ANOTHER SURPRISE.

OUR ONLY REAL OPTION IS TO WATCH SOMEONE ELSE DO EVERYTHING WRONG AND THEN FORENSICALLY EXAMINE IT.

On Thursday evening, we tried to work on preparing for and dealing with a surprise attack. It soon became obvious that you can only work on dealing with a surprise if you are genuinely surprised, and not just pretending.

As soon as we attempted to create a surprise scenario, our onboard computer tried to cheat. Even when it is completely make-believe, we fail at creating scenarios where we get everything wrong; we unconsciously add in subtle ways to solve or preempt the problem. 

Our only real option is to watch someone else do everything wrong and then forensically examine it.

This is not the problem it may appear because all training is a form of gathering information to be assessed, stored, organised, then retrieved for use further down the line in a different place at a different time, under different circumstances.

All training happens to someone other than the guy in the middle, a different version of ourselves.

The real skill is in how well we transpose the information to serve the current situation.

When we watch others fail, when we have no skin in the game,  we do not try to lean away from telling it like it is, from brutal honesty.

Let me recount a personal experience.

Quite some time back, when I was still in the workforce, a bunch of us took a break to get some fresh air. As is common with workmates, the banter soon became a revolving round of take-downs, everyone was into it and taking shots at each other, including two women in the group.

For some reason, one of the women stopped laughing, and I asked her if there was a problem.

She just looked at me, as I thought she had not heard me, I stepped closer and asked, “Is there a problem”?

Woooshh, she slapped me across the face and stormed off.

The crew found this hilarious and almost peed themselves, I, however, just stood there like a stunned Mullet, frozen, but aware that under different circumstances this would be SOOO BAD.

When asked what had just happened, I genuinely had no idea. I had not seen the slap coming in.

Every day is a school day.

We all know that fear or anxiety can cause an adrenaline dump, but it is so much more than that. Physiologically, anxiety and excitement are remarkably similar. Both activate our sympathetic nervous system, resulting in an Adrenalin dump and resultant fight, flight, or freeze response.

I had an adrenaline dump because I was having a hoot,  I was humouresly excited,

I did not see the slap coming in because I had adrenaline-induced tunnel vision; the slap came from outside of my field of vision, which was not helped at all by my stepping in and shortening the focusing distance.

When we assess any situation, we should look from two specific directions.

1. How could we have stopped that hit from landing?
2. How could we have avoided the situation/position where we got hit?

If we look at my experience, there was simply no way for me to deal with a strike I did not see, and no way for me to see it.

I tried to find a video of a surprise attack on YouTube, but there are none; to be expected because this type of video does not attract advertisers.

There are plenty of videos pretending to show how to deal with one, but if we are honest…..

Direction #2: How could we have avoided the situation/position where we got hit?  This is the work, and it reminds me of the immortal Mr Miagi: “Best defence, don’t be there”.

Seriously, though, anything that can prevent the introduction of Adrenalin into the system is a step in the right direction, as is having more time.

Talking of time, Uncle Albert told us that time and space are different sides of the same coin.

How do we achieve these goals, and how do we integrate them into our information chain?

This is the way!