Getting Ideas For Safety Talks by Safety Speaker John Drebinger
I am continuing my series of blogs that cover safety meeting topics. As a writer and safety speaker I am constantly working on new ideas. Today, I want to discuss how you can come up with topics of your own. After all, we have all heard the saying, “Give a man a fish and you have fed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you have fed him for a lifetime.” Don’t worry, I will still be giving you new safety story ideas in this blog and I will add to it the skills you need to create your own safety stories.
Set An Outcome
My first suggestion is to set an outcome for yourself of writing a new safety story every week, every month or for whatever period you would like to challenge yourself. By making this outcome you have set your brain to work on how to achieve it. Keep it simple and make an outcome that you will tell the story to at least one person. This is valuable because it will get reactions and cause you to move forward.
Test It Out – Perfect It As You Go
As a magician, whenever I learn a new trick I quickly try it out on someone. I practice until it’s good enough to fool someone but I don’t perfect the fanciest patter and moves to go along with it at that point. Too often, we stop our success by setting our standard too high and constantly trying to improve something instead of using it. My dad had a great saying, “The better is the enemy of the good.”
My safety stories are constantly improving and my audience helps me accomplish that. If I worked on a story until it was “perfect,” it might never see the light of day. Instead, I tell it and improve it each time.
Stay Committed To Your Outcome
The key to this whole process is commitment. Once I committed to doing a daily blog and decided to focus for an entire month on safety topic ideas, they just seemed to jump out at me. A famous magician and magical inventor, Andre Kole, set a goal of 100 tricks in one year and he did it. I had the privilege of interviewing him once when he was performing for our church at a public event designed to bring in new members. He shared at first it started slow and then the ideas came faster and faster. I’m talking about innovative magic; this guy has designed many tricks for famous magician, David Copperfield.
So, how many safety stories will you come up with this year? Set your outcome and you are on your way. Watch my blog for a great way to come up with stories in a group setting.
