Dr. Gav Schneider, an expert in personal risk management and security, shares the biggest mistakes people make when it comes to personal safety. He explains the importance of developing situational awareness, having multiple plans of action, and realistic training to defend yourself. Learn about the significance of understanding one's surroundings, evaluating people's characteristics, and recognizing early warning signs of danger.
Prioritize situational awareness to avoid dangerous situations and make informed decisions.
Acknowledge potential risks and mentally and physically prepare for potential threats.
Realistic training that incorporates stress and resistance is crucial in developing effective self-defense skills.
Deep dives
Focus on Situational Awareness for Personal Safety
The podcast episode discusses the importance of prioritizing situational awareness for personal safety. It highlights the need to spend 80% of our time learning how to avoid dangerous situations in the first place. By being aware of our internal and external context, we can make informed decisions and take proactive measures in potential threat scenarios. The podcast emphasizes the advantage that attackers have and the limited time we have to react, emphasizing the importance of pre-planning and visualization. It also touches on the run-hard-fight-communicate model, encouraging individuals to proactively develop plans based on the potential responses required in different situations.
Understanding the Mistakes People Make in Personal Safety
The episode explores the two common mistakes people make when it comes to personal safety: ignorance and denial or overconfidence. It emphasizes the importance of acknowledging potential risks and preparing oneself mentally and physically for potential threats. The podcast also delves into the psychological factors that contribute to people denying or downplaying the possibility of bad things happening. It highlights the significance of internal and external baselines, knowing one's own context, and having a realistic understanding of the advantage criminals hold in dangerous situations.
The Disconnect Between Self-Defense Training and Real-Life Scenarios
The podcast discusses the challenges and limitations of self-defense training when it comes to real-life scenarios. It addresses the discrepancy between training in controlled environments and the unpredictable nature of actual attacks. The importance of managing panic and the instinctive fight-flight-freeze response is also emphasized. The episode highlights the need for realistic training that incorporates stress, resistance, and other variables that align with real threats. It concludes by highlighting the significance of being proactive in personal safety and mindset shifts that can enhance one's ability to avoid dangerous situations.
Importance of Situational Awareness
Situational awareness is crucial for personal safety and risk management. The podcast emphasizes the need to be aware of one's environment, including knowing entrances, exits, escape routes, and hiding places. It highlights the importance of understanding the structure of buildings and being able to identify what is normal and out of place. The ability to detect potential threats, weapons, or defensive tools in the environment is also essential. By developing a reflexive capability and training intuition, individuals can better manage environmental threats.
Evaluating People and Making Decisions
The podcast discusses the challenge of integrating people-based threats into situational awareness. It examines the need to evaluate individuals around us regularly and recognize early warning signs of potentially violent or dangerous behavior. By paying attention to cues such as undue attention, concealed weapons, or erratic behavior, we can proactively identify potential threats. The podcast emphasizes the importance of training and realistic experiences to develop a contextual understanding of when to respond, whether to avoid a situation or engage in self-defense. It encourages individuals to make decisions based on their own safety and well-being, considering the potential consequences of getting involved in conflicts.
If you found yourself in a situation with a violent attacker, would you know what to do? While it’s easy to think you’d instinctively make the right decision, the truth is, if you haven’t been formulating and practicing a plan ahead of time, you’ll likely make the wrong, and possibly deadly, choice.
My guest today has spent over two decades teaching people how to deal with threats, and even more importantly, how to avoid them in the first place. His name is Dr. Gav Schneider and he’s an expert in personal risk management and security and the author of Can I See your Hands: A Guide To Situational Awareness, Personal Risk Management, Resilience and Security. Today on the show, Gav shares the biggest mistake people make when it comes to their personal safety and why understanding that criminals have an advantage is foundational in keeping you and your family safe. He then walks us through how to develop situational awareness so that we can avoid problems before they occur, why it’s important to have multiple plans of action for when an attack happens, and why realistic training is crucial in being ready to defend yourself.
