Developing a culture of prevention: “Turn limiting beliefs into safety and health”
Martin Silva Casal, Osarten’s Preventive Culture Consultant, explains in his last blog post that beliefs have the capacity to govern the course of thoughts and decisions. They get in the way of the body’s senses, distorting what they capture with the intention of confirming themselves. As Silva puts it, if we truly believe that we cannot change the way we do something, we will probably find it hard to even try. The good news is that, if you want to, it is possible to change.
Direction of beliefs
The Preventive Culture Consultant remarks that beliefs can be “positive”, when they provide motivation, impulse, expansion and greater well-being or, on the contrary, limiting, when they prevent us from achieving something we desire, make us believe that we are vulnerable, restrict us, limit our openness to new experiences and restrict our well-being. We must be aware of the limitations that some beliefs produce in us, so that we can leave them behind and expand our experience through those that empower us. Although we may not be aware of it, beliefs tend to be self-affirming through our behaviours. We may not like the results that these behaviours lead us to, and we may find it difficult to change them, even if we want to and try to do so.
Changing our beliefs
A question that arises for me at this point is whether, in occupational health and safety, people want to change their behaviour when it is unsafe and unhealthy. Because it is necessary to want to change.
When you ask people if they consider that they have unsafe behaviours or behaviours that threaten their health, there is usually no clear and strong affirmative answer. When we believe that we do things well, or that they have worked well for us so far, why should we change?
Therefore, Martín Silva stresses that it is very important to work on beliefs that increase awareness of the importance of personal esteem and, therefore, care, in order to loosen limiting beliefs.
Cultivating self-esteem
Martin Silva says that beliefs, although sometimes it may not seem like it, can be changed, in fact, they can be changed, because they are a choice.
In safety and health, we first need to be able to “reel” current beliefs, to challenge them. Without having to experience accidents, incidents, or illnesses, which show the need for change.
Recognising beliefs
One way to recognise beliefs is in words we often use in our language such as “have to”, “must”, “must have to”. For example: “I have to solve the problems of production issues, otherwise I won’t get approval”. These are certainly the result of years of messages and evidence that production came first, and they still do. For many people, even though the messages have changed, they still hold that unconscious belief.
Types of beliefs
There are several types of beliefs that have to be well placed in order to achieve a desired goal such as greater care and well-being at work. According to the studies of R. Dilts, researcher, author, trainer and consultant in Neurolinguistic Programming, we can speak of several types of beliefs:
- When a person thinks he or she knows whether a goal is achievable or not.
Example: “Certain PPE cannot be used”, “The work can be made safer”.
In this case, it could also be that the person sees it as possible for others, but not for him/her. Example: “That’s for young people, they are more used to wearing PPE, I’m older and I’m not going to change”.
2. When, in addition to the previous one, the person believes that he/she has all that is needed to achieve it or not.
The above examples would apply, but said in the first person: “I cannot use certain PPE”. “I can make my job safer”.
3. When a person believes in what will happen with their behaviour in a given situation.
Here are all the interpretations about behaviour in risky situations, which, if they go “right”, become experiences from which we draw our conclusions. And which, if repeated, are further reinforced, and end up becoming firm beliefs about the expectation, with respect to this behaviour.
We could say that the “overconfidence”, in which we could frame this case, is actually a belief about expectation, drawn from the conclusions of repeated experiences. This is why it is so difficult to change this situation.
Osarten can help you to work on transforming limiting beliefs in health and safety and, in this way, develop a preventive culture. For more information, please contact Osarten’s Preventive Culture Consultant, Martín Silva (674 966 441; msilva@osarten.com).