Transcription
Hey guys, what is going on? Chris Sajnog, a retired Navy SEAL and founder of the SEAL training system. And in this video, I'm gonna give you ten ways that you can improve your situational awareness. Now, let's go ahead and get started.
All right guys, let's face it. Today, people are just not as situationally aware as we were in the past. You know, in the past, we used to live out in caves, or in forests, or grasslands, or, you know, wherever. They weren't in houses, and they didn't have all these little devices that you see people with their heads in all the time, and just closing off their situational awareness. So, in this video, I just want to give you 10 ways that you can improve yours.
All right, so the number one way that you can use to improve your situational awareness is to use what I call the SEAL loop. Now, the SEAL loop is kind of like the OODA loop, which you may have heard of, and that is to observe, orientate, detect, and then act. Now, the problem I found with this is it's not a loop, it's a linear sequence of observing, orientating, deciding what you're going to do, and act. There's nothing looping it around. But luckily, SEAL has an L at the end, which allows me to loop it back around and make it a true loop.
So, the SEAL loop stands for: See or Sense what's going on around you. So, not just seeing, not just using your eyes, but also using all of your senses, using your sense of smell, is just your feeling, you know, if you're practicing meditation and being able to detect what's going on around you and be present with what's around you, you're gonna be able to sense stuff a lot faster and easier than a lot of times you can see it.
The E in SEAL loop is to Evaluate. After you see or sense what's going on around you, you need to evaluate quickly what you're going to be able to do, or what you should do, or should not do in that situation.
The A in the SEAL loop is to Act. So, now that you've seen or sensed what's happening around you, you've evaluated what you need to do, now you need to take action. And that action is obviously going to depend on how you evaluated the situation and what you think you should or should not do in that situation.
Now, the L, which is what, of course, makes this a true loop, is that the L loops it back around, and you need to learn from each of your experiences. That is the whole part of training, and the whole part of, you know, learning from these experiences is getting that loop back around to go, you know, what went right, what went wrong, and how can I improve in the future? So, that is the SEAL loop, and that's number one way to improve your situational awareness.
Number two, and that is practicing your positioning. So, what do I mean by that? I mean, in any situation, positioning is everything. In the OODA loop, they talk about orientating yourself, or orientating yourself to your terrain. Position yourself in the right spot to observe what's happening around you. So, maybe you go into a restaurant and you're like, you know what, to be able to have the best situational awareness, I need to sit with my back to a wall and be able to observe better from that. Or maybe you're in a crowded area, as you move through that area, think about the position that you can be in so you're not surrounded by potential bad guys. So, positioning is number two.
Number three on the list is to use all of your senses. Now, sensing what's going on around you, it's not just one sense, it's not just the sense of sight. You also need to practice hearing what's going on around you, and you can do that simply by just going outside, going in a public space, and just sitting, closing your eyes. Hopefully, it's a safe place, right? You still want to maintain situational awareness, but you know, you shouldn't be on high alert at all times. Find a good spot you can practice this, but close your eyes and just start making visual images, like actually picturing what is happening around you just by the sounds that you're hearing.
The other senses are your spidey senses. You can actually work on that through meditation and other techniques you can use to build up that sense of what's going on around you. Obviously, your sense of smell, not going to be too important in your situational awareness unless you're looking for some fast food and you're driving down the road. I think they pump that smell out into the roads. Hopefully, you don't stop too often. I don't. But think about it, think about using all of your senses, and that will help with your situational awareness.
All right, number four on the list is to know at least two exits where you can get out of any situation. So, this is going to be a practice that you need to do all the time where you are just constantly looking for two exits. For instance, right now, I am in my studio here, and I know that there are two exits. One is the door that's right there. Unfortunately for me, number two is going through the ceiling, which is the weakest part in here. I have no windows in this office right here, but I do have the ability to make a hole up in the ceiling to get out of here.
All right, now that's just one example. Let's go back to being in that restaurant with your family. So, the first thing you do is when you walk in, you should start looking for where the exits are as you're going to your table, or maybe where, what you're waiting for your table, and look around and go, okay, there's the exit, there's where I came in. I want to try and find another exit that is somewhere other than that, the opposite direction. And maybe it's a window that's right next to you. And then you just need to start thinking a little bit more situational training and going, how am I going to get out that window with me and my family? Well, okay, is this table mounted down? If it's not, maybe I can pick up the table, maybe the chair. You've just got to think about it and come up with it.
