How to be Safe by Cultivating Relaxed Alertness

November 16 2002

I was at the passport office in Los Angeles the other day, getting ready for a trip to Mexico, and got a chance to witness an interesting guy in action. He was the security guard for the inside of the Federal Building, and he was laughing and joking with people as they came in. He paid attention to every person that walked through the door, and helped him or her to get into the right line. With people who did not speak English, he would walk them right to the proper window. I had about half an hour to wait, so I watched him and admired the informal mastery with which he attended to the room.

Most of the people in the Passport office of the Federal building that day were from other countries. There were many who appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent. People were tending to their papers out of concern with the heightened security in the United States.

At the same time that he was being loose and kind of dancing around, he was aware of virtually everyone in the room. He was so at ease, that if anything had been out of place, he would have noticed. He would have felt it on his skin or in his belly. He had clear radar screens. Although he was armed, he was as relaxed as if he were having buddies over for beer in his apartment. He did not waste one erg of energy in false vigilance, pointlessly being suspicious of people. No, he was embodying what real security is, which is to be both relaxed and alert. With this guy, there would be very few false alarms. And false alarms degrade the efficiency of any organization or group of people.

The whole staff there was relaxed, which is unusual. There must be a very good manager there, to create an atmosphere in which the employees can function well.

This security guard was a living example of what Gavin de Becker talks about in his excellent book, The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence. De Becker is a security consultant, an expert in assessing when situations are dangerous. Police and federal agencies across the country often call on him. Although he writes about situations such as stalking and domestic violence, de Becker emphasises the need to trust your own instincts and to learn to read your survival signals. One key to this is staying relaxed as much as possible, so that when you do get a fear signal, it is accurate and useful. If you often scare yourself with fantasies that have nothing to do with what is going on in your immediate environment, then your survival signals may be drowned out by inner noise.

For years, I have recommended that everyone who experiences fear on a daily basis read de Becker. Now Gavin has a new book out, Fear Less: Real Truth About Risk, Safety, and Security in a Time of Terrorism .

All this points to the idea, don't walk out the door without meditating! Even if you just do a couple of minutes. Meditation, practiced the way I describe it in my books, is a great tool for tuning your intuition and living a relaxed life. One in which your survival signals only go off when needed, so you listen to them.