Pssst! Want to learn something new today? Try one of these links …

• Seven Learning Points from the Marysville, WA School Shooting. Written by Greg Ellifritz, this article hits several lessons we can learn from this tragic event. A short read that could expand into a long afternoon browse if you follow the embedded links to news reports and other source material.

• “I got back up and saw he was trying to reload his gun. And when that happened, I just ran in the opposite direction and I was out of there as fast as I could.” That’s a quote from one of the students who survived that active killer event at the school near Seattle. The lesson here is, make sure your family members know what an unloaded gun looks like, and what it looks like when someone is trying to reload or clear a malfunction. That’s often the best time to act, either to run away or to fight back.

• Short video of some guys unintentionally knocking over a tree with a .500 S&W revolver. Watch the muzzle awareness (or lack of it) as the guy runs away from the falling tree. Do you know how to run with a gun in your hand? Have you practiced enough that trigger finger placement and muzzle control would be an automatic, almost reflexive response even if you felt panicked?

• During the shooting in the Parliament building in Ottowa, some of the members of Parliament armed themselves with snapped-off flagpoles they planned to use as spears if the attacker got into the room where they were hiding. “These guys were up there holding these spears ready to impale anyone who came in,” one source said. Good for them and their determination to survive. Even when you don’t have a gun, you don’t have to curl up and die. You can decide that you will fight back with whatever you have and that you will do whatever it takes to survive.

• Fascinating thing about human beings. Some of us suffer from a cognitive bias called “functional fixedness,” which limits a person to using an object only the way it is traditionally used. The MPs who armed themselves with flagpole-spears knew better — they saw a long, pointed object instead of just something to hold a flag. That kind of flexible mind can be a lifesaver in bad situations!

• How can we develop the kind of flexible thinking that avoids functional fixedness and thus helps us survive sticky situations? Here’s an article written by Rory Miller that talks about exactly that.