Why you should read The Gift of Fear

According to a recent article in the Chicago Sun-Times, a screener at the Portland airport on 9/11 could have changed history and saved lives if he'd only trusted his gut instinct. Michael Tuohey screened Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz Alomari before their flight to Boston that morning. In Boston they boarded American Airlines Flight 11, which they ultimately crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers.

Atta's appearance and demeanor set off alarm bells in Tuohey's mind:

"I said to myself, 'If this guy doesn't look like an Arab terrorist, then nothing does.' Then I gave myself a mental slap, because in this day and age, it's not nice to say things like this," Tuohey told the Maine Sunday Telegram.

This is why I wish everyone would read The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker. Internationally known and respected security expert de Becker tells us that we humans have instincts that warn us of danger and enable us to protect ourselves -- if we heed them. These instinctive warnings are derived from clues and cues that we may not even recognize consciously. For example, Mr. Tuohey's gut feeling that Atta was a terrorist didn't come solely from the fact that he was an Arab. He was picking up on Atta's facial expression, his body language, his one-way ticket, and countless other clues which taken together added up to "terrorist" in the mind of this experienced airline screener.

Already some are blaming political correctness for Tuohey's failure to act, but according to de Becker it's more complicated than that. The very fact that we're civilized can work against trusting our instincts. He gives the example of a woman feeling hesitant to get into an elevator alone with a strange man, then rationalizing away the fear: "Oh, I'm just being silly. It would be so rude of me to refuse to ride with him. I'm sure he's perfectly harmless." Maybe he is and maybe he isn't, but if he sets your Spidey sense tingling, that's reason enough to wait for the next elevator.

Please read this book. I originally checked it out of the library, but later bought it because I like to re-read it every now and then and keep its lessons fresh. It's not often that I can recommend a book that could literally save your life -- but this one can do exactly that.