And you should be doing this all the time. If you're walking through a mall or shopping center, you should be looking up ahead and going, okay, I can see a way to get out up there. And then as that one passes, that's still a way out, but it's now it's one behind you. Mental note, okay, I've got an exit back there. And now I'm looking for one up ahead. So, I'm always going to have two ways out, and you should too.
All right, number five on our list of improving your situational awareness is having a full field of view at all times. I talked about getting your head out of your mobile devices. You want to have better situational awareness? Simply get your head up. Okay, head up, and we call it on a swivel. So, your head is always on a swivel, seeing and sensing what is going on around you at all times. And if your head's not up and on a swivel, you're not going to be able to detect what's happening around you.
And one of the best ways I've found to train this is to go running on trails. So much better than running on a treadmill. Although, if you don't run at all, go ahead and get on a treadmill, that's fine. But when you run on a trail, you are taking in hundreds and thousands of bit of more information into your subconscious all the time. With every step you take, you have to see what's happening up in front of you, and then you have to remember where to put your feet, or how your balance should be when you get to that point. And you're constantly improving your situational awareness just by going on a trail run. And guess what? You are getting in better shape too.
All right, number six on our list is meditation. Now, if you know me at all, you're probably surprised that this is all the way down at number six. But guess what? These are not in any order. Okay? So, I would probably put meditation number one. But meditation is one of the best ways to improve your situational awareness. And just very briefly, what meditation allows you to do, it allows you to basically clear out the clutter of thoughts and information that's coming in, and it allows you, it teaches you, or you're teaching yourself to focus on what you need to focus on at that moment in time.
And with meditation, it's breathing. But when you learn to meditate, you learn to tap into that power that we all have inside of us. You're able to take that out into society, out into the public. And as soon as you need to tap into it, with enough meditation, enough practice, you're able to focus on what's most important in that space in time for you to stay alive. And that is why meditation is so important with improving your situational awareness.
All right, number seven on our list is to play games. And what I mean by this is, as you're walking down the street, say, you can do it with yourself. It's better with somebody else. Say I'm with somebody else, we're walking down the street, and I'm just walking forward, and my friend is going to observe a few things. So, say we walk by a group of people, my friend just says to me, "Hey Chris, that last group of people we walked by, how many people were they?" You know, I'll be like, "Three." He's like, "No, there's four." "Okay, what were they wearing?" And then I describe what they're wearing. "Okay, did anyone have a hat on? Did anyone have sunglasses on?"
And what you'll find at first when you're doing this, it's really hard, and you're gonna feel like you can't get anything right. But what happens is, because internally, our bodies don't like that, that sense of getting it wrong, it is going to start spanning our situational awareness. So, now we are paying attention to more things as we're continuing to walk down the street. And each time we walk down the street, we're gonna be getting better and better, and you're gonna find that you can start answering these questions better.
You do the same thing in your car. I do it with my kids all the time, like, "Hey boys, we just drove by a street sign. What did it say?" And they'll be like, "Oh, I don't know." Dub my phone. Get them off their phone, get them learning some situational awareness. And you can do it yourself. There's also some great games. There's a, it's called a letter game. Think it's just called letters, but I have it on my iPad, and it's great. It's, it just shows a bunch of the same letters or numbers, and one of them is different out of like hundreds of them. And it's super hard at first, but again, as you practice more and more, you learn to detect differences, like what is standing out. And you'll find it's what's really cool is you don't look at the letter and go, "Oh, there it is." You just look at it in general, at the whole page, and you're like, "Something doesn't feel right up in the top left." And then you, that's when you'll look and you go, "Oh, there it is." So, those are some great ways to improve your situational awareness.
All right, number eight on our list is practice people-watching. There's people apparently that love to do this just for no other reason than they'd love to people watch. So, why not make it part of your training? And all you need to do is go back to that bench where you were closing your eyes and practicing your auditory situational awareness. And now, this time, just look at people and observe them, whether they're alone or with a group of people. Try to figure out like, what are they doing? Like, why are they there? Try to describe in as much detail, like their entire life. And I know it sounds crazy, because at first, especially just like with the other drills, you're going to be like, "This is impossible." This, it doesn't matter if you're getting it right or wrong. What matters is that you are training your brain to come up with answers. And you'll find after time that you're starting to get these things right. And it's really crazy when it starts happening. But the only way you can do it is by practicing.
