Leah: [00:00:00] I am Leah Rele. This is The Balancing Busy Podcast, and today we are having a conversation that could literally save your life. I already said that once because this is part two. Now, part one of this, I wrote it down, is episode 180 2, and in that episode. You get to hear a lot of Jesus’ story. You get to learn about the nine tactics to survive an active shooter.

He just drops so much information and knowledge and it’s a conversation that like we both are very, we’re not trying to pretend anyone wants to have this conversation. We know nobody wants to have it, and yet it can save lives. So I highly, highly encourage you. To go back and listen to episode 180 2, if you missed that episode.

Today we’re shifting and we’re really talking about situational awareness. We’re gonna focus really on [00:01:00] women and being able to protect ourselves and this idea of. That we should not, and do not need to think civil in an uncivil situation. So with all of that, I am handing it over to you and you just go ahead and, and take it from there.

Jesus: Well, first of all, thank you again. For those of you that are back for part two, um, I’m glad to have you back and, uh, you know, it’s, you can never put too many tools in your tool chest. You know, the cold part about situational awareness I find is. Is that, um, we’ve got brain research that tells us that you use 2010 to 20% of your brain 90% of the time.

I mean, I want you to think about that for a second. That’s it. Okay. There’s a ton of storage space up here, right? So what are you doing with it? I’m just kinda curious. I love that I have plans in my brain still after retiring from the sheriff’s department. This is my 12th year of retirement and, um. I can tell you that I still have [00:02:00] plans in my head that I’ve never used, and I have some that I’ve used more than once.

Right? And so today’s focus is really gonna be about what are you doing with your downtime? What I love about this is, you know, you’ve got busy lives, right? You’ve got really busy lives, you’re doing a lot of different things. And the cool part is it doesn’t matter where you’re at in those busy lives, you do have some time to stop and go.

I wonder what I would do right now if, okay. There’s an exit. Okay. There’s one I hadn’t seen before. Okay. Whoa. That’s a dead end. Okay. Stop. Did you know that your brain cannot recall anything? It doesn’t see, hear, smell, taste, or touch or think of there it is. Mental visualization is critical. It’s critical to situational awareness.

It’s critical because of the fact that research shows from psychologists and psychiatrists around the world. Why mental rehearsal is so, and mental visualization is [00:03:00] so applicable. It works. It is like, man, did you know that if your brain thinks of something to react in a crisis, did you know that your brain does that?

You have a higher likelihood to react that way in the crisis. Isn’t that interesting? Even though you’ve never done it, you have a higher likelihood of doing it. And so if you add psychomotor skill to that according to research, then it’s an even higher probability. Now I can tell you that that’s the research.

But how did that apply to me? It applied to me in life and death. Uh, my first two biggest fears in the sheriff’s department was, um, uh, I didn’t want to get shot because someone pulled a gun out on me while my weapon was still holstered and I didn’t wanna get stabbed. Those were, I know it sounds crazy, but those were my two biggest fears.

So I mentally visualized them for years, by the way. And then they both happened. And I can tell you from. Empirical research to practicum [00:04:00] combined. My brain took over. It was weird looking at it later, how quickly my brain said, Uhuh, you said you were gonna do this. This is what we’re doing. We’re fighting back.

It doesn’t matter. Give everything you got. You’re gonna live. Right? Okay, yeah, the gun’s coming out, but you can draw yours faster because you practiced so many times in front of your mirror for years, not because you’re trying to be. You know, quick drama draw. That’s not why, ’cause I wanted to get home.

You see, sometimes you have to apply the applicability of your mental visualization. You have to apply the psychomotor skill of it so that your brain goes, oh, that’s what we’re gonna do. I see it and touch it and feel it. Now, for example, 30-year-old, uh, early thirties, uh, young man and his wife go to, uh, north Bend, Oregon, uh, Safeway.

And I watched this interview on TV and while they were in the Safeway, they split up to go dual shopping. How many of you have done that? Uh, and I get it right, trying to save time. [00:05:00] And in the process of doing that, um, within a few minutes, gunfire erupts. It’s an AR 15. It’s an active shooter it in a grocery store.

Okay? Now, as you can imagine, instinctively their first reaction is to do what? I’ve gotta find my wife. I’ve gotta find my husband, right? Now, I will tell you that’s really romantic and that’s really cool, and that’s not a good plan at all. Um, and the reason is so you’re gonna try to find each other and you don’t even know where you’re at.

While bullets are coming through all of the shells, because none of them are gonna stop an ar 15 round and you don’t know for sure where the shooter’s at. Now I understand why they did it. Please understand that I’m not, I’m not, uh, victim shaming here. I’m just making sure you understand. This is why you should already have the plan.

My wife and I have a plan. She knows what it is. By the way. We’ll discuss it periodically. We just discussed it at Home Goods the other day when we were shopping. Do you remember the plan for split up? Yep. Okay, good. By the way, [00:06:00] the plan is simple. She uses one of us nine survival t uh, uh, tactics that you saw in episode 180 2, and she uses one of those tactics.

