Angels with Attitude: The Socially Intelligent Woman's Guide to Personal Safety

By Danny Kessler

Angels with Attitude: The Socially Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Personal Safety brings the training that self defense expert Danny Kessler teaches his students in workshops around the world to YOU. The book addresses self defense, awareness, body language, intuition, reading people and boundary setting and discusses how these techniques can be employed to maximize personal safety. Women have better intuition and communication skills than men; this book will teach you how to turn these natural talents into practical and empowering strategies for your safety and the safety of the people that you love. In this book you will learn:

How to trust your powerful female intuition.

How to read and analyze people on sight.

How to detect danger before anything happens.

How to use your body language to set visual boundaries with people you would rather not talk to.

Powerful verbal self defense that makes men freeze in their tracks.

What do you do if your ex starts behaving like a stalker.

How to set boundaries with male friends and coworkers.

To determine what self defense devices and martial arts classes are for you.

How to fight when your life is in danger.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Danny Kessler
• Release date: Apr 24, 2011
• ISBN: 9781452423357

Danny Kessler

Danny Kessler is a Ph.D. Candidate at Youngsan University and a self-defense expert. He is the founder of Angels with Attitude, a company dedicated to promoting women's personal safety. His company has been mentioned on The Today Show, NBC Nightly News, and Fox News Online, and in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. He is also the author of Angels with Attitude: The Socially Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Personal Safety and Travel: A Korean's Guide to America. He is currently living in Busan, South Korea and researching his next book on East Asian food culture. You can find out more about his work at http://www.dannykessler.com

Book preview

Angels with Attitude:

The Socially Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Personal Safety

By Danny Kessler

Edited by Natalie North

Copyright © 2016 Danny Kessler

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

Cover Design by Kim Geun Ryeong

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Danny Kessler is an English teacher at Youngsan University and a self-defense expert. He is the founder of Angels with Attitude, a company dedicated to promoting women’s personal safety. His company has been mentioned on The Today Show, NBC Nightly News, and Fox News Online, and in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. He is also the author of Travel: A Korean’s Guide to America. He is currently living in Busan, South Korea and researching his next book on East Asian food culture. You can find out more about his work at dannykessler.com.

Photo by Anuj Madan

DISCLAIMER

The following information and safety tips are intended to be used as a general guide for enhancing personal safety through awareness and prevention. No assurances whatsoever are given or implied by the author or the publisher that, by following these guidelines, an individual will protect themselves or their property from harm, damage, or destruction. All suggestions that I make regarding self-defense and/or personal safety should be practiced in person with a qualified trainer, and great caution should be taken by the reader when practicing or executing these preventive safety tips. The author and publisher hereby disclaim any and all responsibility or liability for injury that may occur as a result of the use or misuse of this material. The information contained herein is an opinion, for entertainment purposes only. You are responsible for your own behavior and no portion of this book guarantees your safety.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1: CATLIKE AWARENESS

CHAPTER 2: LISTENING WITH YOUR EYES

CHAPTER 3: RAZOR SHARP INUTITION

CHAPTER 4: VISUAL BOUNDARY SETTING

CHAPTER 5: VERBAL BOUNDARY SETTING

CHAPTER 6: DATE RAPE DRUGS AND ALCOHOL

CHAPTER 7: FACEBOOK STALKER

CHAPTER 8: PHYSICAL SELF-DEFENSE

CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND CITATIONS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I want to thank Rochelle Pullman for being the best and most supportive aunt. I want to thank Jeff Funicello for being like an older brother to me and a great coach who taught me persistence, perseverance and the belief that I can achieve anything. I want to thank Bari Yonkers for being like a twin sister and persuading me to continue to take the road less traveled. I want to thank Dedra Johanson for being the best mentor I have ever had and for giving me great strategy and wisdom in the business world.

PREFACE

About 10 years ago, I was teaching a class on personal safety at Arizona State University and was concluding it by reminding my students about how important intuition and awareness are. After class, a student named Rebecca approached me and said that she had a story to tell me about something that had happened to her recently.

I listened as she told me that a few nights before, she was walking home with her boyfriend when they reached an intersection. As they were waiting for the light to change, she noticed two guys in the distance who were giving her a bad feeling. She couldn’t understand why she felt this way, but remembered what I had taught her about the power of taking her intuition seriously, and immediately became proactive about the situation.

