Performance and Sports Psychology in Security Practice

What can the security industry learn from Sports Psychology

War, combat, sports, and security is as old as history itself, and in some cases, they overlap. This overlap for example of work and play can be seen when countries play "war games". Both the USA and Europe through, NATO perform "war games" to test each member state's military personnel readiness for combat or all-out war. Even the term "war games" has the element of the word "games" in it. The goal is to exhibit the skill, strategy and mental fortitude to defeat the "enemy".

What can security managers learn from the psychology of sports? Or in this case, the psychological need to play, have a game, compete in sports or start and stick with and exercise? (And I do not mean physical exercise here but ongoing security expertise to develop a security culture). Can security managers motivate employees to exhibit proper security practices in their organizations to secure the property, people, information, or data? 

How can security managers utilize sports psychology as a means of encouraging an ongoing security culture in the workplace? What is sports psychology you may ask?  Below are the two definitions of sports and exercise psychology. For the sake of time and space, I am using them interchangeably in the context of mental and psychological benefits towards building a security culture in an organization.

American Psychological Associations definitions of sports psychology and exercise psychology

"Sport psychology is a proficiency that uses psychological knowledge and skills to address the optimal performance and well-being of athletes, developmental, and social aspects of sports participation and systemic issues associated with sports settings and organizations" (American Psychological Association, 2008).

What Is Exercise Psychology and Sport Psychology?

Exercise psychology and sports psychology involve the scientific study of the psychological factors that are associated with participation and performance in sport, exercise, and other types of physical activity. Sport psychologists are interested in two main areas: (a) helping athletes use psychological principles to achieve optimal mental health and to improve performance (performance enhancement) and (b) understanding how participation in sport, exercise, and physical activity affects an individual's psychological development, health, and well-being throughout the lifespan (American Psychological Association, 2011).

At times, security managers complain that employees have a hard time or outright ignore security policy to keep the organization running securely. Many security managers come up with new policy solutions, new techniques, implement new software policy, etc, etc, but are still coming up short in establishing a long term security mindset needed to keep employees engaged in security and not have them lose interest.

While many security managers are awesome when it comes to security policy, running training programs, and even teaching the need to be secure, they at times miss the psychological aspect of the human that is needed to keep the employees engaged.

For security managers to have success in keeping people interested and engaged, they must not only understand their mental, emotional psychological state but also understand human psychology to a degree to understand why security practices are being or not being implemented by people.

What keeps people engaged in the security mindset? Do they have confidence in themselves? Do they trust the security manager? Or, are they in a complacent mindset that nothing has happened in the past, so they doubt that anything significant will happen in the future? Many employees lose the security mindset due to complacency, boredom, or at times they simply do not trust the security manager and start to put up a mental wall and reject pretty much everything that is being asked of them by the security managers regarding security policy practices. And this lack of action by the employee leads not only to a frustrated security manager but also a frustrated employee as both engage in a tug of war of egos and emotions.

How might security managers overcome this tug of war of emotions and egos by understanding human nature? Well, sports and exercise psychology may provide some solutions to those security managers that are interested in human behavioral psychology as a way to get cooperation and work towards the same goals. With human behavior in mind, let us take a trip back to how human behavior is molded and developed through human behavioral development from childhood.

Human psychology at "play"

Humans are curious, and in one form or another love to compete with each other, be it in play, games, sports, or exercise where most people fall into one of these activity categories. And as we grow from childhood into adulthood we develop our skills of walking, running, hitting balls, balancing, speed, and power through playing, games, sports, and exercise.

As we grow into adulthood and reach adulthood, our activities may change, but skill development and fitness continue to grow. As adults many of us still play, we still get involved with games, some may even continue or start being part of sports to compete, and many just simply exercise to keep fit both mentally, physically, and to stay healthy.

The definitions of the 4 phases of activity are play, game, sport, and exercise

Play

This mode of activity is typically used for having fun, enjoyment, and doesn't always have to have a target goal. This activity mode also reduces anxiety, excess energy, and lets the individual practice a set of skills (Shaw et al., 2005).

Game

This mode is typically for having a playful competition, and the outcome of this mode is to develop or exhibit skill and strategy. In this mode, rules are not so important than for example in the games mode (Shaw et al., 2005).

Sport

This model is structured and institutionalized. This mode is typically organized with teams, sponsors, coaches, referees, and leaders. It can also involve technical equipment such as safety, clothing, and training halls (Shaw et al., 2005).

