Translated material
Become invulnerable
The Bombbor publishing house represents the book of Evi Pumupura “become invulnerable. How to find mental armor, learn to read people and live without fear ”(translation by Anna Malysheva).
The former US Secret Service Agent Evi Pumpuras, who was guarded by four American presidents, believes that everyone can acquire the super -resistance to be invulnerable. In her book, she teaches to be always ready for difficult situations and tells how:
- curb, reduce and prevail over your fears;
- react to conflict or critical situation without unnecessary anxiety;
- keep the blow mentally and physically;
- read verbal and non -verbal signs of people's behavior;
- recognize manipulations and confront them.
We offer to read a fragment of the book.
How to curb your fear
"Troubles give a person the opportunity to know himself."
Epictete
Our possible self and the one we are afraid
The more we learn about ourselves through the analysis of our own behavior at the time of fear, the more independent and independent we will become in making important decisions on which our life depends. Fear should not limit you. And life does not come down to overcoming fear-sometimes you just need to curb it and learn to use it in order to get what you most want to become stronger than ever.
I grew up on legends about Alexander Macedonian - the great countryman of my mother. I read about the heroes of Ancient Greece - Achille, who fought in the Trojan War, Leonid, King Sparta, and his three hundred husbands, who settled against the whole army of the Persians. I eagerly absorbed these stories and the more I learned about these heroes, the easier it was for me to identify myself with them. These were the legends of my people. Their courage and courage lived in me, determining the views of life and a place in this world. In childhood, it is so easy to be inspired by such stories, to imagine yourself in the place of heroes! We dream to have the same qualities-to be brave, strong, fair, honest-and little by little we begin and behave in real life in such a way as to match this example. Such a visualization of the future is called the "theory of possible itself." This term was brought out by Hasel Marcus and Paula Nurius. “Possible Self” is the result of self -identification through the combination of the representations of the past and their projection for the future. We demonstrate these “possible self” in two ways: through hopes and fears. Hopes show who we want to become, in this case the term “I hope” is used. So you imagine yourself - for example, “I want to become a doctor”, or “the President of the United States of America”, or “an agent of the secret service”.
In turn, fears are concentrated directly around what we firmly intended to avoid. This phenomenon is the name "I am afraid." At this moment, we decide who we do not want to be. Personally, for example, I am afraid to become homeless. I'm afraid to become like my father. I'm afraid to become weak. It is thanks to the merger of these two hypostases that we can go forward, gradually becoming what we want and do not want to be.
Sometimes the trajectory of our life - the decisions that we make or do not make - leads us to a more conservative version of life than the one we dreamed about when we grow up. The world in which I lived did not at all reflect the model of thinking of the warrior that I dreamed of becoming. On the contrary, my early years embodied the ideal contradiction between what I was hoping to become, and what I became against my will: the careful, silent, constantly captivating fear.
For those who grow in fear
In the 80s and 90s, New York was not at all what now. In 2018, 289 murders occurred in the city. In 1990, when I was thirteen, they were registered 2245. Due to the trade in Crak and the ongoing gangster showdowns, the city resembled the battlefield. In the Brooklyn area alone, a slightly less than ten kilometers, the police recorded the murder every sixty -three hours. The news reports were filled with images of bodies on the street in puddles of blood, children, worn during a shooting from windows of cars, and ordinary people pulled out of their own cars and shot only because they made a mistake of a quarter.
My parents - both immigrants from Greece - are used to difficulties and dangers on their native land. Uncle robbed several times. The father was assigned to the temple of the gunpoint and robbed when he worked at his first workplace - in the coffee shop. More than once he was attacked when he had already driven a taxi. One day a neighbor attacked mom. Our cars knocked out and stolen, burst into the houses and robbed - once they took out all the money that my mother accumulated, and those several jewelry that I had.
