Your Biggest Risk and best protection
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An old Spanish proverb says it all: “Show me your friends, and I’ll tell you what you are.” That proverb survives to this day in various forms (including “show me your friends and I’ll show you your future”) because it stood the test of time throughout the range of human experience.
Ask men who went to prison and later reformed themselves if it is true. Ask men who are successful in their occupations because they are known as honest and trustworthy if it is true.
If you associate with people of high moral character and integrity, you will be relatively safe from many of the dangers that derail if not end the lives of too many young men.
If you associate with criminals, expect to become one. If you associate with drug users, expect to become one. If you are a drug user who wants to stop, associate with people focused on recovery and succeed. Continue to associate with people focused on using and fail. And so on. It’s generally just a matter of time.
In a similar vein, Dale Carnegie wrote in 1936 “If you tell me how you get your feeling of importance, I’ll tell you what you are. That determines your character. This is the most significant thing about you.” His book How to Win Friends and Influence People has sold over 15,000,000 copies.
What gave many of the criminals I worked with their feeling of importance was dominating and humiliating someone smaller and weaker. What gave my co-workers in the maximum security unit a feeling of importance was protecting these same criminals from each other, often at great personal risk.
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Your best protectors against harm are friends with integrity.
The biggest risks to your safety are friends without integrity.
Resistance Technique 1: Escaping the one-handed grasp
NOTE: This information is worthless if you: (1) don’t practice it with a partner; or (2) your partner gives you a false sense of security by not gripping as tightly as safely possible.