ExclusiveSituational awareness can improve your intuition when you engage in reality

Welcome to Epoch Insight with Tiffany. My name is Tiffany Brannan. One of the most famous detectives in literature is Sherlock Holmes. Those who haven't read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's writings on him may just know him as the British sleuth with the funny hat and a pipe. But if you've actually read the countless stories he wrote on the great detective, you'll know that his primary feature was his seemingly supernatural ability to tell things about people or objects or situations just from a single glance. This is first demonstrated, of course, in the very first story he wrote about him, A Study in Scarlet, a novel which introduced the character in which he casually observed several remarkable things about his roommate Watson's watch. And Watson grew to realize that that was something he could easily do for amusement of his companions, but for him it was bread and butter when it came to solving crimes. One of the most interesting examples of this in all of the work on Sherlock Holmes, to me, was from a story called The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter. This is one of the few stories that features Sherlock Holmes's brother, Mycroft Holmes, who's seven years older and, in contrast to Sherlock's tall, thin, lanky physique, is quite overweight because he has no energy. He just wants to sit around and be at the club. But while he's sitting around, he enjoys observing people. And as the two gentlemen, the two brothers, look out the window, they're able to have almost a duel as they go back and forth noticing things about people on the street. And Watson can only stand there amazed as they bat facts back and forth like a tennis ball. And that's just one instance of this great power to deduce things from looking at people. And true, this was a bit of a literary exaggeration which Doyle used to create this very interesting character and his equally remarkable brother. Yet it's a power which, to perhaps a lesser degree, we all can develop. The power of situational awareness. There's an article in the Mind and Body section, actually, but it's it's really something practical rather than just about health, and it's called A Critical Life Skill You Didn't Know You Needed. This is a second in a two-part series on situation awareness, and the last one talked more about the different states of awareness which we have. And this one digs deeper into how to practice situational awareness. That previous article talked about different colors as being related to different levels, with ones like red being a state of high alert and black being a state of absolute panic. But milder colors like yellow, meaning you're you're on watch but you're still somewhat calm. The article mentions that there are many ways to improve your situational awareness, and that one of them is people watching. Just practice watching people and try to observe things about them. Even invent stories about them. How much money do they have? What type of work do they do? Are they carrying a weapon? And you'll find as you do this that you can get better at it. Perhaps you'll never be quite as amazing as Sherlock Holmes, but you can practice that kind of deductive reasoning. And I would go on to add from the article that reading books of detectives like Sherlock Holmes would be a good way to inform yourself on how you can practice these things. What was it that he would use to observe things, and how can you do similarly? Now why is this important? The article describes that being aware of your situation can be a matter of life and death if you're in a dangerous position, and the world is a dangerous place. You never know what's going to come upon you, and if you're not paying attention, you really won't know what's going to happen to you. One of the most important things is to be aware of your surroundings in public, and one thing it requires is unplugging. So many people walk around, sit on the subway, cross the street, all while looking at a smartphone with earphones in. You're not very aware when you're in that position. It's a very dangerous position to be, because your sense of hearing is one of the most important senses, and so is your sense of sight. So if you're not paying attention with either your ears or your eyes, anything could happen to you, and you wouldn't even know what's coming. You'll be safer and better able to respond to threats if you're aware of what's happening around you. So the article recommends walk tall, keep your head up, and your eyes open. Look around and observe what's happening. So you'll be able to move with confidence to avoid danger if necessary, and being engaged with your surroundings helps you avoid predators, hear oncoming traffic, notice an altercation nearby, or even help someone across the street. You can minimize threats and observe useful opportunities for pleasant things as well. Perhaps you could strike up a conversation with someone or help someone in need, and see a moment when you could be a better friend to an acquaintance. And by being aware, you tell other people two things. You're showing them that you're aware of what's happening, and also that you're approachable. So less approachable to someone who could be a threat, but more approachable to someone who could be a friend or an ally, because they'll see that you're engaged and you're