It seems that being “mindful” is now more commonly advocated than being careful. “Mindful” has become the equivalent of “careful”, but these words have different meanings and are not interchangeable. Occupational health and safety (OHS) laws impose a Duty of Care, not a Duty of Mind.
Much of the social media discussion on Mindful vs Careful seems to originate from parental sites or well-being advocates. One example can be found here in a discussion of a child’s reaction to each of these words.
“…one of my biggest communication lessons has involved a single word choice. As Lucas entered toddlerhood and became more active, I noticed that my admonition to ‘be careful’ didn’t feel good–to either of us– no matter how I said it. Implicit in the phrase is a fear and heaviness I rarely felt until after I said it; my choice of language was suggesting an emotional state that then became reality.
I therefore replaced ‘careful’ with the word ‘mindful’ and immediately noticed a change. Gone were the heaviness and fear; in their place emerged a thoughtfulness as well as a calm and even peaceful awareness of self, others, and objects. As with the women who removed the word ‘just’ from their vocabularies, this simple shift has had a profound and positive impact, for both Lucas and myself.”
“Careful” does imply “fear and heaviness”. It reflects the reality that actions (and thoughts) have consequences, and sometimes those consequences are bad and harmful. But this ignores that our actions can also create beneficial consequences too. When we care, we usually value what we have because we do not want to lose, damage, or harm the thing or person we care about. Replacing “careful” with an alternative word avoids the fear and heaviness but changes our value set.
“Mindful” seems to be an isolating word. It is tough to be mindful of another person as we have no access to the thoughts or minds of others. In most instances, the manifestation of mindfulness would look the same as carefulness. The focus on the individual is evident in this Facebook post from “The Feeling Expert”:
“Being mindful includes being aware of where we are, what we are doing, and how we feel. More so, it includes being in touch with ourselves, knowing our limits, and understanding our goals and desires for life. Being mindful is about being aware of your thoughts, actions and sensations around us and being fully present without judgment.”
OHS is intended to be about a collective benefit, creating a safe and healthy workplace where many individual workers work. Mindfulness fits the self-help, well-being perspective on work health and safety but undercuts the collective aim of OHS and OHS laws. It degrades the philosophy of shared responsibility, mutual obligation, fraternity and common purpose on which many of our social mores and definitely OHS laws, are based.
It is possible to state that “I am mindful” but not “we are mindful”. However, it is possible to say that “we are careful”. Our duty of (to) care is inclusive; the duty applies to all of us, and by all of us, it establishes and strengthens our organisational and workplace cultures.
Explanations of the OHS Duty of Care have gone a little out of fashion, but the Worksdafe Western Australia 2005 Guidance Note seems reliable, although it is pre-Work Health and Safety Act. Fundamentally, the Duty of Care is an obligation on all of us (at work) to not harm anyone, including ourselves. The beauty of the term “harm” is that it is readily understood and encompasses physical and psychological injuries and maybe even social harms. That this was prescribed in OHS laws limited it, initially to workplaces but over the years, this has expanded to include work and wherever that work is done. It also includes the social and environmental impacts of work. The focus remains on occupational factors, but our understanding of these has broadened the application of the Duty of Care beyond just the OHS context.
In a way, this has gone full circle from the moral obligation to look after and help one another to do so at work and now using an OHS model in broader social (moral) contexts. This circular evolution, if there can be such a thing, is also evident globally with the recent acceptance of safe workplaces as a fundamental human right and the reinforcement of this through United Nations and International Labour Organisation declarations, Standards and programs.
Modern workplaces will continue to be bombarded with calls for mindfulness as it fits the current well-being dominance in organisational culture, and there is a substantial market of mindfulness advocates who demand to be fed. OHS obligations have never sat well with employers because OHS is economically and morally disruptive if not integrated into business models and practices, and employers rarely, if ever, do this. Yet it is OHS that is now being seriously considered, with government and regulatory support, as a more effective way to achieve sustainable and positive change in workplace psychosocial practices. And our obligation to be careful and to take care of ourselves and others is central to this change.