Trying to protect, parents gave my fears with my brother. We were allowed to go out of the house only to school, we did not play in the yard, rarely went to visit friends, did not care about Christmas, did not go to the subway - according to the parents, it was the real border of the Wild West, painted graffiti, where only evil was happening. Fear was everywhere. While it was growing, I inhaled him like oxygen - in every word that mom, dad and grandmother told me - warnings:
"Look at both."
"Be careful."
"Do not stay on the street."
"Silent."
"Give a look."
"Be smart."
"Be careful."
We were taught to look around, going out of the threshold of our mocking cockroaches of a poor shack in the direction of the bus stop. And in the evenings, leaving the school bus, immediately run home. It was always necessary to prepare for the worst: to beware of strangers, to be afraid of friends, peace outside the window, people around the corner and those who passed by. Each of my step behind the threshold of the house was filled with fear. And I am lied if I say that this did not enrage me.
Fear took strength and energy, deprived of new sensations and so many opportunities. I did not even give a good education. When I submitted documents to the Brooklyn technical secondary school, one of the three best in New York, I was not allowed. Mom said that going there by public transport every day is too dangerous. In her opinion, Brooklyn was even worse than Queens. She never agreed to my training there. If the Queens was a battlefield, then Brooklyn is a real underworld. No matter how much I begging, the answer was one: no.
Why?
Fear.
But the more they inspired me that I should be afraid of everything - to be careful, to look around, not to lose vigilance - the stronger the resistance grew in me. And the stronger my determination did not allow fear to dictate what to do. I know: fear keeps us in good shape, but it does not allow you to fully feel the taste of life.
Riot against fear
Parental ambitions at my expense went completely contrary to what I wanted for myself.
“Find a decent man who will take care of you,” they said.
In their opinion and in the opinion of the society in which I grew up, a decent Greek girl can do something meaningful and at the same time safe only until she finds a good Greek man who will marry and give birth to children. I wanted to be strong. Brisk. I could not do everything that, according to others, I could not do. If I learned something as a result of the eternal ordeals of my family, it is that I should not bend before fear-he needs to resist. I decided that I would not, like others, observe from the outside and inactive, but I would call for help all my strength and go through the necessary training in order to make my own life and the world around it is safer.
So, at the age of twenty-three years, I entered the Academy under the police department of New York. To say that for parents this event has become the worst nightmare means to say nothing. “Why are you doing this? The father asked, looking over his shoulder when I filled out an application for admission. - Don't even strain. They will not take people like you. They don't need such. ”
When I was accepted, he began to express his disapproval even louder and more often. Mom chose a denial strategy, and her always reaction to threat and conflict - “Run” - was an attempt to simply get away from the problem. That is why whenever the conversation came to me, she answered only that I was working at a good, respected work - secretary in Manhattan. With my deed, I was so disappointed with my parents that they did the only thing that could have occurred to them was stopped talking about me. Maybe they thought that in this case, I would give up and return. Or maybe, in their opinion, the career path I have chosen was inappropriate for the girl. Or a premonition suggested that I would not be easy and I would experience a lot of pain, anxiety and devastation, trying to meet the standards of the Academy. Of course, I myself had no idea about this.
But I had a whole life behind me in the Quvince's immigrant quarter, and it was this experience that helped me learn how to curb my fear and hardened its determination.
What am I going to take, thought
- Papadukis! What else is it?
There was a second week of training at the Academy, and I was already used to the fact that in one day the instructors could distort my name in five different ways. Pompusus, pompadoris, papadopulos, pompadorallus - it seemed that their fantasies had no bounds. They did it on purpose - the surname was written in my T -shirt in large printed letters. Their task was to bring us, to enrage and in every way break the character in order to subjugate to themselves. I felt absolutely out of place and already thought about abandoning this venture.
