Security Starts in the Mind
How we mentally process perceived threats and mindfulness that violence can occur anywhere is really the most important element to our security.
In short, our mindset is the foundation of safety.
If you’ve been with me a while, then you know this. Now some might be rolling your eyes thinking, “Here’s another mindset guy.” Not to worry, I’ll prove my case.
I’ve found in my experience in life and in the threatening situations I’ve seen there is one important thing about humans.
If people don’t know how to act, then they won’t.
If we don’t know how to respond to a medical emergency, fire, or violent event then we won’t act. We won’t act for ourselves or to be an asset for someone else. We simply will watch whatever it is and hope it all works out.
Ever see the bystanders in a street fight? They just stand there and watch. Maybe they’ll pull out their phones, but generally, they’ll just stand there. While it does look like they’re being really rude and unhelpful, in reality, they’re learning from that event.
Our Brain is the Beginning of Everything We Do
In terms of safety, the brain is the starting point for threat detection and response. We have to train our brains to better see the warning signs for threats of violence. If we don’t have a thought process or experience for an event like a fistfight then we’ll be really behind when a guy in the parking lot hits us in the face.
If we don’t know how to fight, then chances are we won’t know we’re in one. Lots of people get knocked out in arguments because they think they’re just talking. But the other party is showing signs of aggression that they don’t pick up on and boop, lights out.
Readers might wonder about natural fight or flight responses and human intuition. These are inborn safety measures that humans have honed for centuries. Will these alone keep us safe from violence 100% of the time? Nope.
We really have to embrace our intuition and fight-or-flight response in order to survive. Every day people suppress those thoughts because they don’t want to be seen as rude, sexist, racist, a wimp, and the list goes on. Focusing your mindset on safety will help you unlock those natural abilities and give us more time to see warning signs and respond.
We must frame our thoughts to understand that violence exists in our world and it could happen to us. So many people we know and love walk around oblivious to the threats in their little world. I’ve talked about this a lot, I call it living in a bubble.
And people who live in a bubble won’t know they live in one until it’s popped. Then they see what we all know to be true about the reality of the world we live in: bad things happen to good people.
Let self-defense, self-preservation, and personal security start at the core of your existence: your thoughts. By admitting that we need to put safety first, then we’ll be more likely to see the smoke before the fire and not get burned.
I heard Tom Gresham on his radio show, Gun Talk once say that the body will not go where the mind has not been. Let’s stack the deck in our favor. Let’s get better at threat detection and keep danger distant so that we can enjoy the life we’ve been blessed with.
Embracing a secure mindset will not make us paranoid. We are simply acknowledging how the world really works and who is responsible for our safety - us. Knowing that we are ultimately responsible for our own safety will boost our decision-making abilities so that we will naturally make safer decisions.
This is the essence of security, making a decision that will keep you from danger.
So how do we adopt a secure mindset? First off, keep listening to The Secure Dad Podcast and reading these articles. I hope to encourage you to create a more secure mindset with every episode.
Then read books like The Safety Trap by Spencer Coursen or What Every Body is Saying by
I also encourage you to step out of your comfort zone to get hands-on experience with self-defense or firearm training.
If we don’t change how we think, then we won’t know how to act.
We need to know how to respond in the face of a crisis, and trust me I can almost guarantee that one is coming in your life. Our families are relying on us to keep ourselves safe, and them, safe.
