If you’re a driver, you’ll know the potential danger of blind spots. If we’re not aware of them they can cause near misses, or more fatally, carnage – for you and anyone else nearby.

And that’s the thing about blind spots. We’re not always aware of them until it’s too late.

I went for years with a blind spot. It was a belief I had about who I was. I remember a friend of mine saying ‘you’re the strongest person I know’ and I took that as a compliment – and it was meant as a compliment.

But my big blind spot was that I was unable to show or articulate hurt.

I wanted to ‘stop’ feeling the ‘bad’ stuff.

I wanted it just to go away. (It doesn’t, of course, however hard we try. It just resurfaces in mainly unhelpful or self-sabotaging ‘coping’ mechanisms).

‘Be strong’ was my mantra. I’d clench my stomach muscles so tight to try not to feel ‘that feeling’.

Good...

Last time I wrote about the safety blanket of Busy-ness.

This week I want to share with you four key things to help you or your teams throw off that safety blanket! I wrote the article for Strategic HR Review a while back and thought it was worth a re-share! I do have permission to share it with you! (The article starts on page 2.)

Four ways HR can improve business productivity

We all know that our best learning takes place when we are ‘outside our comfort zone’ – but not so far out that we want to run for the hills. I know my deepest and most long lasting growth has come when I’ve had to confront something I’ve been avoiding or take on a challenge that felt new and scary.

I also know that for me and for many of my clients it’s easy to stay under the safety blanket of busy-ness’. And whilst we say ‘I’d love to be less busy’ or ‘I’d love to have more time for myself/my family’ we just keep on doing ‘stuff’ that we’ve always done and not getting round to the other ‘stuff’

So why do we say we want one thing and then do everything we can to sabotage ourselves?

Easy.

Busy-ness is safe (exhausting and overwhelming but safe)

We can do it.

We’re in familiar territory.

We’re experts.

And if I’m busy, I’m important; valued; valuable.

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