Relevance and Reframing

This is probably going to be too esoteric for anyone except me to spend time on, but it's one of the threads that spawns from the last post.
(Caveat: like anything where I talk about levels or different ways to think, I can only describe the stuff I've done.  Don't think there is an endstate.  Anything I do, someone else has taken farther or deeper.)
Knowing what matters and what doesn't matter is important, but there is a lot of latitude in deciding how something matters.  In seminars, I'm always hammering on the concept of 'gifts.' Almost anything you see and anything the threat does serves you if you learn to see it... but sometimes disaster also has a gift if you choose to see it right.
Someone grabs your leg.  Are you off balance and unstable?  Or can you choose to own your common center of gravity, make his legs part of your tripod and keep your stability while you hammer him with your completely free hands?
Is a ground-and-pound the worst case scenario or (as it often is on concrete floors) a gift where a slight hip twitch gets the threat to shatter his own hand?
This goes subtle.  If I tell you "It's only pain. Ignore it." You will find it encouraging.  If I tell you, "It's only pain, don't think about it,"  you will likely obsess on the pain.  The meanings are identical, but the brain processes positive ("do" statements) and negative ("don't" statements) very differently.  It's an especially important point in teaching, but it affects things as varied as whether your children will be active or passive to whether a threat can maintain the will to fight.
There is an old description of jujutsu as the 'art of advantage.'  In any instant, any action, any situation there is something that can be turned to your advantage.  Not to go all pseudo-Japanese on you, but the difference between a fighter and a strategist is the practical application of this skill.
A fighter practices hitting harder, moving his or her weapon more fluidly.  A strategist practices recognizing and exploiting at the same level of reflex, the chaos inherent in the system.