Just 2 Seconds (9 page)

Few things remove a person from the present moment as completely as craving. Imagine a smoker on a protective assignment, three hours since his last cigarette. The space between every relevant perception is quickly filled by the urge to have a cigarette. All day, he is riding the addiction roller coaster, chugging his way up the steep track toward satisfaction, thinking of little but reaching the top, perhaps getting a cigarette and then rolling downward into the next valley, a valley in which he'll predictably slow to a chug as he climbs up the next steep track. Craving, imagining, planning, anticipating, attaining, satisfaction, and then a brief moment of freedom from craving -- till the cycle starts again, and then again.

A note from Gavin de Becker: Some readers might already be aware that our firm deploys a nicotine-free workforce. That doesn't mean simply no smoking at work. It means no smoking or other tobacco use at any time. Every employee in our firm is nicotine-free, 24 hours a day, and we have random urinalysis to ensure it.

Years ago when I made that decision there was some controversy. I took a fair amount of criticism: Was I trying to control the off-duty lives of our protectors? Did my firm have the legal right to disqualify applicants who used tobacco? Etc.

We learned that some military sniper units had made the same decision about nicotine use because (among other reasons) snipers might be positioned at concealed locations for hours and must be careful not to reveal their location through lighting a match, for example. And even with the stakes involved, do you know what many addicted smokers do when in concealed sniper positions for hours?
They light the match.
Of course. They have no choice. A highly stressful situation is hardly the ideal circumstance to quit a powerful addiction. And if they resist the cravings, what happens to precision and accuracy after a few hours without nicotine? Let's just say it's not improved: hands shaking, blurred vision, inability to concentrate, looking for any opportunity to take a break and get a cigarette -- all things that distance the smoker from our goal of being present.

So when I was facing this decision I thought: Can I really look at our clients -- who trust us to protect their safety and to protect their children -- and say:

"We are completely committed to your safety, except for this one thing: We assign people who are either withdrawing from or dosing themselves with a consciousness-changing chemical, hour-by-hour, all day, every day -- and they'll often be thinking of ways to fulfill their cravings rather than thinking of being in the right place at the right time."

When people asked if I was trying to control the off-duty lives of our associates, I replied Yes -- and not just trying. I was ensuring it through testing. There are many policies and requirements that influence the off-duty behavior of professionals: You can't smoke pot or have a few beers an hour before work. A pilot can't arrive at work drunk or exhausted and expect everyone to accept the off-duty choices that left him in that condition. You can't pass our Physical Fitness and Readiness test each year unless you dedicate some of your off-hours time to exercise. Professional readiness requires a full commitment, period.

Imagine you owned a racecar. You certainly wouldn't let someone pour anything in the fuel tank that would detract from peak engine performance. Now carry that thought to a biological example: Imagine you own a champion racehorse. You wouldn't give it nicotine.

I've been told we're the only protection operation on earth that maintains a nicotine-free workforce -- I don't know, but I hope it's not true.

People crave ingestibles other than nicotine, of course. Depending upon a protector's habits, addictions, metabolism, nutrition, and peace of mind, he might crave sugar, coffee, chocolate, or even food itself. It's obvious that to do their best work protectors must be in excellent physical condition, so obvious that it's taken for granted in these pages that serious protectors will be in excellent physical condition. However, a person can appear to be in excellent physical condition, and yet still be slave to cravings. The concepts we're about to explore might well be the most important in protective work, and they require the willingness to condition the mind through practice.

Among other things, this means avoiding the trampoline-like effect of cravings. Sugar is the prime example of something that provides a bounce, a brief moment that feels like flight, then the rapid and weighty descent to the canvas, and then what feels like low energy, followed by the belief that sugar is needed again to keep going. We said
what feels like
low energy because, in fact, you have all the energy you need, Snickers bar or no Snickers bar.

What will help most people to have ready access to their energy is a lifestyle and dietary change involving several smaller meals (as opposed to two or three big ones), and choosing snack foods that metabolize more slowly than sugar. This is made quite difficult by the fact that nearly every snack that's conveniently available is a form of sugar.

You feel hungry and want to grab something in a hurry. At most populated places throughout the world you can find -- usually within a hundred yards of where you're standing -- someone selling some form of sugar. Think about this: Walk a hundred yards in any direction, into any hotel, gas station, convenience store, pharmacy, even health food store -- and you're likely to find a wide selection of small doses of sugar, offered in a variety of forms, textures, and flavors, with varying levels of deceit in the packaging. You'll also find cigarettes and caffeine just as easily, 24-hours a day, and virtually always within a hundred yards. Why? Because millions of people are addicted to these chemicals. For the purposes of protective work, addiction is defined as any habit that leads to craving. Craving is any strong or uncontrollable desire, any persistent tug on your attention that can be stopped only through feeding it, and even then the cessation is temporary.

Nicotine, sugar, and caffeine are three popular products people crave -- but what the body actually seeks is nutrition. Accordingly, all intelligent logistical plans by security professionals will include opportunities to eat, and access to foods that don't inspire cravings. On this planet, that just about certainly means protective teams will have to bring along some of their own food; otherwise the only thing you'll be able to find quickly will be sugar.

Lest we sound preachy, we certainly don't pretend to have mastered the nutritional plan that perfectly matches the realities of protective assignments. We're always working to crack this nut, so to speak (and speaking of nuts, they are part of the solution because they are metabolized more slowly than sugar). This isn't a book about nutrition, of course, and all we're intending here is to give you the goal: to be free of craving, because it undermines (you could say under-minds) a protector's ability to be present for the mission.

