As I, along with many others enter another month of lockdown, October is also National Safe Work Montharound Australia. The ideal time to have a real life lived experience story shared to your team. Be it online or in-person, it is now more important than ever to have Safety front and center in your business.
Alan shares how he is incredibly keen to return to the skies to travel and continue delivering his passion for safety. I touch on parents and leadership, share my own ongoing issues I have from getting hurt and encourage you to register for my new short book coming out soon, it's a ripper!
It’s a buzz word in most
workplaces these days, The Leadership Team or Leadership Group.
But what about at home? We are coming into some good weather down here in Melbourne so I’ve been getting out on my bike for my daily allowed exercise time (we are still in lockdown).
I’ve been surprised and a little disappointed to see how many parents are out riding with their kids with no helmet on. The kids have a helmet but the parents are riding alongside or behind them with not a helmet in sight.
Is this poor leadership OR just bad parenting?
At what age or stage do the parents say to the kids, “You are a bit older now, you don’t have to wear a helmet.” Or when do the kids start saying, “You don’t wear a helmet so why do I have to?”
When I went through rehab after my accident there were 3 people in the rehab centre that all had injuries that could have been prevented by a helmet. Two of them had an Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) and one of them broke his neck after hitting his head on the ground falling off his bike.
I’m writing this from my bed! Yesterday I went for a bike ride, came home and did a few things, had dinner and put my daughter to bed.
About 9.30pm I decided I was going to go to bed to get off my bum (it hurts sitting down all day) and watch the Russian Grand Prix. I'm a bit of a petrol head.
Around 10.00pm I started to feel a little unwell, had a headache which quickly turned into an all over body ache. I went to the loo and my urine was a bit dark and cloudy so straight away I suspected I had a Urinary Tract Infection (UTI).
Within an hour I felt like I was dying, I actually wanted to just close my eyes and not wake up. Unless you have experienced a UTI, you have no idea how unwell it makes you feel. I was in all over body pain, especially my head, neck, shoulders, back, kidneys, eyes, face….. It was horrible!
But even worse (for me, not sure if it affects everyone like this), is that it starts to make me have some horrible thoughts and feelings. I was thinking to myself
What if I fall out of bed and break my leg and the bone sticks out of the skin?
What if I get a pressure sore and have to stay in bed for 12 months?
What if I lose my wheelchair, how will I get around?
If I break my arm how will I get in and out of bed or on and off the toilet?
And many more thoughts which are just too dark to print here.
I know this is an overshare, but
I want you all to know that getting hurt is one thing. It hurts and affects everyone around you.
But the ongoing shit that you have to deal with can be much much worse. I’m over it, if having to get around in a wheelchair is not bad enough, UTI’s, Organ failure, Heart Disease, Pressure sores, lack of circulation…The list goes on.
With Melbourne’s 7-day lockdown now reaching world record status, if lockdown ends as planned on October 26, we would have spent 267 days in hard lockdown.
Not to mention the amount of commitments to safety around Australia we could not reach due to lockdowns (Bloody Depressing).
How draining has it been on everyone, not just financially but on a personal level and the ongoing impact on our mental state.
I hope I’m right, seeing little flickers of hope with the talk of 80% vaccinations.
This might be selfish but I don’t really care anymore, I want out and to get on with life.
My light at the end of the tunnel is travel and I’m seeing things like airfares to Bali coming online with the hotels that l have to get back to. You must try and find a positive for your personal state of mind and travel is it for me.
My two passions are safety and travel and if travel opens maybe we can get back to my other passion, people’s safety again.
Not long now until my long awaited book is ready. I’ve done some things in my life that I never thought possible. Writing a short book is pretty exciting.
It is based on the 12 most important reasons NOT TO GET HURT. It’s an easy to read look at some of the ways my accident changed things for me.
If you are interested in grabbing a copy, it should be ready in the next couple of weeks. Click below to register your interest and I’ll let you know when it’s hot off the press. Woody
Your last line of defence is yourself. Use this book to keep sharp about what’s out to get you because it’s no joke. What Woody also teaches you is that other people suffer as well, with their lives upended. His list of 12 is not all there is but should help to make you challenge what you do, especially when you are like Woody that day, just trying to do a good job.
There is one group I’d add to the list of people who should read this book and that is managers and executives. They may think this happens to other people, that they should have looked more carefully, but accidents almost always have someone senior who has the power to make things safer. One very senior executive I know is still, after 30 years, racked with guilt that he could have done better and has used that to make things better.
Woody is a force of nature, learn from him so you don’t have to learn yourself.
