A domestic disturbance call is made, a police car arrives, and two officers step out. The scene is chaotic. Screaming can be heard from inside the house. Toddlers are crying in the front yard, and it’s after dark.
The officers are trained to analyze the situation quickly, detect potential threats, and ensure the safety of everyone involved—including themselves.
Their training teaches situational awareness, the concept of being fully aware of what’s happening around you. It’s critical for those in the military, law enforcement, and professions like first responders to help them deal with stressful and potentially life-threatening situations.
It’s also a valuable skill for regular people living everyday lives.
Situational Awareness Explained
Situational awareness is a technical term for being consciously aware of your surroundings. In the modern era, most of us have disconnected from instinctual behaviors—like sensing the approach of an animal intent on eating you—and we spend our time out in the world buried in our cell phones—distracted and unaware.
Mike Glover, who spent nearly two decades in the U.S. Army, is an expert in counter-terrorism, security, and crisis management operations. He is the founder of Fieldcraft Survival, which offers education and training in survival skills—including situational awareness.
“We’re more distracted today than we’ve ever been in human history,” he told The Epoch Times.
Glover says that as technology becomes more integrated into our lives, people are becoming less situationally aware. This disconnect from our surroundings makes people more concerned with external factors than what’s happening right in front of them.
Being distracted means not hearing the bad guy walking up behind you, the car that has lost control coming your way, or the child up ahead wandering into oncoming traffic. Being aware can save your life and the lives of others around you. In these scenarios, being situationally aware means using all your senses and maintaining a certain level of alertness—allowing you to perceive dangerous situations so you have time to react.
However, situational awareness isn’t just about personal safety—it’s a powerful tool that can enhance many areas of your life. Here are some everyday scenarios where being situationally aware can make a meaningful difference:
– Knowing the area where you live well so you can find fresh water in a natural disaster.
– Feeling when something seems off about a business deal so you can avoid a financial catastrophe.
– Observing behavior that suggests a house in the neighborhood is selling drugs so you can avoid it.
– Picking up on non-verbal clues that a coworker is depressed or anxious so you can offer support.
-Sensing changing social environments and preparing accordingly.
-Spotting early signs of wear and tear in your home so you can address repairs early.
– Picking up on subtle cues that your partner is stressed or upset, even if they haven’t said anything, so that you can address it.
– Noticing a friend is looking tired and has lost weight, you can recommend they see a doctor to make sure they are ok.
– Observing problems with the supply chain at the grocery store and deciding to stock up before things get worse.
Color Codes of Awareness
Many experts on situational awareness refer to Lt. Colonel Jeff Cooper’s four color codes of readiness. They range from white to red (and sometimes black, which was added later).
Cooper, a WWII-era combat marine, made tremendous contributions to skilled shooting (marksmanship) and self-defense. His color codes of awareness refer to different states of alertness or states of mind:
– White: Relaxed and completely unaware. Experts say you should only be in white when you are in the safety of your home.
– Yellow: Relaxed but aware. Prepared with good situational awareness.
– Orange: Heightened sense of alertness. Alerted to a potential threat and ready to take action.
– Red: The threat has been verified, and it’s time to act.
– Black: Panic. Breakdown of physical and mental performance. You never want to be in black.
Maintaining heightened alertness when you’re out in the world, particularly in urban areas or crowded spaces, is crucial. Experts recommend being in a “yellow” state of awareness as the default when you’re away from home.
Chris Heaven is CEO of Survival Dispatch, a network of experts providing information in every area of preparedness through articles and videos. He spoke to The Epoch Times about situational awareness, using the example of being in a restaurant.
“Phone down, eyes up is the easiest thing to remember—put that weapon of mass distraction away and sit with your back such that you have a purview of the entire place. It doesn’t mean that you’re paranoid and you’re on pins and needles—you’re just paying attention,” he said.
Being situationally aware doesn’t mean expecting danger at every turn. It’s about being more aware of your surroundings to recognize potential threats and have time to respond. We can do many simple things to increase our situational awareness and improve our resilience. Given the realities of the world we live in, this approach is both logical and wise.
Being situationally aware also doesn’t mean being in a heightened state of alertness at all times. Constantly being on high alert isn’t possible (or advisable), and we all need downtime to relax—but we should have some level of situational awareness any time we are outside our homes.
Help in Everyday Situations
Situational awareness has applications beyond looking out for bad guys and avoiding potential violence. Glover stresses that situational awareness is not just about reacting to immediate threats but recognizing and responding to subtle cues in daily life.
Below are some everyday examples:
– At a Shopping Mall: It’s a busy weekend just before Christmas, with many people out shopping. You stay vigilant, keeping your wallet and other valuables tucked away to avoid being stolen without your notice.
