Remember elementary school and your love of learning new things? The books and papers and pencil boxes and different colored artwork throughout all of your notebooks. That was a glorious time, was it not? Remember how the desire to learn began to seep out in middle school, and had turned into rather strong feelings in the other direction by the end of high school? The desire to learn, and how it is dealt with, changes over time. As we grow and mature, our ability to learn and absorb important information exponentially increases, but the former methods of learning are now out of date and unwanted. Hiring new management staff, implementing drug and alcohol testing, rescheduling or eliminating office hours, and switching to cloud computing are all forms of new learning. If you are stuck in old habits, how do you change your willingness to learn?
Set in your ways
How set in your ways are you? Many people believe that you become more set in your habits with age, but the 25-yr-old blogger who is writing this article is just as susceptible. It is important to recognize that habits, including habitual thinking, are comfort zones. Once you become used to something, it is fairly difficult to remove it from your comfort zone. This is why individuals stay mired in unsatisfactory job positions, unfortunate relationships, and engage in abusive and self destructive behavior. Drug and alcohol screening insures that you and your business employees never become “used to” destructive attitudes or behavior on the jobsite.
The reverse ripple effect
Habits are not most easily formed by doing something 31 or 41 days in a row, but by living with someone who has those habits. Why? The reason is that your entire lifestyle, from your morning habits to your regular interactions with colleagues to the way you discipline your children, affects each and every habit that you possess. This is the reverse ripple effect. If you have the unconscious habit of brushing your teeth every morning, you also have the unconscious supporting habits of keeping the bathroom lavatory clean and fairly uncluttered, allotting five minutes at the beginning of your day for this task, and of keeping your toothbrush clean and dry and your toothpaste always in stock. People who do not possess this habit are more likely to run out of toothpaste and keep a less hygienic bathroom. Supporting habits help to create and solidify desired habits, which is why it is easiest to simply live with someone who already possesses those traits. Their supporting habits and lifestyle will influence you. Workplace drug testing is like one of those supporting habits. It supports a healthy, smoothly run company.
Contact Mediscreen today for more information on our onsite drug and alcohol testing services: (+61) 1300 79 70 40.
“Conscientiousness, goal orientation, and motivation to learn during the learning process: A longitudinal study.” APA PsycNet. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Nov. 2011. http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/apl/83/4/654/.