paying attention. The article advises to be particularly wary in transition spaces like gas stations, parking lots, public transit, because those are places that people will target as a place to do others harm, because there are a lot of people coming and going, and it's less likely to be seen. That's why muggings can happen in public transit, and they tend to be crowded and full of strangers. Intuition is a critical part of situational awareness, and it's really a sixth sense. So beyond engaging those five senses, just that extra inner voice that tells you something isn't right. Chris Heaven is the CEO of Survival Dispatch, a network of experts providing information in every area of preparedness. And he says that every single person who has been a victim of sudden violence, whether it's an assault, attempted murder, whatever, every last one of them has started their recollection by saying something didn't feel right. But we're the only creatures on the planet who will ignore their sixth sense. And we should have a stronger sixth sense, being more intelligent beings than animals, yet animals rely more on intuition than we do. We tend to rely on thinking, and we'll tend to reason things away, say, oh I'm being silly, that's just being superstitious, I'm being paranoid, nothing really is wrong. But oftentimes that voice is what's telling you that something is wrong. And it's not just a clairvoyant sense. Usually it's a subconscious memory, because without even realizing it, we observe patterns through sights, sounds, and things we've seen in the past. And that's how we can observe danger and realize that we're in harm's and get an uneasy feeling about something. But you're less likely to be able to make a smart choice from intuition unless you've developed your intuition. How do you do it? Well, by practicing it. You can practice intuition even in making simple decisions. Gerd Gigerenser is a prominent psychologist and researcher known for his work on using intuition in decision making. And he says that intuition is a type of subconscious intelligence. Using it to make decisions often leads to better outcomes, especially in complex and uncertain situations. He says that studies show that it's a powerful tool we can use if we'll just tap into it. And people who use intuition to make decisions tend to make them better and more accurately, and that intuition can improve over time, so it gets better with practice. It goes along with the old saying, go with your gut. Your initial feeling and thought about what you should do tends to be a very basic one that could be better than one you have after a lot of careful thought. Because as you think, you tend to overthink and start coming up with problems. So listen to that gut reaction. But how do you know that your intuition isn't a form of paranoia, especially when you have an off feeling? Being connected and engaged in the real world a lot is a good way to foster a realistic intuition. By keeping your eyes and ears open, looking around, you'll see things that are dangerous situations. But also, by unplugging from excessive media use, you can avoid becoming paranoid for no good reason. Farther along in the mind and body section, we have an article called, How Doomscrolling Steals Our Health. It's a lengthy article, but the basic point is that doomscrolling was a term that was coined during the COVID-19 pandemic. Because when we didn't have access to a lot of other real people, there weren't many opportunities to see things in real life, people turned even more to getting all their communication, interaction, and news from the internet. And with not much else to do, people would scroll for hours to see more and more bad news about death tolls rising, and ongoing lockdowns, and shortages, and hoarding, and no cure, and all these horrible things. And it's addictive. And it became more and more addictive. And it's found that each day, the average person spends about 108 minutes scrolling on social media. And if you're using a smartphone, in that time, one thumb travels approximately 38,880 centimeters, which is the height of the Empire State Building. So while you're scrolling up the Empire State Building, a lot of what you're seeing is not good news. It's not something positive or cheerful. A lot of it is very negative things. It could be political. It could be about possible health problems, ads that are just fueling fears, things that are just destined to make you feel envious of others who have more money, a better figure, younger, a more desirable job, you name it. Anxiety and fear direct our attention. And media sources know that. They actually use scientists who have studied behavior and mental processes to come up with the algorithms they use because they want to keep you on that app scrolling. So it's not just that you're a weak character. It's an actual addictive situation. And people respond as they do to addictive substances. But like any addiction or just bad habit, you can overcome it by realizing the things they do. For instance, long before social media or the internet, it's a basic fact that people are drawn to negativity. Researchers have found that each additional negative word in an article increases the click-through rate by 2.3 percent. So that just encourages them to put more negativity in it. And negative articles are shared more on social media. People tend to comment more, make people get angry or upset, and