How The Secret Service Changed My Life
Protect Yourself Inside And Out
PART ONE
By Melanie Lentz
Melanie Lentz is a former Secret Service special agent and author of the bestseller "Agent Innocent: How the Secret Service Changed My Life" and the upcoming workbook "Advance Work: A Personal Protection Assignment".
She currently speaks and writes about the life lessons she learned as an agent.
Follow her journey at www.melanielentz.com
Personal security is valued by everyone in one way or another. Whether we realize it or not, we are always trying to keep ourselves safe. We’ve been wearing masks and taking precautionary measures to protect ourselves during a global pandemic. We can’t turn on the news without media outlets giving us lists of ways to protect ourselves from cyber scams and other undesirable intrusions into our lives. The desire for safety is human nature.
At a young age, I became a professional protector. I became a Secret Service special agent at twenty-two, one of the youngest females ever hired. The Secret Service is responsible for the physical protection of America’s leaders, including the President, Vice President, their respective families, former Presidents and their spouses, visiting foreign heads of state, and a handful of other individuals closely associated with the U.S. government.
Many view protection as merely reactive, completely reliant on the reflexes of the big bulging human shields in black business suits and sunglasses to keep everyone safe. But protection is not just intuitive reactions when faced with danger. Successful protection is equally reliant on proactive preparation for this potential danger.
The Secret Service has advance teams, or teams of agents that travel ahead of a presidential event to create a security plan. It’s during this advance period that the real work happens. These agents learn, memorize and plan for motorcade routes, bomb sweeps, access point control, movement patterns of the President and public, and so much more. There’s a plan of protective action already in place by the time the protectee arrives.
Of course, the agents surrounding the President still vigilantly observe and protect, continuously ready to react if needed. But because of a pre-determined security plan that’s already in place, the President is able to go about his/her day without incident.
In other words, better proactive preparation diminishes the likelihood of relying on reactive protection later.
Advance work was my favorite job as a Secret Service agent. However, I got caught up in the protection logistics of others and failed to see that protecting myself, inside and out, was also important. My lifestyle of personal neglect caught up to me. Eventually, I realized I could not continue to live this way. I had become someone I did not like very much.
Somewhere along the way, I lost track of the woman I wanted to become. Depression, divorce, and despair took over my life. I knew deep down I needed to leave the Secret Service in order to get my life together. Intuitive protection is a learned skill, but it can never be ignored long-term.
Protection is not just outwardly physical when applied to personal life. There’s an inward element that deserves exploring, and I went wrong by failing to protect myself inside and out.
In this two-part series, I’ll be sharing the lessons I learned about self-protection.
Let’s take a look at inner protection first. But before we do that, remember this: YOU are the protectee in this security plan, and no matter what, your protection needs to be a priority to YOU.
Here are the three ways I’ve applied physical protection of others to my personal inner security plan:
1. Know Your Legacy.
In other words, what kind of person do you want to be? You may not have the logistics figured out, but regardless of circumstances, who do you want to be?
Politicians are constantly making promises to act. Often these promises go unheeded or the possession of power causes them to lose track of why they wanted to get into politics in the first place. It’s easy for us to do the same when life gets crazy.
Think about your legacy for a few minutes. Write it down and reference it often. Make an authentic promise to yourself to be someone you’re proud to be.
2. Evaluate Access Control
Access control is the centerpiece of protection. Access to the protectee (you) must be controlled for optimal outcomes. But control is not solitude to avoid hardship and hurt. It’s about monitoring who and what is allowed to influence and control your daily thoughts and actions. Effective immediately, recognize that you are in control of your access.
There are four categories in access control: access granted, access denied, access limited, and access revoked. From time to time, you may have to recategorize someone’s or something’s access to you.
Think about who and what you see on a daily basis. Recognize how these people or situations make you feel and act as needed.
Here are some examples:
A friend who empowers you and builds you up should have access granted because of the positive effect this person has on your life. Be the kind of friend they should also grant access to.
A manipulative and spiteful coworker likely needs access denied (or revoked if granted initially). Revoking physical access to this person might not be practical if your job requires some contact, but how this person influences how you feel is completely under your control.
If the popularity of your social media determines your daily mood, then social media has been granted too much access to your internal wellbeing and self-esteem. Perhaps there’s a way to limit access while simultaneous granting access to something else healthier for your emotional wellbeing.
3. Give Honest Situation Reports
In the Secret Service, the motorcades are in communication with the agents at the destination. Periodically, the motorcade will receive a situation report, better described as a status update, to indicate if the site is “all clear for arrival”. If it’s not “all clear” the motorcade will not arrive. In internal protection, giving yourself an honest Situation Report is crucial. It’s essentially an honest answer to the question “How are you?” and reacting as needed if the answer is unfavorable. This applies to mental health as well as general wellbeing.
For me, when my Situation Report is not clear, it is often a result of faulty access control which caused me to lose track of who I want to be and my overall legacy. It all weaves together into a delicate and ever-changing balance based on circumstances at the time.
Personal security plans are not set in stone and will require regular revision. I’ve found that, despite the uncertainties of life, focusing on these three aspects of self-protection has kept me moving forward in a positive direction personally.
The good news is it’s never too late to start a personal security plan for your inner protection. The advance work is often the hardest, but it’s worth the effort. Now let’s get to it!
Next time, I’ll dive into some practical ways to physically protect yourself on the outside (and you don’t need to be a ninja to do these things).
