It might sound challenging to be exceptionally aware of everything all the time, but it really only takes a few small mindset shifts and regular practice. Here are some practical tips you can use to maintain situational awareness at all times.

What Does it Mean to Be "Situationally Aware"?

Being situationally aware means being conscious of your immediate surroundings and any potential threats you might face. By paying attention to the world around you, you become more aware of any potentially dangerous or threatening situations.

By being aware at al times, you can respond and react to dangerous situations faster, improve your chances of survival if you ever face an immediate threat, and have better opportunities to avoid the threat in the first place.

The Different Levels of Situational Awareness

When moving through life, people experience different levels of awareness. You've probably noticed that some people seem oblivious to everything going on around them while you may see others scanning a room or looking you right in the eye. The Cooper Code is a system that was designed to explain the different levels most people live in:

WHITE: This state is when someone is completely unaware and oblivious to possible threats. If you're caught in Condition White, you will need several seconds to even realize what is happening and respond. The only thing that may save you is a mistake by your attacker.

It's acceptable to be in condition white when you're secure in your own home, but the minute you walk out the door, you leave your home, it's recommended you move to the next level.

YELLOW: This is a relaxed, but alert state. There is no specific threat around you, but you are aware of the fact that you may need to defend yourself any moment. In Yellow, you are "taking in" surrounding information in a relaxed but alert manner and something catches your attention, you assess it. Condition Yellow is best practiced when you find yourself in unfamiliar surroundings or among people you don't know. 

ORANGE: This is when you've identified a potential threat. Something is not quite right, so you give it your full attention while not losing sight of your overall surroundings. You don't take any action like drawing your firearm, but you are in a position to do so if necessary. You also formulate a plan on how to deal with this specific situation if the threat elevates and needs immediate attention.

Condition orange gives you the opportunity to remove yourself from the situation before you find yourself having do deal with a threat.

RED: Condition Red is when you are dealing with a dangerous situation that has escalated. You’ve made your decision to act, and you're no longer waiting to see if it gets better—you’re now taking decisive action.

Tips for Improving Your Situational Awareness

It's not practical to be in a heightened state of awareness all the time, so the best thing you can do is learn to shift your level alertness to match what's going on around you. Here are some practical tips for improving your awareness levels.

Minimize Device Distractions

It’s easy to get distracted by electronic devices. Try to avoid burying your head in your phone while walking or in unfamiliar situations. Only use your electronic devices in areas or situations where it’s safe to do so, and remember to look up regularly to keep an eye on your surroundings.

Find Exits and Establish Escape Routes

When you enter a building, scan your surroundings to make sure you have a way out of any room should a dangerous situation arise. It doesn't have to be some elaborate plan, it could be the nearest door or window.

Identify High-Risk Situations

If you find yourself in a high-risk situation like in a poorly lit parking garage or a high-crime area after dark, stay extra vigilant. Don't pull out your phone or let anything else distract you when your safety may be compromised easily.

Regardless of how challenging it can be to maintain situational awareness, it’s still crucial. To live more confidently every day, pay attention to what’s going on around you at all times. Think about how you can improve your observation skills, whether you’re concealed carrying or not, and practice recognizing potential threats before they become immediate dangers.

Being aware of a threat before everyone else can keep you and your loved ones safe. It sounds easy in principle, but requires a lot practice to get it right—especially when adrenaline is pumping through your veins!

Maintaining a high level of situational awareness is a necessity when you're carrying a firearm, since that same heightened awareness is what will give you the opportunity to protect yourself if you're ever involved in a self-defense situation. It's also a key factor in getting away from a situation before there's a problem, which is always the ideal response to a potential threat.

Just like shooting, situational awareness is a skill you can develop with practice. Here are three things you can do to improve your situational awareness.

Scan Your Environment and Look for Things Out of the Ordinary 

The best way to stay out of trouble is to leave an environment before anything bad happens. While you can't predict the future, you can find a lot of clues in any environment if you take a few minutes to look around to see if anything or anyone looks out of place. This is something that only takes a little extra effort and the more you do it, the better you will get. The more aware you become, the more your chances for survival increase when faced with a life-threatening situation.

The Cooper Color Code is a tool that can help you open your eyes to your surroundings. This sliding scale was invented by self-defense expert, Lt. Col. Jeff Cooper, who recognized that learning to observe your environment and react appropriately to what you see can help you achieve a large degree of control over your circumstances. The color scale goes from a state of being oblivious (white) to a condition of being ready to protect yourself with lethal violence if required (red). Instead of being in white (unaware of your surroundings), practice staying at yellow as long as possible to help you get into the habit of noticing what's going on around you.

