Best Practices Amaury Murgado
Warrior Mindset To survive and win you must prepare, commit, believe, and never give up.
Y
ou probably hear about needing to have a warrior mindset almost daily. Books are published about it, motivational speakers make money speaking of it, and while attending in-service training, we shake our heads in obvious agreement when someone lectures about it. But what do you really think? Are your attitude and mindset real tools or are you just buying into the hype? Do you even know what a true warrior is, let alone the mindset of such a person?
Some Definitions Let’s first define what a warrior is. In general, a conventional definition for warrior is “someone who is engaged in or experienced in battle.” But this definition goes only so far, as it relates to those fighting in a war. A more encompassing definition of a warrior for law enforcement is “one who is engaged aggressively or energetically in an activity, cause, or conflict.” I believe this to be a better working definition because it broadens the scope and therefore who can be involved with it.
Certainly those in law enforcement are put in harm’s way and experience their own form of battle. And you can be considered a warrior if you completely commit yourself, mind, body, and soul. In order to do that, however, a warrior must make daily sacrifices for his or her cause. These sacrifices include developing a set of attitudes that will reign above all others. Everything a warrior does will revolve around them. An attitude generally means a state of mind, feeling, and disposition. It also means how a person views something or tends to behave toward it. This is why attitude is always such an important topic in law enforcement; it speaks to your behavior. The behavior that is created from these attitudes therefore becomes your mindset. A mindset is developed when you employ a fixed mental attitude that predetermines your response to a given situation. For example, your attitudes toward something help develop your response or approach. Your mindset becomes your approach. Say for example you hate coming in on a day off for in-service training. You then form the mindset that you don’t want to be there so you sit in the back and play with your smartphone the whole time. Your mindset guides what you do and how you do it. Therefore, having a warrior mindset means having a positive focus about your mission and demonstrating the appropriate behavior to back it up.
Understanding Mindsets
To develop a warrior mindset you must train both your mind and body.
14
POLICE MAY 2012
If you are looking for a good all-in-one reference on the topic, I suggest reading “Warrior Mindset,” cowritten by Dr. Michael J. Asken. I had the privilege of hearing him speak at the first South East Warrior Symposium held in Orlando, Fla., this past February. In the book, Asken writes, “…experience shows that up to 90% of successful performance is attributed to psychological skills. Rarely is that number reported to be less than 40%. This comes from talking to military personnel, police officers, including SWAT tactical team members, and For more Best Practices go to www.PoliceMag.com/bestpractices