The Art of Manliness - #438： Developing Real-World Situational Awareness

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00:01:16.980 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. If you found yourself

00:01:21.080 in a situation with a violent attacker, would you know what to do? While it's easy to think you'd

00:01:25.440 instinctively make the right decision, the truth is if you haven't been formulating and practicing

00:01:28.940 a plan ahead of time, you'll likely make the wrong and possibly deadly choice. My guest today has spent

00:01:33.020 over two decades teaching people how to deal with threats and even more importantly, how to avoid them

00:01:37.280 in the first place. His name is Dr. Gav Schneider and he's an expert in personal risk management

00:01:41.000 security and the author of Can I See Your Hands? A guide situational awareness, personal risk

00:01:45.460 management, resilience, and security. Today on the show, Gav shares the biggest mistake people make when it

00:01:49.840 comes to their personal safety and why understanding that criminals have an advantage is foundational

00:01:53.620 in keeping you and your family safe. He then walks us through how to develop situational awareness that

00:01:57.460 we can avoid problems before they occur, why it's important to have multiple plans of action for

00:02:01.340 when an attack happens, and why realistic training is crucial in being ready to defend yourself.

00:02:05.480 After the show's over, check out the show notes at aom.is slash caniceeyourhands, all one word.

00:02:09.880 And Gav joins me now via clearcast.io.

00:02:19.840 All right. Dr. Gav Schneider, welcome to the show.

00:02:28.880 Thanks, Brett.

00:02:29.800 So tell us about your background. You are involved with security training and consulting. This is like

00:02:35.960 bodyguard stuff, executive protection. How did you get involved in this?

00:02:39.260 So I started training martial arts when I was about five years old. The career in martial arts

00:02:44.180 has been awesome. It led me to travel all over the world, and I spent a lot of time as a live-in student

00:02:50.220 under an Israeli great-grandmaster known as Dennis Hanover. I then spent time traveling around in the

00:02:57.200 U.S. and through Thailand and various other places. While I started studying academically,

00:03:03.460 my first qualifications were in marketing and management. I got contracts training bodyguards,

00:03:08.160 police and military back in South Africa, where I'm originally from. Started working as a bodyguard

00:03:14.100 shortly thereafter. Set up my first business providing close protection and training services

00:03:19.120 about two decades ago. And I've never formally served in the police or military, although I've

00:03:26.320 worked with many special units and awesome operators. It's not the common pathway into the security world.

00:03:33.440 So I started focusing on academics and got a master's degree and later on a PhD

00:03:38.340 in criminology focusing on security management. And now I teach a course in a postgraduate course

00:03:45.860 in the psychology of risk. And I'm the CEO of three or four businesses that work across

00:03:49.960 risk, insecurity, safety, emergency response, and overall risk integration.

00:03:56.040 Yeah, that is an interesting background because most people who do what you do, they've had some sort of

00:03:59.600 military or police background, but you went at it from a different angle.

00:04:02.420 Yeah, and it's been a great journey for me. And I think I've been very lucky and also sometimes

00:04:12.180 right time, right place for things to happen. But also sometimes it's incidents that aren't so lucky

00:04:17.480 that happen. When I was, I think I was about 21 years old, I was a full contact jujitsu champion

00:04:24.840 in the style I was training, a professional bodyguard and living in South Africa, which is a very high

00:04:30.540 crime rate environment. Got a phone call one night from my mother who was on the way to hospital

00:04:35.660 after my stepfather had been shot in the head and attempted carjacking. And I rushed to the scene,

00:04:41.940 almost nothing I could do there. Rushed to the hospital, almost nothing I could do there.

00:04:46.680 And what the worst part about that for me was that, you know, it actually doesn't matter how good

00:04:53.300 professionals get in many cases, because the professional is not likely to be there when

00:04:58.420 people need them. And it steered my career in many ways, but particularly focusing on how do

00:05:04.840 you translate the knowledge and the skills that every person needs so that they have it when they

00:05:11.140 need it. Because, you know, as we said, the specialist or the sheepdog, as David Grossman refers to them,

00:05:17.380 it's not usually going to be there when the bad things come.

00:05:20.780 Right, right. So you wrote this book, Can I See Your Hands?, which you basically distill or make

00:05:26.520 explicit the skills, the knowledge that you have, and then a lot of operators have, or people who do

00:05:32.820 what you do have. And you were talking, I was talking to you on the show before, I think you did

00:05:36.660 a great job making a lot of these things explicit. Because one thing I found, you talk to these guys who

00:05:41.660 are in this field, and they're super good at what they do. But a lot of the skill they developed,

00:05:46.800 it's almost like it's intuition, right? It's like fingertip feel. They don't, if you ask somebody

00:05:51.120 what exactly you're doing, they just know, right? Which that's an advantage, right? When you're in

00:05:56.460 that situation. But when you're trying to convey that or pass that information on to, say, a layman,

00:06:01.920 you have to kind of approach things from a beginner's mindset. And I think you did a good

00:06:05.360 job with this book doing that. So let's talk about from the beginning. In your experience with

00:06:11.200 training individuals, and maybe we're talking like just regular citizens here,

00:06:16.660 what is the biggest mistake you see people make when it comes to their personal security?

00:06:22.120 Thanks, Brett. I think there's, it's hard to put your finger on one thing. But if I had to put it

00:06:27.620 down, I think there's two real variants that we see of this. One is absolute ignorance and denial,

00:06:36.360 where, you know, people are going, this won't happen to me, nothing bad will ever happen to me.

00:06:40.360 You know, so I'm never going to bother to prepare for that sort of thing.

00:06:44.680 So they absolutely disempower themselves and actually make themselves an easier victim for

00:06:50.220 somebody who would want to do something bad because of that denial. And then the other side

00:06:55.300 of the spectrum that we do come across a lot is, is overconfidence. And, you know, when you look at

00:07:01.380 the two, you'd rather be overconfident than underconfident, because at least that creates a bit of a

00:07:06.040 deterrent for most would-be attackers. But, you know, overconfidence without the ability to follow

00:07:12.840 through can also have its limitations.

00:07:16.000 Gotcha. So that combination of negligence and overconfidence and just, just denial that bad

00:07:21.620 things are going to happen. Why, what do you think people deny? Is that like just willfully,

00:07:24.880 like they're willfully trying to be ignorant that bad things can happen to them or they just,

00:07:28.960 it's unpleasant to think about bad things happening?

00:07:31.400 It's a very good question. I spent a lot of time doing research onto this issue because,

00:07:37.820 you know, I'll just give you a few examples that have fascinated me around this, you know,

00:07:41.140 decision-making and the psychology of risk over the years. During my bodyguard and clutch

00:07:46.200 protection career, you know, you'd see crazy things. We'd have people phone our office and,

00:07:52.500 you know, the conversation would often start, I need, I need a bodyguard. You know, money's not an

00:07:57.300 issue. You know, someone's trying to kill me. I need help right now. And, you know, we had a

00:08:02.480 standard process that when we got those phone calls, we would ask a few questions really to

00:08:06.700 verify as much as we could, but we would never normally send less than four people because if

00:08:11.580 it's a confirmed threat and you don't know what you're facing, you know, at the very least you need

00:08:16.160 a minimum number of people to make sure it's safe for the people you're deploying.

00:08:20.080 And all of a sudden, you know, people who had, you know, two minutes before said money was no

00:08:26.680 object, we're starting to try and bargain us down to go, oh, can't I just get one or maybe just

00:08:30.860 two at the worst? You know, other experiences in the bodyguard world where, you know, people pay

00:08:36.860 for all this protection and then see if they can lose their protection team as some sort of game.

