Product Description

True fear is often a signal that can save your life. Are you listening?

• The baby-sitter you've just hired makes you uneasy--what should you do?
  
• You sense you are being followed --do you confront the stranger...or run?
  
• A fired employee says "You'll be sorry"--should you take him seriously?
  
• A person in the elevator you are about to enter just doesn't look right--do you wait for the next car?
  

A date won't take "no" for an answer. The new nanny gives a mother an uneasy feeling. A stranger in a deserted parking lot offers unsolicited help. The threat of violence surrounds us every day. But we can protect ourselves, by learning to trust--and act on--our gut instincts.

In this empowering book, Gavin de Becker, the man Oprah Winfrey calls the nation's leading expert on violent behavior, shows you how to spot even subtle signs of danger--before it's too late. Shattering the myth that most violent acts are unpredictable, de Becker, whose clients include top Hollywood stars and government agencies, offers specific ways to protect yourself and those you love, including...how to act when approached by a stranger...when you should fear someone close to you...what to do if you are being stalked...how to uncover the source of anonymous threats or phone calls...the biggest mistake you can make with a threatening person...and more. Learn to spot the danger signals others miss. It might just save your life.

---

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1147 in Books
• Published on: 1999-05-11
• Released on: 1999-05-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780440508830
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Amazon.com Review
A Q&A with Gavin de Becker

Question: In today’s world, where terror and tragedy seem omnipresent, the fear of violence never seems more heightened. Is the world a more violent place than it ever has been?

Gavin de Becker : Your question contains much of the answer: today’s world, "where terror and tragedy seem omnipresent..." The key word is "seem." When TV news coverage presents so much on these topics, it elevates the perception of terrorism and tragedy way beyond the reality. In every major city, TV news creates forty hours of original production every day, most of it composed and presented to get our attention with fear. Hence an incident on an airplane in which a man fails to do any damage is treated as if the make-shift bomb actually exploded. It didn’t. Imagine having a near miss in your car, avoiding what would have been a serious collision--and then talking about every hour for months after the fact. Welcome to TV news.

To the second part of your question, No, the world is not a more violent place than it has ever been, however we live as if it were. The U.S. is the most powerful nation in world history--and also the most afraid.

Question: Your bestselling book The Gift of Fear gives many examples to help readers recognize what you call pre-incident indicators (PINS) of violence. What role does intuition play in recognizing these signals?

Gavin de Becker: Like every creature on earth, we have an extraordinary defense resource: We don’t have the sharpest claws and strongest jaws--but we do have the biggest brains, and intuition is the most impressive process of these brains. It might be hard to accept its importance because intuition is often described as emotional, unreasonable, or inexplicable. Husbands chide their wives about "feminine intuition" and don’t take it seriously. If intuition is used by a woman to explain some choice she made or a concern she can’t let go of, men roll their eyes and write it off. We much prefer logic, the grounded, explainable, unemotional thought process that ends in a supportable conclusion. In fact, Americans worship logic, even when it’s wrong, and deny intuition, even when it’s right. Men, of course, have their own version of intuition, not so light and inconsequential, they tell themselves, as that feminine stuff. Theirs is more viscerally named a "gut feeling," but whatever name we use, it isn’t just a feeling. It is a process more extraordinary and ultimately more logical in the natural order than the most fantastic computer calculation. It is our most complex cognitive process and, at the same time, the simplest.

Intuition connects us to the natural world and to our nature. It carries us to predictions we will later marvel at. "Somehow I knew," we will say about the chance meeting we predicted, or about the unexpected phone call from a distant friend, or the unlikely turnaround in someone’s behavior, or about the violence we steered clear of, or, too often, the violence we elected not to steer clear of. The Gift of Fear offers strategies that help us recognize the signals of intuition--and helps us avoid denial, which is the enemy of safety.