Put Your Phone Away

We're positive you've heard this advice a million times before, but it's important to repeat. Ask yourself - do you keep your phone put away when you're in an unfamiliar situation or do you peek at it from time to time? It's important to resist the urge to distract yourself by looking at your phone, especially if you're carrying a firearm. Keeping your head down to look at your phone makes you completely unaware of what is happening around you, and that significantly increases your chances of not being able to react in time if you run into a problem.

If you do need to use your phone, wait until after you’re in a relatively safe area and don't forget to keep scanning your surroundings and make note of any changes. If you’re using headphones, try to keep the volume low so you can still hear the things that are going on around you.

Have a Plan In Advance

One of the best ways to protect yourself (and your family/loved ones) is to have a plan for action before something happens. When you enter a building, make sure to look for exits and identify potential barriers that could prevent you from escaping. Once you know how to get out, it's important to make sure your family knows 

Being able to understand and apply these three tips everywhere you go will greatly decrease your chances of being caught off guard. It may sound exhausting to constantly be on your toes and assessing potential threats, but once you get the hang of it, it will become second nature to you.

Situational Awareness:  What is it and Why Should You Care?

There’s a lot of talk these days about situational awareness.  Law enforcement talks about it, self-defense experts talk about it, shooters talk about it.  It seems like it’s the new buzzword.  But what is it, exactly?

Situational Awareness Defined

Some of the definitions for situational awareness can be quite complex.  But let’s just break it down:

Situational:  location or place with reference to the environment; your current status, place or position.

Awareness:  the state or condition of being aware; having knowledge; consciousness.

So to be situationally aware means that you are conscious and have knowledge about your current situation.  In other words, you know what is going on around YOU!

Conditions of Awareness

Colonel Jeff Cooper, former Marine and Founder of Gunsite Academy, developed the Cooper Color Code to describe possible mindsets with regards to situational awareness. 

                  Condition White: Unaware and unprepared

                  Condition Yellow:  Relaxed alert

                  Condition Orange:  Specific alert

                  Condition Red:  Fight

Why Should You Care?

There are so many things that compete for your attention constantly.  Technology, kids, noise or your own thoughts can keep you from paying close attention to what is happening around you.  It’s so easy to be distracted.  And it’s not just that you ARE distracted but how you look when you’re distracted.  A person who is distracted, not situationally aware, in Condition White, on their phone or whatever looks like a TARGET!  So not only are you not in a position to see danger, but you could be actually attracting it!

Situational Awareness is a Skill

Situational awareness is not just something that you are or are not.  You can learn to be more situationally aware, to have that kind of mindset.  The best way to start is to learn to be present in the present.  Put the phone down, turn off ambient noise and take the time to look around you.  My favorite place to practice situational awareness is a parking lot.  Keep your head up and look around you.  Count the people in the parking lot.  Pretend that you’re a witness to a crime and you have to describe one of the people in the parking lot to law enforcement.  The police are going to want to know height, weight, hair color, clothing and anything other identifying features.  If you were a witness, would you be able to give them that information. 

 Conclusion

Having situational awareness or being aware of your situation can save your life; whether it’s because the bad guys/girls don’t want to mess with you because you look confident and alert or because you see danger before you become a part of it.  Make a point to practice your situational awareness and before you know it, it will become second nature to you.  And added benefit of situational awareness is that you experience so much more in your day to day life because you actually SEE so much more than you knew was happening!

Written for consumerlawyernetwork.com by Tracy Hughes. Tracy is a firearms instructor, competitive shooter, facilitator for A Girl and A Gun Women’s Shooting League and the owner of Brilliant Backstraps. 

According to Lt Col. Jeff Cooper, recognized as the father of the modern technique of handgun shooting, the most important means of surviving a lethal confrontation is not the weapon or the martial skills. The primary tool is the combat mindset.

By learning to observe your environment, constantly evaluate it, and react appropriately to what you see, you can achieve a large degree of control over your circumstances. This means you need to learn to shift up and down a scale of alertness, so that you can match your level of readiness with the threat level encountered.  This is a sliding scale of readiness, going from a state of being oblivious and unprepared to a condition of being ready to instantly do lethal violence if forced. You must learn to go up and down this scale as the situation and circumstances around you change.

WHITE

Unaware and unprepared. "Daydreaming" or "preoccupied”, oblivious to possible threat. If attacked in Condition White, the only thing that may save you is the inadequacy of your attacker.

