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 what's 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 your 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 sense 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 ODA 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 she 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 constants
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 heads 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 it all go ahead and get on a treadmill that's fine
but when you run on a trail you are taking in hundreds in 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 surprise 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 a 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 it anybody 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're 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 said 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 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 their 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 in 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 safe
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 cease 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 & 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
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