Since I previously discussed condition white I figured that I would move on to the next one with a little more information that seems to get missed.

Condition Yellow is frequently defined as “relaxed alert” but that doesn’t really explain what an “alert” person is actually doing. Every self defense class on the planet will pay some lip service to awareness with a stock phrase like “be aware of your surroundings”, but no real explanation about how one goes about being aware.

We need to understand a little bit about how humans perceive the world, and for the most part we do it with abstractions. An abstraction removes a lot of ‘irrelevant’ detail that we don’t need in order to function. Your next door neighbor probably has a car and for the most part it is probably unremarkable: it has a color, a make, a model, and you can probably recognize it in front of his house. You probably do not know your neighbors license plate number – because it doesn’t matter to you in your daily life and you can function just fine without that detail.

Condition yellow is about abstracting the normal and recognizing the details that aren’t part of “normal.” Good condition yellow awareness identifies things that are not normal and then seeks enough detail to begin making some decisions about what should happen next.