Your main enemy is reaction time. If you are not aware of your surroundings, and fail to see the suspicious character, he may overwhelm you before you can effective defend yourself. If you're caught in Condition White, you will need several seconds to even realize what is happening and respond. You simply don't have that much time.

When would it be acceptable to be in Condition White? When in your own home, with the doors locked and the alarm on. The instant you leave your home, you escalate one level, to Condition Yellow.

YELLOW

Relaxed alert. There is no specific threat situation. You don’t expect to be attacked, but are simply aware that the world is a potentially unfriendly place and that "today could be the day I may have to defend myself". You are alert and aware of your surroundings.  You are difficult to surprise, so you do not make an easy victim.

You should always be in Yellow whenever you are in unfamiliar surroundings or among people you don't know. You can remain in Yellow for long periods. In Yellow, you are "taking in" surrounding information in a relaxed but alert manner. When something catches your attention, you assess it. If it's not a threat, dismiss it. If it is a threat, start getting ready mentally to deal with it.

Anything or anyone in your immediate vicinity that is unusual, out of place, or out of context, should be viewed as potentially dangerous, until you have had a chance to assess it. When you pick up on something that’s out of place, you immediately escalate one level on the scale, to Condition Orange.

ORANGE

Specific alert. Something is not quite right and has your attention. You shift your primary focus to determine if there is a threat. The difference between Yellow and Orange is this specific target for your attention. Your mindset shifts to "I might have to defend myself against that person today", focusing on the specific target which has caused the escalation in alert status. When you shift upward to Orange, you begin to focus your attention on this individual that caught your eye, but you do not drop your guard. You don't want to be blind-sided by his friends. You begin to watch him and assess his intentions. Once you figure out he's not a threat, dismiss him and de-escalate right back down to Yellow.

As you assess, you start to play the "What if…." game in your mind, to begin formulating a basic plan. If he acts suddenly, when you have at least a basic plan for dealing with him already in place, you can react quickly. In Condition Orange, you set a mental trigger: "If that person does "X", I will need to stop him". If the threat proves to be nothing, you shift back to Condition Yellow.  If, after assessing him, you believe he is an actual threat, you then escalate to the highest level, Condition Red. By having a "pre-made decision" already set up in your mind, you can move physically fast enough to deal with the problem.

RED

Condition Red is the fight or flight. It means stop him or escape. Your mental trigger (established back in Condition Orange) has been tripped. You must act now with a decisive and aggressive action.

The USMC also uses condition Black, although it was not originally part of Cooper's Color Code.

BLACK

Catastrophic breakdown of mental and physical performance. Condition Black is when you have not prepared yourself for a violent encounter mentally or through self-defense training and now your mind is overwhelmed with stress, and both your mind and body shut down to any realistic defensive response.

In essence, you become the victim through lack of planning or self defense awareness or planning on your part. Black is is NOT where you want to be.

Summary

Increase personal security and personal safety by living in Cooper Condition Yellow.

Remaining constantly within the yellow level and moving easily into and out of the orange level is simply a state of mental awareness that must be practiced until it becomes second nature.

This is a selective attention test. If the video doesn't look as though it rings a bell, watch the top video first.

In the version below, you know what you’re expecting to see, but you might be surprised!

Inattentional blindness is the failure to notice a visible, but unexpected stimulus because our attention is focused on something else.

When we expect to see something, we see it. When we don’t expect something, it can be right in front of us, fully visible, and we never see it.

What’s worse though, is that we don’t realize that we fail to notice. We believe that we notice more than we actually do.

We are overloaded with inputs, and it is extremely difficult to process all of them with a high level of attention. Even with training, it is difficult to control inattentional blindness. But we can at least be aware of it, and that it affects us more than we think it does. We can guard against overconfidence, avoid the multi-tasking that dilutes our attention and we can learn to better expect the unexpected.

Because what we don’t notice can kill us.

More video experiments here:

The Tueller study is credited with first establishing the importance of maintaining a “reactionary gap”. This article by Dennis Tueller first appeared in the March 1983 issue of SWAT magazine.

Here's the original article in its entirety. "How Close is Too Close?", by Dennis Tueller:

The "good guy" with the gun against the "bad guy" with the knife (or machete, axe, club, tire-iron, etc.).  "No contest", you say. "The man with the gun can't lose." Or can he? A great deal depends on his ability with that gun and the proximity of his opponent.

If, for example, our hero shoots his would-be attacker at a distance of 20 yards, he loses. Not the fight, you understand, but most probably his freedom because he will almost certainly be charged with murder. The only thing that justifies your shooting another human being is the immediate need to stop him from trying to kill you (or someone else), remember?