they'll want to comment a lot more than if it's something positive. Maybe you won't do anything. Oh, that's nice. But there's, you're less likely to want to respond. It's like, I hate this. I disagree. It just, that's, it makes you want to fight for some reason. And there's an old, an old parable about a grandfather talking to his grandson, and it's called the two wolves story. The grandfather says, inside each of us, there are two wolves. One is full of fear, anger and despair. The other is full of hope, peace and love. The two wolves are always fighting. The grandson asks, which one wins? The grandfather replies, the one you feed. And you can feed that good wolf by seeing positive thing. One suggestion that's offered as an alternative to doom scrolling is called kindness scrolling, where they've done studies showing if you spend the same amount of time looking at nothing but positive things in your newsfeed, like good news, heartwarming videos, uplifting music and art, happy stories, it makes your mood and health better, as opposed to neutral or negative things. You can take control of this by spending time, if you must be online, looking at positive things, and above all, limiting the useless scrolling. And some tips that are offered to prevent doom scrolling are, one, probably the most obvious, turn off news and social media app information. Two, set a timer to limit scroll time. Three, keep track of your screen time. Four, read positive news feeds. Five, spend more time with family and friends. Six, start a new hobby or revisit an old one. Seven, exercise. Eight, practice meditation. And nine, if you find you can't stop doom scrolling, it is okay to seek help. So you see, out of these nine, only three of them were suggestions for things you can do to make being online positive. Setting a timer to limit scroll time, keeping track of your screen time, and reading positive feeds. The other six were all about basically just putting down your phone, getting off your computer, and doing other things. And as the article mentions, the reason that this is so bad for your mental and physical health to have all this negative media consumption is that you can actually have symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder from observing things secondhand, as you're seeing really negative things happening because you have this desire of being in the know, you feel like you have some control. But you don't have any control over seeing these things, you're just making yourself more upset. If there's something positive you can do, do it. If there's some natural disaster and you feel inclined to help, volunteer, donate money. But don't just read all the bad news. If there's nothing positive that you're going to do, you can of course use some reputable news sources to find out what's happening to a degree, but find out, think about it, and then move on with your life. For instance, a study showed in 2013, after the Boston Marathon bombings, they interviewed 5,000 people on how much media they had consumed about coverage of this horrific event. And those who watched more than six hours of media coverage daily were nine times more likely to report high acute stress than those who had minimal media exposure. Now, they hadn't been part of this bombing, but they had stress from finding out about it, as do people who find out about any kind of horrific disaster. And these feelings can make you think that you're in that sense of peril. And thus, your intuition may not be as strong, because you might always be going around thinking you're about to get a bomb dropped on you. So it's important to limit that and to look at a balanced news source. Of course, I recommend the Epoch Times is the most reliable one. But just look at what the Epoch Times offers. There's the first section, that's news. What's happening in the day? There's the opinion section. Some of it's about news, but it's also some rational thoughts on what's happening. But what are the other sections? There's mind and body. It's about your health and how you can live a healthier, happier life. Life and tradition, talking about the beauty of art and literature. There's home, talking about how you can fix up your house and delicious recipes you can make. Far more of the newspaper is positive things, helpful things, than just news. And the news tries to offer a balanced approach. So it shows how we can look at the news and be aware, because part of intuition and situational awareness is being aware of the danger that is out there. But to also have a practical view of the likelihood of things happening. Yes, something bad could happen to you, but don't live in a state of panic, because when you're in a state of panic, you can't respond. Instead, as first responders are trained to do, you need to learn to look around, think quickly on your feet, and respond accordingly in a smart, logical way. And that often means not being afraid to ask for help or to go to a place that's safe. Thank you for watching this discussion of the importance of situational awareness and how we can increase our awareness and our abilities of deductive reasoning by avoiding doomscrolling and instead being engaged in the world around us. If you enjoyed this video, I hope you'll like it, subscribe to the channel, share it with your friends, and leave a comment letting me know what you think about practicing deductive reasoning. Thank you for watching!