Andy: This is The Secure Family Podcast.
Welcome friend, I'm Andy Murphy, the host and the founder of The Secure Dad.
This show is all about empowering parents to protect themselves and their family.
I believe that security is the foundation of happiness, and I want
your family to be safe and happy.
The information that I share on this podcast is for general
information purposes only.
My goal is to empower you to make safer decisions for yourself
and for your family because our safety is our own responsibility.
Today I want to share with you three safety tips that I use all the time,
and I hope you discover that they're gonna make your life easier too.
All of that and more coming up on the Secure Family Podcast.
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So today I wanted to chat a little bit about three things that I do almost
daily that I think you probably need to incorporate into your life too.
I'm always trying to see trouble before it starts, and I know that you and I both
don't want to be the target of a crime.
So we need to do a few things to make sure that a bad guy doesn't think
that we're gonna be an easy target.
And many times trouble isn't present, but it's still good to
make wise decisions so that you don't find yourself in a bad spot.
Of course we can't always be a hundred percent aware all of the time 'cause
you know, we need to enjoy our life.
Or you know, God forbid we're tired or we have a headache.
While the title of this podcast is kind of simple, we do need to understand
that situational awareness is actually very complicated and you can't get
everything you need to know from a TikTok video or an X thread or a
single episode of a popular podcast.
So, uh, as I alluded to just a moment ago, we can't be switched on all the time.
Not even I can do that.
And I've studied this stuff, you know, every week for years.
The fact is that we are going to get tired, we're going to be distracted by
the dog in the parking lot, or we're gonna have our faces in our phones
trying to figure out a text about what we're gonna have for dinner tonight.
Knowing that we can't actually be situationally aware all of the time,
I realized that I needed to develop some personal security habits.
And these habits I've developed from what I have learned about being safe in public.
While my brain may not always be switched on, if I commit to some of
these hardcore habits, I still have some security radar working for me.
I've preached this for years and I practice it too.
So here are three security habits that you can use to boost your
situational awareness and avoid being the target of a crime.
Now, the first one comes in the parking lot when you are getting out of your car.
Make sure to check the immediate area surrounding your vehicle.
I have those little circular blind spot mirrors on my cars and I look at
those before I get out to make sure that nobody is like standing right
beside my car and they're ready to rush me as soon as they open the door.
I also look at the one.
On the other side to make sure that nobody is hiding there either.
Then I look in the rear view mirror and then out the front and through
the windows, and this is a quick scan that only takes me, I don't know,
10 seconds or something like that.
So this is something that's easily doable for everybody.
So then I actually take a larger scan of the area to see what's going
on, a little bit further out and to see who or what may not fit in.
And we're gonna talk more about that in a minute.
Now, I've done this for a long time and I've heard Patrick McNamara
say pretty much religiously that he has a five and 25 yard rule.
He says that if you first look at five yards out from your car and then 25 yards
out to see what's going on before you get out, you're gonna be in great shape.
And this was cool to hear him say that because I've been doing
something like that all along.
But I think the way he's put it is a whole lot more memorable.
So look five yards around your car first, and then push out
to 25 and see what's going on.
Secure habit number two is to look up and out.
This means that we limit the opportunity to be distracted in public.
The best way that we can do this is by not being on our phones
while we're out in public.
When our faces are in our phones, we are down and in.
This is the exact opposite of what we need to be doing.
I need all the opportunities that I can get to see a situation developing,
so the better my odds of being aware, I set myself up for more success
by making sure that my eyes, ears, and brain are available to take
in everything that's happening.
Also, when your face is in your phone, you may not notice that you've wandered
too close to a fountain and you trip and fall in and you're all wet now.
While that sounds ridiculous, I swear I see a video every week of somebody
falling into a fountain or falling down like an open manhole cover or something.
So keeping yourself alert to your environment is key, and you need
to devote your brain to doing that.
And because it's summer, I also want to remind you that you need
to be up and out when you are watching your kids at the pool.
Remember that.
The last secure habit that I wanna leave you with for today is
to notice who is acting counter to what's going on around you.
The gentleman of the Human Behavior Podcast call this
looking for incongruent signals.
