Have you ever wondered why you do certain things you do? Without thinking, do you stop to assess a parking lot for hidden hazards, before walking to your car? Do you walk to your vehicle with your keys in your hands? Is your bed positioned so that you can lie facing the door as you sleep with one eye open?
These habits are instinctual, and I am convinced that just like the law of the jungle, we all become survivors in this dangerous world, picking up safety habits and allowing us to grow old and grey.
As I have grown older, I find myself looking for exits as soon as I enter a room or restaurant and wonder if it’s my safety and loss control safety training or is it something else? I also find myself wanting to sit with my back to the wall facing the entrance and have wondered just when this habit developed? I’m not a wild, wild west gunfighter, war vet, or police officer, but I still have an instinctual desire to be able to keep an eye on the room to keep a tactical advantage. Is it because of all the news stories I’ve read over the years or is it because I am now looked upon as the protector of my family?
To answer this question you must watch Animal Plant channel and observe the animal instincts of the law of the jungle. After all, lions have to eat, and if you don’t want to become dinner, you change your habits so that you can live another day.
For you deer hunters, I would compare it to those of you who have tried to stalk that ghostly monster buck that eludes you year after year. You realize he didn’t grow old by making mistakes.
Those who travel thru this world with tunnel vision oblivious to all the hazards become a statistic, and those who learn from others’ mistakes and are keenly aware of their surroundings live another day. It’s that simple.
Instinct is an inborn pattern of behaviors learned over decades and even centuries of human experience. It is passed down through generations. It is defined as a natural impulse, inclination, or tendency, a natural aptitude or gift. Like intuition, natural instinctual safety habits allow some of us to quickly assess a situation, triggering the instinctual part of the personality to quickly sense danger, and safety. Instinct is the jungle wisdom that tells you when to wait, when to act, who to trust, and who not to trust.
Doubt and idealism can also cause a person not to respond correctly as well. The desire for life to be a certain way, rather than what it is, can cloud judgment enough to cause you to overlook a hazardous situation.
An example of this would be the idealism to believe that all people are good-hearted, causing you to doubt anybody would want to do you any harm.
Instinctual safety habits can be superseded by fear as well. Fear is an emotional reaction to a dangerous situation that we consider having the potential to cause death, injury, or illness. For the person trying to survive, fear can have a positive outcome if it encourages caution in situations where recklessness could result in injury or even death.
Regrettably, fear can also immobilize a person, as such is the case when mass shootings occur today at work or in public. Such fear can cause individuals to become so scared that he/she fails to perform the basic activities essential for survival.
I witnessed such behavior back when I use to catch shoplifters during and after college days. Almost all the thieves we would stop would be afraid and anxious of getting caught, but many that we apprehended had different approaches to handling the situation. Some came into the store to steal with a plan and if approached by loss prevention they were the most dangerous. Others never thought they would get caught and never had a plan. Then some would try to fight their way out of the situation or would bolt, thinking they could outrun us. Then there were a handful who would lose control of their bodily fluids because their fear came true.
Because it is natural for us to experience fear, it is also natural for us to experience anxiety. Anxiety can cause us to be uneasy and apprehensive when facing a dangerous situation.
Anxiety can push us to act to end or overcome the dangers that threaten our existence. However, anxiety can also have a devastating impact and can overwhelm a person to the point they become confused and unable to think correctly. Once this happens, it becomes more and more difficult to make good judgments and safe decisions.
Fear and anxiety are what you must overcome to survive dangerous situations so that your instincts can take over. Given that natural instinctual safety habits can be learned, it’s important to understand how you may react in such dangerous situations, if it’s at work, in a dark parking lot, or simply in a movie theatre when danger approaches.
To survive a dangerous situation, we must prepare, train, and learn techniques to calm our anxieties to aid our situation. This is where education and training come into play and is exactly why police officers, firefighters, pilots, and even flight attendants train and train and then train again. The overwhelming majority of these professionals will never experience the worst-case scenario, but each still trains for it nevertheless so that when they are faced with such danger, their actions become reflexive.
The lesson here is that we should all strive to develop a bit of a risk-management, life-preserving mentally. Plan for the worst but still expect the best outcome. Always wondering what if, and “IF” happens, then how will you respond and how can you survive?
The same goes for the business world, as businesses take calculated risks around extreme hazards every day but are supposed to have the necessary controls in place to prevent the worst-case scenario. For employees to survive a major incident at a fireworks plant, fertilizer plant, oil refinery, or even a small excavating company, they must rely on instinctual survival behavior to kick in when things go wrong, and safety training must be continuous and often.
If you are a business owner that has never given much consideration to developing a disaster preparedness or business continuity plan, then ask yourself what the worst-case scenario would be, and ask yourself how your business would survive such a disaster if you couldn’t rebuild for another 16 months, and would your customers still be there when you did? Then ask yourself if you have a plan and if not then you are planning to fail.
After all, some of us only have one chance. Make the most of it and plan to be a survivor and begin to learn the Habits of Highly Effective Safe People/Businesses.
Be Safe My Friends
