Staying Left of Bang!

Today we were greeted by yet another affable retired Special Forces Marine. He poked fun at us and kept the mood light while teaching us how to breath and relax.  Did you know 75% of Americans experience at least moderate stress every day, or that 75% of all disease can be traced to stress? Maybe legalizing marijuana is the right way to go.  He advised us to call our families often, take time to talk with other MoDAs, and get into the habit of chilling out for a bit every day through breathing exercises.  Did I mention that Kabul has the highest percentage of fecal matter dust in the air than any city in the world?  Let’s deep breathe on that for a bit.

More importantly, we were taught about the five stages on situational awareness or SA.  Worst was to be in SA condition “White”, i.e totally oblivious, like when a person is walking down the street staring down at their cell Phone.  The only time you should be in White is when you are asleep they tell us.  Being in White, is when people become victims; in Afghanistan or in the comfort of suburbia.  Our Marine is also a profiler for a number of law enforcement agencies.  Where we will be going he said, and I suspect everywhere for our instructor, we should be in a general state of alertness, called condition “Yellow”, with your “head on a swivel” until something abnormal catches your eye, ear, or nose.  We spent a good deal of time on predictive profiling, to stay left of Bang (before the bad thing happens).  Remember the “Combat Rule of Three”; any three or more anomalies you observe, do something!!.  Good advice for your daily life.

We all profile consciously and subconsciously every day as that is what humans are programmed to do, without thinking about it.  Predictive profiling is not racial profiling.  This profiling is understanding and recognizing that all humans worldwide exhibit the same behavioral traits to the same stimulation. Body movements, facial expressions, body placement, speaking all matter and if you understand what they mean. 

Profiling through behavior is a powerful tool.  Not just for threats, but in business and personal relationships. The symmetrical grim we make when we lie, that our pupils get bigger when we are happy, we sweat when nervous and men have a different walking gait than do women.  You can use these traits quite effectively to understand when something isn’t normal without the need for racial profiling, but only if you recognize them. 

Many of these traits were role-played by us as we began to tell when someone was sending us a signal that we just ignored.  This really could have helped me at the bars when I was single.

-          When you use an “ly” word in a response to a stress inducing question, you are probably lying.  Really?