Exercise

This mode is typically thought of as a way to develop a level of health and fitness. exercise, unlike sports, is that there is no competition and is typically non-institutionalized.

Psychological context

All of these modes are explored from a sports psychology context and the behaviors that are involved in the inner workings of people in a way of mental phenomena. The human inner behavior falls into two categories, feeling and thinking. So we can say that the psychological aspect here is the scientific study of behavior, feelings, and thoughts (Shaw et al., 2005) generated by people in the above-listed modes.                             
           

"Unpacking"

Employing play, game, sport, and exercise in developing a security culture using sports and exercise psychology, can help the security manager to use out of the box thinking, as well as using methods that have been tested and researched to work with athletes and people trying to get into shape.

Employing these concepts can also assist in reducing stress and anxiety through confidence-building methods.

Employing play

you have to make the security activity fun, and this can most of the time be employed by play. Play mode sets into motion a thinking mode that this will be a fun activity. The play activity will be enjoyable, pleasurable, and can be spontaneous (Shaw et al., 2005). When employing the play mode of security psychology, we must keep in mind that this is not the time for competition, this is the time to relax and entertain, and use the newly learned skills as a way to release stress and anxiety.

Employing game

In this mode, it is now time to do a bit of friendly competition. In this mode, the goal will be to test or determine the physical skill sets, strategy skill sets of the players (Shaw et al., 2005). In this mode, you will have to make up some ground rules as well as what will determine the winners and losers as well as what the prizes may be.

Employing Sports

OK, so now that you have understood the game mode it is no time to step it up a notch, and for those that are willing, it is time for the sports mode. In the sports mode, an institutionalized model has to now be employees such as teams, area to exhibit the skills, much more stringent rules, and regulations, team captions, rituals, rewards, trainers, coaches, and so on (Shaw et al., 2005).

However, remember that the main feature of the sports model is its physical dimension (Shaw et al., 2005) and that some people are not going to want to participate in the sports aspect of it due to reasons of their own such as being non-competitive, fear of embarrassment, low self-esteem, fear of losing and so on. The organizer of these in a company or organizational events must consider these factors and counsel these people to gain progress.

Exercise mode

The exercise mode is typically an ongoing process that goes beyond games, sports, and play. The exercise mode is typically thought of as an ongoing process to gain better health and fitness (Shaw et al., 2005). In the exercise mode unlike the sports mode, there is no competition involved, there are no winners or losers (Shaw et al., 2005). In the exercise mode, a person can simply do it to keep up their newly learned skills or the skill sets that they have already acquired years back. And so in the spirit of fitness they typically continue this activity as an exercise to keep their physical, mental and wits engaged and sharp. It is the exercise mode that is typically a sought after goal by organizational leaders. the person in an exercise mode is doing it mainly for intrinsic value and sees the benefits of continually being engaged in the activity both for psychological rewards as well as physical rewards. The exercise mode mentality is what we seek to gain and this is the overall goal in security psychology.

Let's get ready for action!! 

How may an individual or corporation use these 4 modes to build a proper security psychology mindset, leading to proper and effective awareness assessment and action? The goal of using sport psychology concepts in this post is not to give you an exact technique or method that you must use, nor a crop and paste format nor a step one to ten application. The goal here is simply for you to think differently and expand your base by exploring methods you can employ by building off the sports psychology model which has already been researched, evaluated, and tested for effectiveness. 

So the goal here is to give you a different way of thinking about security in hopes that you and your organization can build on these sport psychology concepts to change behavior. Most importantly, to get you to use your imagination to construct long-lasting behavior changing activities through behavioral psychology as forethought, and not as an afterthought. Think, evaluate, use your imagination, and build using sport psychology concepts.

Due to the vast needs and differences of companies out there, it would be very difficult if not impossible to give a one size fits all solution to employees for all organizations, every organization has different needs, different work culture and so on. However, all organizations employ humans as their primary workforce, and so the task becomes a lot more simplified because of human psychology and behavioral techniques that can be employed to promote a secure environment by the above mode of sport psychology concepts. 

Technology changes as it typically does, but human behavior as complex as it maybe is still more workable and simpler with a degree of predictability. I am not saying that human psychology is a simple matter, but what I am saying is that humans in this context, from childhood to adulthood like to play, have friendly games, join sports, and commit to exercise in one form or another.