Question: Your latest book, Just 2 Seconds, has been called a "masterpiece" of analysis on the art of preventing assassination. It contains an entire compendium of attacks on protected persons across the globe. What motivated you to put together such a definitive reference? What tenets can be applied to one’s everyday life?

Gavin de Becker: Most of all, we wrote the book we needed. My co-authors and I had long looked for an extensive collection of attack summaries from which important new insights could be harvested. Unable to find it, we committed to do the work ourselves, eventually collecting more than 1400 cases to analyze. Many new insights and concepts emerged from the study, and the one most applicable to day to day life, even for people who are not living with unusual risks, is to be in the present; pre-sent, as it were. Now is the only time anything ever happens--now is where the action is. All focus on anything outside the Now (the past, memory, the future, fantasy) detracts focus from what’s actually happening in your environment. Human being have the capacity to look right at something and not see it, and in studying such a crisp event--the few seconds during which assassinations have occurred--Just 2 Seconds aims to enhance the reader’s ability to see the value of the present moment.

(Photo © Avery Helm)

---

From Library Journal
De Becker, the CEO of a firm that attempts to predict and prevent violence against individuals, shares his informed insights on enhancing personal safety. He believes that violence is part of the human condition and that America is increasingly a violent place. For example, homicide is now the leading cause of death for women in the workplace. De Becker posits that intuition is our most basic and reliable survival skill. When it produces fear?as distinct from worry or anxiety?we should pay attention. Mixing theory with case histories, he discusses stranger-to-stranger crime, obsessive admirers, employee rampages, and spousal crime, as well as the more esoteric categories of celebrity stalkers and assassins. Having suffered an abusive childhood himself, de Becker has a special empathy for victims and an acute awareness of the signs of criminal intent. A valuable contribution on a timely topic, this is recommended for public libraries.
-Gregor A. Preston, formerly with Univ. of California Lib., Davis
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
De Becker, a national expert on the prediction and management of violence, thinks most people are great victims because they ignore their fears and survival signals. His frighteningly simple advice will come as no surprise to women: use your intuition. De Becker believes every crime has a warning and a motive and that the code of predictable violence can be broken by trusting the phenomenon that he defines as "knowing without knowing why." If people believe in and are alert to the possibility of danger, they can reduce their risks and save themselves. Written with consummate style, the book recounts the motives, warning signals, and defenses against wife beaters, stalkers, assassins, enraged employees, and violent children. De Becker's experience as a presidential adviser, consultant, expert witness, trainer, and designer of a system that evaluates threats to Supreme Court justices should convince readers to trust the involuntary certainty of fear over the voluntary uncertainty of anxiety when confronted by those to whom senseless acts make perfect sense. Patricia Hassler

---

Customer Reviews

A book that dispells crime prevention myths
Few crime prevention experts emphasize intuition. Instead, they talk about staying alert to crime. Sometimes crime prevention experts generate more fear than they alleviate.

Gavin deBecker, on the other hand, makes intuition and freedom from fear the focus of his philosophy. Instead of imagining the bad things that could happen, he says, live without worry of crime.

He also says to stop watching the news. It only generates needless worry and gives one a distorted view of the world. I have been teaching these same concepts for years as a black belt in karate, so it was refreshing to read them from someone else. I avoid newspapers and TV news--it only darkens our view of the world. It only makes crime seem worse. Give up news for two weeks and notice how your outlook improves.

As a teacher of women's self-defense, I've heard many stories of intuition. Some people call it the "back ground music," because it is like the music that plays in a movie before something bad happens.

As deBecker writes, act upon your survival signals (run, search your house in the middle of the night, stay away from an individual, etc.), even if you feel foolish doing so.

Shed the fears in your life, because fear clouds the survival signals. Those who live in fear of crime are already victims.

Some of the book is difficult to read, such as chapters on child abuse. But the book is still worth it. Buy copies for yourself and friends. If you spend time worrying about crime, this book could change your life.

