There’s something I find really fascinating, and that’s learning about the wildly different ways people react in a sudden emergency situation.

Imagine you’re in a restaurant and the main dining room is full of people. Everyone’s talking, servers are buzzing around to their various tables, people are enjoying their food. Then suddenly at the table next to you, a middle-aged man clutches his chest, yells out in pain, and falls from his chair. It’s pretty clear he’s having a heart attack. He’s still conscious and breathing, but he is clearly in distress.

And what does everyone do? No doubt, there will be a person who will yell out for someone to call 911. There will be people who see what’s happening, and their first reaction is to quickly look around the room, like they’re looking for help. There might be someone who goes to the man and tries to do CPR. Incidentally, if someone is still awake and breathing, you don’t need to do CPR. I can guarantee that many of the people at the nearby tables will not do anything – they’re definitely going to watch and see what happens, but they won’t take any action themselves. And there will be some people who will immediately get up and get away from what’s going on. Their brain tells them they need to leave. I know this, because I’ve seen it happen.

And there will be some people who remain calm, and try to help. They’ll make sure someone has called for paramedics (or they’ll just take out their phone and make the call). They’ll get the man into a comfortable position, maybe talk to him, maybe check his pulse. These are the people you want to have around when something happens.

But that’s the interesting thing about this. If you’ve never been in a situation like that, you don’t really know for sure how you’ll react.

My guest today, Jen, doesn’t have to wonder about that. She knows how she reacts. That’s because one day at work in a retail clothing store, she turned around and was facing the barrel of a gun.

Jen’s podcast is called I NEED BLUE – www.IneedBlue.net

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Juan Martín de Pueyrredón

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