Human psychology is a lot more predictable and manageable for the overall goal of promoting a security mentality as well as a security culture in the long run. Exercise programs that stimulate the thinking process to activate the proper security mentality will reduce anxiety and must be a lifelong choice.

What can security managers learn from sports psychology in the context of mental health for employees that have anxiety and stress when it comes to keeping up their role in keeping a security mindset? A lot! It is not always easy to keep up with the constant bombardment of security threats, security responses, and changing security policy. It is hard enough at times to just simply do your job, and now, to have this extra burden of keeping up security can produce anxiety by being overwhelmed.

Over the last decade, there has been a vast amount of literature written on the subject of mental health promotion in exercise by sports psychologists, neurosciences, pharmacologists, psychophysiologists, and physiologists. A broad range of support can be found on exercise benefits. This exercise is of course not limited to physical exercises such as boxing, golf, running, biking but also activities such as chess and other sports that are generally associated with mind use only (sports psychology concepts themes).

From sport psychology, we can learn that the more a person is comfortable and exhibits a degree of competence with activities will result in less anxiety and stress when it comes to keeping up with the learned skills.

Developing a coach-athlete relationship

Shamuel kohen. Bomb Threat Awareness for organizations

Relationship and trust. Security managers and the team must develop a 2-way relationship. Like a coach or athlete.

Without getting in too deep into the security managers as a coach, we must understand that security managers are a type of coach. Coaching, guiding, explaining, and at times enforcing operational and policy practice. So, within this context security managers take on a sort of coach position.

And like with all coaches and athletes, there must be trust. If employees do not trust your advice, training methods, and reasons for living up to the security culture standards as well as employing some form of training, security compliance will be ignored or in some cases outside the mandatory compliance, they will largely ignore what is being taught or employed.

According to (Moore & Tschannen-Moran, 2015), people have a basic need to belong and try to maintain a strong bond of lasting personal attachments; people seek a healthy positive relationship with each other. And through this need, most people seek to do their best at what they do as a way to be part of the group in play, games, and sport.

When people seek out coaches, in this case, the security manager, an important factor that people sought out in a coach was empathy, someone who inspires confidence, competency as well as being in a positive mindset, not to mention that the coach must have the ability and knowledge to understand the client's point of view as well as values (Moore & Tschannen-Moran, 2015).

So without going deeply into the coaches job, my point was to just point some basic information regarding the coach and I encourage security managers to study out the topic of being a good coach and supplement their knowledge base regarding the topic of sports coaching and hopefully gain a deeper insight into the psychology and behavior of not only themselves but the people that they are trying to guide into a security culture mindset.

Conclusion

So what is the goal of all this sports psychology application into the security mindset? Well, we can say it is to build a healthy habit, a way of thinking, and a lifestyle built on behavioral change through natural human behaviors such as play, games, sports, and exercise. People as well as animals, love to play, and love to be challenged with interaction, stimulation as well as some form of reward. By introducing and understanding the 4 modes of the sport psychology listed earlier, we can tap into the natural human instinct to build skills and competencies that further produce a feeling of know-how and self-confidence to reduce boredom, anxiety, and stress. Confidence in one's ability can lead to a desired security policy implementation, outcome, and security-oriented culture. 

By Shamuel Kohen

REFERENCES

American Psychological Association. (2011). What is exercise psychology and sports psychology? https://www.apadivisions.org. https://www.apadivisions.org/division-47/about/resources/what-is

American Psychological Association. (2008). Sport psychology. https://www.apa.org. https://www.apa.org/ed/graduate/specialize/sports

Breslin, G. (2016). Sport and exercise psychology: Practitioner case studies. John Wiley & Sons. 

Moore, M., & Tschannen-Moran, B. (2015). Coaching psychology manual. LWW. 

Shaw, D., Gorely, T., & Corban, R. (2005). Sport and exercise psychology. Garland Science. 

All material and pictures are copyright Shamuel Kohen

Survival Hikes

7 reasons why you should plan and go on a survival hike

The title “survival hikes” to some readers may imply hikes that involve surviving, possibly bushcraft, possible food deprivation, or some form of military/survivalist type of activity. This, of course, is true in some cases, but not in this case. When I teach self-defense, I tell the students that self-defense starts internally in a person’s psychological or emotional state of being. I would ask the students, “what good is self-defense in the context of external threats such as defending against thugs, or how to defend against a punch when the real self-defense starts with your own mental health?”

