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  Interestingly, thoughts are not your enemy; it's thinking that gets in the way, and there's an important distinction between the two. A thought is something that arises in the mind, and you rarely know from where it arose. Very often, a thought will be important and relevant. You might explore it, consider it, act on it, or discard it. It might come back, it might not. Whatever happens, the initial arising of a thought is not under your control.

  Thinking, on the other hand, is the horizontal process of consciously linking thoughts, concepts, and ideas -- and thinking is what most often gets in the protector's way, as in this example:

  "What's with the guy in the yellow raincoat? Reminds me of that sailboat team, crew all wore yellow raincoats. What's that race in Australia? Or it starts in Australia. Chevron sponsored some of them. Chevron logo was on the sails. Chevron had that executive kidnapped in Brazil. Or Peru... America's Cup! But it starts in Australia? Or a different place each year? Chevron paid some ransom, I remember. Is it even likely to rain? Why wouldn't a guy leave a coat like that in the car? If he's got a car. Some people came by bus. Buses could block the parking lot exit -- have to remember to check that when we get to the reception. Maybe we can even see the driveway from one of the windows. Is it a reception, or just a fast meet-and-greet? Reception means food. I should have eaten something when we had that downtime. Maybe we can bring the cars around before the thing starts, in case we have to leave early. Nutrition bar in the car; just candy really, but I want it. I need it. And if it rains, it'll be easier to get coats from the car. Maybe that's why he's wearing a raincoat ..."

  This form of thinking, in which one idea is linked to the next, might feel like there's a constructive process underway. There isn't. The mind often links things together and then thinks it has formed some continuity -- but continuity is an illusion. In protective work, Don't strive for continuity. Continuity is a product of the mind only, a belief that some past events are significantly linked to the present moment and to the future. In protective work, there is nothing gained by connecting this moment to other moments -- and much is lost during the time travel it takes to gather up memories and create a story. As hard as it is for the mind to accept, there is no story to assemble, no sense to be made of events -- just occurrences and images that must each be allowed to stand on its own. In the example above ("What's with the guy in the yellow raincoat?"), the thought had great value, but the thinking carried the Mind away.

  "When you are given diamonds mixed with gravel, you may either miss the diamonds or find them. It is the seeing that matters."

  Indian Sage, Nisargadatta Maharaj

  Satisfy the Hungry Mind

  Earlier, we discussed addictions, and the mind itself has an addiction: To reach conclusions. A moment after reaching one conclusion, it will want to replace it with another one, and so on. If your mind has trouble discarding the snapshots appearing before you, try creating a quick name or label for each one. This can help convince the mind that it has completed a task, that it's okay to move on to the next person or event. For example, the process of observing and then naming seven people could look like this, and could be this fast:

  Sunburn

  White hair

  Looks like Leonard Nimoy

  Mr. Pushy

  Guy arguing with wife

  Mr. Nervous

  Second time in line

  Notice that you didn't think about any of the people you named. Also, the last four names assigned are based upon behavior: One man is pushy, another is arguing, one appears nervous, and the last is doing something of relevance to your mission (getting into a receiving line for the second time). If, in order to let go of snapshots, you must name them, then naming on the basis of behavior is more useful than naming on the basis of appearance, because behavior is more relevant to your mission than appearance.

  The mission is to see, to realy see. For example, did you really see the misspelled word in the last sentence? (It's the seventh word).

  Now, take a look at this paragraph:

  FINISHED FILES ARE THE RESULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY COMBINED WITH THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS.

  Pause here for a moment and count the number of F's in the sentence above.

  How many did you find? Three? Four? Five? If your total was any of these, count again.

  There are more than five F's in the sentence. So, looking for F's doesn't necessarily mean finding them. Looking for attackers doesn't necessarily mean finding them either. Looking to match things to our preconception of what they'll be doesn't work as well as seeing what is. In fact, looking for attackers (as opposed to perceiving behaviors that might precede an attack) is actually counterproductive. That's because you might have in mind an imagined appearance -- and anything imagined takes you out of what's actually occurring in front of you. The great French intellectual, Marcel Proust called this an inexorable law: "Only that which is absent can be imagined."

  In other words, whatever you imagine cannot be present -- for if it were present, you wouldn't be able to imagine it, just as you cannot look at this book and imagine it at the same time.

  Don't Look for Assassins

  An expedition that sets out to climb Mount Everest and doesn't reach the top is called a failure. But an expedition that sets out to find whatever it will find cannot fail. Let that be your expedition, to discover what is in the here and now. Rather than looking for something that matches your imagination, rather than looking for anything, look at everything. See what is set right in front of you, what is real.

  Looking for assassins would be like seeking wealth by applying the belief that "Every place you go contains diamonds." For a time, your mind might look for diamonds, and then after finding none, it would stop. Rather than looking for diamonds -- which are rare -- a more constructive adage for attaining wealth would be "Look for opportunities." Because opportunities are not rare.

