Balancing Awareness and Paranoia

For many people involved in martial arts, the decision to cultivate those skills is a way of taking responsibility for their own safety. It's a given that even in the safest of societies or areas of town, that there may be the possibility of incidents involving anything from road-rage to attempted mugging. As mentioned in a previous post, awareness may preempt an unwanted situation. The challenge is having awareness without paranoia. So while walking somewhere, for example, it's a good habit to notice things in our immediate environment that could be used for defense, such as club-like objects in a street dumpster, or having a pen within reach, but not letting that awareness translate into an assumption that a boogie-man is going to jump out at you if you are not hyper-vigilant. Not always an easy thing if we watch too much tabloid news, but something worth striving for.