“In asocial or predatory violence, particularly in a predatory ambush, the purpose of presence and verbal skills is to keep you off the victim list. As such they must become habits. You may never even know if they worked. If a predator scans you–which will happen several times a day in the crowded part of a big city–and decides to pass, chances are good that you will not even notice. Success, in this subject, is often invisible. If your habits of presence—how you walk, how you scan, what you do with your positioning and your hands—are good, the bad guy quietly moves on, never even coming to your attention.” ~ Rory Miller and Lawrence A. Kane in Scaling Force: dynamic decision-making under threat of violence
I love all of Rory Miller’s work, and this book is one of his best. Strongly recommended!
Yep, plain and simple, paying attention WORKS! If you’re inside their OODA loop, they tend to move on…