To survive, but she’s not gonna come looking for me. And here’s the key, and I’m not gonna come looking for her. If I wanna save her life, I need to stop the shooter. My training is different than yours. Okay? I, I have to do something. I, I may flee initially, but I gotta come back. I can’t not take the opportunity, given what the data tells me how successful fighting is.

I mean, like 99%, that’s pretty successful if you. Attack the shooter from an angle, right? But the point being, it doesn’t take a gun to stop a gun. And I know that, and I teach that. And I’m a, I’ve got all these credentials of hand-to-hand combat and, and fighting most of my life, 32 years of my life has been spent fighting and wrestling.

So of course I’m gonna use that, right? And I taught gun disarm techniques, so of course I’m gonna use that. You see, [00:07:00] she lives so that I can do what I feel I need to do. And then I pray God protects me in the process of doing it. That I can accomplish what I need to do. And that is if other people are gonna survive, you’ve gotta stop the shooter, right?

That’s my wife’s best chance at survival. So we discuss it, and by the way, periodically we’ll update it, we’ll just check in. We went to a church, we were church shopping here, um, over the last few months of looking at a church that kind of fit, you know, what fit our personalities, what we wanted, how we worship, and, and I asked my wife, I said, where do you wanna sit?

And she goes, how about over there? And I went, okay. Let’s go over there. Okay. And we got there. I said, now why? She goes, well, ’cause the sound booths there gives us a little bit of concealment because the shooter’s probably gonna walk in through the back of the gallery. Which by the way, that’s usually where they walk in.

So if you’re a person that sits in the back of the church lot, you might wanna change where you sit. Your pastor might notice, by the way, he might go, what is up with everyone sitting in the front? This is awesome. Right? He’s gonna really believe it’s ’cause of his message now anyway, I’m just kidding. [00:08:00] Okay, but the point being, she says, the sound booth conceals us.

That gives us time to get to that exit door. And I just looked at my wife and she goes, and finger goes up. If we have to crawl around this set of pews, it’ll go to the back of the, um, the altar. And there’s always exits back there. And I just looked at my wife and went, God, I love you. Because see, prior to meeting her, she never thought this way.

By the way, she’s not paranoid. And I wanna make it really clear today what the difference is between being paranoid and being proactive. My wife is proactive. My wife knows, Hey baby, we’re gonna sit here at the movie theater in the owl seats, right? That’s my wife. Right? Okay. We just got back from the James Taylor concert at Chateau San Michel.

We picked our seats. We actually showed up two hours early in line to pick our seats on the lawn next to the sidewalk, next to the exit. By the way, that’s not paranoia. See, nobody knew around us why [00:09:00] we picked it because hundreds of other people were sitting around us as well. See we looked normal. And there’s the key.

When you’re proactive, you’re acting in a way that people don’t notice that you’re being aware. It’s just so casual. And by the way, many of you, I’m sure have done this where you’ll pretend you’re writing, you’re looking at your phone, but you’re listening to the conversation in the coffee shop next to you going, man, that is a hot conversation right now.

I mean, let’s be honest. Come on. You’ve done that, right? 

Leah: I am absolutely the worst at this. My husband, like, I, I am so bad. So we’re on date night and he’ll be like, babe, come on. And I’m like, you are not gonna believe what’s happening over there. Okay. They are. And I’m like so into it. So like you say that, and I’m like, definitely guilty.

Jesus: But you know what? Guilty of what? Nobody knew you were doing it right. I’ll look at my wife and she’ll and she’ll see me chuckling like you, and she’ll go, what’s so funny? I go, I just have to finish listening to this conversation. It’s really hilarious, right? So my wife has gotten better from when I’ve met her [00:10:00] so much better, and yet she’s not paranoid.

Here’s the difference in my opinion, in my definition of paranoia. Para being paranoid about your life is when your body physically manifests your brain’s fears. There it is. If you leave this podcast, you go, man, that was a good class. I’m, I gotta walk to my car. I gotta watch for everything. I put my phone away.

Okay? If you’re constantly doing this, we call it, right? Some people will say, head on a swivel. That’s not a head on, a swivel, that’s a head on a her herky jerky, swivel. Of course you’re paranoid, right? If every time someone makes a sound, you turn and write, paranoia is manifested physically through your body language, which people read.

Don’t forget, your body language represents 55 to 90%. Of your message, your thoughts before you utter a word. I mean, moms, come on. Research shows that you are better. And by the way, this is thousands of studies backed by the American, uh, psychological Association, the National Institute of [00:11:00] Health, thousands of studies that tell you, on average, women read body language better than men.

By the way, I guarantee that a lot of the women watching this are going, that’s right. Right. We totally are. You know why you do and it’s really sad. One in five women in a recent study I just read, it’s now one in five Women in America have already been victims of a rape. One in four will be a victim of rape, one in five, and yet for men it’s less than one in 71.

Are you, are you serious right now? I mean, your odds are three to a hundred times higher than mine. Yeah. Right, right. I mean, even more than that. Why? Because we live in a male dominant society of violence. That’s violence [00:12:00] over women. Predominantly. Do women commit violent crimes? Well, yeah. As much as men? No.

Okay. So something else I want you to think about if you’re watching today, especially if you’re with your daughters, is stop letting people feed you this garbage that you’re being paranoid. We don’t live your lives. Even I, as a man who studies this researches and teaches women, I still can only imagine in trying to empathize with you as to what you have to face.