  Similarly, if one looks for assassins, and day after day they aren't found, the search has no payoff. The ZAP philosophy encourages us to look for nothing, and instead to directly perceive what's actually here. So rather than giving your mind an assignment it will quickly tire of ("Look for Assassins"), here's an assignment that actually has a frequent payoff: See and register relevant behaviors without regard (at this moment) to whether they will eventually escalate to attack.

  You see a person positioning to intersect with your protectee, hands kept out of view, or you see someone stubbornly maintaining a position, or someone holding his breath, or someone breathing rapidly -- all these behaviors are worthy of holding your attention -- until they aren't. (Suspects worthy of your attention exist everywhere, regardless of whether they turn out to be attackers. This is a concept of such profound importance to protective work that it merits the entire Chapter Five.)

  Ideally, each event will gain your attention for only the length of time it takes to either qualify for continuing interest or be discounted. You hear a pop, determine it's a balloon, and you move on. A man quickly withdraws something from his coat, it's a pair of sunglasses, and you move on. When you are in the flow, ZAP asserts itself without engaging you in the act of thinking.

  If you do observe an attacker, then you become predator. Then you draw on powerful resources. But no predator in Nature would waste those precious resources before they are needed. No predator remains in a constant state of predation, nor does any predator always hunt for prey; the most effective predators are always ready to exploit any opportunity that arises. (More on this below.)

  How can you tell when you're in the Now? By the constant recognition of new information. This has less to do with what's happening and more to do with how you process what's happening. For example, as the politician shakes hand after hand in the jostling crowd, you are presented with new information in every instant. Your mind is totally occupied with the happenings you perceive, you take in each new image: a hand, a body, a face, an expression on a face. You are not thinking about anything, you are perceiving only. You are
in the Now.

  An unskilled protector might categorize thousands of events within view under the heading of "handshaking" when, in fact, there is so much to perceive that it can't possibly be contained in any one category. A capable protector intuitively registers, assesses, and then discards many perceptions, each perception: Now this, Now this, Now this, and nothing is assigned to any category (which would be thinking). In the jostling crowd, it's easier to remain present in the Now because so many perceptions arise, but it's more difficult to remain present when listening to the politician's speech before a fairly sedate audience. The people aren't doing much, you might think, and it's the same tedious speech you've heard at a hundred rallies and luncheons, the speech that wasn't new even the first time you heard it, the speech that has you stuck in your mind anticipating each passage before it comes, anticipating that joke he tells as if it just occurred to him, anticipating the quarter-hearted laughter from the crowd, and anticipating (most eagerly) the ending.

  So how do you stay present while listening to that speech? You don't listen to that speech! Listening to the speech is the opposite of being present in the Now. But if you allow it, your mind will pounce on that speech every time, because your mind loves things that are predictable, loves confirming what it already knows. Following along and hearing that which is already known is a test the mind always passes, and the mind loves tests -- and particularly loves passing tests, winning points, being right. But to stay in the Now, you don't listen to that speech at all. Your ears might register the vibration, your mind might recognize that it's the speech, but you don't give away your greatest asset: your attention. You can be sure that a person who is about to attack is not focused on the content of that speech, isn't thinking, "Wow, that's an interesting policy for dealing with the budget deficit."

  The Absolutely Bearable Stress of Attack

  A person who is about to attack might be thinking any number of things, but at the instant of attack, he is free of thinking; he is fully in the Now. If a protector is not already with the attacker in time, then he will be yanked into the Now in way that can be shocking and stressful. Even with the best of training and readiness, protectors during actual attacks can experience something well beyond the potency of the word stress -- beyond any word.

  At the instant of an attack, time stops, time speeds up, time is forgotten, everything is forgotten. Life is no longer lived in leisurely increments of seconds or minutes. Life is now divided into milliseconds. Every tiny action is now under the control of ancient internal protectors that have been waiting deep in the cells. The heart rate will instantly jump as the body's nuclear defense system jolts on. Blood flow increases to the legs and arms, lactic acid heats up the muscles. A cocktail of powerful chemicals will blast into the bloodstream, including the famous one, adrenaline, but also Cortisol, a chemical that helps the blood clot more quickly in the event of injury.

  The five senses will take off, sometimes in different directions, shouting back disjointed reports of their discoveries. Normally, when one sense is involved in something of importance, it commands the attention of the brain, while the other senses sink into the background or attempt to cooperate by providing additional information. But the attack has overthrown all that, and by the time things are back to normal, normal will have been forever changed.

  It is distressing enough to watch videos of attacks, even though distance provides us the luxury to perceive events through sight and hearing only. In actual attacks, events are absorbed by every sense, taken in via taste, smell, touch, and through the skin, literally. The exchange of energy between aggressor and defender cannot be fully appreciated from the comfort and distance of wherever you are reading these words. A hint of the stress is displayed by the contorted, unnatural postures and twisted, pained expressions on the faces of protectors during attacks.