That means something that is in a location or shouldn't be.
Or maybe something is missing.
Maybe a person is behaving differently than everyone else.
It, it can actually mean a lot of things.
For example, let's head back out to the parking lot.
If I'm in the parking lot at Best Buy and I see a car pull up to
the front of the building by the doors, that's not something unusual.
Maybe they're dropping somebody off for work, or maybe they
just bought a really big TV that needs to be loaded into the car.
But now, because you're paying attention and you are up and out, you see three
people pop out of the car all at once.
Well, that's a little different.
And they're all wearing hoodies and masks.
Well, that's very incongruent to what's going on.
And then they spring inside leaving their car doors open.
None of these are safe behaviors.
These are signals that they are most likely going to rob the store and
because again, I'm up and out, I see this and I decide to get in my car and
leave, then I'm gonna call the cops.
All of the things that these people demonstrated in this scenario were
things that we need to be looking for, because that's not what people
are doing in the parking lot.
Normally people are parking their car, getting their keys
and their wallet and their phone.
They're getting out and they're walking into the store.
Anything other than that is really something that you
should pay attention to.
It might not be a crime.
But it's definitely something that you need to look at, understand and decide if
that's gonna impact your personal safety.
Now, I have told this story before on the podcast, and I think it's
worth going over again because I thought about it yesterday of all
things, and it really made me laugh.
Plus this really fits into what we're talking about.
So on the last day of one of my Disney trips, I was not in a great mood.
It was, we were going into one of the parks, I think it was
Epcot, maybe, I don't know.
I was tired and the trip was coming to an end.
My family had gotten stressed over a disagreement that we had trying
to get from the hotel to the park.
When we reached the outer entrance of the park, the one before the
ticket gate, I realized that I just did not have a sunny disposition.
The baseline for people going into a Disney Park is happy, excited, energetic,
and I was none of those things.
I also think my stomach hurt too.
So before I even hit the metal detector.
The closest agent squared up to me, and I saw it coming.
His shoulders, his feet and his hips were all directed at me.
He pretty much just ignored my wife and son, and he was just
ready to have an encounter with me.
So there I was talking with this agent and other people were watching
us as well, and were also on camera.
And he asked to look in my bag.
That's not unusual.
That's totally fine.
Now I know that there's nothing in this bag that he's going to flag.
So after a brief search, he pulls out my Key Bar and he examines it.
By the way, a Key Bar is this thing for people who have a lot of keys.
You kind of put them.
It's in this, you know, I really don't know how to describe it.
It's just a, it's a big block of keys.
That's, that's what you need to know.
So he gets excited and he taps the key bar and he says, sir, you
can't have this knife right here.
He thinks that I have integrated a knife into my key bar, which is
actually something that you can do.
Um, but I had not done that.
He even had just a little bit of happy feet as he said this 'cause he
bounced up on the balls of his feet and he kinda looked away so that I
wouldn't catch the smirk on his face.
He was also looking at his other security agents.
I told him that I didn't have a knife and I splayed out all of the keys
for him and everybody else to see.
I said that the key in question that he pointed to was
actually the key to my church.
As quickly as he was excited.
He deflated, and after that he sent me on my way and I smiled
for the first time that morning
In that particular situation, was he wrong to stop and investigate me?
Absolutely not.
He made the right call.
I was the anomaly in the baseline, but I wasn't a threat.
But he was right to investigate further.
And that's what we have to do is check out who's not acting like everybody
else and see what's going on and see if this is gonna be an issue for us.
If it's going to be an issue, we need to get out of there.
I hope you found these three safety tips helpful, and yes,
there are more and I will share them as we go in further podcasts.
Just keep in mind that situational awareness is a big topic of
multiple domains, and it's actually a lot of fun to sit and study.
You can't get it all at once, but if you commit to it, it's
a really fascinating journey.
For more on this, I want you to go and listen to my friends Greg Williams and
Brian Marin of the Human Behavior Podcast.
Thank you friend for joining me for this episode of The Secure Family Podcast.
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I am Andy Murphy reminding you that our safety is our own responsibility.