problem Solving!

This post is prompted from having been kept up late the other night as the elder youngling was struggling with sinus issues brought out from allergies. After finally taking some allergy medication, he stopped hacking stuff up and slept.

This got my brain going, though. As Randy King of KPCombat, a reality based self defense school, has said “Self defense is high speed problem solving.” Why do many of us neglect to carry the skills with us in non-physical daily situations? Are we so caught up in the physical technique training that we miss all the other stuff.

Many of us “hard stylists” train in one-step sparring and free sparring as a way to learn what techniques fit together and which techniques we do well. It also provides the very great opportunity to see how others move as they do techniques against us. Learning to read movements and other signs to thwart their attacks is a portion of the high speed problem solving.

Here is where my brain went that night…
So, you are hacking your lungs out and running to the kitchen every ten minutes while getting frustrated because of it. At what point does the problem solving kick in? In this case not until I told him. He took the allergy medication and within 15 minutes had stopped hacking and coughing. The problem was solved by default.

One of the thoughts that got in the way here, which I can understand, is that “I don’t want to take pills.” concept. I agree with this, mostly. We shouldn’t be taking pills (or other) for every little problem but, if you cannot fix or change problem without the help then, use the help. If you truly don’t like the pills, use them until you have a better solution. That does mean that you still have to be actively aware of the issue and spend time working on it. It is easy enough to forget and not take another pill, also.

But this example isn’t even high speed! When we don’t recognize what is happening in something as slow and obvious as allergies, how can we expect to handle things that have speed? Maybe the example of a highway entry ramp can help illustrate this better. As you are on the ramp moving onto the highway, what are you looking at? The ramp (road)? The car ahead of you? The traffic on the highway? All of the above? Have you looked enough to know where and when you will fit yourself into the traffic on the highway? Are you planning your spot to merge? Yes, all of this is the part that you’re responsible for. Are your problem solving skills up to the task? If not, you need to train much more as well.

The next question that my brain had was “When do you think for yourself?” If you can’t recognize there is a problem that should be solved, will you continue the way you are? I think this goes beyond the education that is received in the martial arts and demonstrates part of the problems of our current educational systems (but that’s another topic). The education that you have should make it possible for you to act without hand-holding and being told what to do.

Okay, so this rambling has also turned into a rant about too many people being sheeple. I hope you enjoyed it anyway. Please comment, like and share this (and my other posts) if you have found it worthwhile. You can also subscribe to get post updates via email with the form below. Thank you!
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