And in this context, we can define self-defense as defending yourself against yourself. The root of any successful self-defense is your psychological state. The chances of a person killing themselves as a result of depression followed by suicide are higher than the chances of a person becoming a victim of a crime, whereby they would have to use self-defense karate style techniques.

In addition to depression, chronic stress is associated with one of the six leading causes of a person’s death. According to the American psychological association chronic stress-related deaths come in forms such as suicide, heart disease, cancer, cirrhosis of the liver, lung ailments, and accidents. And so, self-defense here is article is defined as “defending yourself against yourself.”

I hear it said many times “that a person's worst enemy is themselves.” If this is truly the case, it must also be logical that we must recognize the threats that we bring on ourselves.

Too many people hike to train the body to be tough or in some cases, hikes and trekking events train others in bushcraft skills to learn how to survive outdoors.

Survival hikes in this context will be hiking for mental survival against threats such as depression, loneliness, anxiety, and so on. The benefit in survival, hikes will be to develop a mentally healthy lifestyle that impacts other aspects of your life such as home, family, community, and friends and lastly work and education.

1. Get out and breathe. Many people spend the majority of their day indoors. In Finland for example, it was reported in research posted by the news that many Finns spend most of their days sitting (YLE news, 2018). As I smiled at myself reading the story, I could not help myself from asking, why are they sitting on their butts inside? And not outside breathing fresh air. I would bet that they spent most of their days inside breathing in air that is full of indoor pollution from other coworkers, dust, chemicals, and other localized pollutants. I can't’ help but think about how this polluted indoor air affects health in a negative way.

Many people don't realize that breathing in this indoor polluted air makes some people feel claustrophobic due to a lack of fresh air getting to their lungs, blood, and brain cells. Some may even feel that they have difficulty breathing, thereby affecting their work productivity. Not getting fresh air into the body does terrible harm to the brain. The body was made to breathe in fresh air for maximum health and performance. In the past what seems like a lifetime ago, I spent many hours working indoors teaching seminars on security-related topics, in addition, I would compile my indoors life with indoor activities such as self-defense classes, sports such as judo, jiu-jitsu, Boxing and kickboxing. If there were moments of outdoors, they were spent in shooting ranges sitting and breathing in gun powder and beating away mosquitoes and black flies or having to go outdoors to get to my car (indoor) to drive to the store (more indoor).

Survival hikes contribute to your survival and “self-defense”. We all need air to survive, so a major benefit of survival hikes is putting fresh the air into your body and brain for maximum health benefits.

2. Your focus will be sharpened. Many times we lose focus and our memory seems to be getting worse. How many times did you forget such things as keys, wallets, purses or even where the kids and dog are? When on survival hikes we emphasize to others as well as ourselves to “manage our space” or as we bark out orders like a military man, “manage your equipment”.

Due to the fact that many hikers and even professional military people in the field may at times carelessly lose vital equipment such as water holders, knives, firefighters, and so on. We emphasize the concept of inspecting the grounds. Before we set camp, we look around and take note of dangers such as anthills, bee or wasp hives, animal tracks such as bear trails, or other animals that may be a danger to us while we camp out. In some sad cases, hikers have been murdered due to a lack of paying attention to criminals or terrorists watching them so they can attack them at a weak moment.

Being forgetful and losing track of equipment and people can have a devastating outcome, such as when people actually forget their children or pets strapped into their hot car, as can been read in many news articles for example in the USA. You can Google this and see how often this happens. The numbers are staggering and frightening.

When you do a survival hike and focus on equipment management as well as pre-camping danger management, you find that in your everyday life you start employing the same thinking. For example, on the trekking campsite, we would say, “do a dangers inspection”. On packing up we say “do a departure inspection” or “do an inspection”. These inspections are enforced to make sure we did not leave any equipment behind only to be regretted later. In addition, if we travel on mountain bikes or kayaks, on the road or trail or water, we do amount inspection. This is where we visually inspect our partner's backpack and equipment on their back or transportation for losing equipment, unzipped or unsecured zippers, and so on. In turn, they inspect us for the same. Our survival trekking starts and ends with self and area inspections always and without exception.

