Have you ever heard such a silly statement?  What does it mean to make pain your friend and how can we incorporate this in our everyday lives?
 
Think of meeting a person for the first time.  You are maybe a little hesitant. You’re wondering what kind of a person they are.  You are trying to figure them out as you go along.  Now think of seeing one of your good friends.  When you see your friend you smile and start to talk about things you have in common and things you are both familiar with.  And why?  Because they’re your friend and you know all about them.  You know what they will do in different situations and what they think about various issues.  You feel at ease with them.

The experts say when you are in a knife fight you should expect to get cut.  If you are expecting to get cut, when it happens you’re not surprised and you can continue to fight.  You have “made it your friend”.  When Evander Holyfield fought Mike Tyson, Holyfield said he knew Tyson hit hard so when he did he wasn’t surprised.  Holyfield had already dealt with the fact that he was going to get hit hard.  He had made that fact his friend and didn’t wait until he was hit to figure it out.

If you wait until you are faced with an attacker to figure out what you are going to do, then you have waited too long.  In that hormonal induced stressful situation you will be unable to formulate a strategy.  You have to know what you are going to do in any given situation before you are faced with it so when it happens you react immediately.  No hesitation.  Hesitation too often leads to injury or death.

How can you make these things your friend?  One way is through training.  Putting yourself in as many situations as you can in training helps you to prepare for the real thing.  Another way is mental rehearsing.  Here’s something we all can do and I’m sure many of you already practice this technique.  Imagine walking to your car late one night when it’s dark and you are faced with somebody who means to do you harm.  What are you going to do in this situation?  By doing this, (mental rehearsing) you can start to prepare yourself for the encounter.  In your head you have already made plans on how you will deal with the situation.  Whatever your plan is, if the situation presents itself you will already have a plan on board and you will react immediately. 

Making pain your friend, simply put, means having a plan on how you will deal with pain, or a confrontation, or anything you can think of.  When you make these things your friend you have dealt with them before you are faced with them.  This allows you to make an immediate decision that is based on training.   

I leave you with this: “To know and to act is one in the same”