00:08:42.260 And you sit there and you just wonder why do people make decisions like that?

00:08:45.900 So it's quite interesting. There's a part of our brain called the reticular activating

00:08:49.640 system that sorts all the information that we bring in through our senses all the time.

00:08:55.840 And it sorts it really on only two things, what we're interested in or what could hurt us.

00:09:01.220 So for the most part, people aren't interested in safety and security because it's not as much fun,

00:09:08.020 for example, as going on holiday. And on the other hand, if people haven't actually been exposed to

00:09:14.960 something, they truly in many cases don't believe it will happen to them.

00:09:17.740 So the biggest challenge is exactly what you said, you know, step one is people just learning

00:09:24.120 that, look, sometimes you could do everything right and you might be in the wrong place at the

00:09:28.880 wrong time. So if you accept that that could happen, you then empower yourself to be able

00:09:33.580 to act on it. The biggest challenge is avoiding the myth of somebody else will take care of these

00:09:41.580 things for me. And in most first world countries, you know, we've been very lucky. I now live in

00:09:46.980 Australia, spent quite a bit of time in the US. You know, there's competent first responders,

00:09:51.640 there's great law enforcement agencies. But, you know, by definition, the first responder is always

00:09:57.220 the person who's on the scene when the incident happens. And, you know, it's a two way thing. We get

00:10:03.060 so caught up in talking about personal security. But the thing that's likely to kill most of us is

00:10:07.640 probably a heart attack, cancer, or some sort of other illness. And, you know, to stay healthy,

00:10:14.620 we know what to do. We just got to exercise, eat right, and visit the doctor regularly.

00:10:19.240 But even that, we often find, you know, people are just in denial and don't accept that it's

00:10:23.740 their responsibility too.

00:10:25.920 Right. Yeah. I imagine the idea that something bad happening is so abstract.

00:10:29.540 Just like, you know, dying of cancer, getting diabetes is so abstract. You just don't even

00:10:34.360 think, ah, I'm not going to worry about it until it actually becomes a problem. So let's talk about

00:10:40.720 sort of the mindset shift. So if we realize that bad things can happen to us, and then that

00:10:45.920 also understanding that when that bad thing happens, like an attack on us, typically police aren't going

00:10:51.820 to be there to help us. Like we're on our own, basically. Like, let's talk about understanding

00:10:58.140 the mindset of a criminal and understanding the situation. So you talk about in the book,

00:11:02.360 one important thing to understand is when you are in a personal defense situation,

00:11:07.900 the criminal has the advantage. Why is that?

00:11:12.280 So it's a critical piece to understand. I think this is something, even people who are really into

00:11:17.340 personal safety, you know, people who train martial artists or go to the shooting range,

00:11:22.260 they often forget the fact that, you know, they get attacked on the terms of the attacker. So the

00:11:28.740 attacker picks when the situation actually happens, they pick where the situation really happens,

00:11:33.500 and they pick the manner in which the attack will manifest. You know, those are all variables

00:11:38.520 that are difficult to control. As you saw in the book, we talk about three things. We talk about

00:11:43.580 capability, opportunity, and intent. And we very rarely have the reach to influence people's

00:11:51.000 capability. You know, somebody can go and buy a gun. Somebody can go and train martial arts.

00:11:57.020 You know, even somebody with ill intent who has no skill can drive their car into you. They just have

00:12:03.500 to wait when they need it. So capability is hard. Intent is equally as hard to manage for the average

00:12:11.080 person. Although, with a lot of experience, you know, you can learn to determine the early warning

00:12:16.700 signs that somebody may actually harm you, or maybe looking to harm someone else. It does take a lot of

00:12:22.540 work. But the easy one that we can control is this idea of the opportunity. Most criminals, even deviant

00:12:30.880 criminals, will take the path that leads them to the highest likelihood of success. So, you know,

00:12:37.400 why pick a hard target that will see me coming, has created enough space to run away, or has

00:12:43.300 potentially got an improvised weapon at hand to defend themselves when I could pick somebody else

00:12:47.300 who doesn't have any of those things in place. Gotcha. So understanding that, that the criminal

00:12:51.620 has the advantage, you make the case that instead of spending your time or most of your time training

00:12:59.180 or preparing for when you have to fight back, you'd be better served spending more time, like just

00:13:06.280 avoiding those situations in the first place. Absolutely. And I think this is an interesting

00:13:10.500 challenge. You know, having taught martial arts for nearly 30 years now, and I've trained thousands

00:13:16.140 of people and had many of them involved in pretty serious incidents, to get really good at self-defense

00:13:22.800 is not a quick thing. You know, despite the fact that people do online training programs or want to go to a

00:13:27.920 one-hour course, you know, realistically, you have to train enough so that your instinctive response

00:13:33.540 is a response that works. And that, that, that takes, you know, thousands of repetitions done perfectly

00:13:40.800 under simulated stress situations, which the average person just won't put the time, effort, and energy

00:13:46.060 into doing, even though it's not that hard and you get the health benefit with it too, and you get the

00:13:51.860 confidence, which means you're less likely to be attacked. So often when I run face-to-face

00:13:56.640 seminars, I'll ask people how much time they would be willing to give to their personal risk management.

00:14:02.560 And if you look at your personal risk management, you know, first and foremost, as we discussed,

00:14:07.120 probably the biggest risks of getting hurt or killed come from medical issues. So, you know,

00:14:11.300 eating and living healthy is probably the first starting point that might take, you know, three,

00:14:15.540 four hours of effort a week, staying in shape, running, going to the gym. The next step would probably

00:14:22.300 be making sure you could provide decent level of first aid to people and loved ones around you if

00:14:26.680 something happened based on this medical risk. You know, next, next is probably if people live in a

00:14:32.060 place where they commute, learning how to drive properly, you know, you're more likely to get

00:14:35.960 into a car accident than you are to get assaulted or attacked. But very few people ever go and do,

00:14:41.060 you know, regular defensive or advanced driver training. You know, then, then next on the list would

00:14:45.840 be self-defense training. So without trying too hard, you might actually need about 20 hours a month

00:14:50.680 to be really on top of your personal risk game. In talking to most people, you know,

00:14:57.480 we've trained thousands and thousands of people. Most people will, at best, give you 20 minutes a

00:15:02.420 week if you're lucky. So, you know, the question comes down to what do you do in that 20 minutes

00:15:07.660 that will give you the best bang for buck? What will give you the most effective chance of minimizing

00:15:13.120 the risks you might be exposed to? And that's situational awareness. It's knowing how to scan your

00:15:18.500 environment, look at who's around you, work out who may be a threat, forecast the probability of

00:15:24.020 that happening, plan an action, and run it through in your head a few times. So if you actually had

00:15:28.500 to do it, you could. You know, that process, you know, earlier on, you spoke about how it becomes

00:15:33.400 intuitive for experts. It's because they've done it so many times. But learning how to visualize is a

00:15:39.140 great cheat for everyone. You know, the world's best athletes do it. Why shouldn't we? And if you can get

00:15:44.560 good at that, you know, it just makes you a much harder target for people that have never thought

00:15:48.520 about it or never actually look around with what could cause harm. And so I like how you break it

00:15:52.780 down in the book. You bring in the, what is it, the Pareto principle, the 80-20, right? So we should

00:15:58.220 be spending, you know, basically 80% of our time that we have on learning how to avoid these situations

00:16:04.780 in the first place through situational awareness. And then the remaining 20% would be spent preparing

00:16:10.760 on, like, how to actually handle that situation if it ever occurred to us, correct?

