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No one ever wants to think that bad things — exceptionally bad things, even — could happen to them. And yet, the world is a pretty scary place, depending on where you look. People do get exploited on a fairly regular basis. And sometimes they get victimised beyond all reason.

One common reaction to this unpleasant fact of life, is to deny the extent of the risk. To continue in “blissful ignorance”, so to speak. But that strategy only holds up until such time as a predatory figure attempts to exploit you. And it leaves you naive and vulnerable to a staggering degree.

Another common reaction is to withdraw from the world, grow bitter, and refuse to engage with life itself, due to your rampant fear and paranoia.

A third, and vastly better option, is to arm and protect yourself with awareness, while still engaging with the world and overcoming your fears and uncertainties through head-on, wide-eyed experience.

We are lucky these days to be able to obtain compensation, and fight against exploitation and unfair treatment, via the help of legal experts such as Newbold Solicitors. But, of course, it’s always best to forestall such issues in the first place.

Here are a few ways in which awareness can protect you from exploitation.

Awareness of the realities of danger and exploitation can forewarn you and stave off naivete

Predatory individuals always do what they can to target the naive and vulnerable. It’s why you hear so many stories of eighty-year-old women getting defrauded by hucksters online than you do about twenty-somethings suffering the same exploitation.

When you reject awareness of the dangers of life, you make yourself vulnerable. You shut your eyes to many of the warning signs. You walk ahead blindly.

By knowing how exploitative people work in different contexts, and how exploitation often happens, you forewarn yourself and prepare yourself to dodge risky situations.

Awareness of yourself, your actions, and your unwise habits, can help you to improve and guard yourself

Many people fall prey to various forms of exploitation, in part because they lack self-awareness. They are unable, or unwilling to consider the ways in which they might be putting themselves habitually at risk, including through unwise and unproductive habits.

Self-awareness is the ability to introspect and strive to obtain a degree of objectivity as to your understanding of your own intrinsic motives and behaviours.

This, in turn, allows you to modify your behaviour in such a way that you are able to act in a more savvy manner, and reduce the likelihood that you will fall prey to exploitation.

Awareness of your circumstances and your environment can help you to see threats approaching and ward them off

The phrase “in the wrong place, at the wrong time” describes someone who has fallen prey to some kind of crisis or has been otherwise victimised or exploited, not so much because of a conscious plot against them, as because they wandered unknowingly into a heated situation and suffered as a result.
Awareness of your circumstances and your environment can help you to see threats approaching, and ward them off. Just as you would hopefully avoid walking into a bad part of town, alone, in the middle of the night, so too should you inspect the lay of the land, so to speak, before entering business dealings, and so on.