Developing Skills to help you Succeed
We’re changing the way we do things this year. Every Tuesday we will be publishing a blog post to help you develop your security approach as an individual and someone responsible for others. Some posts will be skills to practice others will be about how we respond and act under pressure.
Street Safe Thinking is about helping you to be safe and the best way to do that is to imrove how you think about the world we live in.
Starting with what's important
In his blog post The Leaf Blower Parable, Seth Godin, highlights how real change only comes from understanding what is important to us and being emotionally connected to that.
At the start of a new year, when so many of us “commit” to making personal changes and businesses take a moment to review their priorities, it is worth pausing to consider why so many good intentions to change, fail.
Knowing that something, anything, needs to change is very different to being emotionally invested in making sure it does happen. It’s the same rule in purchasing, we buy what we want, not what we need.
How many of us have tried a diet? I certainly have. And how many of us have failed in that diet or to make that change that we wanted even when the benefits are clearly stated? Smokers often try to quit smoking and fail; people often try to lose weight and fail. Yet, others manage it, so how is that?
Why do some succeed?
At the heart of it are two things. The first is habits. All habits, good and bad, need triggers to initiate the action. If you want to change your habits, you need to change your environment, so the triggers are moved into the right place. Secondly, you must want that change, which means you must create the emotional imperative to overcome the habits you seek to displace and make the changes you really want.
That emotional drive need not always be driven by a positive. Psychologically, we feel a loss more than we do a success of the same magnitude, and so a negative event such as a doctor telling you that you have diabetes is as likely as anything to create that emotional impetus.
What does this have to do with security?
So, what does all of this have to do with security? The answer is, it’s the mindset.
On New Year’s Eve hundreds of thousands of people will have gone out to celebrate and bring in the New Year. Perhaps some of your loved ones and close relations were. As they left your house, you may well have said something like, “Have a good night and keep safe”, or “don’t do anything foolish.” You may even have talked to them about how they would safely get home.
Our emotional connection to their security is a real thing. Something going wrong would be a visceral wound. During such moments, we are connected with people who are the most important to us.
Make changes in 2023
So why not carry that through into 2023 and make sure that you have put in place appropriate security and safety measures to keep your business and everybody within it safe. Then you can all then be freed up to focus on whatever your organisation does.
Street Safe Thinking for businesses and individuals, puts at its very core the need to understand what is most important or valuable to you. This gives you the opportunity to focus your efforts on those things and to step away from distractions which may otherwise cost time, effort, emotions and resources.
The investor Warren Buffett famously gave one of his pilots a small piece of advice about how to achieve success. He asked his pilot what were the things which are most important to him and to write the top 25 down in priority order, which he did. Buffet then crossed out all but the top three, on the rationale that everything else was a distraction. His belief is that if you truly want to succeed your focus must be on those things which are most important to you.
And finally ...
This year in these posts, I’m going to seek to challenge the way you think about what is important to you from a personal, a business and a security perspective. The blog will seek to give you ideas to help you not only stay secure but will also help you in your day-to-day activities and your life.
Please like and follow blogs throughout this year.
