Increase Your Awareness

Gather information about the areas you spend the most time in: your home neighborhood, where you work, and surrounding communities.
Photo: Caleb Causey

Research your “most likely attack” based on your age and gender, among other factors.
Photo: Grant Cunningham
Revisiting Situational Awareness

While the people in the foreground are clearly distracted and would likely be criticized by the “situational awareness” traditionalists, take a look at the people in the background. They are just as oblivious to their surroundings as they focus on the presenter who is addressing them.
Photo: author
Be Reasonably Fit
The fitter you are, the more prepared you are to defend yourself and deal with any variety of non-criminal emergencies. While that may seem an obvious statement, it is one that many people seem to be missing. Take a look at any group of police officers, security guards, or students at a defensive shooting class and you’ll see a few examples of people who don’t appear to be setting a solid foundation of fitness under their vocational or lifestyle choices. I am certainly not advocating for everyone to be a professional athlete or obsess about being faster and stronger. But I do think it is missing the point to obsess over firearms skill (for example) and not be capable of getting up off a soft couch without assistance and making everyone else in the room think they may need to render assistance or administer medical aid in the aftermath of your failure. I advocate what is known as Functional Fitness. If you can’t get through the normal activities of your day without struggle and/or discomfort, and aren’t prepared to exert yourself for short periods of time at increased levels of physical activity, you should think about improving your fitness. Insert a disclaimer here about disabilities and short-term injuries … obviously, there are specific cases where you’ll be prevented from being fully functional. I have found that most people have the ability to be very honest about areas in which they both should and could improve, though some choose not to be.
How about lifting a moderately heavy box from the floor to a counter top? These are examples of Functional Fitness. Photo: author
Enjoy the media productions
Good content, information that we need to re-digest every so often as a reminder. Self and our loved ones safety are primary as watchmen protectors.
Excellent advice on all counts…well balanced and thoughtful.
The “trick” is to make these things into good habits…especially situational awareness!
Most of what you offer makes sense, but at 72 years old and after back surgery your physical fitness comments may need modification. We older fellows may have even more reason to carry, and still have enough sharpness to be situational aware, but have to think ahead regarding an active situation.
Spot on. Will share this with my wife. All in a family should be aware.
Very good information. Situational awareness is a must and being fit to defend yourself is true. Don’t become someone’s punching bag, fight back the best you can.
Great article Rob! I really liked how you broke this down. I particularly appreciated you touching on the importance of our intuition. I talk about not ignoring our intuition when I’m teaching my self-defense classes. It’s great to see another person teaching similar key points to “functional awareness”. I also appreciate you just telling it the way it is. We can’t always be 100% completely aware and anticipate a threat, yet we can place importance in our training on how quickly one can respond to the threat for a positive outcome.
Thanks Rob,
I look forward to the next read.
Good stuff.
Stay vigilant!
Excellent article. Keep doing these job. Thanks for this
Excellent article and the depth and facets or knowing and understanding the predator and the mind set of situational awareness. Its so true with smart phones how less aware people really are and also the concept the ” things like this only happen to other people”. Physical fitness for defensive is also an important factor if someone has difficulty touching their toes, Thanks for the great work you are doing.
The cinder block room with one’s wall to the back does not illustrate a very secure room to me. I watch Hickok45 videos that destroy cider block targets with just a few rounds. Unless the holes in the cinder blocks are filled with reinforced concrete the wall is no more protection ballistically than most other exterior walls. Suggest a better example to illustrate the point. Just saying.
I think you missed the point of the example… it wasn’t about “safety” it was about “awareness”. If nothing else, taking things to the extreme example like you did still supports the underlying premise: You NEVER really have 100% awareness in a way that prevents you from being attacked.
Great article, without being militia-minded or paranoid. Good common sense brought to bear in real time. Being able to recognize those subtle unexplainable promptings, like back-of-the-neck hairs rising, or other “strange” alerting sensory alarms, is an art. Keep up the fantastic training/prepping via your articles, books and dvds. Thanks.
Rob
