Sometimes You Really Need to Listen to the Voices in Your Head
At iSi, the office and marketing/sales teams get involved in safety too, and one of the things we do is we each get a week to share a personal safety ex...
At iSi, the office and marketing/sales teams get involved in safety too, and one of the things we do is we each get a week to share a personal safety experience. This is what I plan to share this month during my turn, and I hope you can take something away from it, especially as we head into National Safety Month this month. Usually when someone talks about the voices in their head, it’s kind of a joke, or played off as a negative thing. However, sometimes those voices can tell you good things that you actually need to listen to.
⚡ TL;DR: Your gut instinct about safety hazards is often your mind recognizing danger before conscious analysis completes. Trusting that internal warning and pausing to reassess—even briefly—can prevent serious injury. It takes seconds to rethink a process; it takes months to recover from an accident.
There was one important time I wish I had listened to the voices that were trying to help keep me safe, but didn’t. In late June of 2001, 20 years ago this month, my sister-friend and I were seriously scalded in a kitchen accident. My friend used to think homemade was the way to go. She was canning green beans from her garden and she had one of the old-time pressure cookers from the 70s. What we proceeded into was pressurized scalding water going everywhere. We had missed a step depressurizing the cooker.
⚠️ Pain Frame: Scalding injuries from pressurized equipment are severe, often requiring extensive medical treatment and causing lasting scars—both physical and psychological. In this case, a few moments of intentional pause before restarting the cooker would have prevented permanent injury. This isn’t an isolated incident; pressure cooker accidents, equipment operation shortcuts, and skipped safety steps happen in facilities every day, often with worse consequences.
I tell her it’s like a tattoo to remind us of what we went through and what we should or shouldn’t do. We are extremely fortunate and blessed it didn’t do any other long lasting scarring damage besides that. If we would have listened to those voices in our heads, we could’ve stopped this accident from happening.
The principle applies directly to workplace safety: when something doesn’t feel right during a process—a piece of equipment running differently, an unfamiliar step, a rushed procedure—that feeling is your mind flagging a hazard. Ignoring it to save time costs far more time in the long run.
Please relay to your teams that it is OK to stop and listen to those voices in your head when something does not seem right. It’s ok to take a moment to rethink something before you do it. Nothing is too important or needs to be completed so quickly that you can’t take a moment to rethink it, especially when it comes to your safety.
Safety culture lives in the permission to pause. Facilities with the strongest safety records are those where workers know that stopping to address a concern is not only acceptable—it’s expected and valued. Your safety manager should explicitly communicate that instinct-based stops are never considered time-wasting or production interference.
💰 Dollar Anchor: The cost of a significant scalding injury can exceed $100,000 in medical treatment, lost productivity, and liability exposure. A safety pause takes zero production time. A single preventable incident costs what safety improvements cost in years.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What is the importance of “listening to your gut” about safety concerns?
A: Intuition and gut instinct are often your mind recognizing hazards before conscious analysis completes. When something “doesn’t feel right,” it’s critical to pause and evaluate—this internal warning signal has evolved to protect you from injury. Stopping to reassess takes minimal time but can prevent serious accidents and injury.
Q: How can workers address safety concerns without slowing down production?
A: Addressing safety concerns actually improves efficiency by preventing accidents that cause delays, rework, and injuries far exceeding the time taken for a safety pause. A few seconds to mentally review a process is negligible compared to recovery time from serious injury or the cost of workplace incidents.
Q: What are the risks of pressure cooker operations and scalding injuries?
A: Pressure cookers contain superheated, pressurized water that can escape suddenly if depressurization steps are missed. Scalding water causes severe burns requiring immediate medical attention. Following manufacturer procedures completely, including every depressurization step, is critical—never skip or abbreviate safety procedures.
Q: How should facilities create a culture that supports speaking up about safety?
A: Organizations should explicitly communicate that stopping work to address safety concerns is acceptable and encouraged. Supervisors should reinforce that workers’ instincts and observations about hazards are valued, and that pausing for safety assessment is never considered time-wasting or production interference.
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