The Defuse Podcast – Improving Personal Safety with the Power of Awareness with Dan Schilling

With the The Power of Awareness you can change your approach to personal safety from passive bystander to becoming your own personal safety expert.

Your personal safety is your responsibility and no one else’s. That is a simple fact. And the two foundations your safety stands upon are possessing situational awareness and listening to your intuition. 

The first can be developed and improved. The second is a million years of self-preservation that is already speaking to you, in a tiny voice, if you listen.

New York Times bestselling author Dan Schilling, Lt. Col., USAF (ret.) spent more than 30 years in special operations, primarily as a Combat Controller and Special Tactics Officer, but began military service as an infantry paratrooper.

His numerous combat, clandestine, rescue, and humanitarian missions have taken him around the world and include Operation Gothic Serpent, popularly known as Black Hawk Down, where he is credited with saving the lives of a Ranger and Team Six SEAL while under heavy enemy fire.

He later conceived, founded, and then served as the first commander of two special operations squadrons, one of which’s name and purpose remains classified. His military certifications include HALO and static line master parachutist, Special Forces combat diver, parachute rigger, and Combat Control pipeline instructor. His final military assignment was the Joint Special Operations Command weapons of mass destruction U.S. interagency and intelligence community director.

In 2023 Dan was inducted into the Air Commando Hall of Fame and received the Freedom Foundation’s national medal for public service. He is also a 2022 U.S. Air Force Gathering of Eagles inductee. His book Alone at Dawn is a New York Times and Amazon #1 international bestseller. He and his wife Julie, a retired NSA cyber warfare specialist, live in Utah

Chapters

• 0:01 The Power of Awareness Book Interview
• 12:28 Foundations of Personal Safety
• 27:29 The 5 Rules of Personal Safety
• 31:24 Creating a Personal Safety Architecture
• 41:24 Intuition and Situational Awareness for Safety
• 52:36 Maximizing Safety Through Awareness and Intuition
• 59:14 Life Tools for Positive Contribution

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to the Diffuse podcast with host Philip Grindel, CEO and founder of Diffuse, a global threat and intelligence consultancy that blends psychology and intelligence to mitigate threats and risks to prominent people and brands diffused podcast.

Speaker 2: 0:27

Diffused podcast. Now this week we've got, I think, quite an extraordinary human being, and I'm going to say that in two ways. One is when I read out to his CV and explain to you who he is. It's kind of mind-blowing, frankly, and you know, I've sort of had the privilege of speaking with Dan for some time. And the other flip side is the humility that he has. And I say that with a kind of slight caveat because I often think when you get to meet people who have worked in Dan's world, they often actually have that kind of level of humility. So I'm going to introduce you to Dan Schilling Now.

Speaker 2: 1:01

Dan is an American. He spent more than 30 years in the US special operations world, started off as an army infantry paratrooper but then moved into what's called a combat controller and special tactics officer. But Dan was at black hawk down, which, which is not actually called that, it's called operation gothic serpent for all of us who've seen the film, which is an extraordinary film because you, you, if you didn't realize it was real, you'd think it was a computer game or something, um, but he's credited with saving the lives of a US Ranger and Team 6 SEAL whilst under heavy enemy fire. He later then conceived, founded and served as the first commander of two Special Operations Squadrons, one of which name and purpose remains classified. Quite literally, if he hasn't done it, then it's not worth doing.

Speaker 2: 2:09

This is, I think, his second or third book we're going to be talking about. But not satisfied with just having that, he's got a Guinness World Record for the most base jumps in 24 hours. Every time I speak to Dan, he's just come off a ski slope, whatever time of year it is, I think he's just come off a ski slope, whatever time of year it is. I think you know he's just an amazing human being who is really maximising the hours every day, and it makes me feel kind of slightly embarrassed about my life when I speak to Dan. But he's written this book which we're going to talk about, and I think it's a book that everybody should have in their library. Think it's a book that everybody should have in their library and it's called the power of awareness and other secrets from the world's foremost spies, detectives and special operations, special operators I beg your pardon on how to stay safe and save your life. Dan, welcome to the podcast bill, thanks for having me.

Speaker 3: 3:03

Uh, you know, I've got. I've got a big place in my heart for the UK. We love coming over there and I think it's such an exceptional country and it's such a central part of history. But I know that's not what we're here to talk about. But it's a pleasure to be on the show and thanks for having me.

Speaker 2: 3:21

It's a huge pleasure and I, I I love this book, as you know what kind of?

Speaker 3: 3:32

what was the sort of motivation for writing it? I, I, I have this habit of writing books that I don't want to write and I've got a really great agent. He's, he's super smart and he had been after me to write a book like this. He said I think you should write a safety book because there's a lot of books out there and he had been after me to write a book like this. He said I think you should write a safety book because there's a lot of books out there and he didn't feel that any of them were particularly good. Anyway, I said no, I don't want to write that book, I'd rather go back to writing some novels and some other things I'm interested in working on a couple of screenplays I've got.

Speaker 3: 4:01

And then I was in Mexico racing in the Baja 1000 off-road race with a buddy of mine. Actually, we were pre-running the course. You get to run the course for a couple weeks before the race starts so you can figure out your strategy and all the teams are doing that and our race truck and chase truck and all of our kit got stolen by Mexican car thieves. But now here's the kicker by Mexican car thieves. But now here's the kicker. We were 600 meters away on top of a hill getting ready to speed fly with our speed wings, that my teammates a speed flyer too. So we watched the whole thing go down from 600 meters and you know, if we had a 300 wind, nag, we probably could have solved that problem, but we didn't and these guys stole our stuff in about 90 seconds. It was an impressive theft.