00:16:15.380 Well, what's interesting is that it merges, right? Because we actually, I love the term

00:16:20.860 pre-silience instead of resilience. You know, the idea of resilience is I can bounce back after

00:16:25.520 something bad happens. But the idea of pre-silience is that the ability to bounce back is formed by all

00:16:32.060 the effort, work, and initiatives I put in ahead of time. So when I look at this idea of where I put my

00:16:37.080 energy, it's not just focusing on, you know, what do I do when this thing happens? You know, for

00:16:43.200 example, if I'm walking down the street and some guy, you know, jumps out in front of me, puts a knife

00:16:47.860 at my throat, most of the time it's a compliance process, right? If he wanted to kill you, he probably

00:16:53.620 would have just killed you. It's about how do you stay calm enough to give him your money. But if you were 0.97

00:16:58.760 situationally aware, you would have realized maybe that's not the street to walk down or when this guy's

00:17:03.260 approaching you, potentially he's a threat. So you move yourself out of the situation.

00:17:08.040 But what gives you the confidence to be able to act under pressure is the physical training.

00:17:13.500 So the biggest benefit of, you know, self-defense or martial arts training is that if I get really

00:17:18.580 good at it, I actually probably never have to use it because I'm able to focus on the pieces

00:17:24.180 beforehand. And it is a challenge, you know, in a world, and don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of

00:17:30.720 mixed martial arts and any sort of combative training. But in a world where we've made combat

00:17:35.500 very sporting, it takes that pre-phase out of it. And the pre-phase is where the average person can

00:17:41.860 avoid these things. So absolutely putting your energy into the focusing before something happens,

00:17:48.060 as opposed to responding and recovering, just makes sense. The challenge we've got, as we spoke about

00:17:54.300 before, is that if people are in the stage of ignorance, negligence, or denial, the chances of

00:18:00.520 them doing something proactively are very, very slim. And while, you know, luckily, bad things won't

00:18:08.180 happen to most people, if you're sitting there without any pre-thought of what you do, you know,

00:18:13.940 it's the equivalent of never having any insurance for anything, you know, a car, a house, your health.

00:18:19.520 And then when something bad happens, going, oh, man, I should have had insurance.

00:18:24.660 So, you know, if we're not even going to invest in our own well-being, how are we going to ensure

00:18:28.800 we have a great life? Yeah, and I think another challenge of why it's hard to do this pre-

00:18:35.260 resilience you talk about, like avoiding the situations in the first place, and then instead

00:18:39.580 focus on, like, what do you do when the thing actually happens, is, like, the training for what you

00:18:44.560 do when the event actually happens, like, it's, I mean, it's fun. Let's, I mean, I think we should

00:18:49.560 not downplay that. Like, I like taking self-defense courses. I like doing tactical gun courses where

00:18:55.740 you're running and gunning, and it's super fun. But you make the case, like, okay, it's fun, and

00:19:01.680 it's interesting, and it's engaging. But in order to get really good at that, like, you have to do that

00:19:06.880 training a lot. Like, I mean, make a big, big investment. I even realized that after a while, it's like,

00:19:11.820 yeah, I mean, this is fun. I'm doing this. I'm doing pretty good in this sort of simulated

00:19:16.000 situation. But it really isn't, like, an action. It's not simulating closely, like, what an actual

00:19:21.200 situation would be like if I were to have to use my firearm. It's a very valid point, and, you know,

00:19:28.100 I'll loop back to a few things. You know, I've trained in many styles of martial arts and

00:19:32.460 tactical firearms instructor, and I've been in a few situations over my career. And when violence

00:19:39.180 actually manifests, it doesn't really manifest the way you practice it in a gym or in a dojo,

00:19:45.800 even on the shooting range. Things happen way differently. It's messy. It's erratic. You get

00:19:51.640 time distortion. All those adrenal factors kick into play. So one of the goals we have when it comes to

00:19:57.760 practical training, the goal is to get as close to reality as safely as possible. And that's a very

00:20:03.320 difficult thing to do. You know, what's the point of going to learn how to defend yourself if you keep

00:20:07.140 getting hurt during the training? But conversely, if the training never actually puts you under stress

00:20:13.280 and simulates, you know, the need to read body language, the need to respond, simulates resistance,

00:20:20.920 multiple attackers, dealing with weaponry, if it doesn't have some of those variables in, you develop

00:20:26.900 that false sense of security. And, you know, it's quite an interesting example that if you look at a lot

00:20:33.400 of self-defense systems, it's something that drives me crazy. Most, you know, sporty martial arts,

00:20:39.460 you know, work on some sort of resistance or, you know, somebody challenging, hitting back, trying to

00:20:44.440 choke you, et cetera. A lot of self-defense systems, you know, still have this idea that techniques are

00:20:50.520 so deadly we can't actually practice live, which is a real cop-out. We find, you know, that the one or two

00:20:59.060 live situations where you get adrenalized and you force people to respond are often the most important

00:21:04.560 aspect of a short self-defense course because it teaches people how to manage the adrenal response

00:21:10.000 as opposed to apply techniques. And we've had some amazing cases over the years where people have

00:21:15.560 been attacked. They really couldn't do any techniques, you know, in the one-hour or one-day

00:21:20.520 self-defense courses. But because psychologically, emotionally, and mentally, they'd made the decision

00:21:25.500 to fight and they saw that trigger point where they had to fight early enough to respond. They

00:21:32.160 survived and many of them did quite well. So it really is a challenge between finding that balance

00:21:38.180 and it's awkward because quite literally being paranoid is worse than not being aware at all.

00:21:45.040 If you borrow a little bit from the field of sports psychology, they found that, you know,

00:21:50.440 athletes who play games such as, you know, baseball or in more British-type countries like

00:21:56.780 Australia who play cricket, you know, the people who are on bat and do really well are usually people

00:22:02.400 who are able to raise and lower their awareness. And the challenge we've got is it's estimated we've only

00:22:08.180 got between 30 and 45 minutes of laser-like focus a day. So if I'm paranoid, I chew through that

00:22:15.140 laser-like focus instantly, which means for the rest of the day, I actually have no ability to

00:22:21.200 cognitively function at a very high level and be vigilant. So it's really important that that point,

00:22:29.220 you know, people often confuse the idea of being aware, situationally aware, ready and capable

00:22:35.060 with being paranoid. And it's almost the exact opposite. Because I'm aware and situationally aware

00:22:41.120 of what's happening around me, I know when I actually can relax. But I also know when I should

00:22:45.860 potentially be more prepared. So I ration that level of awareness more effectively. And you can

00:22:51.720 have an overall much higher quality of life and much more effective daily engagement. Psychologists

00:22:58.160 talk about being mindful. But it really is more effective when I learn to manage and moderate,

00:23:04.560 you know, what I'm doing based on what's happening around me.

00:23:07.900 Well, so let's talk about that. So just so we understand, we're going to spend, you know,

00:23:13.960 understanding that the criminal has the advantage in a situation if we're being attacked, we want

00:23:19.120 to spend most of our time, like 80% of our time learning how to avoid that situation in the first

00:23:24.320 place, because that'll give us the most bang for our buck. So let's talk about how we do that.

00:23:28.580 What's the first step of establishing situational awareness in any, like, no matter where you go?

