Watch how this guy responds to a kidnapping right in front of him.

In self-defense training, one of the key factors that victims have to deal with is normalcy bias aka the bystander effect.

Normalcy bias is when you ignore the reality of a situation because you think that if you just act normal, the situation will return to normal.

Normalcy bias means you are not seeing the red flags and not grasping the gravity of a situation, so you go into denial.

Since something like this has never happened to me before, it never will.

The guy at the pump in the video was faced with at least one decision. What was it? What else?

Normalcy bias is dangerous judgment error that causes our brains to assume things will keep going as they have been--normally.

As a result, we drastically underestimate both the likelihood of a disaster occurring and the impact if it does.

How Does This Apply to Your Martial Arts School?

As a school owner, you can go into denial about what is happening in your school.

Students are dropping out. Students always drop out. Nothing new there. It's "normal."

What you are ignoring is that parents and students today are far more educated about martial arts than ever.

The UFC has been educating any fan of martial arts or sport fighting that it makes more sense to train in a practical system that is more focused on the student than the style.

Many students today have parents who did martial arts when they were kids or in college, so they have a better understanding of what a quality school is.

Yet, as the market gets smarter, many school owners remain in the past and still teaching their kata and traditional blocks and holding punches out in the air while the world around them has modernized.

Lesson:  Face what is happening, not what you hope will happen.

Note: I first saw this video on the Active Self-Protection website.

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