The times you get into an elevator and are uncomfortable if it’s late at night with with a man in the elevator. The times you get to the crosswalk, and rather than standing next to you, the guy chooses to stand behind you, right? The things that frustrate you. I’ve heard all the stories and it would be frustrating.

You’re not paranoid. You’re just really good at situational awareness. So quit letting people say that you’re being paranoid and beat you down with that stick so that you finally just give up your situational awareness and say, well, stop [00:13:00] being paranoid. You’re not being paranoid. It, your odds of being victimized are much higher than mine.

In fact, one study that was done in 1979, it’s one of the largest studies ever done in American history on women in particular, tells us that your danger, radar, accuracy rate is 75%.

I mean, that means that if Leah and I are walking out late one night because of a teaching. And she has some questions and we’re walking to our car and they’re only the, there are cars and they’re the only two cars in the parking lot and Leah suddenly goes, stop. Jesus. Suicide sense, danger up ahead. Okay.

I She’d probably do it like that too. I don’t know, but for sure you need to know that. I would go, what’s up? I don’t know. Something doesn’t feel right. By the way, the first time you get that feeling, we’re gonna talk about it. Don’t just look 180 degrees, turn around. Okay. Because something has happened to spark that.

Uh, I know [00:14:00] many of you’re gonna call this the sixth sense you need to know. Research has really debunked that. The sixth sense is nothing more than all five of your senses reacting to some external stimuli that, for some reason causes you to go to overload of sensitivity, right? So you can call it sixth sense if you want, that’s fine.

It’s your life. I, it’s fine. I’m a data guy. But at the end of the day, trust it. Instead of, and hopefully your husbands are watching this. Guys, we have a tendency to go, seriously, babe, come on, let’s just get to the car. Stop. She’s got a 75% accuracy rate. Honor it, right? Honor her. Let her feel validated and let her feel empowered with for once.

Maybe I’m the security measure tonight, right? Because we like to think as men that we’re the security measure all the time, right? So if she says something’s wrong, something’s wrong, I’m gonna go back in the room. Let’s go back in the building then. Let’s go back to movie theater. Okay? You want to grab a security officer, see if we want, [00:15:00] whatever you wanna do, but alleviate the feeling.

Here’s why. In that same study I just told you about all 75% of 500,000 women, 

Leah: wow. 

Jesus: Not one of them changed their plan, not one. They had the feeling something was wrong and they continued entering the environment. Wow. And they were attacked. You were, 

Leah: how do we untrain that? I mean, okay, so I’ve already heard this training, right?

So for, for those I who don’t know, I had a girlfriend who said, you need to go to this training. I couldn’t make it. That was months ago. Then you came back again. Again, she reached out and. You have to come to this training. And so this time I put it on my calendar, and I’ll be honest, there was a part of me that really wanted to be like, Ugh, I’m too busy today.

’cause it’s not exactly a fun topic, but I was like, no, I, you know, like I’m, I’m gonna go, I’m gonna show up. So I go to the morning one, which [00:16:00] is about situational awareness. It’s, it’s this but longer, bigger, right? And I go to it and I’m like, wow, this was amazing. And then I go home for lunch. There’s a second one in the afternoon.

I bring my husband, I’m like, you need to come listen. So he comes and listens. That’s the how to survive an active Shooter, which was episode 180 2. And so, okay, so all of this is there, and I’m going to make a confession that you’re probably not gonna be very pleased with me about. But yesterday I was, so this is my Ruck girl summer.

Okay? So I’ve been walking all over with a backpack with weight in it. So yesterday, I’m rucking, I have this. Little, um, I, I have this, this route that I go, which is down an irrigation line, and then there’s a little park that has a loop. I try to loop it about three times. Then I walk back. I notice as I get to the end of the irrigation line, I notice there’s a man who’s just kind of standing at the irrigation line and I’m thinking, this is where I’m instantly aware.

There’s two women in front of me. I’m assessing. I’m completely like, I know exactly what I would do. I know where he is. There’s a busy road I like, I feel good. I go, I [00:17:00] walk my circles. Then I watch him just very, very slowly walking, which seems strange ’cause there’s not really, like, he doesn’t seem like he’s on a walk for a purpose or anything, right?

He’s walking this irrigation line and then he goes outta sight. I’ve walked this trail several times and I’m like, well, I wanna go home. And so I decided, like, I was like, I think it’s fine. And I went ahead and walked the irrigation line back and, and I kind of was like, you know, I was looking to see, make sure like how far ahead he was of me and everything.

And it turned out fine, right? Like he took a left, he went down a road, I crossed the street, continued on, and, and he was way out of distance. But I, I will admit, I was thinking like. Okay, Leah, what if it wasn’t fine? Like I, I do feel this tendency where I don’t, I don’t wanna seem ridiculous. I don’t wanna seem like I’m, I’m being too much.

I, I, and I mean, and this was literally just me with me, but I did, I, I, I feel like I probably should have chose a completely different route. Right. But I didn’t, I [00:18:00] guess maybe wanna be inconvenienced, I’m not even sure. 

