Gavin de Becker Interviewed by Charlie Rose - Part 1

For years, crime rates have been declining, but fear of violence continues to grip Americans across the country in the gift of fear. Gavin de Becker urges us to listen to our inner survival signals and allow fear to protect us from danger. He considers himself to be Rebecca. As one of the leading experts in predicting and managing violence, the book is currently a bestseller and is considered by Oprah Winfrey to be the most important book she has ever read. I'm pleased to have Gavin de Becker on this show. Thank you. What I mean. That's incredible praise from Oprah.

Hmm, what do you think made her such an important and significant person in her life? Well, actually, I heard it from a lot of people in letters and I think what was touched on here in The People is the idea that we already have the resource in us. I mean, here we are a nation that goes to the experts for everything. The experts will tell us if we are safe. The experts will tell us what causes cancer and the experts will tell us about the violence and the problem. local news and whatever, and what my book really makes clear and loud is that you already have this resource within you that if the human mind is the most extraordinary creation on earth, then it is never more incredible than when its host It is at risk and then comes this incredible defense system, intuition and fear are

part

of that system.

Hearing you say that intuition reminds me of reading over the last week that it has nothing to do with the tragedy or even the morning, but Princess Diana mhm was quoted a number. Many times when talking about what had happened to him and coming out of the whole tragedy, it was his intuition, yes, that had served him best time and time again and his brother said that in the eulogy he wrote he said that was the only characteristic . What he will remember most about her is what you know most closely is her intuition that is what guided her and where we get intuition in the spiritual sense you could say about God in the most scientific sense it is really a cognitive process that does not is much Unlike logic, it is much faster and goes from A to Z without stopping and all the letters on the way in our way, more mail, since we stopped at all the letters on the way and we want to be positive before committing.

Z, we saw each of those letters, intuition is just not knowing and, you know, it's really amazing. When I was writing this book, I learned that the word means to guard and protect, that's what the root of intuition really is. means that you say you know to hear at the beginning of the book that men of all ages and in all

part

s of the world are more violent than women, for this reason the language in this book is more gender specific for men when it comes to of violence that women can I proudly renounce recognition in the language because here it is finally politically correct, statistically incorrect mm-hmm differences in men women without questions and just as it says when men are more violent and women are victimized by men men very, very often I mean in this country a woman is murdered by a husband or a boyfriend every two hours and women visit emergency rooms more often for violence from their husbands and boyfriends than for violence, that is, for accidents, rapes or car accidents combined, so this is not surprising to women what I have written, but apparently it has been a big surprise to many men because I have heard from many men who are not happy that that statistic is repeated, but it's just the fact of what your business is, we advise you like a law firm basically.

We are around 67 people and we advise public figures and public organizations government agencies battered women's shelters universities cities on managing fear and violence a typical example would be someone coming to us and saying we have to fire Joe Smith and everyone The co-workers are afraid of Joe Smith, so how do we get him fired? What is the probability that he will behave violently? We are really in the business of making high-stakes predictions. That's the advantage when you're worried about a client I employ. who is not exercising and needs to be fired can react in a terrible way, there are many strategies, for example, issues like the day of the week, it's not that you fire someone, it's a problem, the time of day is a problem, For example, we generally recommend not firing people on a Monday morning when they will have the entire week to be home at odd hours watching TV shows they have never seen before knowing that their coworkers are at work talking about them.

We recommend dismissal. on a Friday night when everyone is going home anyway, so Saturday will be a normal day for them and one hopes that they will focus on the future next week, but there are warning signs associated with people who behave violently and fortunately most people who come For us, with a fear problem, we find that the probability of the person acting violently is very low, but the one with the bumper sticker that says protected by Smith & Wesson and you know, you talk about guns all the time and you watch your violent news. stories and says yes, they were right, what they did to that guy causes an intuitive feeling of fear among co-workers who might act violently and that is that evaluation guides management's decision on how to fire, whether to fire and whether undergo treatment. and all the other options they have, how the world has changed for celebrities, probably the most notable thing is in this fraudulent relationship that comes with television, it seems like you really know Johnny Carson, for example, and we really don't, but there are people who knew Carson. better than they knew people in their own lives because they spent more time with him literally so there are people behind who were getting ready to go to bed in bed intimately better oh this thing is a ray gun in the brain.

I know I mean this is a very intimate medium and I'm closer to some people on TV, closer to their faces than I am to any human being unless I was going to kiss them or fight them and yet here I am watching to Farrah Fawcett. or whoever she is, the small details of her eyes and our bodies don't know the difference, so intimacy is the biggest change for media figures. Another thing, I guess, is the numbers, the numbers are so extraordinary for a singer like Madonna who has a Knowing audience of over a billion people, pretty extraordinary people know who's right Madonna and Ed Muhammad Ali and other people like that. , and when you have such a broad brush, you're going to have some people who react the way you would.

You don't predict it or you wouldn't want most of them to go out and buy the music and act predictably, but some of them will think that you're sending them a message through the television or that the lyrics are meant for them or whatever and So, many of you know many cases involving obsessive pursuers, certain people panic, what is the difference between people who panic and those who, in a sense, at the center of the storm are focused and concentrated? And are they directors of operations? that the people who are panicking are debating with that fear information that comes in and this is what I mean fear says two people a woman who is at risk of being murdered says shut up and do what I tell you to do and I will get you out of this and suddenly extraordinary resources come back to my fears that's why it's a gift panic on the other hand is when you start to imagine oh dear now this could happen and that could happen I think this means this and I could slip and all that is the thing that great athletes , the mountaineer or the long-distance swimmer, will tell you that it's not the rocks or the water that kills them, it's the panic that kills them and what it really was, what they do is because you stop, you stop. listening to the natural resource and you start living up here in the mind and you start trying to predict all these things that can happen when fear an intuition has already predicted it it's like you and I have now literally made an evaluation that neither of us will hurt the another and you know it as surely as you could ever know anything, but slowly you might change your mind.

I could get angry. I could reach for a knife. You might remember something about the point is that until those things happen you. You are calm and you know there is no one behind you right now and I know there is no one behind me. If someone touches my shoulder right now, you get a tremendous reaction, but the point is you know it's coming, the garage is coming. but the point is that intuition and fear have put an end to all thinking, even before we hear the starting gun, we have won the race if we listen without debate and I give you a great example of someone who does not know who a person is. elevator door opens in a building late at night and a woman wants to get on the elevator inside the elevators a man who scares her feels a little hesitation and fear and doesn't know why it could be his size it could be his appearance so late it doesn't matter why the point is that she got the signal what does she say I don't want to live like this I don't want to let the door close in her face so for fear of being rude she will enter a soundproof steel chamber with a creature that is afraid of and there is not an animal on earth that would do that, but we do it out of denial, the opposite of intuition, because we want to hurt someone's feelings or something good because we are afraid of not knowing who knows, but the point is that we will get into an elevator with someone who we just received this signal from because we live in this culture where we can deny what the most satisfactory answer is.