Awareness
These are my ideas on awareness, I hope you find them useful.
Lots of people don’t pay attention to the world around them, they have a tendency to live in their own world and don’t really notice what is happening. A successful response to real life situations require observing events early and accurately, where basic awareness will help to make the correct decisions.
Awareness is not the same as paranoia
Awareness can be managed through a number of levels, from low when relaxing at home to high while walking down a dark alley. This is totally different from paranoia which typically has one level of high awareness in any situation, which causes all sorts of problems both physically and mentally.
- Relaxed State: Sitting at home watching telly
- Observation State: Walking down a dark alley
- Decision State: Passionate argument
Paranoia is living in the Decision State constantly.
Improving Awareness
Just be more aware!
The simplest way to improve awareness is to start actively paying attention to the world around you. When next walking down street try taking off the blinkers and experience as much of the world as possible. While doing this take care not to walk into any lamp posts by forgetting to pay attention to yourself.
People watching for learning/developing body language
Identifying and understanding body language is an essential part of communication. I have found that knowing body language helps me to identify situations early in my new job as a doorman and to improve this skill I spend a lot of time watching people. This can be done in public (and is often quite fun) and to get the best results requires analysing how people are behaving and why.
Instincts
Instincts are the body’s way of noticing all the things that you are not consciously registering. This is then presented in the form of a ‘gut feeling’ that could be useful in understanding what’s going on.
Listen to them
It’s a good idea to listen to your gut feeling when you are not sure how to respond to a situation. If you are feeling nervous or threatened there is probably a reason for it, you just don’t know what it is yet.
Don’t let them control you
Humans have the ability to reason through their instincts where as animals cannot. Animals will always act on it where as humans can choose. If you get the opportunity, take a step back to figure out what is causing the unease and take appropriate action.
Body Language
Often victims are picked because they are an easy target and one of the signs for their victim status is their body language. By getting our body language to say “I’m too much trouble” then conflict could be avoided before it begins.
Look at the personal body language
As well as paying attention to the world around you, take some time to look at your own body language and see what profile it presents. Here are some typical examples of victim and confident profiles:
- Victim profile
- Unsure movements
- Eyes looking down
- Oblivious
- Mumbling
- Confident profile
- Walk with a purpose
- Shoulders back
- Head up
- Speak clearly
|