00:23:34.040 So we like to talk, in the book, I try to summarize it as the awareness toolbox.

00:23:40.200 But it really starts, first and foremost, with a little bit of knowledge of your own internal

00:23:46.320 context. And I'll give you a simple example of that. You know, if I wake up in the morning,

00:23:52.340 I have a bad night's sleep, I might have a bit of a head cold. And on the way into work,

00:23:56.460 I get cut off by somebody and I land up screaming at him. For the rest of the day,

00:24:00.860 I'm probably not going to be that effective at being situationally aware or at making good

00:24:05.860 decisions in totality. So if I don't take context of where I am mentally and emotionally,

00:24:13.320 I might miss what I should actually be doing. So, you know, people, for example, who work in

00:24:19.200 high-risk environments need to be so attuned to their internal state first. Otherwise, they might

00:24:26.140 expose themselves to risks that normally they could deal with, but in a different state might

00:24:31.940 not be able to deal with. And the way we see the world is always governed by how we feel.

00:24:37.820 So if I'm feeling good, I'll look around and I'll actually notice good things, not bad things.

00:24:41.960 If I'm feeling bad, everything I look at is a problem or an issue.

00:24:45.980 So it starts with that internal baseline. Once you have that, you can then try and generate an

00:24:50.420 external baseline. And that external baseline is knowing what's happening around me.

00:24:55.920 We teach a tool called the three-point check system. There are many tools like this, but

00:25:00.880 the history of the three-point check system is an interesting one in that roughly 20 years ago,

00:25:06.280 we set up a bodyguard training school. And we would get sent these guys to train in 10 or 20 days.

00:25:13.520 And many of them were not the perfect specimens for the job. They weren't academically capable.

00:25:21.240 Many of them weren't physically capable, but we had to train them nonetheless. And the timeframe was

00:25:25.980 really short. So we actually went on a research process and we interviewed around about 150

00:25:32.060 experienced operators, the people you spoke about earlier who do it intuitively.

00:25:36.540 And asked them, what is it that you do? What do you look for? How do you look for these things?

00:25:43.760 What tells you that this place is good or this place is bad or that guy's dodgy or he's not?

00:25:49.580 It was a very frustrating research process because many of them just looked at us and said, look,

00:25:54.260 you know, I don't know how I know. I just know. And if you want to be like me, you've got to do this

00:25:57.900 for 20 years. But in the end, we pulled out that basic three-point check system, which is the ability

00:26:02.980 to scan your environment, scan the people there, and come up with a contingency plan.

00:26:07.920 So we simplistically talk about places, people, and plans. And then there's a few subcategories

00:26:14.200 under that. The next aspect is if I get good at doing that, I can program my intuition because most

00:26:20.220 assessments and most activities are all done intuitively. Daniel Kahneman, who's a really famous

00:26:26.620 behavioral scientist, likes to divide the mind. He talks about a system one aspect of our mind and a

00:26:32.720 system two. The system two is our deep thought, cognitive, intellectual decision-making capability.

00:26:40.840 And system one is our reflexive, intuitive capability. And it takes so much energy and

00:26:45.520 effort to engage system two that we almost always default to system one, which is our intuitive

00:26:49.840 decision-making. So the better we program our intuition, the more likely we are to actually not

00:26:56.880 have to do anything because we'll naturally be scanning the environment, naturally be evaluating

00:27:00.780 people, then naturally be coming up with a plan. But it takes quite a long time to program your

00:27:06.000 intuition to work that way. We also, you know, we know we make decisions primarily based on

00:27:11.540 biases and heuristics. So, you know, if I don't like the look of somebody, I might not know why I don't

00:27:17.760 like the look of them. And they may actually not even be a threat at all. So I'm wasting all this

00:27:22.140 energy, you know, being biased, thinking somebody's a threat when they might not be. And I might be

00:27:26.640 missing the actual thing that is a threat because of where I'm focusing. So learning to manage our

00:27:31.100 own biases is really important. We like to divide decision-making into sort of two categories.

00:27:37.520 You know, I have to make the call right now or I have time to analyze it. If you have to make the

00:27:42.380 call right now, then going with your gut is almost always the right call to make, particularly when it

00:27:47.800 comes to personal safety. There's really only two downsides usually about going with your gut, even if

00:27:52.720 you were wrong. And they are usually, you might offend somebody and be rude to them, or you might

00:27:58.420 inconvenience yourself a little bit. Whereas, you know, if you ignore your intuition, you might land

00:28:02.740 up having something really bad happen to you. The flip side of that is obviously if I have more time

00:28:07.380 to evaluate what's going on around me, I'm probably going to make a better decision by actually thinking

00:28:11.880 about it than just reacting on gut instinct. We also leverage off Jeff Cooper's color code system,

00:28:17.920 which is a really useful tool to learn how to raise and lower your awareness based on what's

00:28:23.560 happening around you so that we don't work around in a state that's too paranoid or too

00:28:29.260 stimulated when we don't have to. Also, so that we're not walking around in a state of non-awareness

00:28:36.860 at all when we really should be. You know, a good example is driving a car. Most people who drive to

00:28:42.600 and from work will have had an experience where they get in the car and don't remember the journey

00:28:46.920 home at all. And that's a pretty risky thing. Bear in mind, you're driving or operating a tool

00:28:54.200 that could kill you and kill other people. We should at the very least have some level of basic

00:28:58.200 awareness. You don't have to drive around like you're paranoid all the time, but being cognizant

00:29:03.460 of where you are is pretty important. So these things do become life skills once you embed them.

00:29:08.660 All right. So yeah, there's a lot to break down there. Let's talk about sort of some specifics.

00:29:12.700 This places people plan. Let's talk about the place. What sort of things should just regular

00:29:19.660 people be looking for in their environment when they go to a restaurant, the grocery store,

00:29:25.440 wherever to be better situationally aware? Sure. So the starting point is just to make sure

00:29:33.360 you know the entrances, exits, escape routes, and hiding places. And it's one of those questions

00:29:38.660 often asked people just to ask themselves a very simple question. If you go to a shopping mall

00:29:45.060 often, do you know where the fire escapes are? And it's quite shocking that people will go to a place

00:29:51.340 hundreds of times, but they park in the same place, they go in the same entrance, and they leave at the

00:29:57.100 same entrance. And they've never thought about other ways of getting out if something went wrong.

00:30:00.420 So the most basic things of knowing how to get in and how to get out is where we start. But it also

00:30:07.400 enables us to know where other people would get in or get out from, where other people might be

00:30:11.960 hiding to hurt me or where I should hide if something went wrong. And it just takes a little

00:30:17.380 bit of practice, not much, to get good at that aspect. And just knowing where to run to could be the

00:30:24.000 most important thing if something bad happened. The next stage is actually being able to understand

00:30:29.100 structurally what's around you. You don't necessarily have to have a blueprint map of

00:30:34.300 every building you go to, but just the ability to be able to tell, hold on, this is a five-story

00:30:38.980 building, and I'm on floor five. So if I hit the staircase, I better run until I get to the ground,

00:30:46.360 but it's five staircases. It often becomes an argument of, I really thought the penthouse was a

00:30:53.120 good idea, but if I've got to run down all these stairs, maybe it's not if something happens.

