Elements that you can control to keep yourself safe and to avoid violence:
1. Lifestyle choices: seek to make good choices in life that work collectively toward your safety. Consider such things as the following:
- Regular exercise to remain healthy and strong.
- Projecting a confident and capable demeanor (usually enhanced by regular exercise).
- Eating healthy foods and seeing the doctor regularly.
- Choosing good friends who are wholesome, moral, and engage in safe activities.
- Avoiding people who are quarrelsome, arrogant, and confrontational.
- Avoiding criminal behavior or hanging out with people who are criminals.
- Avoiding dangerous areas or establishments with known violence or criminal elements.
- Avoid provocative dress and overly flirtatious behavior.
- Note: this is not blaming the victim! You have control over your own lifestyle choices and you can choose to live safely and to avoid violence in your life.
2. Attitude:
- Keep a positive, confident, and caring/loving attitude.
- Be pleasant toward others so as to invite kindness in return.
- Be tolerant and open-minded toward other people.
- Discuss controversial issues and ideas only with people who are willing to engage in meaningful discussion.
- Remember, you do not always have to win a discussion; sometimes we must agree to disagree.
- You cannot and should not control other people’s lives: let people live their own lives without unnecessary interference from you.
- When tempers flare or tensions rise, be humble and de-escalate the situation.
- Be the bigger person and choose NOT to fight and to seek peace, even if that means being humiliated or called names.
- Live peacefully and harmoniously with those around you.
- Remember that other people may be relying on you (especially of you are a father, mother, or caregiver), and so you cannot live selfishly for yourself only. Your actions will affect others, so avoid conflict, violence, and fighting at all cost.
3. Awareness:
- You do not need to be paranoid or on hyper ninja alert, but do not be willfully oblivious to your surroundings.
- You can control what you pay attention to and what you ignore.
- Avoid being oblivious to your surroundings
- Avoid texting while walking around.
- Do NOT text and drive.
- Avoid tuning out in public places with headphones and loud music.
- Avoid walking and/or jogging in public with headphones and loud music.
- Be actively aware of what is going on around you.
- Stay alert and constantly look around and take notice.
- Enjoy the beautiful, interesting things.
- Be alert to and cautious of anything that seems out of the ordinary or suspicious
- Take appropriate evasive action sooner rather than later:
- Walk around groups of rowdy people.
- Avoid dangerous situations.
- Do not engage in conversation with strangers.
- Be aware of scams and how one person may be a distraction for the other person who is planning the attack.
- If you are reading or using your smartphone in a public place (train, bus, park, etc.), be sure to lift your head up occasionally and take a look around you to see what is going on.
