The Gift of Fear

 

I am a fan of Gavin De Becker’s work, and this is (in my opinion) his best work.

He uses The Gift of Fear to further his argument that fear is necessary for survival, and that, in our “safe” modern world, we ignore our gut.

He posits that women’s intuition, uneasy feelings, a man’s gut instinct, and our fear are all signals something is not right. If we learn to harness and train ourselves to use these unconscious signals we would be better trained to deal with unplanned emergencies.

De Becker has a long and distinguished resume to bolster his ideas, for instance, he wrote the program our US Secret Service uses to prioritize and interpret threats to our elected officials.

I have used his work to describe to my students what goes on in the brain when we get instinctive clues and why they should trust their “gut” feelings.  This book really does a good job of describing that.

I will say that while adherence to policy and good common sense is important inside the prison, being able to trust those gun instincts have saved me a time or to also.

You really should really check this book out.