Situational Awareness Course

We are building a taxonomy of situational awareness types.

If somebody ever told you that you have no situational awareness—or the opposite, you pride yourself on your truly excellent situational awareness, this article is designed for you.

I am building out a taxonomy of situational awareness types, after beginning situational awareness training with a situational awareness expert. This is a log of our lessons as we progress, and my own observations.

I may start some zoom classes for people who are interested, so feel free to shoot a message on Twitter to be part of that list. If you have questions, also shoot a message and we can fit the question into our materials.

Lessons in situational awareness:

1. TRACKING PHYSICAL THREATS. Track what the physical threats are in a room. If you are in your own room, the biggest threats are probably something falling or you hitting something. The biggest threats are probably hurting your foot, hand, or head. Water, wind, fi

2. TRACKING PEOPLE WHO ARE THERE. Track the people in the room. Who is here? Who is not here, but likely to come in?

3. TRACKING PEOPLE YOU CAN’T SEE. Track the people in your house, or in your space, who are not in the room. Where are they? What are they doing? What are their movement patterns?

4. TRACKING WHAT PEOPLE WANT. Now we are onto tracking people’s motivations.

   The first step to tracking what people want, is straight up tracking what they ask for. “Ask” here is doing a lot, so let me break down what I mean by “ask.”

   1. THEY STRAIGHT ASK. Sometimes people straight tell you what they want, by asking for it. “Can you give me that jug of water?” “Can you take me out to dinner more?” This seems easy enough, but even here, there are some complications.

      
      

      Often people ignore what people ask for explicitly. Either they do not understand what is being said, or they have lots of stuff in their own brains that distorts the listening. For example, one common ask is to “help more around the house.” This is a straightforward ask that unfortunately ends up breaking too many relationships because people hear it, but do not pay actual attention to what is being asked.
      
      

      Often what is being asked is, “can you take some of the burden of staving away chaos off of me, so that I can relax without worrying that without my doing everything the place will descend into chaos,” or “can you have a joint stake in maintaining the status quo, so that I have more energy planning for the future.”

   2. THEY TRY TO TAKE IT. This one is big. This is a shortcut for feeling out what people are asking for indirectly. Ultimately, people want from you what they ty to take from you.
      
      

      They make bids for getting something in exchange for something else, or make their hopes and plans clear, with hopes that you would help with them. Sometimes they use all kinds of force.

5. TRACKING WHAT YOU WANT. Often people are not honest with themselves about what they are looking for, themselves. They are not sure what they want, so they have a hard time figuring out what is possible for other people to want.

   One exercise to try is to watch a music video you had liked for a long time on repeat, and watch it again, paying attention to what elements of the video you like. Often it is very shallow things! The colors are pretty, the people are hot, something about how somebody moves, a certain mood you aspire to.
   

   

   Photo by Alvaro Palacio

   
   This is a very simple exercise that shows that you too, with all you sophistication, are not immune seeking the barebone pleasures of existence. You just developed layers of sophistication over time. You have created overlays, or extended far in directions, but the basic structure of people’s desires, and therefore your desires, is the same.
   
   Paying attention to your body is also important here. Getting in tune with how you react to things will be very helpful. I have recommendations for bodywork books and trusted practitioners, that can help you see how much more awareness into you own body you can have.

6. TRACKING TIREDNESS AND REST PATTERNS. You can do a lot with making people happy and making yourself easy to be around by tracking people’s tiredness and rest patterns. If you can help people rest, they generally will want to be around you more than if you make people tired.
   
   It is also important in conflict avoidance. If you can tell that somebody is really on-edge, they are not going to tolerate too much work or complications, and that is going to reveal a lot about their conflict-avoidance or conflict-seeking pattern. Some guy who just snapped at another person because he is too tired to care is likely to snap at you also, regardless of if you actually do anything to get in his way.

   
   Interrupting a person’s rest is a way for them to be off for the entire day, and maybe even the entire week if they do not find a way to get their rest back. If a person close to you is not getting rest (many people do not know how to ever relax), then helping them find a way to rest may do more for your relationship with each other than any other efforts.
   
   Figuring out non-obvious ways you interrupt a person’s rest, and non-obvious ways you interrupt you own rest may be very beneficial.