Jesus: Well, the interesting part is, part of that, Leah, is that we’ve trained, uh, little girls in America since they were little girls.

Not to be rude, uh, Patricia O’Brien and Pauline Bart in their book Stopping Rape tell women this specifically. It’s a culture of politeness and that’s why Well, so what you’ll be thinking is, well, but I don’t want him to think that. I think, ’cause if he sees me, we’ll do my route. That I’m changing my route because of him.

Why? You are changing your route because of him. You don’t know the guy. Why do you care what he thinks? And the answer is because as a little girl, you were probably taught to be polite, and yet we’ll teach little boys how to fart, itch, and scratch. Right. But that’s okay. By the way, I’m not being too blunt, but Right.

But it’s interesting that society keeps teaching this mantra and the women, uh, parents out there, it’s been handed down generationally, and not all women, by the way, I, I wanna make sure that we make that clear throughout this whole. These trainings in this, this podcast. Not all women. There’s great, [00:19:00] strong, powerful, I mean, Rhonda Rousey, yeah.

She could walk in right now, bam. Hit me in the face and I’d be knocked down and I’d go when I wake up, like we just sat in my face. Right? Right. But research is research. We know that on average, most men are stronger than most women by 60% in the upper body and 40% in the lower body. Sorry, that’s research driven.

Which means if it does turn into a fight, boy you better have some training. Right. But at the end of the day. You do have to self-examine Leon and find out why didn’t I change my route? And part of it is, here we go, is pride. I should not have to stop. I have to check my ego at the door when I went out every night so that I could come home every night, I had to check my ego at the door, okay?

Because our egos get us killed, right? Male or female. Our egos are getting us killed. So think about it, 500,000 women, 375,000 of them, I believe that’s 75% or 325,000 had a feeling something was wrong and [00:20:00] all of them did nothing about it, and all of them were attacked. The data is clear, and by the way, your route that you take to ruck, you should find three different routes, all of the same distance.

Mark the routes A, B, and C on a piece of paper. Fold the paper, stick it in a jar. When you get home and you want to go rock next time, shake the jar, reach in and pull out a route and you can’t change it. You can’t go, oh, I like route ate so much better. 

Leah: It’s the water. That’s funny. I actually kind of thought you were probably gonna tell me that.

I realized as I was saying out loud and I do the same route, I was like, I feel like I’m gonna get called out on that one. That is a very, very bad plan. 

Jesus: And here’s the thing though. I, I and, and I even, even the words we use, right? I’m not gonna call you out, I’m just gonna, what? We’re gonna elevate our level of awareness by going, oh my gosh, I’ve never thought of doing that.

Leah: Yeah, right. 

Jesus: I mean, by the way, if your route suddenly encompasses a homelessness camp, I’m just telling you, the data from HUD just came out for last year’s report and the year before, and both reports tell us homelessness [00:21:00] is not going away. It’s getting worse. A lot of mental health issues, a lot of drug and alcohol addictions, and here’s the key increase of crime in most of those camps, in almost all those camps.

Increase of crime, criminal activity, sorry, but that’s data. That’s not stereotyping the homeless, that’s not implicitly biasing them. That’s taking data and going, there’s a homeless camp there. Now I’m probably gonna find a different route. Stop feeling guilty about it. That has nothing to do with homelessness.

That has to do with the fact that crime is higher in those encampments, and that’s per hud. Housing and urban development. Right. Per the reports. So it’s important that we do come up with different plans and there’s where we start talking about clear. So let’s, let’s talk about Clear, okay. So that we can get those out of the way.

’cause I got a story for you that you’re just your audience and she’s probably in her thirties now. If she’s watching, God, reach out to me, please. You were awesome. Um, um, clear. I teach what’s called Clear Survival Mind States. Uh, C is for [00:22:00] complacency. L is for look and listen, E is for Entru. A is for action.

R is for recover, right? We are constantly complacent. Why number one distraction device right now in the world, right? No, go ahead. Go ahead. You’re good. No, I’m walking out the front door right now. Okay. I can see the picture of the lettuce, but stop. Why are you looking at the picture of the lettuce at the front door of your building while you’re heading to your car?

When you should have just said, gimme a second and look around first. Right. Your investment in being situationally aware is nothing but time. That’s it. Time and thoughts. What would I do if, and then come up with a plan, and then plan’s now tucked away. Isn’t that cool? I mean, isn’t that cool? You’ve got a library up here.

It’s a giant Rolodex, right? You just keep flipping through the plans. You keep adding to it. By the way, if your kids are watching millennials or Generation Z, a Rolodex is, is [00:23:00] it’s something physical we used to use back in the day. You guys have fun, but the point being is that your brain can never have too many plans.

Why? You’ll never fill it up, right? Isn’t it better to have a plan and not need it than to need a plan and not have it? That’s my mantra. That’s my philosophy. A battle avoided is a battle not lost. 375,000 women wouldn’t have lost their battles if they had trusted their feelings instead of feeling guilty for having them.

So stop feeling guilty if you think something’s wrong and it’s related to a man, stop thinking. Well, maybe I’m implicitly biasing. Okay? That’s something you have to review on your own. But if your heart rate is jacked up, if it’s a now decision, you’ve gotta make act first. Review later. Okay. Do I think we all should be reviewing our implicit biases?