Speaker 3: 4:47

And by the time we crossed the border back into the United States from Mexico at two o'clock in the morning with no passports, no anything, a couple of parachutes and two bedraggled looking guys, I called my agent up and said a couple of days later all right, man, I'm going to write this book because I was so pissed that I let this happen. You know I'd been, I'd worked in like 26 countries I think I counted one time and you know I've done a lot of clandestine work and special operations work. I've worked in, alias I'd never lost so much as a bullet or a t-shirt in another country. And I let a hundred thousand dollar race car disappear in the desert, $100,000 race car disappear in the desert. And the sad fact that I kept or conclusion I kept coming back to was I could have prevented that.

Speaker 3: 5:31

There were some indications that things weren't right, and we can talk about it in the course of our discussion, maybe and I allowed myself to blow past those, as we all do when we have a crisis, often with our indicators that something bad is going to happen, and so I came back and I started spending some time and I started reading books that had been written by other people and I realized I don't think there's a really good book. That's a practical guide that you can use as a non-professional, like you're a football mom, you're taking kids to soccer practice or you're a business traveling guy, doesn't matter what you are Fifteen year old girl, 80 year old guy You're out there in the world. How can you, how could you formulate a plan that allows you to navigate the terrain safely? And that became the purpose of the book and hopefully I did that. So that was. That's a long story on the Genesis, but I was so pissed I let this race car disappear in the desert for no reason.

Speaker 2: 6:31

And it is a great book. And it's a great book, I think, and the reason I think it's so compelling is A the content is fantastic and is absolutely applicable, but the way in which you've weaved it into stories of worlds that most of us will never experience, in terms of CIA operatives operating in the Middle East and special forces operating around the world, and I think that makes it for the average person, such an enjoyable read, because it's a world they're never going to get involved in.

Speaker 3: 7:03

It's it's a world they're never going to get involved in, but much but you know, all the things you're teaching are as applicable there, as you say, as they are to everyday person, and that's what makes it such a great book, I think you can walk across the parking lots, you know, the shop or the club, or you can be navigating the streets back streets of Bangkok, or you can be navigating the streets back streets of Bangkok, or you can be, you know, on vacation in Fiji. It doesn't matter where you are in the world. I think the principles are all universal and it's, you know. But I think, as writers and you can appreciate this because you know you're a writer as well, you know, I think our responsibility is you have a purpose, and in this case it's education. You know, maybe if you're a historian, it's to inform, but it's really education that has utility value. But if it's not entertaining, people aren't going to read it.

Speaker 3: 7:57

And so I've had the good fortune to have worked with some really amazing men and women around the world, and I've had some really unusual and unconventional experiences, experiences. So it gives me a pretty rich tapestry to pull from and then incorporate, you know, stories into the book's narrative that are germane but also either interesting or funny. I mean, you know, the first story is an attempted assassination on a couple of guys that worked for me when we were in another country. I don't think I listed it, so I won't say it here, but anyway, you know people don't. You may watch it in movies, but real assass I don't think I listed it so I won't say it here but anyway, you may watch it in movies, but real assassinations don't happen that often they don't, and so it makes for a compelling book and then, hopefully, we take the reader on a journey that they can find their way to how to be safe, and you and I share that passion and that purpose how to be safe. And that's what you know, you and I share that passion and that purpose.

Speaker 2: 8:45

So I mean, the founding principle really is that personal safety is your responsibility. It's something that you own and that you have to take control of. So where do we go from there?

Speaker 3: 9:07

Well, because people get a little shy about victim blaming and I think there's some gray area there. But at the end of the day, it's not that other people don't have responsibility for your safety as well. You know civic organizations like Salt Lake City, down Valley for me, or London for you, and Scotland Yard or Salt Lake Police Department and the airport that you transit through. They have responsibility for safety. But at the end of the day, when you're out in the world, you're ultimately responsible for yourself in everything you do, whether it's happiness or sorrow, or good relationship choices or bad career paths. They're your choices and safety is such a companion because it's with you all the time. Your awareness and how you experience the world is how I choose to approach safety and living my life. But you know you can say, hey, the cops have a responsibility, I'm going to call for a Bobby and they're going to show up at whatever time the crime's over in an instant. You know they're not going to get there. At whatever time the crime's over in an instant, they're not going to get there.

Speaker 3: 10:06

It's always the aftermath and that's one of the reasons I spent time talking to detectives police detectives in my book. It wasn't a world I had any experience with because I came out of the military and special operations. But what was interesting for me as I thought about it was detectives and inspectors are always working with the aftermath of the crime, so they could have this really wonderful ability to dissect things and talk about the conditions or the circumstances that led to the incident where something bad happened or something tragic, and for me it was a great way to pull that thread and I learned a lot from detectives. It was really for me, it was a great journey. And so at the end of the day, as you said, how can we subordinate that? You can't, any more than you can subordinate your happiness. Only you can choose to be happy, only you can choose to be safe, and so the book is sort of factored around.

Speaker 2: 10:59

These rules that you came up with, were they rules that you already had in terms of identify them as rules, or were they things that you did unconsciously, that you kind of brought together as these rules?

Speaker 3: 11:16

So the answer is yes and no. Some of them were rules or habits that you accumulate or get trained into you based on our professions, right, and so there's part of that. But what I learned when I decided to apply this to personal safety and make it readily absorbable and practical for the citizen of the world was I realized I didn't really make formalize them as rules and I needed to build an architecture around that really formalize them as rules, and I needed to build an architecture around that If I wanted something that people could remember and practice on a regular basis, because that's how you become safe. It's also how you become good or competent at any activity, whether it's playing a guitar or being safe walking a major metropolitan area. You have to practice those things to get good at them. So if you want to be safe and most people don't really think about it, so they don't really choose to be safe or unsafe, they're just letting circumstances happen to them. But if you want to be safe or you want to be a good guitar player, you have to whip out the fret and you got to practice your chords. You have to walk the street and you have to think somewhat about your environment, and I would like to talk about that. So for me it became OK. How do I articulate this in a way that I hadn't even in my own life?