7. TRACKING BIOLOGICAL GROWTHS. This is a more advanced step in tracking physical objects around you. How are organic objects changing? Which objects decay in a bad way? Which objects are growing mold? Which objects decay in a good way? Which objects are fermenting into wine, or yogurt?

8. TRACKING MAINTENANCE FLOWS. Which things would collapse, or die, without ongoing support? Where are different things getting their energy from?

9. TRACKING CONFLICT-DISTANCING PATTERNS. Certain kinds of conflicts make no sense unless you track people’s conflict-distancing patterns.
   
   Let’s say that on a scale from 1-12, 1 is no conflict, and 12 is an all-out, fire and brimstone physical brawl, with chairs and glass thrown.

   
   

   Different people have different comfort areas, and different escalation and de-escalation patterns. Some of these are personal decisions, some are the result of upbringing or abuse, and some are cultural differences.

   
   

   Here are some examples.

   
   

   Tim is comfortable at around a 1 or a 2. When things get to a 3, he gets uncomfortable, and takes steps back to get to a 1 or a 2. He doesn’t like conflict, and doesn’t like escalations towards conflict. When a de-escalation is possible, he takes it. His default conflict-distance preference is high distance.

   
   

   John is comfortable at around a 2, 3, or a 4. He does not like absolutely no conflict, because that means that the situation is stale and people are not creatively pushing on boundaries that may lead to creativity or deeper friendships. John understands how conflicts progress, and so he is not afraid of escalations or de-escalations, but he monitors them. If things get up to a 5 or a 6, he tries to bring them back down. His preference is high conflict-distance, but he would escalate and de-escalate as is needed for the situation.

   
   

   Ryan is comfortable around a 3, 4, 5, or 6. Less than a 3 feels confusingly unintimate. It doesn’t feel to him like a real interaction is actually happening. It is not “deep” enough. Higher than a 6 feels like an actual conflict for him that he has to deal with. Because he is comfortable around the higher numbers, he many not know when other people register him as being in a “conflict zone.” Other people may think he is escalating things, and then not backing up. Actually, Ryan is just vibing on his wavelength and has no idea he is doing anything wrong.

   
   

   Tracking how close you are to a conflict, and how close other people think they are to a conflict, is a more advanced skill. Don’t worry if you can’t do this yet. This takes some practice.

   
   

   Seeing how close something is to blowing up, and how well other people can tell, is important. It keeps you safe, and keeps you from getting false information from other people who have skewed heuristics for safety.

   
   

   Some people who are extremely conflict avoidant never really develop faculties for how close they actually are to conflict. Some people who are very comfortable in conflict develop magic powers for dealing in conflicts, but do not learn the various ways of preventing conflicts before they happen.

10. TRACKING WHAT OTHER PEOPLE ARE TRACKING. What are other people paying attention to? How are other people doing steps 1-7? Are they paying attention to something you are not noticing? Are they tracking changes in a category you did not even know exists?

11. TRACKING ASYMMETRICAL INFORMATION. What do people know, that they are operating on knowing? What do other people not know, or have zero ways of knowing?

12. TRACKING WHAT YOU CANNOT SEE, BUT WHAT YOU KNOW MUST BE THERE. This is an intermediate-to-advanced skill. Think about your home. Who is inside it? What rooms must they be in, and what are they up to? Practice “seeing through the walls.” Try this with the natural world as well. The trees must have roots even though you cannot see them: where must they be? Where must the different animals be living?

13. TRACKING KARMIC DEBTS. This is an advanced skill. Sometimes when you have no idea why somebody is doing something, it is because they feel they have a karmic debt they need to repay. Often their awareness of this is beyond their subconscious, but rather is deep in their bones. This is an advanced skill. Message me if you want to learn more or have questions.

14. TRACKING EXISTENTIAL ANCESTRAL INHERITANCE. This is an advanced skill. Sometimes when you have no idea why somebody is doing something, it is because they have inherited various karmic debts, blessings, or curses. Figuring out how to even begin to look at this is very tricky. This is not to be taken lightly as a woo category, but rather taken seriously as a way to look cleanly at things that are otherwise very messy or seem to be unparseable. Many people who say they can do this cannot with much reliability, and the ones who can do this with reliability usually keep this to themselves and practice in closed communities. If you are practicing in this area, I would recommend messaging me so that I can put you in touch with the right people.