“I was annoyed from the start by the attitude of doubt by the spectators that I would never really make the flight. This attitude made me more determined than ever to succeed.”
– Harriet Quimby, just prior to her flight across the English Channel, 1912
JUST KEEP FLYING
Birds happen.
I don’t mean the embarrassing “enemy bombers above” kind of bird incidents in the hair. I’m talking a “kamikaze birds trying to take you out” kind of incident. I’ve got a story…
One of the most nerve-wracking days for a student pilot is the day they take their flight test. Arguably, the second most nerve-wracking is the day before. Anticipation is a bright orange flare burning in your chest. You’re worried about all the things you might forget or screw up. ‘Am I ready?’ is on constant replay in your mind. Even as you’re excited about it, you just want it to be over.
The argument could be made that I should not have gone flying on the day before my flight test. Was I testing fate? Here’s where I have to explain… I combat fear by taking it on. Nothing wrong with a quick and easy flight to reassure myself that I did, in fact, know what I was doing and that I was ready to become a licensed private pilot.
I arranged to meet my flight instructor at the Reno-Tahoe International Airport and flew my parents’ Cessna 150 solo from Carson City to Reno, receiving permission from the tower to land on runway 7. I’d approximate that I was 15-20 seconds from touching down when a gigantic flock of birds (To my eyes it was an apocalyptic swarm of feathers and doom) swooped right in front of me.
One cardinal rule of flying (and driving, for that matter) is this: No matter what, you must maintain control of the aircraft. There was a split-second thought process: Do I swerve or try to maneuver out of the way this close to the ground, jeopardizing my safe landing on the appointed runway at a busy commercial airport? Or, do I maintain course, not deviating from my goal to land safely, birds be damned?
Safety and self-preservation dictated that I maintain course and plow straight through the flock of birds.
Holy. Flying. Feathers.
Adrenaline pumping, heart-pounding on overdrive, I landed the plane and taxied to a stop and immediately climbed out to check the plane.
My flight instructor helped me inspect the damage. One glaring issue: a smallish hole in the wing. I was going to have to cancel the next day’s flight test. A major setback.
To my delighted surprise, my stepdad decided to fix the damage and worked into the night to get it done so that I wouldn’t have to reschedule my flight test. Spoiler alert: I passed. This isn’t a tale about how I overcame adversity with the help of my aircraft mechanic stepfather, though. It’s about keeping control of the aircraft in the face of fear and feathers to reach the intended destination—the ground, in one piece.
In flight, things sometimes happen. It’s rarely a straight, bump-free, incident-free line from start to finish. I’ve had kamikaze birds, malfunctioning doors opening during flight, electrical failures, and my seat flying backward on takeoff – but I kept flying!
In life, things also happen. Lots of things! Illnesses, divorce, job changes, moves, deaths, overwhelm, or the numbing ease of bad habits. We’ve all been there. The point is to remind you that you can maintain control of the overall direction of your life by remembering, always, where you hope to end up. That endgame is your touchstone, your intended destination.
Your true course.
The gorge between where you are now and where you want to be is only as big as your perception of what’s possible, and your beliefs about what you are capable of.
For some of us, this is the hardest obstacle; out inner negative self talk that we will fail because we can back it up with evidence that we have failed before.
Let me be clear; Your HS won’t give you desires and directives that you’re not capable of achieving.
Just keep flying.
Who’s the Pilot Here?
Don’t let passengers fly your plane.
For a time, I took lessons from a crusty old bush pilot I’ll call…Crusty. One day, Crusty told me that passengers can be a pilot’s worst nightmare.
“They can suddenly get scared to be up in a small plane and grab the yoke or push buttons or flail about like loons, potentially causing a seriously dangerous situation.”
“What do you suggest?” I asked, thinking immediately of the horror stories I’d heard when I was a skydiver about tandem jumps turning tragic because a skydiver grabbed the hands of a tandem jumpmaster rendering them unable to safely control the jump. Yes, people panic and panicky people do stupid things.
“Sock ’em.”
Me: “…” Did he seriously just tell me to physically assault unruly passengers?
“I mean it,” Crusty said. “Control the situation in your airplane by any means necessary. It is up to you to make sure that no one thwarts your ability to maintain control of the aircraft.”
This story comes to mind as I contemplate one of the more difficult obstacles to change: Naysayers. While I’m not advocating you sock your cynics, I am suggesting you consider attacks on your journey to your Higher Self as life-threatening. It is! It threatens your ultimate happiness and the fulfillment of your most cherished desires for YOUR LIFE.
The reasons people sabotage our attempts at change can vary but it usually boils down to their discomfort about what it will mean to them if you change. They may or may not be consciously aware that they are aiming their fears, insecurities, or petty jealousies your way in an effort to keep everything as it is because at least that’s familiar and comforting. They feel better if you stay the you that they know.
Many of us with commitments to our health have been called “obsessive” by someone close to us. Ouch. I knew the commitment it took to achieve the results I’d achieved and to maintain them. Writers know this intimately. It takes tremendous persistence and dedication to get published. When we have extraordinary goals, it often takes consuming, extraordinary, and sustained amounts of effort to achieve them.
At the time that I was working so hard toward these goals, I wished I’d known of the following quote. It would’ve gone down in my personal history of great comebacks:
“Obsessed is a word the lazy use to describe the determined.” – Anonymous
Resistance from others is a challenge but consider that changing may dredge up your own inner demons and let loose the flying monkeys of self-sabotage. One of the most poignant examples comes from my own life.
When I lost fifty pounds, I didn’t realize that the mind doesn’t necessarily follow the body. I was a new, thinner, fitter version of myself. More confident and self-assured. Definitely attracting more attention. Sounds great right? Not exactly.
See, while getting noticed for how I looked was heady, I wasn’t entirely comfortable with attention or with the subtle (and overt) advances from men or the ways that other women now perceived me as a threat and became less friendly. Remember, I was fat because it was my armor. Anonymously overweight = safety. It didn’t occur to me until later, that when I dropped my fat, I’d be left vulnerable in ways I wasn’t emotionally prepared to deal with. I struggled with the emotions brought about by my own changes for quite some time. Resistance from without and within is a double-whammy.
No matter the source, there is a voice that can drown out the voice of any naysayer: YOUR HIGHER SELF. As I said above, its job isn’t to whisper unattainable rainbow wishes in your head. Its job is to remind you of WHO YOU REALLY ARE. It is the one who knows what’s best for you and your life and it sure as heck knows more about what’s best for you than your sister, friend, spouse, or neighbor. Do not put those voices above the voice that is telling you that you can be the best version of yourself.
