Personal growth can save your life

I walk in the grocery shop and look at people’s behaviour… I walk in the street, and see yet the same… I go to a bank, and that behaviour is there… I meet a girl for coffee and it shines through… I socialise at a barbecue, and it is ever so strong.

The behaviour I talk about is that of being totally disregardful of our surroundings, in the sense of being totally ignorant of the reality of where we live.

The reason why I start my writings with such direct criticism aimed at the majority of law abiding citizens, is despite the fact that South Africa is the most violent democracy in the world, despite the fact that a rape takes place every 17 seconds (26 Nov 2010), yes that’s right every 17 seconds, despite the fact that 60-149 murders takes place every day, you go on with your lives as if it is simply a part of life that one has to accept and cannot do anything about.

That perception is painstakingly wrong. The question that has to be asked and also be answered is: Why 7 weeks after a farm murder or violent attack in the city, does people’s levels of awareness return to exactly the same levels of readiness that preceded the attack. Why after they or their families experienced such traumatic episodes do they not endure in protecting themselves against such future attacks? If it wasn’t obvious before the hijacking, murder, or violent house robbery, shouldn’t it at least be obvious to ready yourself and that some form of self protection should be manifested after such events?

I am sure that when you read this, you find it obvious. Implement safety measures, and maintain that new level of awareness and readiness so that you are not caught off guard like the previous time. The reason why it is obvious for you now, is that you are utilising your conscious mind to read and reason what you’ve just read. Consciously it makes sense, and to the conscious mind it is quite obvious that the correct measures should be taken immediately. It is the subconscious conclusions that can be quite the opposite.

The reason why this explanation follows is that those who open themselves to learning from it can grow personally, and not fall in the same trap as the millions of people out there that live in ignorance of the very direct safety threat that they are faced with. To get to the bottom of the cause of such high risk behaviour like being totally ignorant to personal threats we have to look at the workings of the mind.

In a nutshell the mind consists of two parts. The conscious and the subconscious.

The conscious enables us to reason, contemplate, and make calculated decisions…decisions that are right for us – For instance to take realistic precautionary measures to protect ourselves and our families. The subconscious runs all the functions of our mind and body, including our behaviour, feelings, and emotions. The subconscious in particular acts as a safeguard for our survival, and once a potential threat has been detected, activates what is known as the fight or flight response. It acts instantly with primitive behaviour patterns to get us out of that situation. Those behaviour patterns are Depression, Aggression, Anxiety, and the freeze response. It motivates us with strong emotions into a certain course of automatic action.

Our conscious brain is about 10% of our mind. On the other hand, our subconscious mind constitutes 90%. Everything that we’ve learned is captured in our brain in the form of templates with meaning and behaviour linked to them, and it forms our frames of reference.

The subconscious is remarkable, and works with lightning speed, taking information streaming in through our senses, and pattern matching it to our frames of reference in our mind. Based then on what we’ve learned (our frames of reference) our reality is formed and our reactions are based on the referenced information linked to the templates previously leaned. All the templates learned as a whole forms what we call the belief system. What we believe is right or wrong, how we react, or the emotions we feel. The core of our being.

Our subconscious will protect the core of our being by making sure that we act in line with our belief system, and thus enforces our self image and experience of reality as we perceive life to be. Our subconscious is a solution focused mind which works to resolve internal conflict, and make complete. Whenever information that contradicts our believed truths about life streams in, our Subconscious labels it as a problem, or threat to our way of living, and automatically deals with it. The parts of the information that fits with your beliefs are made known, and the information that doesn’t is simply filtered out or blocked from our conscious field of vision. I.E simply not brought to our attention.

This means that any information that contradicts our sense of reality (even if your sense of reality or your perceived truth is dangerously far from the actual truth) will be filtered out, so that only the information that affirms our sense of reality is pattern matched and acted upon, enforcing our sense of reality, truth, and control over our lives. The reason is based on sanity. The subconscious cannot tolerate insanity. This filtering process creates blind spots which are called psychological scotoma.

In other words. You can literally be looking at evidence that contradicts your interpretation, and not see it. We are affected by these blind spots on a daily basis, and it can have dire results. If you have negative beliefs about yourself like I’ll always be poor, or I always lose my keys, then your mind will filter out business opportunities, or even the picture of your keys lying in front of you, just so your beliefs can be confirmed.