Absolutely. We need to become better people, but not in the middle of a crisis. I’m gonna let my instincts take over. By the way, that’s what your amygdala does, right? Fight or flight. What’s up? This isn’t cool. I’m getting outta here. Or freeze and there’s a [00:24:00] problem. I don’t know what to do. Guess why Most people don’t know what to do?

’cause they never thought it would happen to them. Back to part one of this training. Right. Podcast 180 2. In other words, you’ve gotta think about it, you’ve gotta think about what you would do. Complacency is not good, but you don’t have to be un non complacent every day. You don’t have to be looking, listening every second.

Man, I’m, I’m tired just getting home. Oh my gosh. By the way, I, I live, you know, out here in Port Orchard, Washington, and we have our two acres out here, and we’ve got cameras strategically placed. So that they can be my eyes, so that I can can get the work done and do the podcast so I can drop my situational awareness a little bit.

And yet still be ready if something happens. Right? And that’s the key. Take some of your complacency time and and withdraw it from your bank account and deposit it into your look and listen account. I love looking, I love going shopping with my wife. I love [00:25:00] it. She knows it too. And not by the way, not just for the reasons you think ’cause you get to watch people.

That’s true. But I love to shop. I actually love interior design. Okay? I, you’re not gonna believe this, but my wife and I designed this together, right? We change it every season, right? And you’re going, but you’re a SWAT guy. Aren’t your favorite colors gray, camel, and black? Yes. Those are my favorite colors.

Okay. But at the end of the day, you see, we’ve just gotta think about what’s our plan, right? Looking and listening. By the way, if you hear a loud noise at the mall, you look, you still look. We’ve had people that have said, I just didn’t think it was gunfire, but the people running should have been the giveaway.

By the way, if there’s a large volume of people running. Did you know that during some of these shootings, people have actually walked the opposite direction just to find out why they were running? Sorry, not a good idea. Okay, so complacency. No. Get rid of some of it, especially your phone. Look and listen.

Yeah. By [00:26:00] the way. I had a young lady in a training and she said to me, I like the look and listen. And I said, really? She goes, yeah, that really resonates with me. And I went, tell me why. Tell us why. She said, ’cause the world’s such an amazing place anyway. Why wouldn’t we want to look at it and listen to it?

And I went, oh, that’s my wife. My wife is in constant, my wife puts me in awe every day. She does. I’m not just saying that to be the, you know, oh, the husband. My wife sees every, the deer that walks just walked up before this podcast. The squirrels, the rabbits that are in our yard, the trees that are growing around us, the flowers that we just planted yesterday, my wife sees amazement in everything.

Maybe we should start looking at the world that way. You know, maybe it would help some of us be a little bit more civil, right? Instead of, I was just constantly being in constant strife. So look and listen. Right. I find that the three [00:27:00] senses that are used the most for situational awareness are smell, sight, and hearing.

Those are the top three. Touch and taste rarely for dangerous situations. Okay. But those three are the precursors, the proactive ones that tell us something is up right. And then we do what? The ease for entrust and trust, whom yourself believe what you’re feeling. Right. Man, if I got a story for you, because I gotta finish that the other two though.

So you’re entrust in yourself and then you think, what would I do if, what’s your action plan? But I shouldn’t have to lock my doors. My, this is fifth generation here and we’ve never locked. Okay, fine. Don’t lock your doors until you get burglarized. Until you get robbed, until you get pistol whipped or killed.

And then I’ll bet you lock your doors every time after that. See, I’m not living in fear. It just doesn’t take that much to [00:28:00] lock a door. Why are we being so obstinate? Right? My doors are locked. I added additional deals on my doors and I was looking at adding anyway, when one day I’m an hour away from teaching, it should have been back sooner.

Got caught traffic on S Bridge, and there’s a guy at my front door acting completely weird in the rain, asking my wife if he can come in to charge his phone. Thank. God, my wife and I have discussed this plan. We have a ring doorbell for all of those You moms at home. You should never be answering your door anymore to anybody except through the Ring doorbell.

I’m sorry. It just had it happen in Florida where two guys showed up at the home of a 72-year-old man and his wife identifying themselves as utility workers wearing the vest, wearing a white helmet and carrying a clipboard, and they said, we’ve got a gas leak somewhere in this area. We just need to check your, your line please.

And of course they were like, oh, these so polite young men, and they came in, the man let him downstairs to the basement. The two young men came back [00:29:00] upstairs. They hogtied her, robbed her, and then fled the house. She gets free and calls 9 1 1, but then she realizes she doesn’t know where her husband’s at.

When the cops get there so fast, they find him downstairs beaten to death, hog tied, and he’s dead. Right. I’m not trying to scare you. Do you have the right to call the utility company to confirm who’s at your door? Yes. By the way, my mom is 93 years old. I just called Puget Sound Energy and asked them, from now on, do not go to my mom’s house.

’cause she lives by herself. Until you contact me, I’m the main point of contact. Gimme the date and time and I will pass it on to my mom and I’ll have you on the cameras. Did you know they did it? Isn’t that awesome? They worked with my mom being a vulnerable adult and they upheld my request. ’cause the first time they showed up unannounced.