Speaker 3: 12:33

The foundation to me for personal safety starts with situational awareness, and I think the problem most experts fall into and maybe I had to before, but I made a departure with was they treat situational awareness as a single entity or a single word. They even say it best situational awareness, you know, but it's not. It's two things. It's really broken into two components. There's our situation, which is external to us. So you're in your office, I'm in my office. I'm on a mountain at 8 500 feet, surrounded by national forest. It's pretty damn safe here. But whether it's safe or not is true regardless of how I feel about it. It is 100 external to me. There could be bad guys out there, around here. I'm more likely to get stomped by a moose than I am a mugger, but there threats and that moose is out there, whether I want him to be or not. And then there's my level of awareness, the awareness of situational awareness. Now, that's 100% within my control, whether, again, I'm a 12-year-old boy or I'm a 70-year-old woman, I choose to be aware and that's the important component. But that's the foundation to start with, and how to be safe.

Speaker 3: 13:50

For me, the other dual leg or second leg of that foundation is trusting your intuition. I'm a huge believer in intuition and I think experts dismiss it a lot, and even experts in the field, like in special ops. We would dismiss intuition because you can't quantify it and so. But the great thing about intuition is it is a million years of evolution and its sole purpose is to keep you safe and it is trying to do that even when we choose to override it or we choose to ignore it. Do that even when we choose to override it or we choose to ignore it. But if you learn how to tap into that and practice and strengthen your relationship with intuition, it becomes a much more valuable tool. So for me it became both of those things situational awareness and intuition, and that's how you can be aware of your environment.

Speaker 2: 14:39

So let's just dig a little bit deeper into situational awareness, because I'm like, like you, I'm a big fan of this subject and I have a theory that, uh, some people are because the very nature of where they they, they, they're born and their childhood and where they evolve from have a greater level of situational awareness than others who may come from a very safe, passive environment. So if you grow up in the projects, as you call it in the US, in the States and we call it the UK, you are probably going to have a reasonable situational awareness because you live in a threatening environment. Is that aligned with your thoughts?

Speaker 3: 15:18

Absolutely because all we know as individual humans is what we've experienced. Basically, it's what we know, so you have that framework. If you grow up in a household where your parents were either abusive or there was a lot of friction in the family, that's normal and, like you said, if you grow up in the estates or here in the projects, you know. If you live in South LA, you know it's a different world and you learn how to be aware. You learn to put your head on a swivel, and one of the things I like to point out in the book and when I travel around the world helping organizations with this is the irony to this having a personal safety approach is there's never been a safer time to be a human than now. Personal safety approach is there's never been a safer time to be a human than now. You're less likely to be involved in a war, to be sold into slavery, to be personally attacked or have your possessions stolen now than at any time in human history. It's the exception now. It used to be the norm. People were sold into slavery regularly throughout human history, not just 200 years ago, and warfare was and conflict was the natural order of things, and so, while we have conflicts here and there around the world and we've had two world wars and small regional conflicts. They're small. The UK hasn't been invaded or had the threat of invasion since the Battle of Britain in 1940. The US has not really been attacked in a way that was existentially a threat to the nation since the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor it's a long time ago. If you're living in the UK and the US, like you and I are, your life is pretty safe and for that reason it allows you to build bad habits around personal safety.

Speaker 3: 17:06

You learn to ignore your intuition precisely because 98 times out of 100, when your intuition is speaking to you, I shouldn't walk across that dark parking lot, but you do it anyway. When nothing happens, you're reinforcing the wrong behavior because you're getting no feedback. And that's the same reason that experts like you and I, when we're out in the field, if I'm on a mission to take down a building or take down, capture a guy inside that building and I've got a guy I'm working for he's the team leader and I'm the number two and I say I don't think we should go in that building and he says why not? No-transcript. So it's more disruptive for a professional to listen to intuition, even when it goes right. But to somebody who's a business person, you know, I work in an office building in downtown, right off the Thames, and I, you know, I come out of my office at night and I've done this every day and I cross a dark parking lot and or I'm going to go to the tube, and so I come down and tonight I just have that feeling when I open the door oh, something's weird. That's precisely why you need to listen to it, because here's the truth and the reality that goes back over a million of evolution.

Speaker 3: 18:47

If your intuition is speaking to you, there are two things that I guarantee are 100 true, and I rarely offer guarantees on anything in life, but this is 100 true. One is your body's reacting to something existential, something's causing your nervous system, whether it's in your gut, which is actually a separate nervous system, or in the back of your spine. Your body is reacting to something it recognizes at the subconscious level. You don't even know what it is yet. So there's something real there and your body's trying to save your life. So that's item one. That's I guarantee it's true. The second thing that's true is it's 100% in your interest to pay attention to item one.

Speaker 3: 19:27

Even if you ultimately decide I'm going to make a conscious decision to take the risk, that's different than just ignoring it or pretending it's not there, and this is where people can make the difference to save their life or prevent themselves from some event that's going to be with them forever. And that is in that fraction of a second. If you just take the moment to then be aware of that and then use your situational awareness, that's the way that which you'll know what your reality is in that moment, and that's what makes all the difference. So that's why I've been my six rules into three categories there's the category of knowing, having the knowledge, there's the category of preparation and there's the category of taking action. And so for me, coming back to what we've talked about so far, is that's how I'll know. I use my situational awareness and I use my intuition to determine what my situation is, and that's how I'm going to know. And if you practice that and that's what's in my book, there's exercises and I describe it in greater detail.

Speaker 2: 20:33

That's the way you can you'll understand what your situation is so can I ask them what's the difference between intuition and instincts?

Speaker 3: 20:44

So I like to point out the difference between the two. From a personal safety standpoint. You can get into you know social scientists and all that kind of thing, but in fact instinct is a reaction. Really it's reactive, which means something's happened. So you and I are in a pub If we're enjoying a pint of Guinness because we're there and you got to have it Actually, old Speckled Hen is one of my favorite taps in the UK. You can't get it here. But when I come there I find pubs in Soho that got that beer. So we're enjoying a pint and you cold, cock me out of the blue and I either swing back and hit you or I run, I fight or I flee.