– In a Restaurant: It’s the dinner rush, and you see your server is overwhelmed. You know this may cause delays, so you order quickly without complex requests to reduce your wait time.
– Driving Through a Residential Neighborhood: Children are playing with a ball near the road up ahead. You slow down in case one of them runs into the street without looking.
– In Your Home: Your toddler plays on the floor while you fold laundry on the couch. You notice them crawling towards an outlet and reach out. You are up and pull them away before they can make contact, averting a dangerous situation.
– In the Subway: You are on a subway platform waiting for a train. You see someone swaying and about to lose their balance. You run and grab them before they fall into the train tracks.
– At a Social gathering: You notice someone standing alone and looking anxious at your office party. You introduce yourself and strike up a conversation.
Pixel-Shot/Shutterstock
Adrift at Sea
Glover says situational awareness is like the subtle art of paying attention. Life gives us hints we often miss, and there are frequently warning signs that problems are brewing.
“It could be a relationship, it could be your profession, it could be your everyday life in a grocery store or in a vehicle, where there’s all these things that we don’t pay attention to—that slip our mind, pass us by—and before you know it, we’re going through a divorce and going, how did we get here? We’re looking down at our bellies, going, how did this happen?” he said.
He believes many of us don’t focus enough on the present moment. But when we do make a conscious effort to do so, we begin to make proactive decisions every day rather than being passive.
“Most significantly, the lack of paying attention leads us to living a potentially unhappy life, and I think there’s plenty of proof of that. More people are consumed with the virtual reality—living vicariously through others on social media—than they are their actual reality in front of their children, in front of their families and friends,” he said.
Mobile phone activities such as phone calls, emails, texting, playing games, browsing, and using social media capture the users’ attention or distract them from other tasks, making it difficult to focus on work responsibilities. As a result, mobile phones restrict users’ attention, impair their ability to make prompt and effective decisions, and ultimately impact their psychological well-being.
A recent study on young people aged 20–34 found that the mere presence of a smartphone—even without interaction—negatively impacted attention. Researchers found that having a smartphone nearby hindered cognitive performance, especially the speed at which tasks were completed. The results show that the presence of a smartphone consumes cognitive resources and reduces the brain’s ability to focus on other tasks.
The study suggests that simply turning off the smartphone or covering the screen is insufficient to prevent its negative impact on attention. However, placing the smartphone in a different room is enough to eliminate these effects.
Glover says situational awareness is a key requirement to take a proactive role in your life. Allowing life to happen to you, rather than actively participating, means surrendering control over your choices and your life’s direction while robbing you of the joy of experiencing the present moment. Like a ship without a captain, you are adrift, letting the sea take you with the current rather than being at the wheel and steering your ship where you want to go.
Live With Intention
Situational awareness is similar to mindfulness. Mindfulness is being aware of what is happening externally and internally—your thoughts, physical sensations, and feelings—without judgment. Situational awareness is what you want to achieve, and being mindful is how you go about it—the two are complementary and go hand in hand.
Developing your situational awareness has benefits that extend beyond physical safety. Being prepared for unexpected events can increase your self-confidence, decrease anxiety, and help you feel more relaxed in situations that may have previously made you uneasy—like walking back to your car late at night or being on a crowded city street.
When relaxed and confident, we tend to think more clearly and make better decisions, and we are less likely targets for those who intend to harm us.
Glover says living with intention involves paying attention to all aspects of life, including health, wellness, and spirituality, which are integral to situational awareness.
“I think living with intention is part of situational awareness. And when you live with intention, you live with purpose.”
Glover says that living intentionally with the goal of being happy means you begin to look for positive things in your life—which improves your mental health. This focus helps you notice what benefits you. On the other hand, if you wake up without intention and go through life aimlessly, everything that comes your way—good or bad—will impact and affect you.
For most people, situational awareness is not looking for or expecting danger at every turn; it is simply being engaged with your surroundings without being passive and unaware—especially in public places. The only times you should be on high alert are when presented with a serious threat to your safety.
If we are constantly on high alert, we move into what psychologists call hypervigilance, which is defined as a state marked by abnormally heightened alertness—especially to threatening or potentially dangerous stimuli. This state can be common for those with anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and trauma—particularly PTSD.
Studies show that being in a state of hypervigilance impairs our decision-making, attention, and emotional well-being. So, while cultivating situational awareness is beneficial, being too alert can have adverse effects and cause unnecessary anxiety.
Situational awareness teaches us to be present and in the moment—something many spiritual traditions have taught for centuries. Living your life with awareness allows you to not only sense danger but to notice the things in life that uplift us and bring us joy—the elderly couple holding hands at the park, someone holding the door open for a stranger, or the person who stopped to help an animal in the road. In addition to keeping us safe, situational awareness makes our lives richer and more enjoyable.
