This lesson deals with how to defeat your enemy. I’ve talked a lot about ways of thinking and what types of actions to take. Here’s something a little more concrete that will help you decide what part of your problem to focus your main effort against.

In combat we Marines look for surfaces and gaps. Simply put, a surface is an enemy strength and a gap is an enemy weakness. There is no reason to attack him where he is strong because you have to expend the most combat power to achieve a desired effect. It is much easier to attack where he is weak. This preserves your combat power for follow on operations while still capturing your objective.

We bypass strong points and attack the enemy’s rear area. That disrupts his flow of supplies and eventually the strong point either becomes weak or becomes useless. Our opinion is, “He can be strong there all he wants, I”ve taken the battle elsewhere and I’ll keep hammering at his vulnerabilities until he comes out to play.’ As stated before, when you get the enemy reacting to your moves, you have him.

If your life is all screwed up then you probably have what Oprah would call “multifaceted problems” or some such psychobabble. This is good. This means that your problems have some kind of weakness attached too them. That is how you go after them. Avoid the strengths of your problems and work the issues where they are weak. With enough focus on those areas, the strengths will begin to weaken. Before you know it, no more problem.

Or you can pound your head against the strongest part of your difficulties and wonder why you always have a headache.