00:30:57.780 The other challenge is if we were looking for something out of the ordinary, it's really hard

00:31:03.860 to tell if something's out of the ordinary if I don't know what the ordinary is. So if I'm looking

00:31:07.600 for an object that looks out of place, it's important to know what is in place. Airports are

00:31:13.720 a great example of that. At airports, they always go, make sure that you don't leave your baggage

00:31:18.520 unattended. Yet, I'm sure you travel a lot, Brett. I do too. And I'd probably say almost every trip I'm at

00:31:25.200 airport, I see baggage unattended. And it's just one of those things that we fall into

00:31:29.280 normalization when actually we should be noting these anomalies. And the last part of scanning

00:31:34.060 the environment, we talk about improvised weapons or defensive tools. What in my environment would

00:31:39.880 somebody potentially use to hurt me? Or what, if I had to in my environment, could I use to protect

00:31:45.400 myself in a worst-case scenario? And I know when you run through this environmental scan, it seems

00:31:50.800 long. But in reality, most people do this anyway. If I want to cross the road safely,

00:31:56.480 I'll actually do a scan like this anyway. I look at what's coming, I scan the environment,

00:32:00.980 and I make a decision. And once we've built a reflexive capability, environmental threat

00:32:05.880 is often much easier to manage than the next level, which is when we integrate people-based

00:32:10.420 threat into it. Because with the exception of natural disasters or a total unforeseen event

00:32:15.200 like a building collapse, environmental threats are often slow to manifest. I'll give an example.

00:32:20.700 Say you walk into a building and you need to go to a meeting on floor three, and you look at the

00:32:25.640 elevator and you're going, if I get in there, I probably will die. It doesn't look like that

00:32:29.540 elevator has ever been serviced. Most people would just logically take the stairs instead of rolling

00:32:33.780 the dust and taking the elevator. If you walk into a restaurant and you sit down at a table and you

00:32:38.520 sit on the chair and the chair feels very rickety and you think you're going to fall on the floor,

00:32:41.680 most people would just swap chairs. So those slow acting environmental risks are easy

00:32:46.440 if we are aware of them. It's usually the combination of people and place that pose the

00:32:51.480 challenge. And this is the interesting part. One of the things that drives me crazy is where,

00:32:57.260 you know, you have a serious incident, whatever the incident was. And after the incident, everybody

00:33:02.900 becomes either masters of hindsight where they're going, oh, yeah, yeah, we knew there was something

00:33:09.220 weird about this guy. Or people will go, yeah, I knew this guy for ages and, you know, he seemed

00:33:15.260 totally normal. And we've kind of built this false sense of reality where we don't think that

00:33:22.640 potentially violent or dangerous behavior is something we can tell in advance, which is just

00:33:28.140 a real inaccuracy. You know, we can predict likely outcomes of the way people behave quite easily.

00:33:34.320 What we don't do is take the effort and energy to evaluate people around us regularly enough to

00:33:40.060 actually assess whether they're displaying any of these characteristics. And what's interesting with

00:33:45.600 this is, you know, somebody who is paying you undue attention might be dressed in a way that they're

00:33:50.640 concealing a weapon, is behaving erratically and following you while you walk to your car.

00:33:56.020 You know, we can all say, yeah, that's pretty dodgy, pretty threatening. But if we're not looking for it,

00:34:01.560 we won't even see it. You know, if we don't even accept that this stuff might happen to me,

00:34:05.440 I'm going to miss all of those cues. You know, even, you know, these, the terrible cases of these

00:34:11.380 kids that land up, you know, conducting shootings at schools. There's many indicators. And a lot of

00:34:17.320 those indicators, you know, are the early warning signs of disassociation. You know, people feel

00:34:22.180 isolated or they feel alienated. They're just behaving differently from the rest. And it's those

00:34:27.740 differences that trigger the need to look deeper. So, it doesn't actually mean that this person is

00:34:33.240 an attacker or they're dodgy. Maybe that person just needs a hug or someone to talk to. But if we

00:34:38.660 don't actually learn to spot these anomalies, we can never actually act proactively and focus our

00:34:43.460 energy before. And it's a pretty convenient excuse. It kind of covers off everybody who didn't do what

00:34:50.440 they should have when we go, oh, there's no way we could see that coming. You know, there's nothing we

00:34:54.560 could have done anyway, which, as I said, for me, I think is just an excuse. I reckon the vast

00:34:59.420 majority of situations, we can do something. We can see the early warning signs. We just don't look

00:35:03.860 for them or know what to do when we see them. Sure, there are, you know, the very limited number

00:35:09.760 of situations that, you know, just instantly manifest, but that's really small. And then the

00:35:16.100 last part of the situational awareness piece is just this ability to come up with a plan.

00:35:19.560 And, you know, we often find this is where most organizations fall really short. They come up

00:35:26.580 with these really complicated plans of what they want their people to do that'll never work. We use

00:35:32.220 the acronym in our corporate consulting business, CYA, cover your ass. And we find most organizations 0.99

00:35:40.000 focus on CYA instead of actually empowering their people to be safe in and out of the workplace,

00:35:45.220 to be safe online and physically. And a lot of that becomes, you know, how do we actually

00:35:50.800 practically apply the skills as opposed to how good do they look when we put it down on paper?

00:35:55.240 We're going to take a quick break for you, Ward, from our sponsors.

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00:37:41.940 And now back to the show. And so what does this planning process look like? Does it take

00:37:46.800 a lot of time or is this something you can walk into a building, you scan your environment,

00:37:52.460 you scan the people, and then you can just quickly come up with a plan based on that information you

00:37:56.000 have there? You're exactly right. Because the problem is if you can't do that and you're the

00:37:59.980 first responder, it actually doesn't help that somebody else has built this detailed plan that

00:38:04.320 you might have never seen or can't be explained to you quickly. And this comes back to that idea

00:38:09.280 of personal power. If I've owned the fact that my safety is my business, I should make it my priority

00:38:17.480 to have a plan if something happened. And there's so many examples of this, but just think about

00:38:23.220 something simple. In the middle of the night, what happens if one of your loved ones needs to go to

00:38:28.260 the hospital? So most people go, oh, we'll call the ambulance. But for whatever reason,

00:38:34.140 what happens if the ambulance is not going to get you in time and you want to jump into your car and

00:38:38.720 drive this person there? Proactive practices like just making sure you've got a little bit of fuel in

00:38:43.340 the car as opposed to leaving it overnight with just the reserve tank light flashing and no ability

00:38:51.940 to drive thinking you're filled up in the morning disempowers you. So it's quite a simple way to

00:38:57.720 actually think about it that if you just think about what are the basic responses I might need to do

00:39:03.440 if something bad happened. And we like to use the run, hide, fight, communicate model. There are lots

00:39:12.060 of variations, but I like that approach because it aligns back to our adrenal response. And our adrenal

00:39:18.600 response really, under stress, will have three instinctive responses. We would fight, flight,

00:39:24.840 or freeze. And fighting alliance to fighting, freezing alliance to hiding, and flighting response to running.

00:39:34.860 So it's a good map. But because in the modern era, most of the time, our first response

00:39:41.100 happens with some level of communication. We've got to have this communication ability built in.

00:39:47.220 And communication works at various levels. But the first level is, there's nothing more powerful

00:39:51.380 than the voice in your own head. So if you can't even articulate a plan to yourself in your mind,

00:39:58.080 the likelihood of you being able to actually carry it out under stress is very slim.