If we go one level deeper into the subject of craving, we see that craving is not actually linked to hunger at all. As one quickly learns when fasting, even if for just 24 hours, the craving for food that we initially think will worsen to the unbearable point actually passes entirely after a while. During a fast, you might think, "I have to eat right away," and then you see that 3, 5, 10, 15 hours later, you still haven't eaten and yet you're just fine. This shows that craving is in the mind, not the stomach; craving and hunger are much different things. The experience of fasting for 24 hours is a profoundly valuable one for protectors because once you know that you can go ten or fifteen hours without even a snack, waiting an hour or two till the next break becomes far easier. Above all, you know your body is fine and that the challenge is in the mind only. (There is a body issue in fasting, however: Drink plenty of water.)

So, we've seen that craving is in the mind and not the body, and we've seen that craving is destructive to effective protection because it takes the protector out of the present moment. From here, we can go still one level deeper and see that more than just keeping you from being present in the moment, craving is a symptom, a signal that you are
already
not present. You'd never crave a Snickers bar while in a free fall skydive, or while scuba-diving with sharks, or immediately after hearing what you think is a gunshot. Being fully present in the moment and craving never go together. Thus, at the instant you become aware of a craving, you're simultaneously being made aware that you are not fully present. If you use craving in this way (instead of allowing it to use you), craving is a superb and reliable reminder to wake up and come back to the present. And the instant you are fully engaged in the present, the craving stops!

Assuming freedom from craving, or wise use of craving, the following concepts can now be applied:

In the TAD exercise, a protector is told that an attack will come within 30 seconds, making pure and complete focus somewhat easy. But in actual protective assignments, each of us must keep our mind at bay for hours and hours. To keep something "at bay," means to keep it protected from the sea, to keep it anchored.

What's tugging on that anchor? The same thing that tugs on all anchors: The constant moving of the water. The mind is a surging ocean of thought-waves, most of them irrelevant to the mission at hand. Unless we give the mind a specific task, such as Design That Building, or Total Up That Column of Numbers, or Find Those Car Keys, we're usually treading water in a sea of constant distractions.

With the mind at bay, your attention can move from Now to Now, releasing each moment almost instantaneously so that the next can be perceived. In protective work (and in life), the rewards come when each past moment is allowed to expire gracefully, without resistance, so the current moment can live fully. Remaining in the Now means, in effect, that you
lose your mind
and
come to your senses.
Then you can perceive what is going on around you. Our thoughts sometimes become scattered all over the mental field, and to direct them toward a single goal, we must collect them. The protector's mission needs to be constantly remembered, re-collected, in the most literal meaning of the word.

In order to avoid problems like Operation Makeup Case, our firm seeks to remove logistical responsibilities from those assigned to close protective coverage when possible. Contrary to a practice applied by some in the field, we do not automatically assign the Detail Leader to close protection, because we want our close protectors free of the need to deal with logistics and planning. We want them actively looking into each fraction of a second to see what it contains -- and we don't want them thinking too much about the future. In fact, we don't want them thinking too much at all.

Taming Your Mind

What if, instead of being assured the suspect's attack will come within 30 seconds, TAD students are told it will come sometime in the 30 minutes? While there are clear advantages to observing people over a longer period, as time passes it becomes more difficult to remain in the Now. After a while, the mind wants to go elsewhere, off on its favorite mission: to think. And thinking is far different from observing.

Imagine we extend the 30 minutes to, say, 30 days, telling protectors: "Within the next month, there will absolutely be an attack on a public figure, possibly your protectee." The statement would be totally accurate: There will be an attack on some public figure within the month -- but even this truth isn't sufficiently specific or urgent to satisfy the mind's criteria for staying in the Now.

Many people wrongly assume that a protector's task is to be super attentive, on high-alert, wound up and ready to spring in the event of a specific outcome. That state, however, cannot be maintained, and remaining super alert for long periods of time causes anxiety, tension, and fatigue. Eventually, the state itself begins to detract from one's ability to perceive. Contrary to the unwanted results of trying to remain super alert, when protectors are fully in the Now, they are invigorated, not drained.

It isn't outside influences that make it so difficult to keep the mind at bay; it's the mind itself that tugs on the anchor. The mind doesn't like to be still. Its mission is to constantly wander, wonder, learn, think, chew on information, and, like a child, always have your attention. That's why people seek "peace of mind," but the phrase is flawed because
mind and peace are opposites.

People go to great lengths to quiet the mind, to have just a few seconds that aren't disturbed by thinking. They ingest all variety of consciousness-altering compounds, from alcohol to LSD. Others seek thrills: They bungee jump, ski, skydive, swim with sharks, and shoot each other with paintballs. Similarly, sex, white water rafting, and boxing have great appeal because they bring us fully to the Now. When truly engaged in one of these activities, we don't think about bills, the office, next week, or last week. We are present for our present experience.

Once the mind gets in the way it labels and evaluates every perception, stamping each one with a judgment, a recap, an opinion, an analogy, a category, a theory, a conclusion. Most people are reluctant to see their own mind as an obstruction, but for many endeavors, the mind does get in the way. Gifted athletes will tell you that thinking is the last thing they want between their perception and their response, between seeing the approaching tennis ball and sending it back across the court. There's a role for the mind during preparation, but there's not much place for thinking during a game.

Before you hear a sound like gunfire, what comes first is the external vibration; second, the nerve motion that carries it to the brain. That's when you hear it. Next, after many perceptions, memories, and thoughts have been quickly (almost instantly) considered, the brain responds with an opinion or a theory about what caused the sound. Though these are each distinct processes (the vibration, the nerve's report, the assessment, and the brain's conclusion), we can't perceive each step;
we perceive only their combined effect.
Every act of perception includes these steps. Therefore,
when you conclude that the sound is gunfire, respect that conclusion and act without further thinking.