The Avoidance Mindset: Why the Best Self-Defense Story Is One Where Nothing Happens

The best self-defense story I've read recently is one where nothing happened.

A woman posted it in a training group I follow. She stopped at a gas station — not her usual one, but in what she described as a good neighborhood, across from the mall. When she got out of her car, she noticed three people loitering near the pumps: one woman, two younger men. The men started slowly circling behind her vehicle. The woman walked toward her with a line.

“Can I ask you something?”

She raised a hand in a stop gesture and said “No.” Firmly. The woman paused. Took another step. She said “No. You don't need to come any closer.” This time the approach broke. The men reversed their circle. She finished pumping gas and pulled out.

As she drove away, she watched them start the exact same approach on the next woman at the pump.

No shots fired. No DGU. No story for the news. Just a person who recognized what was happening and shut it down with a hand and a word.

That's avoidance. And it's the dimension of mindset that almost nobody trains.

What Avoidance Actually Is

In the pillar article on the six components of a concealed carry mindset, I described avoidance as the practice of not being there when bad things happen — or, when you are there, recognizing the situation early enough to leave before things escalate.

Awareness is what you notice. Avoidance is both minimizing the risk of being in a bad situation and what you do about it when danger finds you. You can be the most situationally aware person on the planet, but if you don't act on what you see, you're just a witness to your own incident.

John Farnam puts it about as simply as it can be put: don't go to stupid places, don't be there with stupid people, don't do stupid things. The avoidance mindset is the discipline that follows from taking that seriously.

The Gas Station Story, Decoded

The thing worth noticing about this woman's encounter is how textbook it was — for both sides.

What the three of them were doing has a name in the training community: “the interview.” A criminal team picks a target, splits up to control angles of approach, and sends one person — usually the least threatening-looking one — to close distance with a verbal pretext.

“Can I ask you a question.” “Excuse me, do you have the time.” “Can you spare some change.”

The pretext doesn't matter. The pretext is the distraction. While you're parsing the question and forming a polite response, the angles are closing.

You can see all of it in her account. Three people meandering. Two men circling behind. The woman approaching with a line. That's not three random people sharing a parking lot. That's a setup.

Here's what she did right:

• She didn't engage the question.
• She put her hand up, palm out — a verbal and physical barrier at the same time.
• She said “No,” and meant it.
• When the woman tested the barrier with another step, she escalated her command. Not louder. More directive. “You don't need to come any closer.”
• She held her ground. Didn't apologize. Didn't soften it. Didn't try to be nice about it.

That's textbook Managing Unknown Contacts. And it's not natural for most people, because most people have been trained since kindergarten to be polite, to engage when spoken to, to answer questions when asked.

The avoidance mindset is in part the willingness to be rude when the situation calls for it.

What Most People Get Wrong

Confusing Avoidance with Paranoia

Paranoia is being afraid everywhere. Avoidance is being thoughtful about where, when, and how you do things — and being willing to leave when something feels off. One is a posture. The other is a practice.

The “Good Neighborhood” Trap

The gas station was across from a mall. Good neighborhood. That didn't matter.

Avoiding bad neighborhoods and bad situations is the first move. It's the most basic application of the avoidance mindset. Don't go where you don't need to be. Don't be there at hours you don't need to be there. Don't put yourself in places where the odds tilt against you. The single biggest reduction in your odds of needing your firearm comes from not being in the places where firearms get used.

But once you've done that, don't make the mistake of thinking you're done. Crime happens where the targets are, not where the bad guys live. Mall parking lots, gas stations, ATMs, grocery store lots — these are predator hunting grounds in every neighborhood, including yours. The strong defensive mindset doesn't switch off because you picked a “safe” spot. The other five components — defensive only, awareness, determination, discipline, diligence — still have to be running. Avoidance reduces your exposure. It doesn't eliminate it.

Treating Avoidance as Passive

People hear “avoidance” and think it means doing nothing. Backing down. Being soft. Avoidance is none of those. Avoidance is active route-planning, active pattern-breaking, active decision-making under pressure. It takes more discipline than drawing a gun. It's just that nobody writes magazine articles about it because the outcome is uneventful.

What Avoidance Looks Like in Daily Life

A few of the behaviors I'd point to:

• Picking when, where, and how you do routine things. The 11pm gas station run isn't the same as the 6pm one. The ATM around the corner isn't the same as the one in the empty parking lot. You have options. Use them.
• Acting on the gut. If a place feels wrong, leave. You don't owe anyone an explanation. You don't have to wait for confirmation. The cost of leaving a place that turned out to be fine is zero. The cost of staying in a place that turned out not to be fine is everything.
• Using verbal barriers early. The single most useful sentence in the avoidance toolkit is some version of “I can't help you.” Said firmly, with a hand up, while you continue what you were doing. It works because it doesn't open a conversation. It closes one.
• Maintaining distance. The most important variable in an unknown contact is how close they're allowed to get. Distance is time. Time is options. The moment someone's closing distance on you and you don't know why, your job is to manage that distance — not to wait and see what they want.
• Being willing to look rude. This is the heart of it. Avoidance often costs you a small social transaction. Predators count on people refusing to pay that cost. Pay it.

How to Build the Avoidance Mindset

A few specific things that work:

• Take a Managing Unknown Contacts class. Chuck Haggard teaches an excellent one that I can personally endorse. Several other instructors teach related material. If you carry every day and have never taken one of these, you have a gap. Fill it.
• Read about pre-incident indicators. Gavin de Becker's The Gift of Fear is the most accessible starting point. The patterns predators use are not random — they're predictable, and once you see them you can't unsee them.
• Rehearse the verbal command. Out loud. In your car. Say “No, you don't need to come any closer” until it feels normal coming out of your mouth. The first time you need it is not the time to figure out how it sounds.
• Audit your routines. Where do you regularly put yourself in low-leverage situations? ATM at 10pm? Gas station off the highway when you're tired? Walking to your car in a parking garage looking at your phone? Pick three of these this week and change them.
• Pay attention to the times you almost ignored your gut. Those are the data points. Most people who get assaulted will tell you afterward that something felt off and they ignored it. Stop ignoring it.

The Takeaway

The woman at that gas station didn't have a gunfight. She didn't have a use of force. She didn't have a story she'd ever see on the news.

What she had was Tier 1 self-defense, executed under real pressure, in real time. She recognized the setup. She broke the script. She left.

The hardest thing about teaching avoidance is that the wins are invisible. You can't celebrate the fight you didn't have. You can't show off the parking lot you left. You can't tell a great war story about the gas station you turned around at.

But that invisibility is the entire point. The best self-defense is the kind nobody ever sees, including you, because you were never there to see it.

This is the second piece in a six-part series walking through each component of a strong concealed carry mindset, drawn from the original pillar article on developing a defensive mindset. Previously: The Defensive-Only Mindset. Next up: Awareness — the practice of seeing what most people miss.