Speaker 3: 21:30

That's a reaction, that's an instinct. I instinctively respond to something you did. Intuition was knowing you were going to throw that punch. Before you did it, something cued me your body language, the energy you're radiating, the smell, maybe because, because people get amped up and adrenaline. You know if you've been in a gunfight, you get used to the smell of fear and anxiety and even death. But you know those things. Things are going to inform you and if you're, if you're reading it before the event happens. That's intuition and that's what we want here.

Speaker 3: 22:07

Martial arts, carrying a gun, carrying an edged weapon, carrying a tactical pen those are all tools to use that support an instinct or a reaction or response to something. If your sink is broken, you need a wrench to fix and tighten it up. That's a tool to fix a problem. If you have to use my martial art, I'm using my tool to fix the problem. You're attacking me and I'm using a martial art to defend my life or somebody else's safety. I don't want you to have to use a gun or a knife or a martial art. Intuition is your powerful tool. If you're already into instinct, you've failed the lessons of my book, because I don't teach self-defense at all.

Speaker 2: 22:47

Yeah, that's a really, really powerful explanation because I do think so often the two get merged into one thing and confused about what's the difference. And actually that's a really great example about intuition is before and instinct is after.

Speaker 3: 23:07

effectively, intuition is before and instinct is after effectively, and 100% of what you and I are talking about even the rest of the rules of my book are about avoiding or evading. It's not about any contact at all, and you don't have to have that kind of contact. I mean, nothing's 100% guaranteed except for your intuition. And so you know you can practice these rules and you can do all these things, and someone can still get the drop on you or someone could shoot you from a distance. There's nothing you can do about all those things.

Speaker 3: 23:38

But what we're here to do you and I, as we share our time, and all of you people that are that are listening, and hopefully you're finding some value. Everything that we're the only thing we're trying to to do here is instill well-founded confidence so you can go about your life with that confidence and it's not misplaced and you can enjoy your life fully. And, by the way, situational awareness and intuition they help you form decisions, not just around personal safety, but how to make better business decisions or even how to find love in your life. If your intuition is telling you the guy you're dating is a dirtbag and you allow yourself to ignore it and stay in the relationship, it's not victim shaming. It's telling you you're making a choice or you're ignoring something. That's a tool you already have to make a better decision and drop that person and find a better person. It's so, it's so, it's so it's so interesting, isn't it?

Speaker 2: 24:37

and we've got this primal piece of our brain that's been there for, for you know, one of the earliest parts of of our existence and our makeup, and yet it's an effective yeah, and yet we don't get taught about it, we don't get trained to use it. We often get the opposite, and yet it's yeah, it's. You know, as you say, it's the one proven mechanism that that warns us of something being different, and yet we don't really trust it.

Speaker 3: 25:11

Something that comes up periodically is well, you might be profiling in this case, and that's certainly possible, but the only way I like to address that is I tend to default to this lower level. If you see a group of young teenage males they're more testosterone driven than just about any other little pack you're going to find that's more likely to lead to a problem than a group that's comprised of males and females or a group that's comprised completely of females. There aren't gangs of women running around the streets of the estates causing trouble. There are differences in people, and your intuition is a basic level part of that, and so don't get caught up, because your life is worth more than your sensitivity to some social norms.

Speaker 3: 26:04

You're not accusing someone of being a criminal or being a potential threat, but if you feel that they might be, then just go with that. You're not passing judgment. You're not even going to tell them that's how you feel about them. You're not going to make a big case out of it, but what it allows you to do is make a decision where you can be safer, and all I want for you whoever you are that's listening is to be safe. I don't care about people's politics. I don't care about their religion, I don't care about their demographics. I want everyone to be safe, because everyone deserves to live a safe and happy life, and that's kind of my purpose. Having been around a lot of violence, having seen it, having caused it, having been on the receiving end of it, I don't, I don't want that in life for anybody, and this is my way of giving to humanity, in a very small, small way, sure.

Speaker 2: 26:56

Okay, so listen, we've done no right Since the first part. No situational awareness and intuition. What's next?

Speaker 3: 27:04

So you need to be prepared. If I know, if I, if I've I've, my intuition and my situational awareness have told me that something may be off For me. That's the first two rules. Rule one is situational awareness and rule two is intuition. Based on those first two rules, do I have a problem and I like to tell people, say it out loud to yourself do I have a problem here? If I'm in the pub and I think this guy's clocking me and I think he might follow me out, ask yourself the question do I have a problem? Because there's only two answers it's yes or it's no? Because if your answer is, I'm not sure, or maybe that means your answer is yes, because you always err on the side of safety. So it's a binary either or answer. If the answer is no, no problem, go about your day. I don't think this guy's a problem. If the answer is yes, you have to go to the next rule, which is make a plan. It's that simple. So we've got no how to make preparations. Are you need to prepare? Do I have a problem? Tells you whether you do or not. So the answer is yes. Okay, rule three it's done. It's the simplest rule of my book. I now need to make a plan and that's rule four. And this is the other way you're going to prepare for a possible problem with somebody and your preparation, your plan, could be run away. I talk about this in the book. My favorite counter-terrorist expert professional plan is run away because it's the only math I teach. Distance equals safety. If you know that equation, it's way better than you know algorithms and algebraic equations. Distance equals safety. If you run away, the further you are from a bad guy, the safer you are. But your plan could be call for help or your plan could be ask the manager to walk you to your car. Your plan could be anything you come up with, but you need to make a plan. Because you said I have a problem Rule three oh yep, do I have a problem? Yes, then you have to make a plan. Because you said I have a problem. Rule three oh yep, do I have a problem? Yes, then you have to make a plan if you have a problem. Right, it's very simple and I wanted it to be intuitive.

