Conventional wisdom has it that there are four essential pillars on which personal safety and security can be built. Let’s take a closer look at these pillars and the ways in which each of them relies upon and steadily builds greater spatial awareness.
1. Observation
It will come as no surprise that one of the essential requirements for personal safety is the ability to recognise danger when it faces you or is headed your way.
That means developing the skills and talents to observe, identify, and detect any danger around you. In the words of the American Survival Guide on the 2nd of June 2020, you cannot escape or face up to an imminent threat unless you that it’s coming.
This is where situational or spatial awareness really comes into its own. And the long and short of that is simply a fancy way of saying that your personal safety heavily relies on your being aware of what’s happening around and about you.
Spatial awareness – registering through close observation everything that is going on around you – pays off in just about any situation. Any situation carries at least some element of risk – the unexpected can happen at any moment. The fact is that these risks can be all around you. So, you’d do well to be on a constant lookout for them. And that much is recognised by at least one American insurance company, Arrowhead, that has published a whole webpage on the virtues of situational awareness.
Keen situational awareness might take some practice – and it is a skill you can constantly improve by:
Always being aware
Most of us will be looking around us, especially when first encountering new or unfamiliar situations. You should, however, make it a way of life – teach yourself to always be aware as to what is going on around you, no matter if you are going to fill up your car or going grocery shopping. You never know when danger could strike.
As you weigh up any situation, however, it is important to learn what needs to be picked out as a point of focus and potential issue. Your personal safety might depend on your having detected early on any potential risks posed by suspicious people or objects and your mental preparation of exit routes and barriers you might erect between you and them.
Peripheral vision
- by using and making the most of your peripheral vision, you can scan situations in a less than obvious way – giving still more value to the information you can take in;
- another trick for the kind of observation that can go unnoticed is to take advantage of reflective surfaces and objects;
- the glass in windows, the windscreens of parked cars, or even the reflection in a passer-by’s sunglasses could reveal the glimpse of a warning to look out for your personal safety;
Don’t be distracted
- for the fullest spatial awareness that gives due weight to your scanning and peripheral vision, you mustn’t let yourself be distracted by trivial things;
- don’t let your attention be absorbed by looking at your mobile or scrolling through messages from friends, for example – wait until you are more or less alone in a space you already know to be secure.
2. Escape
“The better part of valour is discretion; in the which better part I have saved my life” says Falstaff in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part One. Simply put, that means escaping or running away from a threat or danger rather than facing it head-on.
So, the second pillar that may be holding up your personal safety is escape – escape danger to keep yourself safe.
One of the keys to effective spatial awareness and situational analysis lies in recognising your escape routes and the exit strategies you can deploy to achieve them.
When you scan any situation, you will be looking for obvious exits, of course, but you will also build up pictures in your mind of alternative escape routes – if the obvious ones become blocked or represent more severe danger.
Exit routes are clearly important when it comes to buildings – and the UK’s little-known Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI) offers detailed guidance on personal safety in built structures.
But your personal safety relies on effective escape routes not only from buildings but also modes of transport (public buses and trains or private cars), lifts and escalators, and even outdoor environments.
3. Barriers
We are all accustomed to erecting barriers of one sort or another around us – they protect us in all kinds of ways against various sources of danger.
As examples of this barrier-building just think about the way you lock the front door of your home whenever you go outside – it’s a barrier against threats from those who would break in and steal your stuff.
What about the seatbelt you put on when you get in the car? That’s another barrier between you and the potential for physical injury if you are involved in a crash. You might also be defending yourself against risks to your personal safety by consciously locking the car doors if you are driving through a less than salubrious part of town.
Think consciously about barriers in this way and recognise how they can help guard your personal safety.
Looking out for – and being spatially aware of – the barriers that are already there or that you can erect at a moment’s notice in any given situation or environment may then become the third pillar supporting your space of personal safety.
4. Engage
Finally – and however well-honed your powers of observation, with potential escape routes already etched in your mind, and the availability of barriers to hold threats at bay – you may need to face the reality of some head to head challenge or confrontation.
When we talk about engaging with some threat or danger, you might immediately leap to the conclusion that this inevitably involves some type of combat – armed or unarmed – concerning an individual with malicious intent.
Engaging with or entering a “fight” against some challenge, danger, or threat does not always – and by no means has to – involve any other individual. The danger may lie in the situation itself. And, in the absence of any practicable escape route, you must engage with or face down that threat.
In these situations where you choose – or have no option but to choose – “fight” over “flight”, and whether the engagement is against animate or inanimate adversaries, remember that you may need to keep your responses and actions proportionate to the level of threat you perceive. If your physical safety – not to mention your life – is at stake, then all bets are likely to be off and there is no limit to the resources you employ in your self-defence.
How can I keep myself safe?
We have shared some ideas on what you need to do during everyday life. A lot will be common-sense, such as:
- not looking down at your mobile phone as you walk around and making sure you always have an escape route planned;
- carrying (legally approved) personal safety devices, such as a rape alarm or spray dye (which identifies the attacker as well as giving you a chance to get away);
- if you are travelling, dress like a ‘local’ so you blend in; etc.
Learning self-defence will also give you confidence and the skills to protect yourself as our article Beginner’s guide to self-protection discusses in further depth.
Summary
By describing the foundations of your personal safety and well-being in terms of four essential pillars it has hopefully helped you to focus on how to improve the security of yourself and those around you.
At the core of that approach lies an ever-alert approach towards spatial awareness – what is happening around you and the direction from which any threat or danger is likely to come.
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