She said to her boyfriend, You see those two guys down the street coming towards us? They’re giving me a bad feeling – let’s cross the street to the other side.

Her boyfriend responded, You’re being silly; let’s just keep going.

She insisted, No, please just listen to me. I am getting a bad feeling about those two guys, so let’s cross the street here and avoid crossing paths with them.

They crossed the street as she suggested, and arrived home to their apartment without incident. By making a minor adjustment to their route home, she took charge of her safety and avoided crossing paths with two men who were giving her a negative feeling. Five minutes later, they heard screams coming from just outside of their building. They immediately ran to the window and called the police. It turns out, those same two guys Rebecca avoided while walking home ended up robbing two women at gunpoint. Rebecca and her boyfriend avoided a very dangerous situation because of what she learned in my class, and this became a defining moment early in my career as an educator about personal safety. Her story is one of many like it that continue to motivate me in sharing the message that helped empower and inform her.

Angels with Attitude is about knowing how to deal with the realities that all women face sooner or later.

Author’s Note:

This book is written from a heterocentric perspective; it uses heteronormative language and only refers to heterosexual dating culture and aggression from men toward women. I recognize that in doing so, I am excluding a large portion of the population, a choice made to reflect the reality of the majority of potentially dangerous situations women are likely to encounter. The principles discussed, however, are often universal and can be applied to a range of unique scenarios.

Most women who care about personal safety are the ones who have already been attacked.

- Danny Kessler

INTRODUCTION

"So why is a girl born with such a highly tuned machine for reading faces, hearing emotional tones in voices, and responding to unspoken cues in others? Think about it. A machine like that is built for connection. That’s the main job of the girl brain, and that’s what it drives a female to do from birth. This is the result of millennia of genetic and evolutionary hardwiring that once had — and probably still has — real consequences for survival. If you can read faces and voices, you can tell what an infant needs. You can predict what a bigger, more aggressive male is going to do. And since you’re smaller, you probably need to band with other females to fend off attacks from a ticked off caveman — or cavemen."

- Dr. Louann Brizendine: The Female Brain

Personal safety for women is a lot different than personal safety for men, for a number of reasons. While males are on average larger and more physically intimidating than females, women have not just significantly different, but significantly better intuition and communication skills than men. These skills are invaluable mechanisms of prevention and protection, and when leveraged to your advantage can greatly increase your safety. At its core, this book is about becoming aware of the natural advantages you were born with, trusting them, and incorporating them into your personal safety.

Many experts in the field of crime, personal safety, and women’s self-defense discuss violent crime and the many ways in which it negatively affects society as if it is a temporary affliction. The undertone to this message is that rapists should, and eventually will, stop raping people, and that police, cameras, and information will one day eradicate this problem from society entirely. Surely these mechanisms are all part of the long-term solution to the plague that is violence against women, but to rely on them more than your own judgment and discretion is foolishly idealistic.

The raw and often disconcerting truth about human nature trumps delusions, no matter how comforting they may be, and I advocate for women to carry an umbrella instead of praying for good weather. I will treat you like the master of your destiny, because that is what you are. If you ever need help, I hope it’s there for you, I really do. But I wouldn’t bet my life on it, and I won’t ask you to bet yours. I will instead teach you how to use your own natural ability to avoid negative situations in the first place, how to de-escalate them when you can’t by using your own natural advantages, and I will eventually suggest systems for self-defense training should physical confrontation ever become truly unavoidable. This book is not about victim-blaming. It’s intended to promote personal safety and empowerment among women, separate from the root causes of any aggressive or violent behavior from the men around them.

Angels with Attitude deals largely with communication skills that break down into four main areas: Awareness, Body Language, Intuition, and Boundary Setting. All of these topics are interrelated, and provide invaluable insight when combined together. As your awareness becomes heightened, your opportunities to read body language increase. Interpreting more body language will gradually enhance your intuition. As awareness of your own intuitive processes becomes more natural, your ability to predict what people will do in various social settings becomes more accurate. This strengthens your confidence and ability to set appropriate and powerful boundaries. Visual and verbal boundaries are vital in commanding respect and avoiding danger.

Chapter One: Catlike Awareness is about being socially aware and alert. I teach you how