Speaker 3: 29:14

So two ladies in a pub having a drinks and they're joining themselves and they realize something's off and they're practicing this thing and there's exercises in the book and they're free, and there's also on the website and you can just look at them while you're sitting. There is man, we have a problem. What do we do? Well, here's our plan. Okay, our plan is we're going to get the bartender to call us a cab or we're going to get them to walk us out. That's all there is to it. I had a problem. I realized the answer is yes, and now I've made my plan. So it's a very, very simple thing to do, and we could talk about it more, but I don't really think you have to and I wanted it to be simple. So that's the way you're going to prepare.

Speaker 3: 29:56

Now I've know I've made my preparation and it really leads to the last two rules, because once I have a problem and I have a plan, I have to enact that plan, and rule five in my book is simply titled act. But when you act, you have to act decisively, and that's one of the things I talk about is the difference that people find I think that you mentioned earlier both stories I put in the book and our experiences are different than people from run of the mill are the majority of the population. It's like well, how do I become a hero? How do I take that action? And I like to say, well, that's all bullshit. There's no such thing in my experience as a hero that is somebody that's up on a pantheon and they have some other skill we don't have, or they've tapped into some universal, amazing secret that none of us have access to. That's all bullshit. My experience with heroism and I have a fair amount of experience with that, not my own, but people I've been around is that it's just simply people doing what had to be done when they had to do it. And you know what? If you're listening to this, if you made a plan, if you just focus on your plan, you'll act the plan that you need to. And that's the same thing that a hero does in a gunfight, when they run through enemy gunfire to save a friend and drag them back to safety. And I've done that in a really one of the biggest gunfights we've had in the last half century in this country with our troops.

Speaker 3: 31:22

All I did was focus on my plan. I was not heroic in any way. I just knew I had to go get my buddy Howie down the street because he'd been shot, had to do it, didn't want to do it. I was kind of pissed he got shot but bloody hell, I'm going to go get him and that my plan was go get him and drag him back.

Speaker 3: 31:39

It was a simple plan and what made me courageous was I knew that's all I had to do. So, if you know, your plan is I'm going to call the police and ask them to come to me without moving, which is a great plan, by the way. That's their job, make them do their job. And if they show up and it's a false alarm or the guy runs away, who cares? It was a great plan, but your action was all I need to do is dial the phone. All I need to do is call my husband or wife and let them know hey, I'm going to do this thing and if something happens, this is where I am. That's part of a plan anyway.

Speaker 2: 32:13

I hopefully that makes sense can I, can I can I just ask a question then? So yeah, a common, a common um occurrence for people who are, who perhaps haven't been trained to do various things, is to freeze.

Speaker 3: 32:30

Is that the way you unfreeze is? Have a plan. Right, I was going to go back to the first step of your plan. Say, my plan is I'm going to walk out the door and go left instead of right, because I think my threat is to the right, so I go. My plan is I'm going to go out to the left and then I'm going to cross one street and then I'm going to go out to the left, then I'm going to cross one street and then I'm going to go to another building where there's people and I think that's where I'm going to be safe a lobby of a hotel. So I'm in a place I think it's unsafe. I can't stay here. I'm going to go left, I'm going to cross the street, I'm going to go into the lobby. How you get past freezing up is go, okay, I just need to turn left, and I talk about this in the book.

Speaker 3: 33:06

Outline the steps of your plan. If you know what they are, all you do is do step one, and you know what happens after you've done step one. Step two is like crossing the street. Step three is like going into the lobby of the hotel, and then step four can be whatever it is Talk to the manager, ask someone to borrow a phone because I didn't have one, whatever the rest of your plan is, and that's how you can empower yourself and, believe me, all you people who are listening you can be your own hero, and you will be if you've taken the time to prepare and practice these things. And it doesn't have to be my book. Go to any expert, become better educated in personal safety. But this is my approach to making it simple for you to remember. I've got a, I'm using my awareness, I have a problem, I've made a plan and now I'm taking the action because I know what to do.

Speaker 2: 33:55

First, so so it's the second. So, so, really, what you're? So you know, once you've got that plan, once, once you prepared, you know the key to having that plan is the first step's a simple step, so that you know you're not kind of saying, right, I'm going to, I'm going to parachute off this building, I'm going to do this, it's, it's, I'm going to do something. Really just because action is what we need, we need. Inaction is the, is the enemy. You've got to do something. You can't just do nothing. That's right.

Speaker 3: 34:23

And so if my plan was simply to run away in the opposite direction, the simplest plan you could have all you okay. Step one is I just start running. If you say to yourself, okay, I have to run, it helps you unfreeze. Hopefully it will get you to overcome that and it's the best tool you have available to you because it gives you something to focus on. And humans do well when we know what we're supposed to do.

Speaker 3: 34:48

Religion is an architecture for many people that tells them what to do and how to live their life, and they can follow a set of rules. Whether it's the Ten Commandments, it doesn't matter what it is. It could be the Eightfold Path. If you're a Buddhist, it doesn't matter what it is. People know how to live their life based on an architecture. This is a personal safety architecture. Architecture doesn't require dogma. You can be any kind of person anywhere in the world, any color, with any experience, and you can use that. But step one is ah, this is what I have to do. That will help you unfreeze and um, and I believe in it so much I've seen it save people's lives yeah, yep, absolutely so.

Speaker 2: 35:27

Okay, so we're into, we're into act and obviously act decisively, which is, which is what we've just been really talking about is do something, um, you know, whatever, however small it is but I'd like, before we leave, that I want to emphasize one other thing for listeners.

Speaker 3: 35:42

The great thing about having made your plan is the reason I say act and act decisively is you act using your plan. You don't have to second guess it anymore because you made the best plan you could at the time. Later on, maybe you can think about it and go well, I should have made a better plan, but right now it's the best plan you have, so you don't even have to doubt it. My plan is to run away, or my plan is to turn left across the street and go in the lobby. Man, it's the best plan.

Speaker 3: 36:14

That's why you have to act decisively, because being proactive and decisive disrupts the situation that involves another human. If I'm a bad guy and I'm going to try and mug you or sexually assault you by dragging you off somewhere those things if you do something to disrupt my plan, it throws me off and by being decisive you empower yourself not only to act so you don't freeze, but you make yourself a much less desirable target, and I believe in that so much. So, yes, that's sorry for that second emphasis there, but I wanted to make sure people understood that.