Over the years of study, I regularly studied in the gym and was in excellent shape, but the preparation at the academy was completely different. Instead of a huge hall with an area of almost 1000 square meters with air conditioning, I had an imaginary rectangle of 150x60 - neither a towel, nor a mat, nor a bottle of water, nor incendiary music. Three hundred people at an extended hand spontaneously recalled the instructions of the instructor. Pulling up, push -ups, jumping, hands, and all - synchronously with him, one after another.
The instructor who drove my last name at this very second, brought my face to mine so close that I felt the smell of coffee and scrambled eggs with which she had breakfast.
- Answer, pompalopus!
Each “P” and “C” were accompanied by splashes of saliva right in my face, and I did not know how to wipe them quietly. She scraped my eyelashes on the right eye with groomed nails and put a thumb and index finger in the face, stained with black paint.
- What is it, your mother?
- Mascara "Cover Gene", ma'am.
She probably considered this answer too detailed, because now her face was so close to mine that our noses were in contact. From such a distance, she seemed a cartoon character, and I would not be surprised if she had come from her ears. Frankly, the use of carcass is not a crime and not a sign of weakness. But it was against the rules.
“Can you paint at the Academy, but, a umbrella?”
- No, ma'am.
- So what the hell did you make up?
I was tempted to answer her in all the details why I did it. I was tired and felt completely broken and a little lost. It seemed that admission to the academy was a fatal mistake. My parents have not talked with me since I admitted that I was going to go to serve in the police. I seriously thought about leaving. That is why, seeing my tearful eyes in the mirror at 5 in the morning, I slightly tinted my eyelashes - just to give myself confidence. At least something that would help me survive the next day in this underworld. But I did not tell her anything like that. And without that, so many people doubted me - there was still not enough to admit that I doubt myself.
“I don't know, ma'am.”
“Is a real policeman need stucco, Pumpuras?”
In those cases when the correctly spoken surname would confuse me more than the distorted, she always pronounced her as it should.
“No, ma'am,” I answered quietly.
- Once again I will see this shit on your face - you will fly out of here! - gritting her teeth, she roared. - And now - on the floor and squeezed fifty times!
I rushed to the floor, grateful for the fact that she did not force others to push up because of my painted eyes. Usually, as soon as someone missed-and everyone paid for his mistake.
The hardest things were given to me when it was necessary to wind kilometers around the gym. Circle after a circle, running, four in a row, at an extended arm from running in front and behind. We not only had to hold a flat row, but also run at the same speed as the instructor. Until that moment, I have never participated in a race for a mile. Those who could not cope, the instructor forced to fail and wrap circles with shuttle running, from one end of the hall to another. It was humiliating - and certainly no one wanted to do this. During one of these races in the first week of training, we fled so quickly that it seemed to me that the lungs were about to explode. I breathed like during a panic attack and constantly stumbled. I tried my best to keep the system. And still, one of the instructors pulled me out - disgust was written on his face. Going into the middle of the gym, I switched to shuttle run-back and forth, forward and forth-so that soon it was already burning in my chest. And then another recruitment began vomiting.
- Urna - at the door! - the instructor barked at him. He ran to the urn, put his head there and began to tear him. Having finished, he sat right on the floor.
- What are you? - roared the instructor. - There is nothing to sit down! Either run, or - in Cabrine (the so -called hospital around the corner)! Decide for yourself.
At these words, the newcomer looked as if he would tear him out again now - but he said nothing and continued to run with us.
When the physical education lesson ended, the instructors ordered the entire class (tremors of cadets) to turn to the center of the hall, where I and other “losers” stood.
- See these recruits? - the instructor asked loudly, circling us with a gesture. - They must leave the academy. And you must want it. Because when you need help on the street, and you will gain 10-13 (the officer needs help), they will already be killed. And you know why? Because they will not be able to run to your aid in time!
With these words, the instructor again looked at me and my comrades in misfortune. We were already ready to fail through the ground from shame.
-Do us a favor, leave until someone was killed because of you.
It was terribly humiliating. I felt a perfect loser, but from that day I promised myself to never give up again.
