How do you win a fight? By forcing your opponent to surrender under the threat of choking him, tearing a ligament, or breaking a joint.
Let me start by saying that such outcomes are rare in the gym. You take care of your training partners—not necessarily out of compassion, but out of self-interest. If you don’t, they’ll quit, and you’ll have no one left to sharpen your skills with.
But the threat has to be real, or there’s no meaning, no progress.
To control your strength precisely, you need complete control over his body. Meanwhile, your opponent thrashes in your grip like a wild cat.
The winning strategy? Isolate a joint. As long as the body remains unified, it’s invincible. But when an elbow, knee, or neck is cut off from the whole, it becomes vulnerable and weak.
Create asymmetry: your entire body versus one of his joints.
This seems like a simple idea, but it holds bottomless wisdom. It teaches you what to seek and what to avoid in business and in life.
It’s foolish to attack a problem head-on. Like a hydra, it will exhaust you. Instead, dig up the root and cut it off. The branches—the symptoms—will wither on their own.
When you’re under attack, flip the strategy around.
The goal of any agent of chaos is to isolate you, cutting you off from your source of unity. To survive, you must rebuild that connection—with everyone you love, admire, and share a path with.
This is where the concept of synergy comes to mind.
In Christianity, synergy (from the Greek συνεργός, “cooperative action”) refers to the collaboration between God and man in the work of salvation—a co-creation of divine energy and human freedom.
Buckminster Fuller, the American philosopher, systems theorist, architect, and inventor, once said: “I find all of our world society is operating exclusively in parts. We know this because the word synergy is unknown popularly and it is the only word that means 'behavior of wholes unpredicted by behavior of their parts.' This proves that society does not even think that it has a need for such a word. This discloses that society does not think that there are behaviors of wholes unpredicted by the parts.”
He also said: “We are here as local information harvesters, local problem-solvers in support of the integrity of eternally regenerative Universe.”
In any moment, we can choose to be at one with the universe or not.
Sincerely yours,
-Alexander
About me:
As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.
How can I help you?
If you've long been trying to understand what is limiting you and/or your business and how to finally give important changes a push, then The Catalyst Session is designed specifically for you. Book it here.