Watch People
There are many ways to improve your situational awareness and become more mindful. One of the best is to become a people watcher. When you are out in public, begin inconspicuously watching people. Observe their body language, demeanor, and behavior. These subtle cues can reveal much about a person and help you recognize when something is off.
Invent stories about different people based on what you see. How much money do they have? What type of work do they do? Are they carrying a weapon? People-watching helps you practice your observational skills and become sensitive to what behavior is normal and when you should be on guard. The more you practice, the better you will get and the more situationally aware you will be.
This type of profiling is what predators use to find their targets. They are looking for people who look weak, scared, and lack confidence—anyone they think will be an easy or soft target.
Unplug From Technology
To improve your situational awareness, learn to unplug when outside your home. Recognize that headphones or earbuds cut off one of your most critical senses. If you wear headphones and look down at your phone, you are almost entirely disengaged from your surroundings.
You’ll be safer and better able to respond to threats if you’re always aware of what’s happening around you. Walk tall, keep your head and eyes up, and move with confidence to avoid danger. Being engaged with your surroundings helps you avoid predators and hear oncoming traffic, notice an altercation nearby, or see a disabled person who needs help crossing the road.
If you want to minimize threats, experts suggest that while in public, you blend in and avoid standing out with flashy clothing, jewelry, or anything that might draw attention, particularly when traveling abroad when you might not be aware of local customs and beliefs. Many people unknowingly share too much information about themselves, like their beliefs or affiliations, through their appearance.
By extension, your car can also reveal personal details. Stickers often show political or religious beliefs, family information like honor student or family member stickers, and other clues about your life, which can unintentionally share too much with strangers.
Be Aware of Transition Spaces
Heaven says situational awareness is particularly vital in transition spaces where people generally move from one place to another—like parking lots, gas stations, public transit, or walking down a city street. He says gas stations are one of the top five locations where people get accosted, and through his website, they teach being “gas station ready.”
Studio113/Shutterstock
Heaven says that most people are buried in their cell phones at the gas station, which you should never do while pumping gas. Another mistake is standing between the car and the pump, which traps you in a small space.
“It’s a really bad spot to be. You don’t have great visibility, so you put the gas pump on while you’re looking around, and you walk away from your vehicle—ten, fifteen, twenty feet so that you have a purview of everything in front of you. Bad guys always want the element of surprise—you just took it away from them,” he said.
Trust Your Intuition
Our intuition is critical, particularly in situations where signs of danger lurk beneath our conscious awareness. In this vein, Heaven shares a sobering statistic.
“Every single person who’s been a victim of sudden violence, whether it be an assault, rape, attempted murder—whatever—every last one of them has started their recollection by saying something didn’t feel right. But we’re the only creatures on the planet who will ignore their sixth sense.”
Tony Blauer is a world-renowned self-defense and fear management expert. In his book “Situational Awareness, Managing Fear, and Converting the Flinch,” he says an often overlooked aspect of situational awareness is cultivating our relationship with our instincts—and intuition.
“Intuition is a powerful pre-contact indicator that something is off or wrong, even if you can’t logically explain why—but we often dismiss it,” he told The Epoch Times.
“Because our romantic, good person self doesn’t want that to be true—we say, I must be imagining that,” he added.
Blauer consults for the military and law enforcement, adding that in discussions on situational awareness, people often miss the fundamentals—which are incredibly simple.
“I tell people, real simple—no awareness, no chance.”
One of the first things to pay attention to—and the most overlooked—is your own feeling, said Blauer.
“Trust intuition, ‘I’ve got a bad feeling. Let’s get out of here.’ It’s so simple to listen to intuition. Talk about low tech … And how much does this cost? Zip. Your intuition is free. And it’s hardwired in all of you.”
Intuition is sometimes described as the result of our past observations and experiences stored in the subconscious. It can emerge as a powerful feeling or insight that seems almost supernatural. However, it may simply be our brain accessing and processing accumulated knowledge and experience beyond our conscious awareness.
Dr. Jenn Stankus is a board-certified emergency physician, attorney, military veteran, and former police officer and is writing a book that includes situational awareness called “Hard Target.” She alludes to the consequences of not listening to our sixth sense.
“It’s really getting you to trust your instincts and that the gift of fear is real. If you feel weird about something, you may not be able to put your finger on it, but we are so well adapted—we have thousands and thousands of years of adaptation for survival. To not trust that is really ill advised—to say the least,” she told The Epoch Times.