Speaker 2: 36:45

No, it's a key. It's a key issue, isn't it? Because you can't sort of come up with a plan and then spend the next 15 minutes dissecting the plan working out. Well, actually, if I do that, this could happen. If I do that, that can happen. You've got to make your plan and then you've got to act. It's as simple as that, because we can all unpick a plan and it doesn't achieve anything.

Speaker 3: 37:05

That's right, I 100% agree. So if you take your action and you've moved forward and you've avoided the situation, which is, again, our whole goal you don't ever want to confront somebody when you don't have to In the aftermath. That's not the end of it, though. If I get to that lobby safely and I had a close call what is important to complete this entire cycle is to follow up in the aftermath, or the successful outcome, and do what I call. Oh, you'd think I wrote this book, so I'd know Two alls the two alls yes.

Speaker 3: 37:48

Yes, yeah, you need to recover from this thing and you need to review what's happened, and so, for me, what matters is we call it an after action in the military. As soon as something's happened, you need to spend some time reviewing it. You know, what did I do right? What did I do wrong? What can I do next time to not put myself in the situation first of all, or to have made a better plan, or to have determined that I had a problem earlier, because if you do that, it allows you to make improvements, and that's what this is about, because you're making it a habit.

Speaker 3: 38:24

Now. It's not I got away successfully. Let's go have a pint and go. Whew, that was good. Now think about it ever again, because it was scary. That's precisely the wrong thing to do. You need to think about the scary things so that you can avoid them in the future, but ultimately, what matters to me is that you recover well.

Speaker 3: 38:44

So if you've had a near experience or you've had a traumatic experience and I personally feel that the difference between a car crash that you experienced firsthand, or an attack, whether a sexual or just violence, and armed conflict, like I've had an extensive amount of they're the same. They all lead to traumatic experiences or traumatic consequences for us as humans that we have to contend with, and the best way to get through those is to recover. You owe it to yourself to recover from something as best as you can Now. For some things you can't ever recover from fully because they're with you for life. Violence is one of those things.

Speaker 3: 39:31

But you have to find those that can help you wind your way back to as full recovery as you can. It could be a religious organization, it could be a victim group, it could be family members but for some people family isn't the right place. It could be coworkers when I worked. If I had a real problem about things that were bothering me, I could talk to one of my teammates. In a way, I couldn't talk to my wife or people I knew socially or in my case, I'm not a super religious person, so I didn't have that architecture. But you need to reach out to somebody because if you hold it inside, you're never going to recover and you're also not going to learn as much as you can from the experience that you had. And that becomes the sixth rule for me.

Speaker 2: 40:19

Okay, so can we kind of use some of the examples in the book then to sort of look at how this works in the real world? Because I think I know the one I thought was particularly transferable, I suppose, was the CIA lady in the Middle East who got out of the car.

Speaker 3: 40:40

She's such a great person.

Speaker 2: 40:42

I think that's a great example because I imagine lots of women, when they listen to this, will actually resonate from that. They don't have to be a resonate from that. They don't have to be a, you know, a cia spy, they don't have to be in a hostile country, but they can resonate with that particular story yeah, and what you know and what she really did.

Speaker 3: 40:59

And I used her example because, um, she's a, she's a friend of mine and I respect her a great deal and you know, and she came from New York, you know she's a Jewish heritage and New Yorker and you know they talk fast, they talk with their hands a lot and it's funny, you know she's really engaging. But you know, when you talk with somebody like that, all she did was implement these same rules. She recognized she was out in a suit, you know, shopping in a bazaar, basically a shopping area, and in Middle Eastern country, by herself as a lone female, and she was getting attention from a handful of teenage males. And she recognized right away I am not a local. People can identify me as a non-local. These guys have taken an interest to me.

Speaker 3: 41:50

I need to make a plan and her plan was simply I need to move with purpose and move away and get back to my car and leave, and. But the great thing about that is she didn't need any specialized CIA training to do that at all. None, her intuition is what told her she was already situationally aware. But she all, none, her intuition is what told her. Uh, true, she was already a situationally aware, but she listened to her intuition, unlike me and my buddy jt in mexico, and we just let our shit get stolen, sure, sure but then she, she, but she, you know, she act decisively.

Speaker 2: 42:23

She moved, but she had a plan as well, didn't she, in terms of you know, are they going to follow me and are they fleshing me? You know, are they actually just interested in me momentarily, or are they going to pursue me? Are they going to become a threat to me? So her plan was a flexible but moving plan as well.

Speaker 3: 42:41

That's right, and she also recognized there was a disparity here. There's a bunch of them, there's one of me doesn't matter what kind of people they are, I'm, I'm outnumbered, and that's that's often the case too. But you know, going back to women, typically most perpetrators that cause violence are male, almost a hundred percent. It's almost, almost a guarantee, but it's not quite guaranteed. And so you know, generally speaking, biologically and physiologically, men are bigger than women and they're more testosterone-fueled, which is an aggressive, you know, fuel, and so it makes that's a dynamic you have to recognize as reality.

Speaker 3: 43:25

So, a lone female against a lone male, you're probably going to be outpowered in a conflict, which makes it that much more important as a female in the world, especially if you're by yourself, to be more aware, because women are the preponderance of targets for violence, because males are, again, almost exclusively the perpetrators of this, and there's a disparity there in strength and power, physically, not an intelligence.

Speaker 3: 43:56

So you have to be smarter. If you believe you're out in an environment where the people that are most likely to cause you a problem are stronger or faster than you, you should be more aware, and that's what I want you to be. Again, I'm not profiling men. That's all bad. I know a lot of great men, but you're more likely to have a problem with a male than a female. And that goes back to you listening to your intuition and on the Serengeti, when you look at prides of lions, the guys who cause the problems are the males. Yeah, it's, it's almost a biological imperative, and so you know they'll kill the offspring of of female of lionesses because they think it's going to give them an advantage moving forward. But either way, a couple of male lions will join up and cause wreck havoc.

