You can listen on Spotify here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/concealedcarrykim/episodes/Trust-your-instincts-and-be-aware-of-your-surroundings-e22cpjr

Alright let’s talk this week about situational awareness. I think when we hear that word situational awareness we can sometimes be intimidated by it because we think about law enforcement and military people are trained in situational awareness and just us the average everyday person like you and me we don’t get that specific training for situational awareness, and I think it’s important for everyone to have that sort of training like it’s just like telling your kid to look both ways before crossing the street right as as I was thinking back to when I was in elementary school in 5th and 6th grade you got to be a crossing guard and I remember one of the things they told us is you look left right and left again and so that’s just beginning that situational awareness to not just look once but look again and that is part of the oobe that observing orienting deciding acting so I hope as you go along on this journey with me that you’ll learn that you can do these things too that they’re not that intimidating that they’re something that you can learn to incorporate into your everyday life not only to keep yourself safe but also to keep their loved ones safe because in a potential threat situation if you have good situational awareness skills and you are practicing listening to that gut instinct you are going to be able to shave off those precious seconds that mean the difference between life and death so let’s talk about situational awareness what is it usually when I teach my class I talk about situational awareness always and my husband always says come on do it do it do it so my favorite part of situational awareness is telling people we don’t have to be like Jason Bourne we really don’t we don’t need to know the license plate numbers of all six cars that are out in the parking lot or that the waitress is left-handed or that the guy at the bar is 215 pounds and knows how to handle themselves and if I needed a gun that I could look in the cab of the Gray truck out front and if I needed to run flat out for 1/2 mile my hands would start to shake we don’t need to know those things that’s like next level stuff guys right so keep it simple always keep it simple what are things that we need to know well we need to pay attention to what is going on around us I was walking to my car at the grocery store to load my groceries into my trunk and I noticed a man walking towards me well he wasn’t walking towards me he was just walking and out of the corner of my eye I could see him walking and I just kept thinking in my head don’t come to me don’t come to me and all of a sudden I saw him make a turn to start walking towards me and he was walking quite quickly and he came up upon me pretty quickly and as he did I had my socket slim from damsel in defense in my hands because I always keep one in my front because where are women most vulnerable parking structures right parking lots all the places that we go because we have to feed our families so I had that kubaton in my hand and I turned around and I looked at him and I said you need to step back and he just looked at me and bewilderment and he was like whoa whoa ma’am I’m not gonna hurt you and I looked at him I said you’re right you need to move along and I think he was just so stunned that I had turned around with kubaton in my hand and told him to take a hike so this is where the UDA loop comes in you’re a bad guy or potential threat whatever you wanna call it we’ll call it potential threat they already have a plan in place they already know how this is gonna play out they are executing their plan what happens when you disrupt their outlook is they don’t have a plan anymore because it was supposed to go like this so when you disrupt their outlook you are taking the upper hand in the situation and now you have control so practicing that good situational awareness again I’m at the grocery store seems I’m there a lot I do I do have five kids my husband and I have five kids so there’s seven of us so I’m always at the grocery store now we just have one at home and I’m still at the grocery store actually I use the what do you wanna call it the easy click and go pick it up and yeah I really really like that and wish I would have had it when I had five little kids but now I just use it for convenience but anyway so I’m at the grocery store and I’m doing my grocery shopping and I see this man walk in and he looks like he’s probably a homeless person and I just kind of kept my eye on him because he his mannerisms were out of the ordinary well for one he didn’t have a shirt on so you know that’s out of the ordinary so I just kind of kept my eye on him doing my grocery shopping just checking to see where he is at and if he was down that aisle then I went down a different aisle and eventually I made my way to the other side of the store and all of a sudden I just hear like all this yelling and screaming and things falling over and I was like Oh yeah that’s my cue to get outta here cause I don’t know what’s gonna go down right so I had already made sure to keep distance between where I was and where that man that looked sketchy because I listen to my gut instinct to stay away so that is what we always want to do is put time and space between a potential threat we wanna pay attention to things that seem off and we wanna listen to that gut instinct that we have there’s like 100 million nerves in our gut that are telling us hey something is not right about this situation personally I call it my Spidey senses and usually when my Spidey senses tingled that