00:40:01.620 So that's why this planning ahead is so important. But calling the authorities, sharing information

00:40:07.200 with the authorities, warning people around you, those are things that save lives. But equally so,

00:40:14.380 if I couldn't get away and I saw this attacker coming at me and I decided my only choice is to fight,

00:40:20.440 me warning the attacker, loudly telling them, no, get back, stop, can actually make a massive difference

00:40:27.500 in the aftermath of the situation legally. Again, it also tells other people around you that you're a

00:40:33.420 victim. You're not the attacker. So understanding this run, hard, fight, communicate model,

00:40:39.300 we make these things complicated. They're not. You know, that's just tied back to our instinctive

00:40:43.640 response. The challenge we've got, though, is if we look at a societal level, most of us, roughly 98%

00:40:51.900 of the population are flight dominant. That when something bad happens, our instincts tell us run

00:40:58.020 first. We'll only fight if we are absolutely cornered. It's that reason why it's so hard to

00:41:05.520 train soldiers or even train law enforcement officers or security personnel to run to a problem as opposed

00:41:10.820 to run away because we have to actually train them to overcome that flight response. The exception

00:41:16.140 to that 98% are usually people that exhibit sociopathic or psychopathic tendencies doesn't

00:41:22.180 mean they always become criminals. It's been found that many people that are sitting at 2% of the

00:41:26.780 people who become special forces soldiers or, you know, half-lying corporate CEOs. But the real

00:41:34.760 challenge for the everyday person is to try and make sure that they can fight flight or freeze or run

00:41:41.980 hard or fight and try and make sure they can avoid the number one challenge, which is to panic.

00:41:48.340 Because panic is a killer. You know, if I panic, I can't think and I can't act. And that's why this

00:41:55.360 planning process, as you said, it doesn't have to be a big deal. If I walk into a building, all I need

00:42:00.440 to do is have a look and go, right, there's the fire escape. Awesome. If something bad happens, I know

00:42:05.820 where to run. If I'm looking at a guy and I go, this guy really looks dodgy. My plan can be as

00:42:12.120 simple as if he gets up and he comes close to me, I'm just going to leave. And because I know where

00:42:16.240 the exit is, it's much easier to leave. And if you mentally role play that just once or twice in your

00:42:20.980 head, all the research has shown you're far more likely to respond that way, the way you've just

00:42:25.840 visualized, than you are to respond randomly because of association. So we can get a lot of bang for buck

00:42:32.620 just by actually leveraging basic awareness around us and just having a little bit of a plan

00:42:38.260 that we role play in our heads a few times. Right. I think you also talk about this goes back

00:42:43.800 to the OODA loop. You talked about this in the book. We've written about it on the website pretty

00:42:48.480 in depth. For those who don't know, the OODA loop is Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. And in a self-defense

00:42:54.600 situation, the attacker, like his OODA loop is like already going before yours is going, right? But by

00:43:01.880 having a plan, you kind of speed up your own OODA loop in a way, because you've oriented,

00:43:07.200 you've decided like what you're going to do in a certain situation. So you're able to act

00:43:11.180 and respond much more quickly. And if you can do that faster, you're more likely to

00:43:15.860 come out the victor in the situation. Exactly right. And it's interesting. So

00:43:21.620 during our career, we've done lots of interesting things. And one of them was that we actually got to

00:43:26.180 rob a bank. And this was a bank in South Africa that we were developing an armed robbery management

00:43:31.300 program for, bullet-resistant glass, armed security, five-minute tactical response.

00:43:38.160 We had 30 people who participated in the exercise as volunteers, obviously. And we only had one

00:43:44.200 chance to do it right because we were breaking the bullet-resistant glass, which was pretty expensive.

00:43:48.840 The bank said you only got one chance to do it. I'll ask you the question, how long do you think

00:43:53.760 it took us to rob the bank, to overcome all of those barriers and successfully pull the robbery off?

00:43:59.000 Let me say two minutes. Pretty close. I hope you've never been a bank robber.

00:44:03.720 I think like one. It took one minute 23. Wow.

00:44:06.420 Which we reckon we could have shaved a bunch of time off that. We've also spent tons and tons of

00:44:11.980 time training people on how to manage carjackings. So with the context of the bank robbery, how long

00:44:17.300 do you reckon it takes to pull off a carjacking? It's like 30 seconds.

00:44:21.540 So we've averaged that out at about 8 to 12 seconds. Wow.

00:44:25.660 The last piece of thinking about that is, imagine somebody standing in front of you being verbally

00:44:30.800 aggressive. And you can see this guy posturing up. How long does it take from that person to go

00:44:37.620 verbal, from verbal to physical and strike you?

00:44:40.940 Like one second.

00:44:43.140 Realistically, between 0.3 and 0.6 of a second if they're in touching distance.

00:44:47.360 Wow. So the biggest problem we've got is this fallacy that we actually will have enough

00:44:52.480 time to evaluate what's happening around us and decide on a response when something actually

00:44:58.080 happens. The truth is we won't. And this is where that performance ahead of time is so

00:45:04.240 important. If we haven't thought about this stuff beforehand, the way we respond is random.

00:45:10.640 Now, we might be lucky and our random response might be effective. But what happens if it's not?

00:45:16.260 What happens if it's a panic response? What happens if it's a flight response and I run the

00:45:20.980 wrong way? Conversely, what happens if it's a fight response that could have been avoidable?

00:45:26.960 Having taught thousands of young men over the years, most young men get into fights or engage

00:45:33.900 in violence because of ego, not because they have to. And the best way to manage that is to get people

00:45:39.380 to understand ahead of time what the difference is between having to fight for survival, which

00:45:45.100 you know, is because you have no other choice and you've tried to avoid every other possible

00:45:48.660 recourse. And, you know, throwing a punch because this guy looked at you funny and you felt

00:45:52.980 cornered. You know, one might save your life, the other might land that you're up in jail.

00:45:58.180 So this ability to actually understand the way things manifest is so important so that we can

00:46:04.120 be realistic about the way we visualize our responses. And it's a really hard thing to do because,

00:46:10.280 you know, let's take an active shooter situation. In hindsight and after situations, it blows my

00:46:17.240 mind and I'm sure you've experienced this with many of the people you've interviewed and what you look

00:46:20.780 at. Everyone's an expert, right? You know, oh, why didn't somebody take this guy out? You could

00:46:26.160 have tackled him. You could have thrown a chair at him. You could have done this. You could have done 0.93

00:46:28.860 that. But when these things actually manifest, it's exceptionally difficult if we haven't prepared.

00:46:35.620 I don't know if you're familiar with the case of Andrus Brevik. Andrus Brevik was the guy who shot

00:46:41.000 all those kids in Norway. Right. Yeah, I remember that. And he actually claimed that it was so much

00:46:48.760 easier. He trained using first-person shooter TV games, which came out in his inquiry. And he said

00:46:56.340 it was so much easier when he was shooting the kids because most of them froze and they were just 0.97

00:47:01.700 standing dead still so it was easy for him to shoot them. Or, sorry, and nobody was shooting

00:47:07.680 back at him. And when he was playing his TV games, you know, people were shooting back and running him.

00:47:12.500 So, you know, just a little bit of pre-thought around what's real and what's not. And this is a

00:47:17.440 hard thing to do. You know, people don't like to think about worst-case scenarios. And this is always

00:47:23.340 the challenge, you know, in terms of writing the book and trying to put some of the stuff down,

00:47:28.040 we've probably trained about 50,000 people and at least one of our face-to-face versions of some

00:47:33.720 of the stuff that's covered in the book. The challenge you've got is, you know, this stuff

00:47:38.060 is actually a practical skill. It's not a theoretical subject. It's about doing the things. And it's about

00:47:43.220 practicing them until they become repetitive and just become naturally ingrained in the way you live.