The Gift Is Within You
When a young relative of mine was vacationing, a stranger grabbed her by the arm and said, "Come with me or I'll kill you." She reacted instinctively and broke free, and as she ran she expected to be shot at any second. But she made it to safety and provided the cops with a good description.

One year later and 100 miles from where that happened, another little girl was grabbed by a stranger, who said something to her--this was captured on videotape. The frightened child, instead of fleeing, cooperated. She was later murdered by her abductor.

I think most of us fall into that second category, because we don't listen to the instinct to run, or to fight, or to (best of all) avoid those situations in the first place. We've been trained to suppress those very instincts that exist to preserve our lives.

What deBecker's book so expertly does is re-train us to listen to our intuition, to scope out our environment and everyone in it, and to read the danger signs we would otherwise prefer to ignore.

Panic and anxiety are not useful emotions; fear is different. Fear is what compels us to take action if there is a clear and present danger; it's what allows us to see what's happening and respond appropriately. It's an emotion that should be nurtured instead of conquered. We don't want our kids to grow up afraid of the boogeyman, scared to go out of their homes or try new things or meet new people. De becker teaches us that, instead, if we develop and learn to trust our intuition, we can free ourselves from that trap, just as we can react positively if we are ever in a position that requires immediate escape.

He shows, with examples and self-reflective exercises, what to ask yourself, and what to do, if you have a "gut feeling" that tells you something is wrong.

Parents, children and women especially need this skill.

It's great to learn self-defense, to build your confidence in what you can physically do to protect yourself. But that ability is enhanced by the lessons in this book. And sometimes, being a black-belt is irrelevent to dangers that are out there.

DeBecker's best lessons are learning how to listen to yourself, how to interpret warning signs from dangerous people, and teaching us how to predict behavior. You don't have to be "surprised" by someone's crazy or hostile actions if you can see them coming and cut them off at the pass. He points out that every time we get behind the wheel of a car, we're predicting what every other driver on the road will do. All we have to learn is how to apply that knowledge to a boyfriend who won't take no for an answer, a neighbor who takes a creepy interest in our kid, or a job applicant who is a little too persistent.

DeBecker says some things that will rub people the wrong way--such as, for battered partners: the first time it happens, you're a victim and the second time, you're a volunteer. But that's actually true. If you KNOW what this person is going to do, and you choose to stay in the relationship in spite of this information, then you have to own the consequences.

The appendices are useful and the reading list is also a good resource, but the IMPACT self-defense classes deBecker recommends are not available everywhere. I wish the book gave a little more information about choosing a self-defense course if IMPACT is not in the area.

Time to Pay Attention
Gavin DeBecker could have named this book "The Gift of Intuition" and tapped into an even larger reader base. Human beings have an enormous capacity to reach deep inside and access the powers within. We just choose not to. Whether it is a religious belief that makes us look outside of ourself for help or just conditioning, we have let this gift atrophy. I always said the answer to so many of our problems is in the listening, not the doing or talking. Just sit quietly and listen, the answers are all there if you're willing to allow them to surface.
DeBecker knows this and teaches you how to hone these skills. He will show you how to trust yourself, have faith in your own ability to know when a situation is terribly wrong.
How many of us suddenly see all the red flags at the end of a horrible relationship or situation? Those red flags did not suddenly appear out of nowhere. They were there from the beginning and were ignored or pushed aside either out of ignorance or the desire for the "appearance" of a situation. The great guy, the independence, the can't miss business opportunity. All of these can shout decibels louder than your intuition ever could. Intuition is quiet voice, it has to be actively listened too, it won't overpower any voice you choose to hear. "The Gift of Fear" will help you listen to yourself, to hear what is inside you.
This is the best gift you can give your teenagers, help them learn this from the start. I might even go as far as to say no better graduation gift exists. Okay, so put it on the seat of that new car or put the cash inside the pages instead of a card, but do give this as a gift to the ones you love. It very well might save their lives. At the very least, it will make their lives better by helping them to live it more aware and in control.