One fundamental truth about the workings of the mind is what we assume we believe, and what we believe our mind reacts upon. When we look at the beliefs held in society, they are mostly that the police are or aught to protect us against such attacks, because we pay our taxes on time. I have many a time heard people saying that they don’t want to live in a jail(only a perception)…a statement reflecting purely on living comfort – Psychological Scotoma in the sense that they totally miss the fact that the police is greatly outnumbered, and the fact that their whole families lives are in grave danger.

They miss the facts of the picture of their wives being raped, skinned or burned with irons and then shot… (everyday realities in SA). Is that the price to pay to maintain a certain lifestyle? The reason why blind spots are created, even with people already having experienced traumatic events related to crime, is that it doesn’t happen to them everyday.

It happens in South Africa up to 149 times a day… but not to them. The subconscious mind is focused on confirming only their own truths learned previously in their lives, not the actual reality.

Growing up in South West Africa (Namibia) my mother’s family were faced with a real threat of terrorism… Today she is still aware and can identify security risks. My uncle grew up in South Africa where there was very little risk. He simply doesn’t notice what my mom does.

We experience what our mind believe we should experience based on our referencing system that tells us how life should be! If you believe that you should be able to live like people live in Europe… you only expose yourself as an easy target that will miss easily observed danger signs. You will be taken advantage of – the reason why people are so gob smacked when something actually happen to them.

The story of Cliff Young as by told Mark Alexander

In Australia a 600-km marathon is held between the cities of Sydney and Melbourne. Several years ago a 61-year-old man named Cliff Young showed up to run the race. Now the world class runners thought he was some derelict that showed up in the wrong place because Cliff showed up wearing Osh Gosh overalls and galoshes. And he was obviously an old man.

When he told them he was there for the marathon, the professional runners asked if he had ever run in a marathon before. “No,” replied Cliff. “How have you been training?” they asked. “I have cattle on my station [farm] and since I have no horses, I run around to move them along.” The runners laughed. You see, every professional marathoner knew with certainty that it took about five days to run this race, and that in order to compete, you would need to run 18 hours and sleep six hours. Cliff Young was clearly not up to their standards.

When the marathon started, the pros left Cliff behind in his galoshes. He had a leisurely shuffling style of running that targeted him as an amateur. Cliff had no training. He did not know what the world class runners knew. As you have probably guessed, Cliff won the race, but that is not what is astonishing. What is astonishing is that he cut one and a half days off the record time. How? Because of his lack of training, he didn’t *know* that you had to sleep. Cliff just kept on shuffling along in his galoshes while the pro runners slept, and he finished the race in three and a half days. He beat everybody. He was a sensation in Australia.

Now that world-class runners *know* that it is possible to run days at a time without sleep, and that they can conserve energy by adopting an easy shuffling jog, they have a new way of approaching long marathons. We are like the pro runners. We act, not according to the *real truth* but according to perceived truth which can be debilitating.

Final conclusions

How do one then go about to changing our perceived truth about how life should be? Imagination is invaluable. When we see ourselves in our imagination doing something, we attract ourselves to that state of mind, in effect setting a goal or vision. It is a conscious decision NOT based on emotion. Through our imagination we tell our brain what is important, in effect forming templates, and changing behaviours in our frames of reference.

Remember, because this new vision is contradictory to your previous beliefs your subconscious mind will respond with motivators like anxiety, or feelings of uneasiness relating to the new behaviour. When creating your vision, or any vision, you are effectively throwing your mind out of order (being creative), and because your subconscious strives to complete, you can either be overcome by the anxiety and fall back on previous behaviour, or use the anxiety as a creative drive.

The only pre-requisite for using anxiety as a creative drive is a conscious will to make a change. There are always a compilation of subtle clues that precedes an attack. Clues that can easily be spotted when our beliefs are in line with experienced opinions from experts relating to home safety.

We at FortisGroup show you the how, so you can mentally form that creative picture of how you can protect yourself and your home pro-actively, and also have the ability to defend yourself in a critical situation. We provide the tools, in the form of our gas gun range (no licence required), to further extend your abilities and capabilities to protect you and your family in a law abiding manner.

We provide tactical training so that you can minimise the risk of attack, and also minimise risk during your defence. Look at the facts, make the decision now, and have the will, to face the cards you were dealt with realistically. Ignorance is only bliss until they shoot your three year old daughter in the head.

Be realistically responsible.

That is the least you can do.

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