Mindset Monday: Awareness, Boyd’s Loop

Monday again, and we have come back around to the first part of our mindset trinity, awareness. This week we are talking about Boyd’s loop or as it is also called, the OODA loop. OODA is just plain fun to say. As humans we go through this process thousands of times a day, from the moment we wake up and make our coffee, to when we lay down at night to go to sleep.

Lt. Colonel John Boyd was an Air Force officer, and fighter pilot with a career that spanned World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. His ideas and tactics also had a great effect on the gulf war in the early 90’s. In the late 1950’s Boyd was known as “forty second Boyd”, and considered the best fighter pilot in the U.S., if not the world. He was called “forty second Boyd because he could beat anyone in simulated air-to-air combat in 40 seconds or less.

Throughout the 1950’s and early 60’s Boyd gave a series of briefings on his observations of dog fights that happened during world war 2. What he found is that fighter pilots that moved through four phases of decision making fastest, where the most successful.

The four phases he looked at where.

• Observe
• Orient
• Decide
• Act

While we work through this process almost every minute of every day, we want to look at it in the context of a self defense situation. If we have a protector mindset, and are aware of our surroundings and situation then, we are already practicing the first part of Boyd’s loop, Observe.

The second part, orient happens once we see a possible threat. Once we know that we are in a possible defensive situation, Our brains can tell us to do one of two things. The first is run, we orient ourselves away from the problem. The second is that we turn our bodies towards the threat. This is us orienting ourselves, getting ready for the confrontation.

Once we have observed, and oriented ourselves towards the threat, the next part is to decide. in the simplest terms. what do we do? do we find cover, do we give verbal commands, or does the situation call for us to draw our weapon? these and a thousand more are what will go through your mind in a fraction of a second. Your training (hopefully if you are reading this you have some or will get some) will dictate what you decide.

Finally its time to act on your decision. Once you have made your decision you have to commit to what you have chosen to do. In a defensive situation you don’t have the luxury of doing something half way. You don’t want to find yourself frozen and unable to act. In the first mindset class I took, we where told “just do something, even if it ends up being wrong, at least you have started moving”.

Our training should be designed to help us move through this loop as quickly as possible. Unfortunately when we find ourselves in a self defense situation, we are almost always at a disadvantage because the person that is the threat has already moved through their loop and is in the act phase. The good news is that there are things that we can do and train, that will force them to restart their loop and put us back ahead of them. But those are a topic for other posts.

If you want to get into more detail about the Boyd’s Loop (OODA) check out our “Situational awareness, and protector mindset” course. As always make sure to stay up to date with what we are doing by liking our Facebook and instagram.