So, watch people, like try to figure out who they are, come up with a whole story about them. And as you get better, you can actually start to figure out what they're gonna do next. So, maybe it's just quickly somebody walking down the street, and they're coming up to an intersection. Watch and go, "You know what? I'm gonna just guess that he's gonna turn left." And as you do this, you start refining this skill, and you'll start being able to do it more often and get correct more often. And you probably do it a lot of times when you're driving. You'll be driving down the road, and you'll see somebody up ahead. And if you've been driving long enough, you, you just know. You're like, "Oh, he's gonna cut over, and he's not gonna put a signal on." Which in California, nobody does. I think they disabled turn signals in California. Maybe it's the same in your state. But I've noticed it here. But you can detect these things. So, it's the same thing, just practice it, and you'll get better.
All right, number 9 on our list is to practice estimating distances and times. We all have, or you should have, like a protective bubble around you. So, we've got like our personal space that we don't really want anybody in unless we're gonna be kissing them. So, that should be a short list of people. So, you've got your personal bubble, and then you've got your protective bubble, which is, you may have heard of it before, like people talk about like 21 feet. That's not exactly right, but it is a distance where you've gotta kind of figure people are coming into my space, and potentially they could reach me and do harm to me before I could react. So, you need to start detecting these different spaces. And you do that just by guessing and estimating different spaces.
Now, the other thing to practice is time. And the reason time is important is because, especially in stressful situations, guessing time and estimating time is very hard. And the reason it's very hard is just like why people say you can't focus on your front sight under stress, is because they haven't practiced that. So, if you are practicing being able to accurately estimate time, you're going to be able to do it under stress. And the way to do that is just to observe somebody and say, you can start your stopwatch without looking at it, and then you just start observing somebody doing something. Doesn't matter what it is. You don't even have to watch anything. Just close your eyes and try to guess and say, "I'm gonna stop it at one minute." And the more you do this, the more you get closer to what is accurate with time estimation, the better you're going to be at it.
So, for instance, if you see somebody walk by in front of your house, and then a while later, you notice the same person walking by. Well, if you can't estimate time very well, you have no idea really how long that's been. So, maybe that's important. Maybe it's not. Maybe if you see, like, if you see somebody that is taking pictures of a national monument, and you, you notice them because you're observant, your situation will be aware. But because you can also estimate time, you notice, "Wait a minute, he has been there for way too long for somebody who should be just taking a picture and moving on to something else." So, maybe your spidey senses are gonna go off because you can estimate time better. So, remember those two things: practice estimating your space, your distance, and time.
All right, finally, number 10 on our list is take care of your body. So, there's three things to think about. And number one is, don't drink. And I say "too much" on this because I love a good glass of wine, I love me some good tequila. But I also need to realize this is going to affect me. It's going to delay my ability to respond to a stressful situation, or to even be situationally aware, right? And this is obvious, we all know this. So, you know, I don't want to come down on you and say no drinking because I do. Just think about it. If you want to be more situationally aware, drinking is not going to help that situation at all.
Number two is getting enough sleep. Now, with sleep, you need to get between 7 and 9 hours of sleep every single night. And they've done studies that show if you get less than 6 hours of sleep 7 days in a row, your reaction times are the same as somebody who's legally intoxicated. Your ability to react to a stressful situation is going to be hampered simply because you chose to stay up watching TV too late, and you had to get up too early in the morning for work. So, think about your sleep.
And the last thing is exercise. Hopefully, you are working out and exercising at least a couple times a week. But the more you exercise, the more oxygen you're going to get your brain, the more vigilant you're going to be able to be, and the more situationally aware you're going to be. So, that is it for today. Use those 10 ways to improve your situational awareness. And until next time, you guys, keep paving your path to perfection.
Hey guys, if you like this video and you want to learn more, I put together 20 videos with the best training advice I've learned over the past 25 years of training others. And I want to give those to you absolutely free. Just click on the iCard that just popped up, or go to ChrisSajnog.com/freevideos. And I'll not only send you those 20 free videos, I'll also send you a free PDF copy of my new Rules of Marksmanship Manifesto, which is the framework for everything I teach. So, here's what I want you to do right now: click on the iCard, or go to www.ChrisSajnog.com/freevideos, and I'll see you on the other side.