That’s scary. She’s 93 years old. She can’t defend herself. Right. So having a plan, you know, making sure that you know this Ring doorbell, my wife loves it. She loves all of our cameras because [00:30:00] we can see people before they even know that we can see them, right? They’re thinking they’re just walking on our property, but they’re already, they’re under surveillance and it feeds to our phones.

And my wife now knows how to work the phone, right? She, she, and by the way, I gotta tell you, if I told my wife today, Hey, just so you know, I’m taking all the cameras away, my wife would go, no, you’re not. I go, no, I really am. She’ll go, no, you’re not. And then I would go, no, I’m not. Right. See, she’s adapted her lifestyle, realizing that it keeps us safe, it keeps us getting home, it keeps us going out to do the things we want to do.

So you entrust yourself, right? One guy in Tennessee calls it A-J-D-L-R, and I said, I’m sorry, sir. I don’t know that acronym. He says, it just don’t look right. And I started laughing. He says, you know Jesus down here, we feel if it don’t look right, it just don’t feel right. It’s probably not right. I started laughing.

I said, do you mind if I use that in my trainings? He goes, yes, sir. You may as long as you tell your participants it came [00:31:00] from Tennessee, so you ever had A-J-D-L-R-J-D-F-R Something just didn’t look right. Didn’t feel right. Yeah, right. 

Leah: I think we all have, I think every one of us can think back and realize.

Yep, and and I think it’s important to realize that. Hopefully we will never know why. Correct. And that’s okay. Right. We take action. We choose not to go that direction and we will never know why we had that feeling. Exactly. And that’s a good thing. And that might make us question and be like, well, maybe I was wrong.

Maybe I was being paranoid. Or being ridiculous. Of being silly. Right. And that is so okay that there, there is nothing wrong with that. 

Jesus: If you are right and you took the alternative route. You’re right. You’ll never know if you’re right. That’s called being proactive, but don’t stop doing it because nothing happened.

I read a, a study of, gosh, it was 20, 20 years ago that talked about women that buy personal safety products, [00:32:00] buy ’em, and they keep ’em for an average of three to six months before they stop carrying ’em. The reason they stopped carrying them is really disappointing because nothing’s happening, right? That’s the point of the product.

Your pepper spray won’t do you a bit of good unless it’s in your hand. Unlocked. And then every time you put it away, clip the lock, put it back in your purse. But when you get from done at Macy’s or Nordstrom’s, wherever you go and you get ready to walk again, unlock in your hand. And you shouldn’t feel paranoid about it.

If some guy goes, whoa, not walking next to you, you don’t know the guy, why do you care if he thinks you’re paranoid or not? Seriously? And the answer is because a lot of young women in America were raised that way. Isn’t that interesting? And yet, research says. You read body language better than men, and by the way, specifically nonverbal cues, right?

Men apparently rely more on verbal. Isn’t that interesting? Tone, pitch rate of speech, women body language, because [00:33:00] first of all, most women have had to raise, obviously the children almost all have had to raise, nurture, and you could tell when the baby’s distressed before it becomes distressed. Isn’t that cool?

The sad part is because you have to live in a male dominated world of violence. And so you’ve learned to use body language recognition as a survival tool. Wow. So you read body language, especially nonverbal cues better than men, according to research. By the way, that’s again, national Institute, health, health, American Psychological Association, a Harvard University.

You can read all the studies you want. There’s thousands of them. Over a thousand that say Women absolutely generally read body language better than men. Okay? By the way, remember, generally most women, not all. Okay. I read body language pretty good, but I teach it for a living ’cause it’s amazing. It’s fascinating.

So E as in trust, A is for action. What is your plan? What is your plan? What are you gonna do? By the way, remember the guy in the Safeway, he finally found his wife [00:34:00] and they rang to the door. When they ran to the door to hit the exit, he paused. And when the interviewer asked him, why did you pause? Now listen to what he said.

There was a sign on the door that said, emergency exit. Only alarm will sound, I know what you’re thinking, but please don’t shame him. I’m sure some of you have done this where you’ve been at a restaurant or a bar and you’re leaving. You’re waiting goodbye to your buddies, and you go to push the door, the push bar, and all of a sudden you go, oh, shoot.

Wrong door. And then you went to another door and your friends went, you’re such a dork, right? Guess what? You just taught your brain to think civilly in a civil event. Unfortunately, it’s not transferring to an uncivil event. He paused. ’cause he’s a rule. He’s not a rule breaker. He follows the rules and then he hits the door and goes out with his wife and lives.

Amazing, isn’t it? His action plan was delayed by his own cultural upbringing of following the rules. I’m gonna be clear today to you, in times of crisis, [00:35:00] extreme crisis, life and death threat to you, your family, stop thinking, policies, procedures, protocol, civility, and morality. Got it. I only think survivability.

I’ll take care of the rest later videos that we showed to prove that I’m, I’m sure Leah, you remember the one of the woman in the or the driver in the van in the parking lot. Yes. That was contained. Amazing. 

Leah: Yeah. 

