There comes a time in every company’s life where it must fight for its life. If you find yourself running when you should be fighting, you need to ask yourself, “If our company isn’t good enough to win, then do we need to exist at all?”

We all fight wars—in our work, within our families and abroad in the wider world. Each of us struggles every day to define and defend our sense of purpose and integrity, to justify our existence on the planet and to understand, if only within our own hearts, who we are and what we believe in.

We all face an inner battle, a slew of feelings, emotions, and thoughts that push and pull us toward persevering through and throwing in the towel. Sometimes our inner world screams at us to quit; sometimes it nudges us toward apathy and complacency.

She has never practiced martial arts or received any special training, she never learned to use a hammer, a knife, or a pistol, and yet, under the surface, her experiences of violence have served as lessons in feminist self-defense.36 Without her even realizing it, they have given her the resources needed to reason, judge, act, and strike—that is,