Situational Awareness Drills

What is situational awareness?

• Being aware of your surroundings and being able to identify possible threats and dangerous situations.
• More than your tangible hands-on skills, but more of a mindset
• Can be done by any individual with the commitment to do it.

Situational Awareness Drills That Help Improve Your Mindset

Recognize that threats do exist

To have a mindset of situational awareness, the first thing you should do is to accept that threats do exist. When you don’t believe that threats can occur in any situation, you will have a poor chance of quickly recognizing a threat, and avoiding it will become impossible. In a dangerous situation a lot of bad things can happen to you.

Take responsibility of security

You must have a mindset of taking responsibility for you and your family’s security. You cannot count on authorities to be everywhere when you need them. They cannot respond immediately if a criminal act happens. You have to look out for yourself and your family and make them safe.

Trust your gut and instinct

Trusting your gut and instinct are also important in having a mindset of situational awareness. Sometimes your subconscious mind can determine signs of danger that your conscious mind has some difficulty of identifying them. If you have a feeling that there is danger ahead of you, do not ignore your feelings. Ignoring your feelings will lead you to some serious trouble.

Discipline

Discipline is a must in practicing situational awareness. You must pay attention to your surroundings and make sure that you are not easily distracted. If you are distracted you will not notice dangerous situations and threats. You need to be more observant even if you are busy doing other things.

Situational Awareness Drills That Can Improve Your Skills

You must know where the emergency exits of a building located. This is important so that when a dangerous situation happens, like fire or earthquake you will easily find your way out.

Count how many people are there in a restaurant, subway, or train.

Observe the cars and note which of them take the same turn in traffic.

Try to figure out the stories of the people around you. Take a look at them; visualize their mood, their work, what things they are focused on, and what they going to do next, based on your observation.

Even simple situational awareness drills will make your mind to be aware of these situations almost subconsciously. In doing these drills it is important that you are in a relaxed state of awareness.