Blog
November 6, 2024
Build essential situational awareness skills for everyday safety, focusing on environmental awareness, digital distraction reduction, and mindfulness.
What is Situational Awareness?
Situational awareness is the foundation of any threat analysis. It boils down to keeping your head up, understanding where you are, what’s happening around you, and the pillars of being situationally aware.
There are lots of strategies we can employ to keep up our situational awareness. Keeping poised, especially in a stressful situation is key to your safety. As a Canadian warrior poet once said in his treatise on escalation “Being humble doesn’t work as well as being aware.” Don’t be a target and come across as weak or unsure, but also don’t attract attention by being overconfident and aggressive. Both postures make you a target.
Strategies to Improve Situational Awareness
A failure to plan is a plan to fail. We don’t all have to be as extreme as Ret. Gen Mattis when we walk into a room, but having a plan that is based on a simple checklist could be the difference between a good day and a bad day. The first thing a plan should consider is, ‘Am I about to put myself in a bad situation, and how can I avoid it’. If you enter a room, you should know where the exits are and how you would get to them. You should be aware of who is in that room, and where in the room they are. For example, are they between you and an exit and could they pose a threat? What is in the room? Are there cameras in the room? From where you are standing, will they capture all actions in the room? This simple checklist will develop over time and with practice. It will also depend on the kind of situations you find yourself in most often.
Developing Situational Awareness Skills
Developing Situational Awareness skills is habitual. Being aware of where you are and what is around you should be on your mind constantly; however, it should not induce anxiety. It should be a flow, an undercurrent reflecting your state of mind. It’s a practice.
Developing Mindful Practices
Situational Awareness develops from being mindful. Being mindful isn’t just corporatized jargon leveraged to sell more yoga classes. Being mindful is understanding who you are, how you are feeling, and what others might be feeling who are around you. How all of this impacts the space you occupy encompasses Situational Awareness. Being mindful is a level of understanding of what’s around you, and Situational Awareness is too, but with a tactile casing.
Minimizing Digital Distractions
Often the spaces we are in are distracting. Constantly bombarded by noise from advertisers, apps, and crowded environments. Being situationally aware is picking up on the signal through those distractions. We carry around a device that mentally takes us out of the space we occupy. On the subway, in waiting rooms, and in all manner of spaces, transported into different digital situations while we scroll. We are effectively removed from our physical world. When we are looking at our screens, we are not fully aware of our present surroundings and our Protective Posture, therefore our Situational Awareness is weakened.
Pay Attention to the Environment
Picking your head up goes a long way. Understanding the context, conditions, circumstances, and environment you are in, as well as how it is constantly evolving, is paramount for keeping yourself and those around you safe. Whether it be while walking down the street on a Saturday night or traveling to and from a destination on a work trip, it’s worth your while to pick your head up and have a look around.
Simple habits, such as being mindful or minimizing distractions, are good for both your physical and mental health. Simply maintaining an awareness of the world and the situation around you will keep your physical well-being and health up too. Have a look around, have an idea of where you’re going and what might stop you from getting there. This world is beautiful and all at once. It’s best for your own good to be aware of that.