Gerd Gigerenzer is a prominent psychologist and researcher known for his work on using intuition in decision-making. He is also director emeritus of the Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. Gigerenzer believes intuition is a type of subconscious intelligence, and using it to make decisions often leads to better outcomes, especially in complex or uncertain situations.
Studies also suggest that intuition is a powerful tool that helps us in many ways if we tap into it. One study found that intuition helped people make better decisions—ones that could be made faster and more accurately—and that intuition even improved over time, suggesting that it can be enhanced with practice.
Don’t Be Polite
One of the key factors that puts people, especially women, in dangerous situations is the desire to be polite and avoid offending others. Predators are fully aware of this tendency and exploit it when seeking out victims.
Stankus says that although we have been conditioned not to be rude or make negative assumptions about people, we can still be polite while having distinct boundaries, adding that it isn’t polite for a stranger to get in your personal space.
“It’s okay to not pick up the hitchhiker. It’s okay to not engage in conversation. It’s okay to yell at someone and say—‘hey, get away from me—you’re making me nervous. I don’t feel safe. Get away from my car’ … It’s okay to go back into wherever you were and get some help. It’s okay to be a strong woman and say, ‘Wow, I’ve got a weird feeling about this. I want someone to help escort me out to the parking lot.’ All of those things are okay,” she said.
“You’re just responding to something that shouldn’t be happening to you, and setting boundaries. And to me, that’s a strong person, that’s a person who’s doing the right thing,” she added.
Take Responsibility
Perhaps most important to the situational awareness discussion is the role of personal responsibility. In his abovementioned book, Blauer says most of us have been domesticated and that we have been outsourcing our safety for decades.
Stankus, a former police officer, offers the following insight:
“After something happens is when police are called, or, as things are escalating—and really you are on your own. You are your own protection. You need to be responsible for your own safety. No one else can be responsible for that. People have come to rely on the police or others to protect them, but it is a false belief, and it’s why we have become so complacent and believe it’s not going to happen to us.”
She added that taking responsibility is tied to our mental health and that anxiety and depression often stem from feelings that we are not in control of our lives. When we take responsibility and control over our lives back, then our fear and anxiety will subside.
Glover adds that it goes back to paying attention to the subtle cues in life and that ego can get in the way.
“A lot of those hints, a lot of those things leading up to worst-case scenarios are all these things that we miss that lead to a tipping point, and then by [the] time we recognize it, it’s too late.”
Glover says that ego and arrogance cause most people to assume that the worst-case scenario will never happen to them. Still, he understands why, saying it is inconvenient to identify that vulnerability in ourselves.
Manage Fear
While it’s always best to avoid a confrontation using your situational awareness—sometimes you can’t.
When presented with a dangerous situation, most people freeze and panic, which is condition black in the color codes. Because most of us are not accustomed to being in these situations, when they happen, we can be overwhelmed by a fear response—or fear spike—and unable to act.
Blauer has been studying violence, fear, and aggression for four decades and teaches personal safety to professionals with dangerous jobs—like law enforcement and those in the military. He teaches the distinction between the psychology and biology of fear and how to use it to help and not hinder you in a violent encounter.
Blauer says the psychology of fear is how your mind processes and responds to fear, which can involve catastrophizing, creating negative mental movies, and getting stuck in a fear loop that prevents decisive action. The biology of fear is how your body reacts, like an increased heart rate. He adds that it is critical to understand both to manage fear effectively.
Straight 8 Photography/Shutterstock
Blauer also emphasizes the need to manage fear and use it to fuel courage and action rather than letting it paralyze us.
He offers different self-defense approaches on his website, Blauer Training Systems, that regular people can use to increase their situational awareness, manage fear, and learn what to do in a conflict—which should always be the last resort. In an upcoming article on personal safety, we will explore these approaches in more detail.
In essence, get some training if you want to extend your preparedness beyond situational awareness and learn how to defend yourself in an attack.
Heaven says, “There’s a Sun Tzu adage that basically says human beings never rise to the occasion—they fall to their level of training.” Sun Tzu was a Chinese general, military strategist, and author of “The Art of War.”
Final Thoughts
Glover says situational awareness is not exclusive to special operations or elite military personnel but is a basic skill anyone can develop with intention and practice.
Situational awareness goes beyond recognizing danger—it’s about staying attuned to everything that affects your life—from weather and road conditions to your health, finances, and even global events. Cultivating this critical skill can transform fear into empowerment and boost confidence and resilience.
Situational awareness is a way of living with intention and purpose. By actively engaging with the present moment, we enhance our personal safety and cultivate a mindset that empowers us to make better decisions, connect more deeply with others, and improve our overall quality of life.
This article was originally published 1/3/2025 by The Epoch Times here, written by Emma Suttie, D.Ac, AP
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