Situational Awareness, part 2

How do I develop it?

Image by me, using HiDream I1 Fast. I’m a thug, not an artist.

“Good. Generally applicable. Perhaps you can delve into establishing baselines more since our greatest risks are often in the unfamiliar environment such as the urbanite driving Route 66 for an adventure or some fat older man wandering about West Africa for business. ;)”

David Spaulding is a very dear friend of ours, a wise man, and asks a pretty good question — blog fodder!

First thing out of the gate: situational awareness/baseline is something that every human being already does on a subconscious level. Any time you have had a “bad feeling” about something, your subconscious has noted an anomaly or deviations from the baseline, and warned you about it.

We may refer to it as “I don’t know why it made my hackles stand up”, or “It just gave me the creeps”, or any other nebulous warning sign, but it’s one of those things that got baked into our blood and bone when Og first climbed down out of the tree.

So, we don’t need to “develop” it so much as we need to refine something that’s already there. To bring it from a subconscious process to a conscious one.

Fortunately this is fairly easy. Unfortunately it is also fairly boring, because it asks you to develop a new habit, and modern life discourages this sort of thing.

So.

For the next 30 days you need to complicate your life a bit. First off — if you’re not either sitting down at your desk, or standing still somewhere safe, don’t answer your cell phone. If it rings while you’re walking down the street, do not remove it from your pocket until you are standing still in a safe area. If you hear the text alert, same thing. Don’t even pull that phone out of your pocket until you’re either sitting at your desk, or standing in a safe location.

We are training, and distractions during training produce garbage training. Garbage training produces garbage results.

Every time you change environments or zones, you need to stop, get out of the flow of traffic, and focus on your senses for 30 seconds. Start with your vision and we’re looking for generalities: check the density of people on the street — is it sparse, crowded or somewhere in-between? What is everyone wearing? Direction and velocity of traffic flow? In your mind, state each observation.

Next, focus on your hearing. What does the street sound like, generally? Car horns? Laughing children? Vehicular traffic sounds? What level — soft, medium, loud? What kind of noise? Again, each note you make, tell it to yourself in your head.

Smell, next. What does the street smell like? What does the air smell like? Make conscious notes.

Then, touch. Which way is the wind coming from? How hard? Is it humid? Hot? Cold? Static electricity? Same. Record all by talking in the vaults of your mind.

Lastly, and most importantly, gauge the emotional mood of the scene. What does everyone’s body language say? Speak it to yourself.

After 30 seconds of going through your senses, you may continue on your way. However, every time you change environment or zone, step out of the flow of traffic, stay still, and do it again. Vision, Hearing, Smell, Touch.

That’s the first week. Stop, get out of the way, assess the environment with all your senses, make active mental notes every time you change zones.

The second week, we’re going to do the same thing, but at regular intervals I want you to compare and verify what is currently going on with the mental notes you took at the entrance to the environment you’re currently in. Has anything changed? What changed? Why did it change? Be sure that you check with each and every one of your senses. If there’s a change, tell yourself what the change is.

The third week, we’re doing the same thing, but I want you to get a rubber band. It needs to fit snugly on your non-dominant wrist, and be thick enough to sting a little when you snap yourself with it. Now, I want you to draw a mental circle around yourself, about 10 to 12 feet in radius.

Now, on top of checking the sensory environment every time you change zones; and verifying at regular intervals — every time someone gets inside that circle before you notice them, give yourself a little ‘pop’ on the inside of your wrist. Just enough to sting. At lunch, if you haven’t had to pop yourself, give yourself a treat. Do the same thing at supper. If you’ve had to pop yourself, skip the treat, and review each time someone got inside your circle before you noticed them, attempt to view the scene from outside, and objectively review what was occurring at the time that drew your attention.

That’s your first 30 days of training. We’ll get into the next 30 tomorrow.

Ian