This inspection mentality gets forced into your psyche by constant repetition, and so it becomes conditioning that leads to developing a skill that will soon be second nature. Members of our groups reported that it has effects on their daily life in positive yet funny ways. For example, this mental conditioning for detail inspection affect them in situations such as when they go into their homes, their mind and eyes start scanning for what is different, when they see their spouses or children, they start inspecting their clothes and bags, this also applies to others as well, and when they leave premises, they start doing a quick self and area inspection. This operational conditioning reaction is now part of their lives and they find that their mind is more sensitive to change and so this new mental behavior that was conditioned into them, aids in fighting forgetfulness and complacent mentality.

3. You will feel how much mental and physical pressure you can take.

Taking the time to give yourself challenges in the context of these survival hikes gives you time to reflect on life and other issues. Many times in our long survival hikes thoughts of work and home life crop up.  On the silent march up the hill and through the bush, we reflect and plan on what we will do when we get back. But as hours turn into a full day, and a full day turns into two, three, four, or even five days, thoughts of home life, work-life begin to disappear. And the thoughts of body discomfort creeps into the forefront of our thoughts. Thoughts such as hurting feet, lower back pain, damn these mosquitoes, when will we rest, and so on take on first priority, and thoughts of normal life fade into the background.

Homelife and work-life now seem a long distance away due to the more immediate concerns of black flies, misquotes and the dreaded ticks consume your mind as you march. Hunger kicks in, thirst kicks in and soon the only thoughts you have are the joint pains you may at times feel.

These thoughts at times of rest are soon followed by the appreciation of the beauty of the surroundings, the quiet nature, and the lack of the crowd followed by the panic of getting things done on time at work or in the home. Ahhh, the bliss of not knowing that rat race life for the short moment.

Although the mental and physical pressure in survival hikes are not as extremes mountaineering or cross country trekking, say 100k to 1000k. But short 2, 3, or 5 days 15 to 40k hikes or treks can offer quite a bit of physical challenge with a full backpack loaded with equipment, camping gear, and few liters of water. You will quickly appreciate the challenge without a doubt.

After being pressure tested in this way, home and work life just does not seem to bother us as much. This pressure testing resets the priorities of life from a “naked perspective”, meaning back to the basics in addition this “naked” also can be seen as free from technology, work-life, debtors, or anything like that. If you thought those were the important things in life, survival hikes will re-prioritize your thinking. Survival in taking care of your mind and body becomes the priority, just like the priorities of life in the old and ancient of days our ancestors had to deal with. You will truly appreciate life and simple things.

When you get back home, you will truly appreciate your simple bed, the current things you own and slowly the need for more junk in your home will fade. You will be put on a life priority “reset”, understanding that in nature being free is the hardest thing people can deal with. Being truly free is a hard and daunting task both mentally and physically.

The restrictions and being a slave to modern life does not seem so hard after all. I personally prefer free life balanced with technology by doing many weeks of survival trekking in every season every year. And so I developed my own philosophy of “own less do more lifestyle”.

4. You will learn to be resourceful from a perspective nor common to you.

Survival hikes will also challenge you to think outside of your comfort zone and make life a bit easier and fun. If you are willing to take the safe challenge that is an approach this with an open mind. Thinking outside the comfort zone in itself is a challenge and one common challenge is the proper use of time. I never thought time can hurt, but in this case, time does hurt. What kind of time hurts? The one that says you have to do it again time. How many of us have taken a few hours to complete a task, just to find out that there was an obstacle that made you do a project again from scratch? How did you feel now? How did you feel knowing it took you hours to get to where you are in your project, just too be forced to do it all over again and lose another two or three or even half a day’s worth of time? Now you know what I mean by “time hurts”. Damn! I got to do it all over again, the lost time! Grrrr. This now calls for innovative thinking, to complete a project without starting from scratch.

This is the exact challenge we were faced with when we hiked 3 hours just to get to a cliff that had a bridge collapsed and the now gone bridge was out for repairs. What do we do now? We ask each other. It took us 3 bloody hours to hike here and the base camp is just across the slow-moving of water below.

If we cross, how do we cross with all our stuff? Or should we hike back another 3 hours to the starting point? A total of a 6-hour hike in all. Time for the brains to come up with a safe solution. Swim for it! I thought and yelled to the group, as the group looked at each other with confusion, yes I said, we swim.

Time to construct a makeshift raft and swim across chilly waters and save 3 hours of hiking with a 15 min chili swim? The choice was easy, make a makeshift raft to carry the packs and swim across!

