Personal Awareness and Personal Safety

How well do you know yourself? What triggers you? How do you handle fear and stress? How well do you handle anger and frustration? How do you find your happy place? What role do coffee and/or energy drinks play in your daily routine? How do you manage your alcohol consumption? Do you get hangry? Are you generally proactive or reactive with respect to the course of your day?

Each day we are pulled in so many different directions, but believe it or not, simple questions like these can affect how you navigate the world, how you engage in interactions, and how you contribute to your personal safety. Ideally, our commitment to personal safety allows us to have not only the situational awareness to avoid threatening situations, but also the personal awareness to conduct ourselves in a way that does not unnecessarily escalate situations.

We often think about personal safety in the context of a third party that presents a physical threat to our person, but we have to keep in mind that personal safety also extends into our mundane, routine interactions. What may begin as a verbal disagreement or misunderstanding has the potential to escalate into a physical altercation with the accompanying physical, mental, and legal consequences. As the holidays approach, we are reminded of some of the challenges of extended family gatherings, the frustration of jockeying for a parking spot before tackling holiday or weekly shopping, or the difficulties of competing with other shoppers for the perfect gifts after finishing work and family responsibilities, but we have also experienced tension and negativity in our places of work, in social settings, while driving, and even in our children’s activities. How did you respond? Were you able to go to your happy place? Did you successfully assess the situation and find an appropriate resolution? Did you consider how your actions could affect others, including those not directly involved in the situation? Did you allow your ego and emotions to take over so that confrontation and conflict were inevitable? Did you allow your insecurity to cause you to overcompensate with aggression because you felt that to respond otherwise would signify weakness? Did your use of coffee, energy drinks, alcohol, or other substances fuel a loss of self-control and good judgment?

Despite our best efforts, we are human and sometimes, we allow a situation to get the best of us. I’m sure we can all look back at various situations in our lives to consider how we could have used better judgment, made better decisions, and otherwise done things differently. As the holidays approach, let’s take a moment to count our blessings and reflect on how we can be the best versions of ourselves so that we can have the insight to take control of our response to a situation rather than allowing a situation to take control of our response. Let Insight Personal Safety LLC be your guide in promoting your personal awareness as well as your personal safety.