If, on the other hand, our hero waits to fire until his attacker is within obvious striking distance, he may still lose. His shots may not stop his attacker instantly enough to keep him from using his knife.

So, what is the answer - just how close is too close?

Consider this. How long does it take for you to draw your handgun and place two center hits on a man-size target at seven yards? Those of us who have learned and practiced proper pistolcraft techniques would say that a time of about one and one-half seconds is acceptable for that drill.

With that in mind, let's consider what might be called the "Danger Zone" if you are confronted by an adversary armed with an edged or blunt weapon. At what distance does this adversary enter your Danger Zone and become a lethal threat to you?

We have done some testing along those lines recently and have found that an average healthy adult male can cover the traditional seven yard distance in a time of (you guessed it) about one and one-half seconds. It would be safe to say then that an armed attacker at 21 feet is well within your Danger Zone.

Even if your draw and shots are perfect, you are cutting things awfully close (no pun intended). And even if your shots do take the wind out of his sails, his forward momentum may carry him right over the top of you, unless, of course, you manage to get out of his way. And if you are confronted with more than one assailant, things really get tricky. So what's a pistol-packing person to do?

Having analyzed the problem, the following suggestions come to mind: First, develop and maintain a healthy level of tactical alertness. If you spot the danger signs early enough, you can probably avoid the confrontation altogether. A tactical withdrawal (I hesitate to use the word "retreat") may be your best bet, unless you're anxious to get involved in a shooting and the consequent legal hassles which are sure to follow.

Next, if your "Early Warning System" tells you that a possible lethal confrontation is imminent, you want to place yourself in the best tactical position available. You should move to cover (if there is any close at hand), draw your weapon, and start to plan your next move.

Why use cover, you may wonder, if your attacker is using only a knife? Because you want to make it hard for him to get to you. Anything between you and your attacker (trash cans, vehicles, furniture, etc.) that slows him down buys you more time to make the appropriate decisions, and, if it becomes necessary, more time to place your shots.

I suggest you draw your weapon as soon as the danger clearly exists. There is no point in waiting until the last possible second to play "Quick-Draw McGraw" if you recognize the threat early on. Also, the sight of your "Equalizer" may be sufficient to terminate the action then and there.

The purpose of the pistol is to stop fights, and whether it does so by dropping a thug in his tracks, or by causing him to turn tail and run, your goal is accomplished, is it not?

At this point it might be advisable to issue a verbal challenge such as, "Stop"', "Don't move", or "Drop your weapon!" It may work, and even if it doesn't you'll be developing your legal case for self-defense by showing that you did everything you could to prevent a shooting. If all goes according to plan, the odds are that by now you will no longer have a problem, your attacker having remembered he had a more pressing engagement elsewhere.

But, as we all know, things seldom go according to plan and the ideal circumstances previously described are probably not the norm. For example, if this goon tries to throw his knife (or other weapon) at you, what do you do then?

Realistically, knife-throwing is something of a gallery trick requiring specially balanced knives and a pre-measured distance to the target. Suffice it to say, however, that if your attacker is within effective throwing range he will almost surely have encroached into your Danger Zone. This throwing business does create something of a timing problem, for, if you fire after he has thrown his weapon, you may have difficulty convincing a jury that you fired in self-defense since technically you were not in jeopardy if your former attacker is no longer in possession of a deadly weapon. Something to consider, and just one more reason to use cover if it is available and time permits.

Sometime, of course, despite your best efforts, you could find you are suddenly, at close quarters, the intended victim of some lunatic slasher. If you are an expert in one of the many martial arts, you may opt to go at it hand-to-hand, and if you are in this category you do not need advice from me on how to do it. So, we'll get back to the use of the handgun for solving the problem. What it all comes down to now is your ability to smoothly and quickly draw your pistol and hit your adversary, and do it all reflexively. And the only way to develop these reflexes is through consistent, repetitive practice, practice, practice.

Practice so the right move comes automatically.

One thing you should practice, with this kind of encounter in mind, is the step-back technique in which you take a long step to the rear as you draw. This puts another three to four feet between you and your attacker, which may be just enough to make the difference.

Remember, the greater your skill with your weapon, the smaller your Danger Zone will be, but only if that skill is coupled with good mental conditioning, tactical planning and alertness, because no amount of skill will do you any good unless you know that you're in trouble.

Skill at arms and proper mental attitude. that's the combination that will make you the winner in a "Close Encounter of the Cutting Kind".