Situational Awareness

[Jason Mordecai]

It's worth knowing that situational awareness, powered by the senses can be improved and refined with training. In 1949 psychologist Donald Hebb described the theory of how brain pathways are developed through regular repetition. Today Hebb’s theory is commonly explained as follows: “Neurons that fire together wire together”.

The question is how do you improve your situational awareness?

 

[ASSAIL]

There is no doubt the conditioning can take place.
During the early days of CIC/Ops Room development the RN introduced the PWO (Principal Warfare Officer) concept, the person in charge of situational awareness.
His job was to absorb all external and internal information and react with appropriate direction to weapons and sensors.
To facilitate this he wore a headset with an external circuit on one ear and an internal circuit on the other.
During the months of course training what at first was a slow and difficult reaction to both info sources steadily developed into an ability to totally understand, absorb and react to two seperate streams of info with relative ease.
In fact after a 6 week FOST work up, I found myself at dinner with my wife in a pub engaging in pleasant conversation and simultaneously hearing and totally understanding the conversation of the couple at the adjacent table.
Uncanny but due totally to conditioning. Sadly or thankfully I lost that capacity a long time ago.
I have no doubt many of my contemporaries suffered the same fate.

 

[Forever_target]

We use the brain to change the mind and we use the mind to change the brain. If we know the 'mechanism' of the brain, we could have a positive framework for changing brain cells, of course making the 'mind' better. When the brain is more active, the mind will filter less reactive and reduce negative emotions such as hatred, anxiety, depression ... and responsive and support positive emotions like fun. , at peace with external stimulation.