Speaker 2: 44:47

And I wonder, when you spoke to the detectives when you were doing the research, whether their experience was the same as mine. Having been a detective and I'm very conscious that this was also something that Gavin DeBecker talked about in one of his books books around you know the amount of times that a you know a female victim after the fact would say there was just something about him.

Speaker 3: 45:16

Yes.

Speaker 2: 45:17

So this is their intuition.

Speaker 3: 45:20

It was an intuition thing. And you know, I'm glad you brought up Gavin DeBecker's book, the Gift of Fear, because when I talked to people I started doing research. When I went to write my book and as I've traveled the world talking about this and even here we are, his book comes up time and time again and I'm glad that it does, because it gets people thinking. But that's a very long book with a bunch of stories about intuition, but it doesn't have a practical guide on how to do things with that subject in his book. I thought it was the shortcoming of that book.

Speaker 3: 45:51

I'm not casting aspersions at him because he's trying to contribute to people's safety and he started a company, but his company is a personal protection company. It's not a personal intuition or situational awareness company for you. It's hire my company and we'll protect you, and that's fine and it can do training as well. But that's what that book does and I feel that my book is an answer to that. My book is an answer to that book. I think my book helps people, provide a guide and an architecture by which they can navigate the world without having to talk to anybody else, and that's why I put practical exercises in the book. How to strengthen your intuition is in the book. Not just you should do it. How to develop situational awareness and break it down into a simple my situation, which is external to me, and how aware should I be, which is internal to me. How to practically do that yourself. That's my goal with this book and I think it does it, it definitely does it.

Speaker 2: 46:55

No, you should be, because it definitely does that and it and it and it. It does answer the question. So it's not just raising an issue and, and for the sake of raising it, it's, it's raising an issue and then teaching you how to solve that issue, and so you know it absolutely does.

Speaker 3: 47:15

One of the things I did. I have a very dear friend. Extensive years of law enforcement here in the States. He rose to be the chief of police of a large metropolitan police department. He was also a Green Beret, which is how we became friends. We were teammates. He convinced me that the book.

Speaker 3: 47:35

Well, people don't read books. Now they get all their information. I'm holding up my phone here If you're not, since this is on audio only. We all get our information off our phone. People pay bills on it. That's how they find a restaurant. That's how they get their entertainment to consume my book and our program visually without having to read pages, and it's broken down into small video snippets so you can absorb it. I think there's 27 videos. That covers the entire book or my approach to safety, and there's these practical exercises you can practice in there, but you can watch them on your phone or your laptop or your tablet. So if you go to mypoaorg, it's the Power of Awareness Institute. That's the name of our organization, and it's another way of me trying to reach people around the world, because I do this for organizations, but I can only talk to 20 people or 40 people at a time so often. But if it's online, people can get it anywhere, anytime, and the goal is that.

Speaker 2: 48:44

We're going to put all those details in the show notes. But actually you make a really you introduce a really interesting point there around mobile phones and you know the distraction that mobile phones provide, you know. So you know, when we talk about situational awareness and you know we're talking about situational awareness and we're talking about doing your videos I think you're pretty confident you're going to say you're not going to do the videos while you're walking down the street.

Speaker 3: 49:12

No, that's right, and cell phones are a part of life. We're not going to get teenagers to not look at them. You and I do it. Do I text and drive? Of course I do. We all do it, everyone does it. What I try and emphasize with people, and I hope they can take away, is that, as you listeners, you're walking the streets or you're traveling someplace, all I want you to do is not look at your phone when you really shouldn't. Here's my favorite example If you travel internationally and you get through passport control so I fly into Heathrow, probably I'll fly into Gatwick.

Speaker 3: 49:48

So say, I fly into Gatwick, I'm going to come and have a pint with you, philip. So the time for me to look at my phone is when I've got my bags and I've cleared customs, but before I leave the airport to catch, you know, a cabbie. Because as soon as I walk out the door of that airport, if I'm still looking at my phone or I'm fumbling with my passport and I'm putting my things away, I've now entered an uncontrolled environment Inside that door. Gatwick Airport has a partial responsibility for my safety as well. It's safer inside, but when I walk outside, that's not the time to start checking my text message. That's the time to start looking around because remember this too, in this situation I'm a foreigner in a foreign land. I just came in on a long flight, my circadian rhythm's off, I'm in the wrong time zone, I'm probably tired, I'm a little defuddled, I had three glasses of champagne on the plane. Whatever All those things combined.

Speaker 3: 50:45

I just don't want you to look at your phone when you walk outside. I don't want you to look at your phone when you're crossing the street. I don't want you to look at your phone when you come out of school or your university campus late at night. I've watched enough British TV. You know Grantchester and Morrison Endeavor. Cambridge is a dangerous city. There's a lot of murders going on in Cambridge if you watch BBC television shows, and so you know, don't do it when you walk out of the pub stumbling after five pints into the street, do it before you walk out the door. Look at my phone then Then put it away and then go home and then look at it again.

Speaker 2: 51:23

So here's the thing.

Speaker 2: 51:24

Here's the thing Next time you're here and we're having a point, we will stand outside an underground station or across from an underground station and we'll watch.

Speaker 2: 51:32

Because what actually happens is people come out of a tube station and they can't bear the thought that someone hasn't been contacting them in the last eight minutes since they've gone into the tube station. So they have to go for their phone and of course, what happens, in the winter particularly, is the light on the phone shines. The screen comes to light, it lights up their face so that you can actually have a good look at them, and it tells you they've got a mobile phone, because you can see it's in their mobile phone, and so the criminals and those that are targeting you, that's where they hang out, because they then know exactly who's got a phone. They can have a good look at you, they know you're a woman, as an example, and then what you do is you put your earpods in just to make things even worse, and then off you go, walking down the street having no situational awareness, shutting down one of your senses because you've got earplugs in so you can't actually hear anyone creeping up on you, and then you wonder why you get attacked.

