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Drills For Situational Awareness
by Ken Jorgustin
Situational awareness is being aware of one’s surroundings and identifying potential threats and dangerous situations.
Situational awareness is more of a mindset than a tangible hands-on skill.
Situational awareness can be applied by anyone with the resolve to do so.
To help you practice, here are a few drills that you can do to hone your mindset…
First though, to establish a mindset of situational awareness one must first recognize that threats do exist. If someone is in denial of the potential for a threat, that person’s chances of recognizing an emerging threat quickly enough – and avoiding it – will be highly unlikely. Bad things do happen.
One must also be of the mindset to take responsibility for one’s own security. The ‘authorities’ cannot be everywhere (and we don’t want them everywhere) and cannot stop every potential criminal action. People need to look out for themselves.
The situational awareness mindset also includes trusting your “gut” or instinct. Often a person’s subconscious can notice subtle signs of danger that the conscious mind has difficulty quantifying or articulating. Have you ever suddenly had that feeling of danger without being able to put your finger on it – so to speak? Ignoring such feelings can lead to serious trouble.
Practicing situational awareness requires discipline and is the conscious effort required to pay attention to your surroundings and gut feelings to surrounding events even while you are busy and distracted – because when you are distracted even obvious eminent danger or hostility can go unnoticed. Individuals need to learn to be observant even while doing other things.
Here are a few drills that you can do to improve your situational awareness skills.
1. Identify all the exits when you enter a building.
2. Count the number of people in a restaurant, subway or train car.
3. Note which cars take the same turns in traffic.
4. Take a look at the people around you and attempt to figure out their stories. Imagine what they do for a living, their mood, what they are focused on and what it appears they are preparing to do, based merely on observation.
5. Next time you’re in a parking lot, look for – and count – the number of cars with people sitting in them, whether you’re walking to the storefront, or coming back to your car, or even driving through.
Engaging in such simple situational-awareness drills will train a person’s mind to be aware of these things almost subconsciously when the person is in a relaxed state of awareness.
More Drills To Practice Situational Awareness
Situational awareness is key to personal security. While its definition goes beyond just this realm, it can be summed up by this very basic concept – knowing what’s going on around you.
It sounds simple enough, and you may think that you’ve got it or that you are aware of what’s happening around you, but in reality most people are not aware as they should be. And in fact, while observing those in our modern world today – it appears that a great many of them are entirely unaware.
Here are three ‘drills’ to practice your own situational awareness:
Use Your Peripheral Vision
We all have peripheral vision, but what we see there is often ignored while we ‘tunnel vision’ what’s directly in front of us. When you are out in public it is especially important to ‘see’ with your peripheral vision. Practice looking ahead (as you normally would) but while doing so – mentally notice what’s in your peripheral. You can do this even while talking with someone. Monitoring a wider field of vision will enable you to see (or be more aware) of anything which may be out of the ordinary.
Use Reflective Surfaces
When you are walking in an area where there are windows along the side (e.g. walking downtown, etc..) practice glancing at these reflective surfaces to see what’s going on behind you and areas which you cannot see while walking forward.
Visualize
No matter where you are, it’s good practice to visualize a threat or emergency, and figure out what you would do – right then. The more scenarios you practice, the more mentally prepared you will be for the ‘real deal’.
More Drills To Practice Situational Awareness
Search Results situational awareness
by Ken Jorgustin
Situational awareness is being aware of one’s surroundings and identifying potential threats and dangerous situations.
Situational awareness is more of a mindset than a tangible hands-on skill.
Situational awareness can be applied by anyone with the resolve to do so.
To help you practice, here are a few drills that you can do to hone your mindset…
First though, to establish a mindset of situational awareness one must first recognize that threats do exist. If someone is in denial of the potential for a threat, that person’s chances of recognizing an emerging threat quickly enough – and avoiding it – will be highly unlikely. Bad things do happen.
One must also be of the mindset to take responsibility for one’s own security. The ‘authorities’ cannot be everywhere (and we don’t want them everywhere) and cannot stop every potential criminal action. People need to look out for themselves.
The situational awareness mindset also includes trusting your “gut” or instinct. Often a person’s subconscious can notice subtle signs of danger that the conscious mind has difficulty quantifying or articulating. Have you ever suddenly had that feeling of danger without being able to put your finger on it – so to speak? Ignoring such feelings can lead to serious trouble.
Practicing situational awareness requires discipline and is the conscious effort required to pay attention to your surroundings and gut feelings to surrounding events even while you are busy and distracted – because when you are distracted even obvious eminent danger or hostility can go unnoticed. Individuals need to learn to be observant even while doing other things.
Here are a few drills that you can do to improve your situational awareness skills.
1. Identify all the exits when you enter a building.
2. Count the number of people in a restaurant, subway or train car.
3. Note which cars take the same turns in traffic.
4. Take a look at the people around you and attempt to figure out their stories. Imagine what they do for a living, their mood, what they are focused on and what it appears they are preparing to do, based merely on observation.
5. Next time you’re in a parking lot, look for – and count – the number of cars with people sitting in them, whether you’re walking to the storefront, or coming back to your car, or even driving through.
Engaging in such simple situational-awareness drills will train a person’s mind to be aware of these things almost subconsciously when the person is in a relaxed state of awareness.
More Drills To Practice Situational Awareness
Situational awareness is key to personal security. While its definition goes beyond just this realm, it can be summed up by this very basic concept – knowing what’s going on around you.
It sounds simple enough, and you may think that you’ve got it or that you are aware of what’s happening around you, but in reality most people are not aware as they should be. And in fact, while observing those in our modern world today – it appears that a great many of them are entirely unaware.
Here are three ‘drills’ to practice your own situational awareness:
Use Your Peripheral Vision
We all have peripheral vision, but what we see there is often ignored while we ‘tunnel vision’ what’s directly in front of us. When you are out in public it is especially important to ‘see’ with your peripheral vision. Practice looking ahead (as you normally would) but while doing so – mentally notice what’s in your peripheral. You can do this even while talking with someone. Monitoring a wider field of vision will enable you to see (or be more aware) of anything which may be out of the ordinary.
Use Reflective Surfaces
When you are walking in an area where there are windows along the side (e.g. walking downtown, etc..) practice glancing at these reflective surfaces to see what’s going on behind you and areas which you cannot see while walking forward.
Visualize
No matter where you are, it’s good practice to visualize a threat or emergency, and figure out what you would do – right then. The more scenarios you practice, the more mentally prepared you will be for the ‘real deal’.
More Drills To Practice Situational Awareness
Search Results situational awareness