something is gonna happen it usually does happen and practicing listening to that gut instinct instead of dismissing it because I think a lot of times we just don’t wanna feel foolish or look stupid well what if I’m wrong well what if you’re right what if you’re right and something horribly bad happens there’s no harm in taking action to keep yourself safe I always tell women too to never sacrifice your safety for someone elses comfort like that man in the parking lot that approached me I totally did not make him comfortable but that’s because he made me feel very unsafe and I don’t like that feeling because why why should I feel unsafe so that you can be comfortable practicing situational awareness listening to your gut instinct those are things that we can do we can develop those skills into something that just becomes second nature for us it doesn’t have to be like OK I have to count all the exits no when you’re in the movie theater do you just observe where the exits are I take note every time we get in the movie theater where are my exits where would I go if something were to happen same with paying attention to people did you know that communication is 65% body language pretty crazy huh have you ever thought about that like just observing a person and watching their body language like are they relaxed is their body stiff how is their speaking are they sweating like there are all indicators of things when somebody is getting ready to do something like they’re trying to work up the nerve to steal your purse or take your cell phone whatever it is that they are going to do you can know ahead of time because you’re paying attention because you’re looking for those signs you’re looking for those things it’s not about being obsessive it’s not about being paranoid it’s about being prepared prefer to say pollyanna and pollyanna is a stage where people think that nothing bad has ever happened so nothing bad ever will happen to me and they live totally oblivious to the world and that is probably the worst thing that you can do guys you want to stay prepared stay alert even at home when you are at home you’re comfortable you’re safe because you know you’re at home you know you’re surroundings but have you ever thought about what you would do if somebody came walking through your front door we I’ve had several neighbors who have had somebody come through their door one time this man ran into my neighbors house shut the door behind him and she was just like oh what are you doing here and he’s like there’s a dog chasing me so he was trying to escape a dog makes sense there was another neighbor they were actually not home they were just alerted by their camera that somehow they forgot to lock their front door and a man with a firearm came into their house looking to escape from the police that were chasing him I even one time when I was very very young I was in my early 20s I remember I was home baby was down for a nap I was down for a nap and I heard somebody open the door walk all the way upstairs go back down and go out the front door and I was just like terrified it actually ended up being a friend who let me know that she had stopped by but from that point on I have always locked my front door and my back door I keep my doors locked when I’m home all day long just little simple things that we can do to protect ourselves and keep ourselves and our families safe so this week as you’re out think of ways that you can practice some situational awareness when I people watch sometimes it’s fun to make up stories and just watch people and how it plays out we were in Cozumel and we saw this couple walking and I’m like oh they’re fighting and my daughter’s like how do you know I’m like you can just tell like the the brisk walk that the husband was walking and the folded arms of the wife and the expressions on their face and then when she sat down and plopped her bag on a table and he stood there and then like they didn’t even exchange any words and all of a sudden he just turns around and starts walking and then like and my daughters goes is he leaving her here I said Oh no my bet is she wanted something at the store over there and he’s going back to get it so we watched the skywalk and that’s exactly what he did is he went into his store and purchased whatever it was that she needed and didn’t they didn’t happily leave but you know went about their way so it’s just kinda people watching paying attention to your surroundings trying to be Jason Bourne but not that extreme right guys practice listening to your gut instinct your gut knows before your brain does because it’s attached to part of the brain that has all that information of things that you’ve learned experiences that you’ve had it’s like when my husband and I sit down to watch like a murder mystery type show I can tell him within 5 minutes who did it and he’s always like how in the world do you do that and I don’t know it’s just a culmination of I guess reading and learning and just knowing how people act and the things that people do that cause them to become my suspect and I’d say 90% of the time I’m right there’s some shows we watch that we both try and be like OK who do you think is who do you think it is and so that’s just a fun way for us to be able to practice those people watching skills is through television shows so kind of fun yeah that’s all I’ve got for this week next week we’ll go into depth a little bit more on some situational skills that you can start to hone in on and learn and put into practice every day and also that gut instinct and listening to it I thank you for taking the time to sit down have some tacos and listen to my podcast and I hope you all stay safe and sassy till next time