That evening, having arrived home, I laid my shoes and went on a run - and since then after classes I always ran on my own. No matter how painful it hurts me and no matter how much I hated this business, the pain could not compare with what I experienced that day in the middle of the gym. And before each physical education lesson, I began to quietly pray at my locker: “Lord, please let me fall and give up!” The instructor's words instilled real horror at me. I was afraid that because of me classmates would have trouble. I was afraid to not cope, I was afraid that the family would think about me, and what I myself would feel if I fall. I was afraid to experience the same humiliation again. So fear turned into fuel for me: it was thanks to him that I did not become what I was afraid to become.
In the end, thanks to these jogging, I developed in myself such a fury and determination that I did not suspect. That day I was disabled for the first and last time.
The power of regret
It cost me a huge moral effort not to succumb to parental fears and my own fears that I wouldn’t succeed, that I am not hard enough, not strong enough and bold enough. I knew that I had disappointed my parents. In my society, I was an outcast and shame of the family. Even friends believed that what I was doing was ridiculous and funny. But I could not continue to live in a glass ball. And she was not going to do this. Even when all my muscles were whining and sick, I knew that if I succumbed to fears, then sooner or later it would happen that I would hurt me even more pain. The muscles can be restored, but what to do with regret? It can torment until the end of the days.
There are two types of regret: what we experience after the act and what we feel if we do not do something. And although regret for its own actions often takes the form of agony, over time the pain subsides, and we begin to look for excuses or meaning in what happened. At the same time, inaction is what we cling to, secretly wanting to rewind time back and do everything differently. People are more often regretting what they did not do than what they did, even if later a certain action begins to seem to them a mistake. Exactly what we did not do - be it a rejection of a new job, from a relationship, unwillingness to stand up for ourselves or get out of the comfort zone - eventually begins to persecute us. Every now and then we mentally return to lost opportunities or unfulfilled promises. The rejection of some action turns into the minds of countless scenarios of the possible development of events. And since the scenarios are not destined for this, our brain cannot stop representing another life - different from the one in which we live.
This can become a curse and a sacred gift. Let us never achieve the heights that they could if they had begun to develop certain skills in ourselves - it is never too late to start. Similar examples exist in all areas. We now and then hear that someone had abandoned a highly paid job and became a “boss to himself”, or that a very successful person sat down at the desk again in order to study a new specialty from scratch. In other words, after time it is much easier to accept the idea that you tried yourself in something and did not succeed than that you did not even try.
Be that as it may, I am not at all going to deny that at the very beginning of my studies at the Academy I felt so worthless to this path that I was just worth inhuman efforts not to surrender and continue to go forward. Our mind can become us as a friend and an enemy; He can push us to the cherished goal or bring a hundred arguments and arguments in favor of abandoning it. Take at least the fact that no one in my family served in the police and none of my relatives agreed with my decision.
But despite the fact that the first days of my training were a real hell, I noticed some interesting changes. The main thing was that the idea of leaving the Academy began to scare me much more than the daily hardships of training. As if I looked briefly at my own future - the one in which I was strong and hardy, where I helped people and changed their life for the better. And the clearer this picture became, the harder it was for me to refuse it. And I walked forward. Over time, I stopped thinking about it in a global sense. Just some eight months-and everything will end. There will be no more screaming instructors, nor parents who ignore me, nor pain in the whole body, nor a desperate struggle for survival in the world, about which I knew absolutely nothing. Instead, I just began to live - a minute in a minute. Hour after hour. I focused on the present. She curbed in her fear of leaving the academy and regret, which did not put enough effort to stay. Meanwhile, my body became stronger, my mind was tempered, and my determination and endurance grew every day. Gradually, the reaction of the family stopped crushing me. The doubts that rejected me subsided, every day I proved to myself and others that I could do everything. At the place of moral and physical weakness, I erected a powerful foundation for the further development of my own power, which ultimately allowed me to make risks that I had not thought about before.