Tony, a Shootrite student, has a lot of physical challenges, but his mental characteristics more than make up for them.

Personal protection is an individual responsibility. To prepare yourself to solve a defensive problem - avoiding trouble, applying unarmed defensive tactics, or using your firearm - you must focus on a few key characteristics. Motivation: Motivation is essential to success in any endeavor. Your motivation for training/practicing defensive skills is to save lives - protecting yourself, family, friends or teammates. Motivate yourself with this: At some point it may be up to you to defeat a violent opponent. This could happen any time, any place. Once the fight starts it's too late for what you "could'a, would'a, or should'a" done. Dedication: Learning to fight with firearms takes time, money, and more time. You have to be dedicated in budgeting both time and money for training and practice. You attend training, but the majority of your time is spent on practice, performing the repetitions necessary to learn the skills and tactics required for effective self defense. Scheduling time to practice takes lots of dedication; otherwise it falls to the side, replaced by more what seem like more pressing needs. The thing to remember is that most of your practice can be performed dry, which doesn't cost anything. A ten-minute session per day with dry practice will maintain and improve your skills. Humility: Humility is a hard one. Acknowledge that there is always more to learn. Fighting with firearms is an art. You think you've mastered a certain aspect or skill. Then, something forces you to reexamine your skills. You'll never get it perfect - whether it's tactics or skills and techniques - but there's always room for improvement. Chances are you'll never be the "Best" or "Number 1," but then when it comes to fighting you don't have to be the best, you just have to be better than your opponent(s). Determination: The path you've chosen is a life long journey. It takes determination stay on the path. You have to be determined in other ways as well, for example, determined to stay aware of your environment, constantly looking for possible trouble. You're determined to improve your skills, always looking forward, concentrating on becoming better. You also have to be determined that when the time comes you will not hesitate to stop the threat(s) as efficiently as possible. And you're determined that no matter what happens, you will win. Learning, and if necessary, applying lethal force is a serious subject, and should be approached accordingly. It's interesting to me when I see posts on my writings and teaching criticizing me for being "too serious." Part of that is my personality. My Mom says I was always serious, even as a child. The other factor is that the skills I teach are about life and death, and cannot be approached lightly. What applies to the teacher applies to the student. You should develop and cultivate the characteristics and attitude that will serve you well in life as well as fighting. Tiger McKee is director of Shootrite Firearms Academy, located in northern Alabama. He is the author of "The Book of Two Guns," writes for several firearms/tactical publications, and is featured on GunTalk's DVD, "Fighting With The 1911 - http://shootrite.org/dvd/dvd.html Website: www.shootrite.org http://www.facebook.com/pages/Shootrite-Firearms-Academy/156608611038230?ref=ts