Jesus: That guy did not expect her to do what she did. She took off in that car. Right? You see, your action plan will lead to your recovery plan, and there’s the key.

You can only recover if you had a plan and you were ready to get home. Clear. Right in law enforcement tactical team, when I’d come out of a room, I’d come out of a room, Zeus coming out clear that told my other SWAT team members that are in a flow going in and out of other rooms while we’re on a mission that this room behind me is safe.

If one of you needs to tuck in here real quick, it’s safe. It’s been cleared of any threats, so I need you to start thinking clear. I need you to [00:36:00] start believing more clear. That you’re gonna make it home, make it to retirement, and without paranoia. And let me give you this, this story that is really an amazing story.

I love this young girl. She’s 12 years old. She was 12 years old at the time in the city of university place. And, um, she wanted to, um, help one of her friends by going on walks with her and her mom said she could, as long as she didn’t go on walks, uh, in the dark. On this particular morning, uh, the sun did not come up as quickly as usual.

It was, we were heading into the fall and she’s, it’s a little bit dark. It’s not horribly dark, but it’s, you know, it’s right about getting there to sunlight and she’s walking with a friend. By the way, this little girl is a pips quake. I’m talking maybe 90 pounds, maybe 12 years old. Okay. If that. She’s walking [00:37:00] down Grandview Drive, and as she is, she hears the crunching of gravel behind her.

’cause Grandview used to have a gravel walkway next to the road and she could hear it clear as day. And so she’s walking with a friend. This little girl turns around and sees this very large, very well-built man, and he’s in sweats and she turns and he looks, and she looks at him and he looks, he looks at her, and then she just kinda looks at her friend and they keep talking.

Now she hears the gravel even closer. This little 12-year-old girl turns around and sees that he has now closed space on them. She’s not feeling comfortable. She’s got her phone in her hand. She turns, and as she continues, just as she finishes turning, he runs up, grabs this girl, tucks her under his arm.

That’s how big this guy was. Starts running back the opposite way from where her friend is at on the gravel portion of the road, running back to his truck. He’s abducting this 12-year-old girl in front of her friend. Unbeknownst to her, he’s a serial rapist, [00:38:00] and while she’s in his arms, this 12-year-old takes her phone, chucks it at her friend and yells, call 9 1 1.

And her friend catches the phone, and as she does, the guy is startled by what she just did. Drops her, jumps in his truck. Drives away. No, no, no, no, no. If that’s not amazing enough for you, she gives me a description of him, his clothing, and his truck. That was so accurate. I wanted to do the follow up that morning.

I wasn’t gonna wait, this was on a Saturday, a weekend. I wasn’t gonna wait for a Monday. Detective, I called the, uh, sex crimes investigator. Do you mind if I run with this? And he goes, yes. We’ve had Serial this, this guy’s a serial rapist. He says, lemme show you what I have. He sent me all the stuff digitally and can I do a, a, a photo montage?

Absolutely. This is one of our suspects. I’ll put him in a montage. This is great. God let me know what happens on this. Yep. I go to this young lady’s house, I walk in, I said, I have a photo montage to show to your daughter. Um, is that okay if I do that? Mom says, well, yes, of [00:39:00] course. I open the book and the, the lid barely hits the table.

And the girl goes, that’s him. And the mom says, stop. Don’t be so quick. Just take some time. I said, ma’am, can I please have you leave the room? Because she’s influencing her. She’s trying. And the girl goes, no, that’s him. That’s the guy that grabbed me. And the mom’s like, well, how can you be sure? I’m like, mom, stop.

She’s giving me clothing, height, weight. We get an arrest warrant for him. We go out to a very ritzy part of Gig Harbor Washington. This is a man married with kids, and I pull up into his driveway while he is working on the front lights of his house. I happen to know his wife,

and she of course is shocked. Jesus says, what are you doing here? And we arrest her husband for rape. Exact truck description or attempted abduction and attempted rape. We look in the back of the car, he’s wearing [00:40:00] exactly what she described. 12 years old. Are you kidding me right now? This young girl, I told her, when you turn 21, please, if I’m still with the department, come find me.

You need to be a deputy. I wanna pass on to her. What? Someone passed on to me. She was just in the moment. Completely in control of herself. Isn’t that an amazing story? Right. And by the way, and the guy was convicted for multiple, multiple rapes from one 12-year-old girl having a plan. Right. 

Leah: I think what’s so amazing is just realizing we have more power than we often feel that we do.

Jesus: Yes. Yes you do. And I think that the sad part is, is that society’s telling a lot of women that you don’t. And when all was said and done, I’m just telling you that if I had to use the odds of danger radar for a woman at 75%, [00:41:00] I’d take those odds anywhere because that’s telling me there’s a reason you recognize this better than I do.

I mean really that I, I stand up one in 71 chance of being a victim of rape. You really think any guy even really thinks of that usually, right? But women. When it gets dark in the fall, women notice it. It’s one of the first things I hear from women all over the country. I step outside and I go, uh, it’s dark.

And they tell me their heart’s elevated a little bit, right? Because they realize it’s suddenly dark. So for the women watching today, for the young ladies watching today, you know, Patricia O’Brien and Pauly Bart, they, they tell us women in America have gotta start being more rude. I agree with them. Stop worrying about what some guy thinks about you.