  Photo by Robert H. Jackson

  Photo from AP Images

  Photo from CBS News Archives

  How can protectors best prepare themselves to deal with the savageness and speed of these events? Training of course -- a very specific type of training that provides, as authentically as possible, the experience of violent attack. Not just role-playing simulation, or aiming an electronic gun at a big-screen TV, but an experience that fully engages the student and compels him or her to function in the face of fear, pain, and stress.

  In TAD exercises, the student's wish to perform causes some stress, but protectors need training that compels profound stress. To accomplish that, we must place them in the specific type of emergency situation in which they are expected to prevail. Cadet firefighters are required to make their way through a building engulfed in real flames because flickering red lights and orange paper mache wouldn't prepare the mind and body to function well in an actual emergency. The cadets must experience real heat and real fire in order to gain what amounts to a mental vaccine.

  "Just as a fireman has to know all about fire, you have to know all about violence."

  Col. Dave Grossman

  In protective work, the ideal mental vaccine for stress is to be shot at, and hit, and to prevail -- all of which occurs during our Academy. We place trainees in the role of protector, and then we shoot at their protectees, and at them, using real guns, firing real projectiles. Rather than lead bullets, however, we use plastic marking capsules (Simunition(r)). Our students wear face protection, but unlike students in many law enforcement academies, they do not wear any other protective garment. When they get shot, it hurts -- a lot. In this context, the pain is good, for it's part of the inoculation.

  Photo by Gavin de Becker & Associates

  To inoculate against a disease, a small dose of the disease is used. Similarly, to inoculate against a stressor[?], we have to give a dose of the precise stress that protectors might experience in an attack -- and then have them prevail.

  Our students are stung by the painful shots, their skin is broken, and the memory that's imprinted contains the experience of continuing to function effectively in the face of pain and injury.

  Research indicates that people in attack situations can have sustained heart rates of higher than 200 beats per minute, so our students learn a lot about the destructive effects of increased heart rate. Consider that for the average person, when the heart rate reaches about 115, fine motor control begins to deteriorate, along with visual reaction time and judgment. Up around 145, substantial reductions in performance occur, some caused by the body's rerouting blood away from the muscles. Our Academy has exercises in which protectors under attack must perform actions requiring dexterity (unlocking a car door, for example). In early engagements, it's not uncommon for students to be incapable of even simple, familiar actions.

  After just a couple of Simunition(r) engagements, student heart rates come down, allowing motor skills and judgment to be retained. Our experience has confirmed this reasonable assumption: Attacks are more stressful for protectors than for attackers. That's because attackers must be calm in order to achieve accuracy, and they must maintain at least the illusion of calm in order not to tip their intent too early. Their breathing is under control, and even at the Moment of Commitment, attackers can (and usually must) stay fairly still. Conversely, at that same moment, protectors need to move suddenly and quickly, compelling increased heart rate. Given this, stress inoculation training is all the more important to help prepare protectors to retain effectiveness during attacks.

  Attack simulations and the use of Simunition(r) are, thankfully, gaining wider acceptance, but the type of Stress Inoculation training we are discussing next is not something you'll likely have read about elsewhere. Only our Academy is applying it.

  Combat Stress Inoculation

  The emergency situation that is far and away the most difficult to accurately simulate is close-quarters combat of the type one might experience in an attack. Hand-to-hand combat training at police and military academies typically involves someone playing a bad guy and "attacking" another participant. This
method cannot be fully effective, because trainees always know that the role-playing instructor isn't going to injure them, and is, in fact, seeking to avoid doing injury. The student knows he is not likely to lose an eye or break a wrist during simulated fights. Accordingly, the experience doesn't trigger the same level of fear and stress as an actual violent encounter.

  To accurately simulate combat, we developed an innovative use of attack-trained police dogs. Before the exercise begins the trainee has absolutely no idea what is coming, not even that a dog will be involved. During the first encounter, a dog is secured on a chain, and the trainee is placed just out of reach. The trainee is directed to remain in place and stand eye-to-eye taunting the viciously growling animal.

  Photo by Gavin de Becker & Associates

  Photo by Gavin de Becker & Associates

  In the next encounter, the dog that the trainee has just been taunting is no longer chained, however the trainee is wearing bite-resistant clothing. The dog is ordered to attack with all it's got. Even though the powerful bites don't penetrate the skin, the trainee experiences the tension, grappling, wrestling, and aggressiveness of an actual violent attack -- because it is an actual violent attack. Having a dog latched onto one's arm -- or chest, or back -- trying with all its energy to pull you the ground and hurt you, convinces the body to go into its full defense mode.

  These encounters with police dogs do much more than simulate violence -- they are violence. Trainees are aware throughout that every encounter is dangerous, and that the animal intends and is trying to do them harm. That's an experience impossible to achieve in conventional training.

 

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