Page 20 - Louisiana 811 Magazine 2020 Issue 4

FACCT:
an you and I be psychologically accident prone?
I raised this question while reading an article
in which the author discussed being accident prone attributed to physical characteristics of the workplace environment.
Let me answer the question I posed. YES! A person may be psychologically accident prone and before explaining that consider the fact you and I are what we think about. What is happening in our brains virtually control our physical and psychological lives. Our thoughts determine who we are.
The attitude that if I didn’t have bad luck I would have no luck at all is, unfortunately, the default position of too many people. Without going into detail, I’ve got
a relative with that attitude and fortunately he’s not working in a safety sensitive environment. His default attitude has left a trail of misfortunes in his life.
Another factor to consider is both the conscious
and unconscious mind. I don’t have to walk around
all day consciously expecting bad things to happen
to me, because that default pattern is stored in the unconscious mind which works 24/7 below the level
of our awareness. So the attitude resting in my unconscious mind is continuously impacting what I see and do.
A self-defeating attitude probably stems from a low level of self-esteem and/or self-confidence. Yes, these two psychological entities are different — self-esteem is the degree a person likes the monkey who looks back at them in a mirror and self-confidence is the “I can” attitude. Self-esteem has been characterized as the most sensitive part of our psychological makeup.
Here comes the kicker. Let’s assume I’m the owner of this self-defeating attitude while working in a safety sensitive environment. First, expecting something bad to happen actually increases the likelihood of
it happening; this is often referred to the Law of Expectation or the Pygmalion effect.
Quantum physics tell us that everything in the universe is connected through energy created by
Some People Are Accident Prone
By Larry Cole, Ph.D. TeamMax
18 • Louisiana 811
2020, Issue 4