Situational Awareness

This week I’ve given situational awareness some serious thought and decided to share with you.

Wiki describes Situational awareness as:

Situational awareness is the perception of environmental elements with respect to time and/or space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their status after some variable has changed, such as time.

Basically paying attention to your surroundings to make good decisions.

Some of the recent events in the world have made me reevaluate and place some renewed emphasis on developing good situational awareness. Let me clear up a fallacy I have heard recently. There is a huge difference between having Situational awareness and being paranoid. I don’t walk around thinking everyone is out to get me nor is the guberment going to drone me any second now. To dismiss any level of situational awareness would be like crossing the road without looking. Assuming cars will always stop is ignorant.

I realized that I first heard the term that I had practiced situational awareness for as long as I could remember. As a child I would use my over active imagination to analyze everyday situations. I would gauge threat levels, escape routes, defense strategies. Of course this was pretending strangers were bad ninja assassins but the principles are the same.

Some things I do now as an adult are simple things that could save you one day. When you go to a restaurant face towards the entrance. I don’t mean to watch the door but have it in you vision. Trains yourself to only pay attention to the abnormal. Normal everyday customers become background sights. If you see clowns and presidents come in pay attention.

A quick thing I do is when I go anywhere I make a mental note of the exits. In a fire and stampeding masses I don’t want to get lost looking for an exit in a smoke-filled room. I takes just a few seconds at most and has no down sides at all.

The next big one is trust the butterfly’s! Everyone has had the butterfly’s in the stomach feeling before. If you primal human intuition kicks in trust it. This feeling evolved with us to warn us about the lion hiding in the bushes unseen. No evidence just a feeling.  In modern times  we’re taught to ignore this. I’m telling you to trust this when it tells you the lions in the bushes.

I know some of this is very counter to the way many live. I know many people who sort of float through life without really paying attention to anything.  I implore you pay attention to your surroundings. Make informed decisions based on your environment. Lastly the best situational awareness is to not be there. Don’t put yourself into bad situations that can be avoided. Don’t be paranoid be aware. Do You practice situational awareness in your daily life? Has it help you out? Let me know in the comments!