00:47:48.680 And when you get to that level, this is easy. They just become intuitive, you know, much like

00:47:53.040 looking left and right or right and left depends which country you're in before you cross the road.

00:47:58.040 And that's where we want to get to. But we need to get there from a response capability first.

00:48:03.440 You know, we need to look at what actually will work as opposed to what is perceived.

00:48:08.080 And maybe you've seen this in the years. You've spoken to many experts.

00:48:12.960 You know, there's so many experts out there who can do stuff that layman can't.

00:48:18.040 You know, so somebody who's a master in whatever martial arts you want to talk about,

00:48:22.660 you know, can actually pull off stuff the average person can't. Therefore, they think that that's

00:48:26.400 effective. And for them, it might be, you know, a good example. I trained taekwondo for many years

00:48:32.440 when I was young in my career, and taekwondo is a kicking system. And, you know, lots of self-defense

00:48:38.000 experts go kicking in, you know, high kicking in the street or self-defense is a bad idea.

00:48:43.140 It is a bad idea. But if you're an expert in it, you probably can kick somebody in the head faster 0.92

00:48:47.020 than they can punch you in the face. But to get to that level of mastery takes so long that the average

00:48:52.100 person would never have benefit. So the actual system itself is pretty bad for self-defense

00:48:57.180 because the average punter can't use it. And, you know, not to pick on that, the same is relevant

00:49:02.380 for many other systems. You know, mixed martial arts, which is great, a great close-to-reality

00:49:08.380 example of the way fights manifest, is awesome. But the things that enable smaller people to beat

00:49:15.660 bigger people are all the things that have been made illegal. The only way you can stop a bigger,

00:49:20.720 stronger person is, you know, trying to poke them in the arse, trying to hit them in the groin, 0.99

00:49:25.420 breaking small joints like their fingers, trying to hit in the throat, trying to grab a weapon, 0.99

00:49:30.100 trying to run away. And all of those things are illegal and things you can't do in mixed martial

00:49:34.720 arts. So the more you train with the limitations, often the less effective you are in the real world,

00:49:41.600 which is a difficult conundrum to overcome. So I think that's a good point you just raised,

00:49:46.320 the difference between sport fighting and fighting for your life. When you're fighting

00:49:51.020 for your life, there are no rules. But unfortunately, people, because like most people are good people,

00:49:56.240 right? They grew up and thinking about, you know, you got to have a fair fight or they're thinking

00:50:00.620 about the legal consequences afterwards. Like they do, they just basically, they fight like they're

00:50:07.000 in a boxing match or an MMA, but when they should be, if it's for their life, like gouging eyeballs,

00:50:11.720 punching throats, et cetera. It's really challenging because, you know, as mentioned

00:50:17.460 before, there's only two reasons in life people will ever resort to violent behavior. And, you know,

00:50:23.880 I have this debate often with criminologist colleagues of mine who love to overcomplicate

00:50:27.580 the world we live in. But the reality is people either fight for ego or for survival.

00:50:33.300 And, you know, even if you look at, you know, serial killer behavior, most of those actions are based

00:50:39.360 on ego. You know, they're based on fulfilling a need that that person perceives is real.

00:50:45.440 Whereas in reality, you know, if it's a survival-based situation, which comparatively would be very,

00:50:51.340 very rare. You know, if you were aware, you were vigilant, you knew where, you know, things could go

00:50:56.420 wrong, you could avoid it. We were unlikely to get caught up in a bad situation. But conversely,

00:51:02.620 if we go into a situation that is a survival situation with the limitations that, you know,

00:51:08.380 people are good people, I couldn't hurt somebody, I don't want to hurt somebody, well, the chance of

00:51:14.440 you coming out okay are pretty slim because your attacker doesn't have those limitations. And it is

00:51:19.860 an awkward discussion. I'll just go back to, we teach a lot of female self-empowerment and female 1.00

00:51:25.620 self-defense. And I find women who come on us, women and girls who come on our self-defense programs 0.95

00:51:32.860 often are really in one of two categories. They're either really underconfident where they go,

00:51:39.420 look, what could I do against a bigger, stronger guy anyway? You know, so I don't even know why I'm

00:51:43.380 here because there's nothing I could do anyway. Or on the other end of the spectrum, we sometimes get

00:51:47.800 girls and ladies who have grown up with brothers, really cocky and go, oh, I'm not even worried about 0.75

00:51:52.920 this. I'll just kick him in the balls. Forgetting the fact that, you know, most men have learned how to 1.00

00:51:59.060 protect our groin since the age of three when we realize it really hurts when you get hit in the

00:52:02.480 nuts. So it's about finding that balance because neither of those is accurate as we discussed.

00:52:09.080 It's about finding the balance between both. But it's also about exposing people to, in a slower

00:52:15.260 measured way, to the very things they're most scared of. So people who are scared of violence

00:52:20.480 and believe it will never happen to them have no ability to respond if God forbid it does happen.

00:52:25.620 And people who slowly acclimatize themselves over time have a much better chance of being able to

00:52:31.860 manage it. And that's a process. And it's really important to find good coaches and good trainers

00:52:36.800 if you want to go through that. One of the worst things we find people can do is, you know, go and

00:52:43.540 do a self-defense training program, for example. Or, you know, we often have a lot of ladies who come 1.00

00:52:50.000 and train and go, oh, yeah, I do boxer size or I do tabo. I'm ready to defend myself. We go, well,

00:52:55.380 that's great that you're fit, that being fit and healthy and strong is excellent to manage our first

00:53:00.480 risk, which is health. And, you know, we'll make it easy for you to defend yourself. But your context

00:53:05.460 is all wrong. If we haven't thought about the way people might actually attack us, we've got no

00:53:10.600 ability to apply the skills we have. So it's a bit of a challenge. But the one thing I always urge

00:53:16.700 people is no instructor, no book, no manual can ever tell a person when or when not to fight.

00:53:23.920 It's really a personal decision. And the challenge we've got is referencing back to how quickly

00:53:29.720 violence can manifest. If you haven't thought about it ahead of time, you're unlikely to make

00:53:35.220 the best possible decision when something actually happens. You know, our cognitive function shuts down

00:53:39.840 and we respond with reflexive, instinctive response only. So if I want to make the right call,

00:53:44.740 I really do have to base it on, you know, thinking about this and programming a response

00:53:49.860 in through visualization or rehearsal ahead of time. I hope that makes sense.

00:53:55.180 No, that makes sense. I mean, like how, so like, how does that work? I guess like,

00:53:59.360 going back to this idea that 80% of the time we should spend avoiding the situation. So we can do

00:54:04.120 that with situational awareness. If you see something like doesn't look right, we get out of there

00:54:08.980 because even if we're wrong, you know, at least we're alive, we're safe. But how do you decide

00:54:14.760 how to respond with either run, hide, fight when like the event actually happens, right? You couldn't

00:54:22.360 avoid it. The event actually happens. So like, I guess what I'm trying to say, like, how do you like,

00:54:27.360 is there like proximity? So it's like, if the guy's this close or this far away, I'm going to run away.

00:54:32.080 But if he's within this perimeter of me, I'm going to attack because that's the only option

00:54:37.180 I have. Does that make sense what I'm trying to ask? Absolutely. And you're talking about what

00:54:42.460 we refer to as the pre-phase. So just before the situation happens, and I view this aspect as part

00:54:48.040 of that 80% we discussed before, you know, everything that happens pre the incident actually

00:54:53.020 kicking off is our pre-work. And that's where that 80% should focus on. So this is the challenge.

