“Untutored courage is useless in the face of educated bullets.” - G.S. Patton.

If you have developed the right mindset to overcome a threat but don’t have the actual skills to do so, you may prevail against an idiot but not much else. Don’t underestimate a threat. At the same time, don’t consider yourself useless because you do not have the knowledge needed to take care of a threat. Nobody is born with that, the technical ability to win a fight is something learned, and anyone can learn it. To what degree is sometimes out of one’s control. As I have discussed before, physical problems can limit what you are capable of doing but that does not mean you are incapable of defending yourself.

Learn all you can, accepting what you find valuable and dismissing what you think is either useless or unusable. There are many, many of the proverbial “best path” teachings about personal defense, you’ll find dozens in any internet search. The validity of each becomes your decision. Even if you pick up some knowledge from a particular technique and then find it’s not for you, at least you will have that bit of knowledge (and the result of your decision) to apply to the next set of skills you find. Through this process, you will become a better judge of what is or is not likely to work.

Regardless of which particular methods, some basic skills should be integrated into how you’re going to win a fight. Have an understanding of basic self-defense skills, if only to get away from a threat. Anything that will teach you that it’s fine to punch your fingers into a threat’s throat or gouge out an eye is all good – because that’s exactly how you’ll have to fight if you intend to win. If you have a gun, you really must know how to get it out and running. A small group of carefully aimed shots at a target isn’t it. Work with close-range shooting. Not five yards, but five feet. Practice getting out of the way of the bad guy’s gun. Consider the dynamics of what would be happening as someone is shooting at you.

All of these things can be learned. It must not be impossible, because I learned them. There is only one reason that you would not be able to learn them also, and that would be if you have convinced yourself that you cannot. If that’s the case, then wander around on Amazon.com, look for books on martial arts or fighting and give one a try. I won’t promise that the first book will be the best one, and you may end up with quite a library of books that don’t quite work (I have just such a library). But, you’ll gain something from each and, as you examine all the techniques and theories available, you will find that your conviction that you just can’t learn these things will have gone away. The most important thing you can do is get started.