A Brief Primer on Situational Awareness

I like to train Situational Awareness and other Soft/Alpha Skills through games. This is the first of an on-going series of blog posts to teach the training games that my friends and I call Advanced People Watching.

But first...

What is Situational Awareness?

Situational Awareness is usually defined as Generally being aware of the people and things around you.

What is it not?

It's not being paranoid. It's not looking for dangers behind every bush.

Why?

First of all, being paranoid and constantly looking for dangers is a terrible way to live your life. Secondly, we need to rely on our instincts to detect danger but, our instincts don't work very well if we're scared of everything. So, constantly looking for dangers actually makes you less safe. 

I'm going to walk-out some of this:

Everyone has Situational Awareness, everyone is aware of their surroundings to some degree. Babies are naturally curious about everything, we don't lose this but as our environment becomes familiar it can fade into the background. However, we can do exercises and play games to bring things forward again. 

Also, we are all aware our surroundings most of the time, but we can all become distracted on our cellphones or even become lost in thought. Playing Situational Awareness games can help us regain our alertness. 

If you're any kind of artist you already exercise a high level of Situational Awareness because you're always looking for inspiration, but no one is truly oblivious. Playing games and systemizing Situational Awareness can help us improve these skills that we already have.

I must take a moment to say that the Hollywood depicted "Stranger Danger" rapist jumping out of the bushes is rare. Roughly 80% of rapists are known by their victims. So the last thing I want to do is make anyone feel paranoid. Eric and I chose our name "Street Shield" in part because people should feel safe walking down the street, the other part is to give cover to victims of Intimate Partner Violence who don't want to their abusers to know that they're learning how to protect themselves against them. Having high Situational Awareness can help you in IPV situations too. Being mindful of your surroundings can help you recognize when someone you know is acting not quite right. 

Even if you live in a high crime neighborhood where strangers can be real dangers, I still don't want you to be paranoid. I have friends who live in high crime neighborhoods who play Situational Awareness games so they won't go crazy. They tell me they need the Life Enhancement side of self-defense to help them maintain a healthy balance. In any case, having high Situational Awareness should enhance your life.

Group selfie in an elevator at the Mall of America after a full day of Advanced People Watching
at Violence Dynamics 2019
From top left to bottom right:
Shay, Lisa Abbott of Subtle Warrior Self-Defense, Chere Martin, Mary Kogut, Cynthia Jolicoeur-Rood of Born To Be A Badass, Kelly Sayre of the Diamond Arrow Group, and me.

How to train your Situational Awareness

Step 1

When you go someplace new take a moment to make some quick mental notes about what is "normal" for that place:

Who is there?

Families? Singles? Couples? Older people? Younger people? Mixed ages?

What are they doing?

Playing? Eating and drinking? Sitting quietly and enjoying the scenery? Or enjoying the show? 

Where are they going?

Is this place the destination? If not, then where are people going? What are the lines of foot traffic? Or vehicle traffic? Are they avoiding somewhere or something?

Now that you've established a "baseline" anything that deviates from it will get your attention.

That's the basic Situational Awareness technique: Figure out what's normal for where you are, and anything that's different will grab your attention. The fun thing about this is that most things that are different are not scary but are in fact cool or beautiful or funny. If you live in a dangerous neighborhood this is still true--most things that are different are cool, not scary. 

Step 2

This is where the fun begins, this is the first game I like to teach.

See Something Fun

Every day that you go out, choose something you want to see that you will enjoy, and then tell yourself that you're going to see those things.

For example, let's say you like flowers so you choose to see flowers on that day. You can do this with anything, but let's use flowers as an example.

Tell yourself, "Today I'm going to see flowers."

As you go about your day, actively search for flowers. Pretty soon flowers will visually jump out at you and you won't have to search for them anymore. When that happens, search for flowers in reflections of windows and other glossy surfaces. After that becomes second nature, then stop actively searching and instead tell your unconscious mind to search for the flowers for you.

Again, you can do this with anything that makes you happy and that you wish to notice. I like to change it up daily. For example, today I want to see flowers, tomorrow it might be the color red, or maybe cool tattoos, or interesting hair-dos, or funny t-shirts. I'm a photographer so I generally tell my unconscious mind to look for anything photographically interesting. However, I go back to looking for something specific when I catch myself not paying attention because I'm on my cellphone or I'm deep in thought.

There are plenty more games, perhaps even an infinite number of games because everyone can come up with their own. I will discuss more of my favorite games in blog posts to come, but this is where I like to start and this is where I frequently come back to.

To sum up Situational Awareness:

Life Enhancement ~ Having Situational Awareness helps you to notice beautiful and cool things, and helps keep your mind alert.

Life Protection ~ Having Situational Awareness helps you to see potentially dangerous things with enough time to take action.

Happy training!

~Amy.