00:54:58.680 It's all about context. So we fear most what we don't understand. If I've never been exposed

00:55:03.780 to somebody closing range, and you're demonstrating even verbal aggression, chances are I'm either

00:55:10.680 going to respond with a flight, flight or freeze response, right? I might just absolutely freeze

00:55:15.980 and not know what to do. I might engage back very verbally aggressively, or I might just try

00:55:22.240 and run. And the challenge is around trying to map the right response to the scenarios we face.

00:55:27.700 And this is where realistic training experience, you know, done repetitively is by far the most

00:55:35.220 effective way to cover that gap you discussed. Because if I don't know at what point somebody

00:55:41.180 can actually step to strike me, how do I know when I should be backing away? You know, if I don't know

00:55:47.600 how quickly somebody can cover distance when they're across the room, you know, I might spend a lot of

00:55:52.780 time being paranoid and missing out on lots of opportunities based on inaccurate perceptions,

00:55:57.180 when actually there's no risk, no exposure of people, or even people who are threatening,

00:56:01.540 we're too far away. So part of the challenge with this one is I always urge people, even if you don't

00:56:08.000 want to be a serious martial artist, spend a few months at a self-defense school. It's a life skill.

00:56:13.820 That will teach you how to read distance. It will teach you when people can hurt you from where.

00:56:18.720 Okay. And then you've at least got context. So for the rest of your life, even if you never go back

00:56:23.340 and train again, you realize that, look, if I can keep a meter and a half of safe separation,

00:56:28.060 and I can see this person's hands, okay, and they're not exhibiting, you know, signs and symptoms

00:56:33.640 of adrenal dump, then chances are I'm okay. But if these things change, then I need to act on it.

00:56:41.060 And the biggest problem is we miss these cues because A, we've never been taught to look for

00:56:45.780 them. And it drives me crazy. I think this sort of training should be a life skill that should get

00:56:50.360 taught to every child. You know, there were programs that I was involved in in Israel where every school

00:56:55.800 kid, you know, received four two-hour training sessions just as part of their school curriculum

00:57:01.940 to understand how to respond. And we spend so much time trying to develop our kids' skills,

00:57:07.500 we're missing teaching them the life skills that could make them healthier, safer, more productive

00:57:12.960 adults. But, you know, on that piece, the big challenge is what do we do when it comes time to

00:57:20.420 make a decision? The reality is it's hard to make a decision under adrenal dump. So the more work I put

00:57:25.400 in ahead of time, the more likely I'm to make the right decision. And the right decision is different

00:57:31.020 for every single person. You know, if I'm the average everyday person, it's a comparatively

00:57:36.980 simple measure in theory. You know, I would like to make sure that I come out of every possible bad

00:57:41.900 situation with everything I went into it with. If I'm a first responder, sheepdog, law enforcement,

00:57:47.880 security, or military person, I have to run to trouble. So my context of, you know, how I come out

00:57:53.480 of it, how I deal with it is quite different, and it is a different discussion. But if we're looking at

00:57:57.760 the everyday person, you know, how do we measure success? And it blows my mind often talking to

00:58:03.440 young guys who get into fistfights. You know, and one of the guys will step up and he'll go,

00:58:08.180 oh, I won that fight. Man, did you see what happened? You know, I beat this guy down and all I got is a

00:58:13.480 black eye. You kind of look at them and often when I have these discussions with them, I say, well,

00:58:18.880 just tell me what were the aspects that led up to that situation? And they'll normally tell you a story

00:58:25.120 of, you know, he said something or I said something or he looked at me or I looked at him.

00:58:30.880 You know, he swore at me, I swore at him. And, you know, then it looked like he was going to throw

00:58:34.440 a punch or he did throw a punch. So I fought back. And, you know, there's this trail of incidents.

00:58:40.320 And when you trail it back down, it usually was, you know, there was an ego-based reason and he missed

00:58:44.620 the opportunity to avoid it, which means if he could have, he wouldn't even have had a black eye in the

00:58:51.220 first place. So actually that's a loss if you really think about it because he came out of the 0.99

00:58:55.260 situation worse off than if he had avoided it. Easy to say, particularly when ego comes into play

00:59:01.140 and social pressures are something that's tough on young men. You know, there is an expectation

00:59:07.020 in certain circles that, you know, you'll defend your honor and backing away from a fight is not

00:59:11.600 a good idea. But, you know, if you look at the consequences of getting it wrong, you know,

00:59:17.400 avoidance is by far the best strategy. Well, Gav, this has been a great conversation.

00:59:22.240 Is there someplace else where people can go to learn more about the book and your work?

00:59:25.540 Yes, thanks. So my book, Can I See Your Hands, is available on Amazon or through the publishers,

00:59:31.420 Universal Publishers. We also have an online training academy. If you just go to www.r2s.academy,

00:59:40.580 we've got various online training programs that are aligned to the book. The shortest one is 30

00:59:45.760 minutes, which you can do in five-minute blocks. You can do them on yourself. You can do them on

00:59:49.440 your cell phone. You can do them anywhere. And, you know, we do run face-to-face seminars and

00:59:55.360 programs all over the world. But from my perspective, I think we've got a lot of work to do. The way

01:00:01.640 threats manifest in a complex world now are so different to the way they used to be. And the old

01:00:07.680 model of, you know, sheepdogs keeping us safe is just not practicable the way it used to be.

01:00:13.760 You know, with cybercrime and online crime and, you know, alienated people who resort to violence

01:00:20.200 because they feel they have no other choice, that, you know, I really do feel very strongly that,

01:00:25.560 you know, our goal is to try and get the average person who may have viewed themselves as a sheep

01:00:30.400 before, in other words, security and personal safety is not my problem, to just get the basic

01:00:36.000 knowledge they need to go, in a worst-case scenario, I know what to do. So, you know, from my side,

01:00:40.740 Brett, thank you very much for the opportunity. To the people who are listening, all the people

01:00:44.840 who've read our books or do our programs, thank you very much for stepping up and being part of

01:00:49.460 the solution as opposed to being a passive stand-by victim waiting for something to happen.

01:00:55.880 Well, Gav, thanks for coming on. It's been a great conversation.

01:00:57.920 Thanks, Brett. Much appreciated.

01:00:59.700 My guest today was Dr. Gav Schneider. He's the author of the book,

01:01:02.240 Can I See Your Hands? It's available on Amazon.com. And you can also go to r2s.academy,

01:01:06.940 where you can see Gav's courses that he have on personal risk management and safety. And he gave

01:01:11.480 you a free month membership if you use code AOM at checkout. Also check out our show notes at

01:01:15.020 aom.is slash caniceeyourhands, where you can find links to resources, where you can delve deeper into

01:01:19.560 this topic. Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. For more manly tips

01:01:36.020 and advice, make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com. And if you enjoy

01:01:39.660 the show, you've gotten something out of it, I'd appreciate it if you take one minute to give us

01:01:42.660 a review on iTunes or Stitcher. Helps out a lot. And if you've done that already, thank you. Please

01:01:46.220 consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who'd think of something out of it. As

01:01:49.520 always, thank you for your continued support. And until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to

01:01:52.920 stay manly.

01:02:06.020 Thank you.

The Art of Manliness - September 05, 2018

#438： Developing Real-World Situational Awareness

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