One poor old soul from another hiking group went into a panic attack and started fighting that he can’t make it back; he was desperately looking for someone who had access to a motorboat from people that were camping in the area, only to find no one with boat access. So this poor soul had to simply walk back the same way he came for the last 3 hours, another 3 on top of that.

And so we made an innovative imaginative choice, it was safe and the choice was right. But fear and panic struck the other group of hikers and so, they lost time and gained a lot of ankle and back pain in addition to their frustration levels. Thinking outside the box if it is safe, go for it.

5. Overcoming challenges, step by step.

Short hikes, longer hikes, and very long hikes. Like many others before us, we started our survival hikes with kayaking, or can we say “survival kayaking”? We started off with small 6 k kayaking trips that took a few hours, and slowly graduated up to 11-hour nonstop kayaking trips. We slept on some of the many Finnish islands at times from 2-day ventures to full 5-day ventures. One success led to another, and each kayaking camping trip they became more pleasurable than the last. The kayaking trips had special excitements with amazing sights of animals, birds, and landscapes, to inner deep thoughts of life and future goals.

In the beginning, the goal was kayaking as far and as many places we can. Always a new place to kayak and rarely did we return to the same place twice on the many lakes in Finland. This adventure mindset graduated us up to cross country hiking, slowly starting with 1 day 15k hikes to 2-day 15k hikes, to 5 days 500-3000 meter high mountain or hill hikes. Each time graduating further up the scale of challenges as our bodies developed more strength and resilience to pain. Not to mention the psychology of overcoming quitting mindset.

This, in turn, let to the next phase to cross country biking with bike packs and camping gear. Starting again slowly with 35k rides and camping, to 130k rides, and some few overnight camping. Surely and slowly progressing on to our triathlon mode of survival hikes and adventures. Foot hikes, cross country kayaking to cross country bike challenges we overcame each challenge with pain and excitement. As we started on foot, in a few years took us to greater challenges like kayaking and biking as a survival trekking adventure. Overcoming each challenge and hardship that we in our inner thought would claim “this is the last one” just to find out we were addicted and continued with more challenging adventures.

Each new challenge that we overcame, set our spirits up for the next challenge. Slowly escalating from easy to the extreme. The need to continually outdo the last trek just kept fueling us to raise the bar to the next level. Normal life challenges and problems did not look so hard or scary after these challenges. Our brains were no rewired to overcome hardships both physically and mentally.

6. Out of the box goal setting mentality.

Nothing seems as tedious and never-ending than just walking to an unknown destination point. Your brain starts doing Kid things such as asking questions, how much longer? When are we going to get there? My back hurts, my legs hurt, and on and on and on.

With a well-defined destination point such as distance, landmarks, maps, and so on, comes the spirit to over the boardroom of time, distance, and some normal trekking related physical pains. When one destination or objective is has been met, the mind and body prepare to take on the next destination challenge with a more positive outlook. Even though we may feel discomfort we know from past or recent experience that the success of each attained goal brings its own rewards. As we strive through one discomfort and success, other discomforts may be more tolerable and even predictable. 

Not only are these discomforts predictable but expected. When the group members expected a certain level of tolerated pain such as slight lower back discomfort, shoulder discomfort, and foot aches, we were better at managing them and overcome the fear and anxiety of uncertainty, by understanding and drawing on past experiences to understand that even this pain challenge will be overcome and it is perfectly normal. And so it went with every goal met and ever new goal planned and reached.

Going back to a previous example of running into what seemed to be a dead-end in our adventure in northern Finland, we were faced with a choice after we came across a hanging bridge that was out and down for maintenance by the national parks service. We were faced with hours of trekking back to the starting point or to continue our trek. We could turn back or we could improvise.

We decided to make the improvised choice as we weighed the risk and benefits and in this case, the benefits outweighed the risks. Do we build a wooden float from the logs we could find, use shoestrings to bind it together, and swim naked across the chilly waters? When we got to the other side, we got warms, put on our warm clothes, and preceded forward with our adventure happily ever after.

We did some basic out of the box thinking and we built a small raft and survivalist would have been proud of, saving time, more pain, and misery.

Point a to point b goal achievement Out of the box innovative thinking becomes more of a natural option when faced with unforeseen challenges, given the fact we weighted each challenge with risk, loss benefit, and always kept it safe. This “operant conditioning” that we developed become natural in this way of life, and translated well back in the so-called civilized world with its own problems and challenges. And so out of the box thinking or using the imagination to its fullest became part of our thinking as well as a second nature behavioral pattern.

