Safety Belief #1
Safety Is Not Hard
Behavior’s are an interesting thing. In one hand we all know we have behavioral strengths and limitations. Yet we tend to let circumstance direct our behavior’s. Instead, we should proactively prepare our behavior’s for how environments impact our behavior’s. It is for this reason I have created three safety beliefs. The first belief is Safety Is Not Hard! When life circumstances occur, I have set beliefs to help me balance my behavior with the situation.
Life Circumstances
There are many environmental circumstances that cause our behavior’s to react. Some of these conditions are knowledge, attitude, ability, available people power, timelines, importance of task, workplace environment and more. At any given moment these circumstances impact our day. In turn, our behavior’s react to a task and change how we observe and complete the task.
What do we do? The answer is to first accept we all are impacted by life circumstances. Although conditions change and impact our day does not mean our behavior’s need to be slaves to these conditions. We can prepare ourselves on how we will react prior to the situation arising.
Safety Is Not Hard
This is where I have created my first safety belief Safety Is Not Hard!
When I am late, being rushed, under the weather, grumpy, tired, distracted, complacent or any other circumstance that impacts my behavior’s. I remind myself; safety is not hard:
- By driving the speed limit when I am late. As speeding does not save phenomenal amounts of time to justify increasing risk,
- To protect myself from risk when I am tired while improving my ability to complete tasks,
- Recognize when I am grumpy by mentally getting my mind into my task,
- To proactively follow safety procedures which control energy so when I am distracted, I have already reduced the risk,
- When complacency sets in by creating positive habits which drive our actions.
In short, environmental circumstances will influence our behavior’s and drive our actions. We can proactively prepare ourselves for these situations. Controlling energy is not hard. The hard part is driving our behavior’s to want to control the energy.
Driving Behavior’s
Driving my behavior is not hard either. Creating safety beliefs is one way I control my behavior’s. I recognizing that as a living human being means the environment will affect my daily tasks. Our behavior’s will act or react when the environment influences our daily tasks. The difference between behavior’s acting or reacting is proactively creating a process to direct behavior’s or subconsciously reacting to this environment. Either way, the environment will influence your daily tasks which does affect behavior’s.
Driving behavior’s is the difference between being consciously aware of environmental factors influencing us or subconsciously reacting to these environments.
What Is Hard!
One way I drive my behavior’s is reminding myself that true hardship does not come from controlling energy. Instead, true hardship comes from living with an incident.
It is hard to:
- Live with disabilities,
- Have your income reduced or eliminated,
- Watch the emotional journey destroy you while it pushes loved ones out of your life,
- To fail at things you once enjoyed and excelled at,
- Seclude yourself from society,
- Ask for help on tasks you should be able to do like dressing yourself or going to the bathroom,
- Be consumed by anger, depression, and anxiety,
- Look your spouse or partner in the eye and say, “I am sorry for screwing up our lives”.
Take it from me, living with an incident is hard!
Conclusion
That is why I have developed my safety beliefs. Because I would rather take a few proactive moments and control energy then live a lifetime with the effects of an incident.
This is what the ripple effect exercise is all about. It is to help people see how hard living with an incident is. By consciously observing how an incident effects us helps to drive behavior’s on controlling risk. Why? Because controlling risk, it is just not that hard to do.
View my Safety Minute video for this safety belief.