The Warrior-Truth: The Ultimate Guide to Victory for Man

By THOMAS BOVET

If you wish to make a significant improvement to the quality of your life and increase the chances for personal success, youll do well by picking up a copy of this one-of-a-kind self-improvement book. "The Warrior Truth", penned by military instructor Thomas Bovet, offers practical, honest advice as well as insightful detailed goal-reaching techniques for any competitive individual - be it the career man, the athlete, the business executive or member of the law-enforcement and military.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 3, 2008
• ISBN: 9781462834921

THOMAS BOVET

Thomas Bovet was born 1949 in Germany. He is a long term resident of Hong Kong, Cambodia and Thailand. Thomas is a counter-terrorist instructor and consultant to Asian governments’ agencies and international corporations. He can be contacted by e-mail: [e-mail]

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The Warrior—Truth

THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO VICTORY FOR MAN

THOMAS BOVET

Copyright © 2008 by Thomas Bovet.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2007908013

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

44308

Contents

DEDICATION

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

FOREWORD

CHAPTER 1: ASIAN VS WESTERN CULTURE

CHAPTER 2: WHAT IS A WARRIOR?

CHAPTER 3: ABOUT SELF-CONTROL

CHAPTER 4: ABOUT FEAR

CHAPTER 5: PHYSICAL CONDITIONING

CHAPTER 6: MENTAL CONDITIONING

CHAPTER 7: SPECIALIZED TRAINING

CHAPTER 8: COMBAT TRAINING

CHAPTER 9: DEVELOPING YOUR ATTITUDE

CHAPTER 10: THREAT MANAGEMENT

CHAPTER 11: THE WARRIOR TRAVELS

CHAPTER 12: TRUTH, ETHICS AND POLITICS

APPENDIX 1:

DEDICATION

I dedicate this book to my mother who kept me straight and morally oriented during turbulent and confusing times of my childhood. She taught me love, responsibility, honesty and loyalty by example. Her ability to think with her heart as well as with a clear and logical mind makes her my favorite counselor to this date.

This book is also in remembrance of my late grandfather from whom I learned courage, discipline, and the pleasures of work and achievement.

Studying and writing became my mother’s great passions during her later years; she urged me to write about my skills and experiences. However, the decision to finally produce this book was upon the encouragement of Miss Portia Chu, my long-time friend from Hong Kong who also assisted me to get it published.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am especially grateful to the friendship of Sylvain Vogel, a professional linguist whom I met in Cambodia during turbulent times. He not only proved to be a loyal companion; but he is the one person I wish to be at my side in moments of mortal danger. His courage, strength, combat talents and ethics make him a true warrior. Sylvain has provided me with valuable assistance during the training of Cambodia’s anti-terrorist forces, particularly in the area of waterborne operations and physical fitness. His fluency in the Khmer language and cultural knowledge has provided me with unusual access to Cambodian society.

The person who had the most impact on my physical skills and ability during the last decade, though, was Kent Turnipseed. After spending 25 years of weapons training and instructing, Kent finally taught me how to shoot and pointed me towards the life-changing Alexander Technique. He found the holy grail of combat shooting and generously and patiently passed on his unique skill; I will never be able to repay him.

FOREWORD

For many years I hesitated to write this book; partially, because I am not a writing-man but mostly because I never felt to possess something particularly special over my peers. Even though I have been teaching a variety of subjects over the better part of my life, I have always considered myself more of a student than a lecturer. I am constantly looking for instruction from people with superior abilities which can add parts to my own completion in my personal quest for self-improvement. I benefit from my inquisitive nature, keen interest in almost any subject and my tenacious attitude of never giving up until I get answers to my questions, or master the certain skill I am after.

Not satisfied with committing time and energies to only one life-style at an early age, I followed several unusual paths, ending up with a double-life. There is the martial side of me and then there is my commercial life which I have created during my 35 years in Hong Kong. In my commercial life I studied chemistry and set up companies in the sectors of industrial design, manufacturing, trading and marketing. In my martial career I worked as martial-arts instructor, joint the military, became a firearms instructor, carried out missions in South East Asia and worked as counter-terrorist instructor and consultant.

Especially during my 15 years in Cambodia I had to navigate through obstacles and overcome barriers which are nearly incomprehensible, in order to conduct my work and personal life. I had my experience in combat and brushes with death and I came to know a great diversity of people under the most diverse conditions one can image. I worked and interacted with Prime Ministers, government officials, business executives, aid-workers, journalists, military cadets, my numerous officer-students and ordinary citizens. Those interactions provided me with unique experiences and deeper insight into social and psychological matters.

The real blessings in my life are my friends and mentors, who provide me with not only inspiration and encouragement, but also the type of criticism which makes you take a close look at yourself and offers the important second chances.

There are many philosophies regarding one’s personal life and almost as divers as the people trying to live by them. There are the philosophies which are closely tied to religion; there are the ones which are deeply caring for everyone and everything in life at one end of the spectrum. Then there are the ones in which the subscribers only put themselves in the centre and remind them to keep their noses out of anything which goes on around them.

I don’t think me, or anyone else, can and should advise on which philosophy to adopt. But through my travels over most parts of the globe, I have learned that people everywhere share certain concepts and desires, regardless of their different and complex views on the meaning and purpose of life.

