Trust Your instincts; The Gift of Fear

Trust your instincts because they could save your life.

Your instincts are a gift from God, and they could save your life.

There has been a lot of work on the subject and everyone is searching for an answer. Science hasn’t figured it out yet and can’t prove it conclusively, but we all know it’s there. You have been somewhere and just knew something was going to happen and it did. But how could you know? How could you know that you should have gone left and not right? Most of the time you can’t explain it but you just knew.

One of the best books about the subject ever is Gavin De Becker’s The Gift of Fear. I’ve read it more than once and will continue to go back every so often until someone writes a better book about it.

In the book, Gavin studies lots of women who were horribly assaulted. Every one of them said they somehow knew the guy that was about to assault them was going to do something bad to them, but they ignored that fear instinct. So his entire thesis of the book is in the title. Fear is a gift, don’t ignore it.

Most of the other works he has done are not worth the time to read, but this was his first book and it is a must-read so you can understand violence if you hope to overcome it.

I believe your instincts are a matter of what you train yourself to look for and the amount of information your unconscious mind can possess compared to what your conscious mind knows.

Michael Bane calls it a ping or email from the back of your head to the front. Your subconscious mind sees something that could be a major problem and doesn’t have time to explain it to you. It just throws a little signal that says go left, not right.

I think you should definitely follow that ping and not listen to society, others that are trying to overrule your choice, or, especially, “politically correctness”.

Your conscious mind is much better about being trained and convinced of things than your subconscious. In Gavin’s book, most of the women wrote off the feeling of their bad guy being a problem because their subconscious mind told the women that they are just being rude. That guy isn’t going to do anything, he is being nice and you should do the same.

In today’s politically correct world this shows up as that person isn’t like you and you shouldn’t be discriminating. That person isn’t the same color, gender, sexual persuasion, economic status, or age as us and that is why you are getting that ping from the back of your head. Better to be rude, than dead or worse.

Trust your instincts and pay attention when that ping comes. It’s okay to be rude. It’s okay to speak up. And it’s okay to leave in the middle of something when your subconscious says run.

Stay Safe,

Ben

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