7. A feeling of success without the need for the praise of others.

Intrinsic self-esteem development to positive self-esteem where being judged by others becomes less and less important is also a big benefit when it comes to survival hikes A feeling of success no one can strip from you, you own it. Once the survival hikes were complete, the group felt we have done it yet again! A sense of pride and accomplishment warmed us like a warm blanket. We have done it! You’ve done it! You may or may not feel the pain on your body, but in the end, you have done it! This sense of accomplishment sets the mood for the next hike and the next adventure, as well as possible for you to make the next hike a bit more challenging if you chose.

When we head out with our group, be it winter or summer or any the season actually, we keep raising the bar of the challenge to new heights and give ourselves higher expectations for a successful survival hike. With every success, we raised the bar of difficulty and challenge, and raising the bar kept things interesting and fun.

The adrenaline rush of adventure and success is the level of an intrinsic high that is felt as your hormones pump out the feel-good chemicals that comes with overcoming one challenge after another and the feeling of success. With every success, our group celebrated with handshakes, high fives, or fist bumps. We did it, I DID IT. We have earned the bragging rights of success and we looked forward and discussed with high enthusiasm the next adventure or survival trekking.

Even though we did many of these so-called survival trekking with a partner or a small group for safety and security reasons, you can still claim the success of the survival as your own and the fact that you had the drive and commitment to succeed. And with much success, you did it without your hand being held at every kilometer, challenge, problem, or whatever came up along the way. You can actually claim it, YOU did it, and your team did it. You will have a sense of feeling that in an emergency, you have the mental and physical stamina to get to safety or get to help. This feeling of primitive success is translatable to any if not most life challenges. You now have an understanding of the psychological ability to overcome, you are a survival hiker.

By Shamuel Kohen

Sources;

https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/people_in_finland_spend_much_of_their_waking_hours_sitting_still_study_finds/10390765

School violence

School violence seminar and security plan development introduction.

Finland school security

Turvallistamatkaa

Bomb Threat - A guide to bomb threat awareness for organizations

Introduction

This manual has been written with the professional security personnel as well as a novice in mind. The novice is in the context of a person not formally in the security or police profession but whose profession brings people from all over together and thus being the target of a possible bombing. Bomb threat - A guide to bomb threat awareness for organizations is meant to aid people working in the service industry, educational institutions as well as a tourism business, or any organization doing business abroad that may be targeted for this threat.

The book is meant to educate the reader in a most basic manner and at the same time not oversimplifying the topic of bomb threat awareness. We choose to leave out all the mumbo-jumbo of complicated jargon and long-winded details. We choose to give you the need-to-knows on handling this threat and choose to leave out the nice-to-knows. Our goal is to keep the information effective for the everyday front line person.

As we listen and read the news, nowadays more than ever the everyday citizens are becoming aware of bombing incidents that are done by vicious and deranged members of our society through the use of explosives devices in forms of traditional explosives such as grenades or even more common the IEDs (improvised explosive devices).

 Professional Security agencies are called upon to be the first line of defense, providing protection for the lives of corporate employees, VIP clients frequenting bus and train stations as well as shopping malls.

As we have witnessed in the everyday world Security as well as law enforcement alone cannot be held responsible for every bomb that goes off killing and maiming people as well as destroying property. Every citizen must do their part to ensure a safe environment in which they do business and travel. To develop a security culture is everyone’s responsibility.

This book is designed to assist both the security professional and the citizen to prepare for the possible threat of explosives-related violence and intimidation.

The techniques and theories that you find in this textbook can be applied in many cases, they are intended only as a guide to assist you in making choices and aiding in your decision-making process.

The information within this textbook is compiled from a wide range of sources and experiences from history within this study context.

The point that we will be aiming at is emphasizing the value of being prepared and aware. By using the ideas or the 3A’s (Awareness, Assessment, and Action) we will try to ingrain in the reader the need to be on guard and vigilant and not to be caught off guard.

By developing and implementing a bomb threat response plan and developing a security plan, you can reduce and or manage personal injury and property damage. While it is true that we cannot predict when and where a bombing is going to happen, what we can do is develop a plan to manage it and reduce the damage and injury.

By Shamuel Kohen