How One Thought Changed My Life
I distinctly remember lying in bed one night as a newly married man. As I tried to sleep, I had a thought that bothered me, and I was concerned about how I was going to respond. The thought was, “If someone breaks into our home right now, I don’t know what to do.”
Sadly, I think there are many people who have this thought and push it aside and think, “It’ll never happen to me.” Unfortunately hoping that something won’t happen really does not affect the outcome at all.
As a single guy, I had a plan if someone broke into my apartment. Now that I was married an in a home, things were very different. I now must account for new surroundings and what role my wife should play in the event someone where to break in. So instead of trying to push the thought out of my head, I began to think about what to do.
Facing your fear, looking at what makes you uncomfortable and planning for it is the best way to keep yourself and your loved ones safe.
And that, my friend, is the best safety tip I can ever give you.
No one joyfully sits around and thinks about what they’d do if their child started to choke. We don’t text our friends to brag about how good our fire escape plans are. And we certainly don’t get excited about what to do if some attacks us in a parking lot. These are all by nature the worst-case seniors that we don’t want to dwell on.
So instead of being fearful, embraced the problem and tried to reverse engineer the worse-case scenario. My whole life I’ve been “gifted” with the adversarial mindset. That means I think like a criminal. I’m always looking for loopholes and exploits that others may not see. But I’m happily on the good side – crime is not for me.
Understand What Fear Really Is
Self-defense expert Tony Blauer created the program Know Fear. I was blessed to be able to take his course and then talk to him about it on an episode of my podcast. Coach Blauer reminds us that fear is an essential signal that keeps us safe and that we have to look at that fear and own it in order to survive.
We need to embrace fear for what it really is – a survival signal – and work with it to protect ourselves. Don’t ever downplay that little voice inside you that indicates that something isn’t right. Your intuition and fear will guide you to a safer existence.
Using my adversarial mindset, I was able to break down how someone would typically break into my home. Instead of starting outside, I began inside with the fear that someone would be standing over me as I slept. And then I made plans to keep the intruder out of my bedroom, then out of my home, to finally making the outside of my home so unappealing for a robbery that no one looking for a quick score would even consider my house.
I even took this same thought process and turned it onto an Amazon best-selling book on home security and a podcast that has spanned nearly 5 years. All because I embraced my fear as a young married man.
Origin Story: Taking Responsibility
To be truthful, this whole thing began when I was in high school. The day after the tragedy at Columbine High School in Colorado, my life and thought process changed. While I was hundreds of miles away from the shooting, it changed the course of the lives of so many school kids including me.
I remember sitting in my classroom the next day and had the realization that if one of my classmates where to start shooting in this room, there would be no way for the school resource officer to get to us fast enough.
It was then that I had the life-changing realization that my safety is my own responsibility.
Don’t get me wrong, our brave first responders will be there when we call them, but we have to survive long enough to call and for them to respond. For a while, we will be on our own. Or depending on what state you live in today, the police might not respond at all. As people we are responsible for ourselves and as parents we are responsible for the safety of our family.
Own this. Know the fear and empower yourself to think like a bad guy so that you can make plans to stop the bad thing from happening as much as you can.
For ways to protect your family at home, in public and online, The Secure Dad is here to help you make he best decisions that you can to protect those that you love.