Read Online Just 2 Seconds by Gavin de Becker, Thomas A. Taylor, Jeff Marquart - Free Book Online
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You'll also find cigarettes and caffeine just as easily, 24-hours a day, and virtually always within a hundred yards. Why? Because millions of people are addicted to these chemicals. For the purposes of protective work, addiction is defined as any habit that leads to craving. Craving is any strong or uncontrollable desire, any persistent tug on your attention that can be stopped only through feeding it, and even then the cessation is temporary.
Nicotine, sugar, and caffeine are three popular products people crave -- but what the body actually seeks is nutrition. Accordingly, all intelligent logistical plans by security professionals will include opportunities to eat, and access to foods that don't inspire cravings. On this planet, that just about certainly means protective teams will have to bring along some of their own food; otherwise the only thing you'll be able to find quickly will be sugar.
Lest we sound preachy, we certainly don't pretend to have mastered the nutritional plan that perfectly matches the realities of protective assignments. We're always working to crack this nut, so to speak (and speaking of nuts, they are part of the solution because they are metabolized more slowly than sugar). This isn't a book about nutrition, of course, and all we're intending here is to give you the goal: to be free of craving, because it undermines (you could say under-minds) a protector's ability to be present for the mission.
If we go one level deeper into the subject of craving, we see that craving is not actually linked to hunger at all. As one quickly learns when fasting, even if for just 24 hours, the craving for food that we initially think will worsen to the unbearable point actually passes entirely after a while. During a fast, you might think, "I have to eat right away," and then you see that 3, 5, 10, 15 hours later, you still haven't eaten and yet you're just fine. This shows that craving is in the mind, not the stomach; craving and hunger are much different things. The experience of fasting for 24 hours is a profoundly valuable one for protectors because once you know that you can go ten or fifteen hours without even a snack, waiting an hour or two till the next break becomes far easier. Above all, you know your body is fine and that the challenge is in the mind only. (There is a body issue in fasting, however: Drink plenty of water.)
So, we've seen that craving is in the mind and not the body, and we've seen that craving is destructive to effective protection because it takes the protector out of the present moment. From here, we can go still one level deeper and see that more than just keeping you from being present in the moment, craving is a symptom, a signal that you are already not present. You'd never crave a Snickers bar while in a free fall skydive, or while scuba-diving with sharks, or immediately after hearing what you think is a gunshot. Being fully present in the moment and craving never go together. Thus, at the instant you become aware of a craving, you're simultaneously being made aware that you are not fully present. If you use craving in this way (instead of allowing it to use you), craving is a superb and reliable reminder to wake up and come back to the present. And the instant you are fully engaged in the present, the craving stops!
Assuming freedom from craving, or wise use of craving, the following concepts can now be applied:
In the TAD exercise, a protector is told that an attack will come within 30 seconds, making pure and complete focus somewhat easy. But in actual protective assignments, each of us must keep our mind at bay for hours and hours. To keep something "at bay," means to keep it protected from the sea, to keep it anchored.
What's tugging on that anchor? The same thing that tugs on all anchors: The constant moving of the water. The mind is a surging ocean of thought-waves, most of them irrelevant to the mission at hand. Unless we give the mind a specific task, such as Design
Nicotine, sugar, and caffeine are three popular products people crave -- but what the body actually seeks is nutrition. Accordingly, all intelligent logistical plans by security professionals will include opportunities to eat, and access to foods that don't inspire cravings. On this planet, that just about certainly means protective teams will have to bring along some of their own food; otherwise the only thing you'll be able to find quickly will be sugar.
Lest we sound preachy, we certainly don't pretend to have mastered the nutritional plan that perfectly matches the realities of protective assignments. We're always working to crack this nut, so to speak (and speaking of nuts, they are part of the solution because they are metabolized more slowly than sugar). This isn't a book about nutrition, of course, and all we're intending here is to give you the goal: to be free of craving, because it undermines (you could say under-minds) a protector's ability to be present for the mission.
If we go one level deeper into the subject of craving, we see that craving is not actually linked to hunger at all. As one quickly learns when fasting, even if for just 24 hours, the craving for food that we initially think will worsen to the unbearable point actually passes entirely after a while. During a fast, you might think, "I have to eat right away," and then you see that 3, 5, 10, 15 hours later, you still haven't eaten and yet you're just fine. This shows that craving is in the mind, not the stomach; craving and hunger are much different things. The experience of fasting for 24 hours is a profoundly valuable one for protectors because once you know that you can go ten or fifteen hours without even a snack, waiting an hour or two till the next break becomes far easier. Above all, you know your body is fine and that the challenge is in the mind only. (There is a body issue in fasting, however: Drink plenty of water.)
So, we've seen that craving is in the mind and not the body, and we've seen that craving is destructive to effective protection because it takes the protector out of the present moment. From here, we can go still one level deeper and see that more than just keeping you from being present in the moment, craving is a symptom, a signal that you are already not present. You'd never crave a Snickers bar while in a free fall skydive, or while scuba-diving with sharks, or immediately after hearing what you think is a gunshot. Being fully present in the moment and craving never go together. Thus, at the instant you become aware of a craving, you're simultaneously being made aware that you are not fully present. If you use craving in this way (instead of allowing it to use you), craving is a superb and reliable reminder to wake up and come back to the present. And the instant you are fully engaged in the present, the craving stops!
Assuming freedom from craving, or wise use of craving, the following concepts can now be applied:
In the TAD exercise, a protector is told that an attack will come within 30 seconds, making pure and complete focus somewhat easy. But in actual protective assignments, each of us must keep our mind at bay for hours and hours. To keep something "at bay," means to keep it protected from the sea, to keep it anchored.
What's tugging on that anchor? The same thing that tugs on all anchors: The constant moving of the water. The mind is a surging ocean of thought-waves, most of them irrelevant to the mission at hand. Unless we give the mind a specific task, such as Design
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