Speaker 3: 52:31

So that's a classic scenario In the situation you pointed out, that screen also blinds you as you came out in the dark. Now you've also just exited a tube station, but your screens are worse for your night vision than ambient light, overhead light from public environments. And so if you really feel you want to listen to that podcast, including your great podcast Walking Down the Street Late at Night put in one earbud, put the phone away and, like you said, all we're trying to do here in this conversation that we're all having the listeners and you and I is, when you come out of there, just don't do it then. Just wait another couple of minutes or do it inside the tube station and then put your phone away and then walk outside. Just don't use your phone when it's the worst time to do it. That's all we're asking here is, and because we want you to be safe and we want you to be happy, yeah, and of course then the other one is.

Speaker 2: 53:28

the other one is when people get in their phones, out to read a map on their phone, to tell everyone that they're lost, tell everyone that they're actually lost. So they so, even if they were attacked, they couldn't actually tell the police where they were when they got attacked, because they don't know where they are.

Speaker 3: 53:39

Yeah, and it's, but that's part of the modern era.

Speaker 3: 53:42

No one's going back to paper maps anymore. If you carry a paper map, you're probably older than I am. I still like paper maps because they're great and it doesn't matter what your cell phone coverage is. You can actually look at it and it orients you in a lot of other ways. But that's. I digress. The point is you know everyone's got phones, we all use them, we use them when we shouldn't. But I'm asking you, please don't use your phone when it's going to put you in the most peril, because crimes happen in an instant. You know this is a detective. They're over in a flash if you're fortunate. Even Otherwise, you know prolonged means worse, but you can save yourself from that. But you have to act in the instant and it goes back to your intuition. Intuition is such a great tool but, like you said, if I remove two of my senses my vision, because I'm looking at my screen, and my hearing because I've got earpods in you're giving yourself this huge disadvantage and I don't want that and what about?

Speaker 2: 54:50

this is another topic around situational awareness and you touched on it a moment ago when you said you know you arrive at Gatwick Airport, etc. But you know, equally arrive at Gatwick Airport, et cetera. But equally, you go into a new country which has different cultures, different body language even. How do you learn the situational awareness and how do you adapt that to a new environment where it's culturally different to what you're used to?

Speaker 3: 55:16

That's the great thing about these rules and I don't just mean that in a promotional way from my book, but it's like using situational awareness and using intuition are universal, and that's why I like to use a lot of international destinations in in my, in my teaching and in my examples. They're more interesting, for instance, but you know, I go to Bangkok and I was working in Thailand for a number of years, including during a lot of the yellow shirt, red shirt, disruption between the royalists and the taxonites, and so Thailand, which is a very peaceful country culturally, Thais are very peaceful people, they just are and so it's a relatively safe place speaking. But Bangkok's a city of like 18 million people, so there's a lot of bad people there. You know everything from cabbies that will divert you down the wrong road to organ harvesting, which can happen in any big city, but you know, so there is crime. But I land in Bangkok. I'm a six-foot white guy from America who speaks patchy Thai out of desperation, so I'm so easily identified, and that's what just makes this. Hey, you know what? As someone who's got a lot of expertise in this or has used these tools regularly, it gives me the well-founded confidence to go, experience something that most people wouldn't. For instance, when they were having riots in Bangkok, which still blows my mind.

Speaker 3: 56:45

I went down to the riots to see what was going on because I was very intrigued. Now you would not want to go to riots in South LA or maybe some places in London, but in Thailand I knew that the violence was directed between these two groups and I'm a disinterested anomaly party. No one's interested in the six-foot white guy standing over off to the side watching this stuff happen. That's an example of the power of using my awareness and intuition. And experience, of course, because we all have our experiences we talked about earlier. And experience, of course, because we all have our experiences we talked about earlier. I'm informed by the environments I've found myself in through my whole life because they accumulate and become my collective experiences.

Speaker 3: 57:41

In my case, as an expert. I went down there because I knew I could use those first two tools to manage the situation, and moderately, safely. I'm not right going to stand in the middle of the Molotov cocktails, but I could watch these riots take place because I was interested in what was happening in the country and I was concerned and I wanted to see it firsthand. I didn't want to watch it on the news, and I was in Bangkok. Man, that's the power of these tools you can use them to put yourself in a relatively extremely explosive situation and navigate it with some pretty good confidence. I don't recommend that for listeners because I'm not your typical person, but that's the power of these things and their universality is you can use them anywhere, in any situation. You can use it driving through traffic in your normal commute.

Speaker 2: 58:22

It's a wonderful book and I'm happy to keep reinforcing that the Power of Awareness by Dan Schilling. I absolutely recommend that every household has a copy of this and reads it, and if you've got kids, I'd suggest that you read it with your kids and talk about it, because I think it's. You know, it is an age where people would, whilst we may statistically be safer than ever, I think it's also true that many people feel less safe than ever, and so I think it's, you know, it's a fantastic book to read together and to understand and maybe even practice together with the kids, etc. And develop those skills of keeping everybody safer, because it's it's, it's without safety, we have nothing. So, dan, thank you so much for being a guest. Any last thoughts you want to share before we, before we go?

Speaker 3: 59:20

I would just offer this. Again, we're talking about crime and violence and all these things. At the end of the day, what I really like to emphasize and I say this as a Buddhist is that these tools can really help inform your life and make a positive contribution. Again, it goes back to making personal and professional decisions outside of safety, and it's how you make better decisions in your personal lives is by coming back to these same foundations, and it doesn't even have to come from my book. So if I hope, if anything people can take away, is that this is broadly more valuable than just safety, and I wish everybody a safe journey, wherever you are.

Speaker 1: 1:00:01

Thank you, dan, much appreciated. Thank you for listening to the Diffuse podcast with host Philip Rendell, ceo and founder of Diffuse. Please rate, review and subscribe on your favorite podcasting platforms.