I enjoyed your article. Well said and accurate-in my opinion. I also am an instructor with several disciplines (to include firearms and DT).
I teach much of the same as you mentioned.
I also bring in Grosman’s analogy of sheep dogs, sheep and wolves. The point is, we all are not wired the same way, however we can train our brain to think as an operator.
We make choices in life and changing our “method of perception” is a way to do this.
I could go on and on reference this subject matter for it is a passion of mine.
Always appreciate your articles.
Thank you.
Rick Poe
Rob is spot on on both awareness and fitness. Staying in a constant state of “condition yellow” would (if it were even possible to do) turn one into a paranoid basket case. However, there are also exercises/drills that essentially work to sublimate that condition yellow awareness to threats into the sub-conscious such that it recognizes and reacts to anomalies that potentially could cause a threat. This is not unlike when you are driving and the brake lights of the vehicle in front of suddenly illuminate. Without thinking of what to do or how to do it, you react by taking your foot off of the accelerator and either covering or depressing the brake as required. Perhaps it was simply to slow down for a traffic light or for a pedestrian to finish crossing the street. In that case you continue on without even thinking about it. (You probably don’t remember exactly how many times, or even the circumstances under which you went to the brake on your last car trip). However, had the car in front slammed on the brakes, you would have followed suit, and/or executed an avoidance maneuver. In this case you were consciously alerted (and consequently would remember it). The exercises/drills I teach basically give you the same sort of capabilities in the awareness of the anomalies that may signal potential threats by other persons.
After doing the exercises for 2-3 weeks you’ll realize that you’ve given yourself this new sense of awareness while walking or driving and no longer have to continue them. (But you may choose to do them occasionally simply because they were interesting/fun to do.) You’ll find that even when walking or driving with a friend and engaged in a conversation, or you are talking on the telephone you note these anomalies around you that you never noticed before. Most are noted and either acted on in a minor manner, or dismissed (much like brake lights), and you’ll actually have to think about them to recall them. However, if you are still walking down the street and looking down at your phone texting, the exercises won’t help you. You’re still liable to trip and fall into that fountain you didn’t see. To be effective the exercises still require a measure of basic common sense.
Along with the exercises of course, are taught the tell-tale signs to look for that would indicate that someone might be up to “no good”, that you might be or are being considered for, or have become the target of such an action, ways by which you might determine (in some instances) that you indeed are the target, and the methods/techniques to avoid/deter/escape/evade a confrontation once the potential has be detected. Obviously those skills must be in place to both recognize the signs as anomalies, and to react to them appropriately.
When deciding to carry a firearm for personal defense you are essentially taking on the role of a VIP Close Protection bodyguard, your VIP clients being yourself and your family who obviously deserve the best protection from danger available. Unlike the military and law enforcement whose missions are to confront those that would do us harm, the primary directive of the bodyguard is to protect his/her clients from even encountering harm. Awareness is the key to avoiding harm, keying actions to deter those threats that can’t be avoided, and escaping and evading those that can’t be deterred. Only as a last resort, to a lethal threat, should you have to employ a firearm. (But should that happen you should strive to be able to shoot with the finesse, accuracy and speed of a special operator.)
The true success of the VIP CP bodyguard is not measured by how well he/she stopped the threat against the client(s), but rather how well potential threats were avoided and never had to be dealt with in the first place.
Continuing to expand your awareness knowledge and skills (and your fitness to act as required), will tend to increase your confidence and and in turn cause you to display the tell-tale signs to those that might do you harm that you won’t be an ‘easy’ target. That by itself will often cause them to move on to another target. And that’s a good thing!
That’s my 2 cents; your mileage may vary.
Well said! Based on my “Psychology 101” education, the amygdala part of the brain identifies dangers when the higher regions of the brain do not. Even people who are blind because of neural damage to the brain are able to react to danger by virtue of the amygdala. Bottomline: One’s “gut feeling” or “angel whisperings” can be explained by virtue of this part of the brain.
Very Very good reading that is very useful, informative and relevant. Thank you for this.
Your title is Sun Tzu. Classic warrior treatise. Great article.