Everyone wants to be respected or at least loved and not be ignored. Everyone wants to make sense, go through the day and achieve something, be recognized and rewarded for some work. People want to see a future for themselves; be able to plan and not just get older but also experience progress. They want to enjoy health, be successful in their work and with the opposite sex and live as comfortable as possible. Problem is, that although this does not sound too ambitious, the combined package of all those aspirations is already a very tall order. The ones who are getting the whole nine yards are far and in between.

This is where the philosophies usually come in; in order to explain life’s pitfalls, misfortunes or plain screw-ups. Most have some wisecracking lines as corner-stone; like… money does not buy happiness, or similar consolations. But that is what they are, not philosophies, but consolations and excuses. A true philosophy has a structured path to follow and you can call yourself successful if you can maintain that path without too many compromises to near the end of your life. What a warrior values most are the priorities he sets. The list of priorities is the core of his principles in life and a philosophy can add further guidelines. The warrior is free to worship and to believe, but his basic human and moral principles are not distracted by religion. Therefore, the path of the warrior is a basic one which leaves room for the individual and his intellectual ambitions.

It is impossible to find anything really new in this book. It is basically about human life—and that’s a few thousand years old! However, I have distilled some of the essential things to which we should pay attention and re-discovered some of what has been lost or forgotten. My chapters capture, analyze and explain the most important subjects for a successful, healthy, dignified and enjoyable life-style.

My motto: Don’t tell me how long you have been teaching; tell me your experience in learning.

I have designed the chapters so that you can either read through the entire book in logical sequence, or just pick out subjects of interest, especially if you are an experienced traveler on the warrior’s path.

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The Author (right) with his friend Sylvain Vogel on an island in the Cambodian Mekong

PART ONE: MAKING OF THE WARRIOR

CHAPTER 1: ASIAN VS WESTERN CULTURE

If you are looking for self-improvement, physical and mental cures, you will find the markets flooded with oriental practices and wisdoms: From acupuncture and the martial arts to eastern philosophies, meditation and business concepts.

Most of those things make interesting reading, but offer limited use to apply to modern life situations and problems. The key word is limited, in fact mostly very limited. There are certainly no cure-alls, so don’t expect too much of those venerated Asian ancestors.

As a long time resident of Asia and student of eastern culture and practices I can assure you that the Asians themselves are looking at their own ancient creations with a lot more pragmatism and skepticism than we do. In many ways, the modern urban eastern citizen seems to be a more practical and realistic person than his western counterpart.

Do you recall your days at school—how little you retained of your history lessons covering the old Greek, roman and medieval cultures? Perhaps you hated it or found it to be one of the most useless subjects. Why study about that old stuff without modern relevance?

But, after their student years, many people start spending a lot of time and money in pursuing the ancient quest to discover the true meanings of live, by instinctively looking to the east. This might be because these life-powers are commonly perceived as being an oriental domain, perhaps also because it is foreign, exotic and imported.

When I was in my teens, my friends and I wanted to learn martial arts, not boxing or wrestling. Later, we went out to eat Chinese. We wanted to go and visit Hong Kong, Singapore or Bangkok, not Buenos Aires, Madrid or Helsinki.

People are reading Sun Tzu in order to improve their success in business and to learn about strategies to defeat their competitor or hostile mother-in-law. Meditation and yoga classes became a sizable industry and many other life-style and health related subjects (such as diets and acupuncture) come with an oriental flavor. Generally, the average oriental person is a lot less interested in our ancient cultures and tales of the Greek philosophers Plato or Socrates, i.e., than we are in their eastern paths to enlightenment. Eastern wisdom became simply more profitable, through our indiscriminate fascination with it.

When I became familiar with Japanese history and culture, I often wondered how the fierce sword-fighting techniques and blind loyalty to lost causes of a samurai could be a guide for a modern-day business executive who is operating in an environment where respect and honor are not exactly in high demand.

Perhaps, what we really admire in the samurai is that he was not afraid to die for his principles, took total responsibility for his actions and respected chivalry—character traits which have largely vanished in today’s societies, east or west.

Successful historic individuals which embody noble traditions, however, are not an oriental exclusive. Look no further than Alexander the Great, Julius Cesar and Napoleon Bonaparte as examples for superior strategic and tactical thinking and without any doubts some of the greatest warriors the world has ever known.

The European philosophers of the 18th century generated reservoirs of useful wisdom which would take the average scholar years to assimilate (examples: Immanuel Kant, 1724 and G. W. F. Hegel, 1770).

Therefore, for our specific purpose of harnessing our mental and physical powers we will concentrate on the techniques and training which will deliver tangible results, and without wasting time with imaginary feel-good therapies.

You cannot see the truth sitting cross-legged in a room with your eyes closed!

CHAPTER 2: WHAT IS A WARRIOR?

As we now understand, the term can describe a person of any culture and does not imply competence in any particular Asian discipline.

A warrior it is a person who embodies a rare combination of special qualities, such as mental strength, physical abilities, courage, commitment, reliability and a set of good solid principles and values, such as a keen sense of honor and respect.

You don’t necessarily always have to be an all-out winner (defeat is an important element in tempering the spirit of a warrior), but a warrior has the determination and skills to