There are no rules to this game

Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something-
-Thomas A. Edison

That's the spirit you need to posses when it comes time to physically defend yourself. Think your attacker has rules?? Ethics? Moral values? You have to play like he does.
Ever played Chutes and Ladder with a child who is convinced that it's perfectly OK to go up the chute if it makes him win the game? This is the spirit you need to have. Save the "nice" and the "compassion" for yourself and your family. Think outside of the "I need to be nice to people" box that women have been taught to live in since forever. Do whatever you need to do to go home alive!!!!

Decision Time

Before you start thinking about defending yourself you need to find what are your limits, how far are you willing to go for protect yourself, where is that line that people will cross that will make you angry enough to need to fight back (notice I did not say “want to fight back” because that can actually be 2 different things, your perception and the reality of it). If you don't know what the line is you will never know when to make people stop in time. In a big city, if there were no stop signs and no traffic lights, driving would be very hazardous to your health. Well so are not having any boundaries.
If you don't choose your values right now, today, somebody is going to choose them for you. You might not like what their choices are so you need to take a few minutes and decide where is the line that people can't cross. What are the things people will do that will immediately trigger your fighter instinct. As women we have been programmed since forever to be nice, not fight back. Society since the caveman has worked in a way where men will protect and be the aggressive ones. This is still wired into our brain. Nothing wrong with any of this. But we need to see it for what it is and understand why we do the things we do. You also have need to survive that should supersede every other needs.
So DECIDE TODAY where and when you need to fight back and what you are willing/ capable of doing to do so. If you wait to decide when you are confronted with a situation, I guarantee you will freeze. You might make the right or wrong decision at that time but are you willing to bet your life on it???
For me that line is crossed wherever someone is trying to hurt me (of hurt my loved ones). Where is yours???

NO means NO

A soft refusal is not always taken, but a rude one is immediately believed.
-Alexander Chase

If you are going to say "NO".. and you should say it immediately if your gut feeling is telling you to... than say "NO" in a way that let's the recipient understand that you truly mean "NO". Confusion and doubt, weak shaky "maybes", should be thrown out the window. Sometimes it's time to be a biotch
And seriously worry about the guys who will not take no for an answer. They are the dangerous one.

Practice, practice, practice

Practice doesn't make perfect, it just makes it permanent. You need to repeat drills, movement, actions that work no matter what. Then those same actions will surface when your are under pressure, when you need to deliver a blow to your opponent. Otherwise you will perform washed down, wimpy, non effective techniques. And THAT will get you killed. If you are at the point where you need to fight back, fight back with power and effectiveness. Otherwise you will just be provoking your opponent to fight back and since he is most likely stronger and bigger than you (we rarely get attack by smaller and weaker people) you just gave him the chance and motivation to win.

Importance of training

If you do not make the decisions in advance, I guarantee you that you will hesitate to make them later and that hesitation may make the difference between you living and dying"
-Lieutenant David Grossman

This is why training is so important. Train your body to have good muscle memory. But also train your mind to be capable of handling potentially dangerous situations.

The Gift of Fear, part 2

"A woman is waiting for an elevator, and when the door opens she sees a man inside who causes her apprehension. Since she is not usually afraid, it may be the late hour, his size, the way he looks at her, the rate of attacks in the neighborhood, an article she read one year ago, it doesn't matter why. The point is, she gets a feeling of fear. How does she respond to nature's strongest survival signal? She supresses it, telling herself: "I'm not going to live like that, I'm not going to insult this guy by letting the door close in his face." When the fear doesn't go away, she tells herself not to be so silly. and she gets in the elevator.
Now, which is sillier: waiting a moment for the next elevator, or getting into a soundproofed steel chamber with a stranger she is afraid of? "

-Gavin De Becker

The Gift of Fear, part 1

"Can you imagine an animal reacting to the gift of fear the way some people do? With annoyance and disdain instead of attention?? No animal in the wild, suddenly overcome with fear , would spend any of it's mental energy thinking, "It's probably nothing." Yet we chide ourselves for even momentarily giving validity to the feeling that someone is behind us on a seemingly empty street, or that someone's unsual behavior might be sinister. Instead of being grateful to have a powerful internal resource, grateful for the self care, instead of entertaining the possibility that our minds might actually be working for us and not just playing tricks on us, we rush to ridicule the impulse. We, in contrast to every other creature in nature, choose not to explore- and even to ignore- survival signals The mental energy we use searching for the innocent explanation to everything could more constructively be applied to evaluating the environment for important information."

-Gavin De Becker