Personal Safety for All Ages
Key points that can help you stay safe most of the time
Personal safety includes many skills, and many of those skills
relate to a much smaller number of basic principles. As I was
thinking about what concrete safety ideas to write about for this
article, it occurred to me to put a summary of "the whole
thing".
When Michael Linehan and I were writing our book Real World
Safety for Women, we researched many others. We really did find
that they mostly fell into two groups — either they contained huge
numbers of points in many bulleted lists, or they were written like
novels leaving the reader to pick out what exactly to do.
Until we saw this, we really didn't have a clear idea of the shape
of our own book. Then it became obvious - to design the book as an
effective learning tool and to condense our knowledge into personal
safety PRINCIPLES that would be easy to remember and simple to apply
to every area of one's life.
Here they are — a review for our Seven Keys to personal safety
for those who already know them, a mini, super-condensed personal
safety course for those who don't.
1. Nurture Your Belief in Yourself
When you believe in yourself, you'll trust your wisdom and your
strength. You'll trust your perceptions and you'll believe you have
the right to your emotional and physical well-being. You're much more
likely to do what you need to protect yourself.
2. Understand Reality --- and FACE IT
When I first wrote this, I wrote just "understand
reality". Then it occurred to me, almost like a blinding flash,
that many folks understand reality, but don't really face it full on.
Completely see and accept reality and you'll be miles closer to being
safe and being in charge of your life.
3. Stay Aware
We might almost say, "Stay awake." We're all often
daydreaming, I think. Stay aware, wherever you are, whatever you are
doing. This is really just the same as the idea of "being
present" - leading not only to being safer, but potentially to
greater enjoyment of the moment by moment experience of being alive.
4. Trust Your Intuition
I say in classes, "If you ignore or forget everything else I
say today, remember this one thing... If your intuition is warning
you, there IS something wrong. Trust it, and act to increase your
personal safety." That's how strongly I believe in the importance
of intuition. (Anyone who hasn't read Gavin de Becker's book The
Gift of Fear on this really should.)
5. Develop Your Body's Language of Strength
Looking strong and confident makes you MUCH less likely to be
targeted.
6. Set Boundaries
One woman, after doing our class, ended literally years of office
harassment with a couple of sentences. I don't remember exactly the
words she told us, but it was something along the lines of, "That
is degrading and offensive. It's harassment. I don't like it and no
woman does. You - will - never - speak - to - me - like - that -
again." (All spoken with 100% congruence and the eyes of cold
fire.) We have heard so many times that just a few words spoken with
conviction was all that was necessary to end a situation, be it
harassment or potential attack.
7. Fight Back
Applying all your wisdom and the personal safety ideas above makes
the possibility of attack much less likely. But it still might happen.
And if it does, fight with 100% conviction in your right and ability
to protect yourself. And remember, at that point you are not
"defending" as such (in the sense of reacting to each of his
attacking moves), you are now "counter-attacking";
completely taking control with a force of energy like a cross between
a pit-bull mother defending her young, a grizzly bear, a tiger and a
Klingon.
Don't hold back.
Don't hold back your caring and belief in yourself.
Don't hold back the wisdom of your awareness and intuition.
Don't hold back your strength and courage in your body, voice and
fighting spirit.
Personal safety grows from your commitment to use your
strengths, skills, and full power to keep yourself safe. If you
let yourself use what you have, you can take care of just about
anything.
©
Copyright 2004. All rights reserved.
A publication of KIDPOWER TEENPOWER FULLPOWER International
www.kidpower.org
831-426-4407
Permission to reproduce granted with copyright notice and contact
information
at beginning and end of each article used.
|