Stop worrying if he goes you f and b and flips you off and walks away, okay? But at the end of the day, if you think something’s wrong, act on that. Right? Stop being complacent. Get off the phone [00:42:00] when you’re in an environment, unless you’re in a secure environment, other people around you, right? Get off that phone.

If you’re crossing the street, get off that phone. If you’re walking to your car, be aware of where you’re going to walking to the concert venue. Walk with other friends. Research shows that if you walk with two people, you reduce victimization by half. Just with two people. Add a dog to it, by the way, something other than a chihuahua.

Okay. Add a dog to it, you’d reduce it dramatically, almost a hundred percent. So home safety, right? You know, I love that my wife does not answer the front door, and I don’t care if people are offended by that. I don’t. Because the people that are our friends, she’ll open the door to, but if she doesn’t know you, and you have the nerd to walk up my long gravel driveway that says, no trespassing and knock on my door, and you’re not an Amazon delivery person, you’re not supposed to be my front door to begin with.

We’ve already got her retreat plan, by the way, established. And she loves it. She’s like, this makes me feel so good to have a plan when you are not around ’cause I [00:43:00] travel. Right? So for those of you watching, you know, think clear, complacency, not as much. Look and listen, that’s where you should be most of the day.

And trust yourself with what you’re feeling. Research shows, it’s usually accurate. Gavin de Becker wrote the book, uh, the, the book called The Gift of Fear. It tells us fear is your body’s way of telling you something’s wrong, right? A for action. What’s your plan? Have you already thought about it and then filed it in your library?

And by the way, this time, did you change it a little bit? New plan, right? Supplemental plan. And then where are you gonna go to recover? And I believe that if you have that plan in mind, for many of us, it’s gonna be home. We’ll make it home, home to retire, home for the holidays, home for our significant others, um, and to enjoy life.

You know, to just enjoy life without living in fear. I refuse to live in fear. I choose to live in [00:44:00] awareness. Hmm. 

Leah: Thank you so much for this conversation, for our conversation from episode 180 2 and just for sharing all of these insights with us. Is there anything that you would love to just leave with the women listening?

Today. 

Jesus: Yeah. One last thing. Um, in a previous relationship I was in, I taught my stepdaughter how to be rude. I actually taught her how to be rude, and then I rehearsed it with her. Remember, your brain can’t remember a plan. It hasn’t rehearsed or thought of. And I rehearsed with her. Um, and the first day that she calls me where she was rude, um, she was at, uh, high school and a young man walked up behind her unexpectedly, completely put his arms around her.

A big bear hug. And it startled her, and she’s an athlete. She’s, oh my gosh, she’s an incredible athlete. And she said, get your effing hands off of me, or I’m gonna turn you into [00:45:00] soprano. And he’s like, gosh, just lighten up. She goes, no, don’t you ever walk up behind me and do that to me again, ever. That was her boundary right now.

He remained her friend. The second time, she was rude. She asked if she was gonna get in trouble because one of my friends called about a vacation that we were on. Lee had never met her, and so he goes, so how was your vacation? She goes, you know, dad, I didn’t feel comfortable. He was asking me questions that I just didn’t feel comfortable.

So I told him, you know what? None of your business. And she hung up. She calls me, I just need to know if I’m gonna get in trouble. I don’t know if this was one of your friends, but I just didn’t feel comfortable, dad, and you’ve taught me that if I don’t feel comfortable, don’t answer questions, just hang up.

I go, I did have taught you that. And she goes, so am I in trouble? I go, no. And when my friend calls to tell me, your daughter hung up on me, I’m gonna ask him, why the heck are you asking my daughter? You don’t know questions about my family. You see it, it, it’s, I’m gonna defend her Practice with your little [00:46:00] girls, soon to be big girls and your big girls, they’re gonna become bigger girls.

Please practice with them on how to be rude so that it’s not something out of their purview. It’s not out of their tool chest, it’s not a stranger to them anymore. It is something that says, I live here permanently and when I’m needed, I will step up to the plate. It’s already rehearsed, and I would have you invite your husbands to have, uh, your significant others as well to rehearse with them, right?

Just give ’em what ifs and see what they come up with. 

Leah: Thank you. Thank you so much for this. I know that this is one that we will share and talk with other women about because. The more that we talk together and bring awareness, awareness, the more that we can save and help each other. So thank you for being here.

I will have all of Jesus’s links in our show notes. I will have the clear acronym in there so that if anybody’s like, ha, I don’t, I don’t remember all of them. I [00:47:00] need them. They’re all gonna be there. So we’ll have all of those things, um, included in the show notes of this episode. All right. Thank you, 

Jesus: thank you, thank you, Leah, for what you’re doing for the women out there that, you know, they, they’ve just got such a heavy workload.

Um, and what’s cool about this, again, remember, is that in the workload, it’s, it’s just something that you can take the time to think about, which is, you know, a lighter workload. When you get that breath, when you take that moment to just breathe and go, what would I do if, okay, that’s my what if today. So thank you for empowering women.

Um, and thank you for inviting me as your guest to do so. You guys take care and of course be safe. God bless you all.

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