Don't waste today

“Death twitches my ear.  ‘Live’ he says.  I am coming”

                               -Virgil

Reality is not fixed

Create it; everyday.

What now?

"Man against himself"

It’s hard fighting yourself sometimes, but it’s what we must do to achieve self-mastery.  Do the things we don’t want to do, when we must do them, delay gratification, learn what we must learn, and resist impulses when they arise.  Reframing what happened may be the hardest of all.

When we are masters of ourselves, there is scarcely another adversary to worry about. 

Pilot in Command

My Dad was a flight instructor and taught me how to fly 24 years ago.  He had a small little experimental airplane called a Starlight.  It was tiny; one seat, rotax (snowmobile) engine, and weighed 400 pounds with you in it.  It had different flight controls than the Piper Archer II I learned on.  I was a new pilot, but my father gave me confidence.

We had talked about me flying the Starlight one day.  It was a very cool looking little plane.  The problem is that it had only one seat.  How do you really learn to fly a foreign airplane when you can’t go up in it until you fly it?  

The only way to get instruction is to sit in it, and have the instructor talk to you while he is standing on the asphalt. “Right wing goes up!” he’d say, and watch my right hand tilt the little joystick flight control, which barely fit between my leg and the fueslage, to the right.

The day came for me to go for it.  There was a crosswind that had picked up over the last hour.  I taxied out onto the active runway, got a clearance for takeoff, and pushed the throttle forward with my left hand.  The light little red plane bounced a lot as it rolled down the runway – it felt really different already.

I watched my airspeed, and at the right time, I pulled back on the little joystick.  The elevators behind me lifted up and pushed the rear down, angling the wings up as they should, and all of a sudden, I was off the ground.  Before I could enjoy the sensation, something was very wrong.  I was crabbing – badly.

The cross wind was hitting the tail of the plane and pushed it to the side, such that I was flying crooked, or diagonally to my direction of travel over the ground.  This is not so much of a problem as it happens with a cross wind in all planes.  But I went to straighten it out with opposite rudder, and it didn’t work!  

That’s when I knew I had a real problem.  I was crabbing enough that if I tried to land that way I’d break the landing gear off or some such violence surely would occur.  Why wasn’t this rudder working?

It was controlled airspace and I was just going to go around the pattern and do a touch and go a few times, then land.  But I could not control the airplane.  It seemed the left rudder pedal worked, and the right one didn’t.  I wasn’t on the right radio frequency to talk to my Dad, I had to stay on the tower frequency.  But I needed to ask for help!  

I turned left, and then left again downwind.  I am now 1000 feet off the ground and I am crabbing the other way now.  I can’t land like this!

Sometimes when we are in a bad situation, or feel the worst is going to happen, we can’t just stop or give up.  I had to fly this plane, and ultimately, I HAD to land this plane – myself.

Breathe.

My Dad would tell me, “You’re the pilot in command.  Don’t be your own worst enemy.  FLY THE AIRPLANE.”

Breathe.  The tower cleared me for landing.  Keep flying.  If I couldn’t straighten it out over the runway at 50 feet off the deck, then I could go around again and figure something out. 

Keep flying.

Suddenly, as I turned base (one more turn to final approach), I accidentally figured out the problem.  This tiny plane had four pedals.  The two middle pedals are for brakes.  You use them on the ground.  The two outbound pedals are for rudder – you use them in the air.  As soon as you leave the ground, you switch your feet to the outbound pedals.  Your feet barely fit on these little pedals without touching the other ones.  I had switched one foot, and not the other.  When I thought I was pressing the right rudder, I was pressing the right brake!

As soon as I realized this, I got control of the airplane.  Good thing because I was on final approach and the crosswind blew me crooked to the direction of travel again.  No problem now.  Right rudder, drop the left wing, and slip it right down..hold it off, bleed off the speed…Perfect landing!

I decided not to do a touch and go and just taxi it in!  I’d wait for a calmer day to fly the Starlight again, which I did a number of beautiful evenings.

There’s no substitute for preparation, but eventually you have to go it alone.  

The unknown can be scary, but in doing it, you can learn to fly.

"Walk of Life"

A dog can only be a dog.  A tree can only be a tree.  But a human being can be many things, and has a choice.

What walk of life are you from?  If you don’t like it, you can change it.

Right?

(Yes, that’s right!)

A wish or a goal?

I wish I had a million dollars. I wish I didn’t have such bad luck. I wish I had more friends.  I wish I had a better job. I wish I could win…

You can’t control outcomes at the outset.  What you can control is your actions and behaviors that lead to outcomes.

What can you control that causes what you want?

Eating Ferns

I went to a restaurant the other night for dinner.  They had fiddleheads as an appetizer special and soft shell crabs (you eat the whole thing, shell and all) for a main course.  I ordered both.  Really different for me.

It’s good to do/play/eat/read/drive differently than you normally do.

Try something different and see what opens up for you.

The Advantage of Disadvantages

When we first experience a setback, problem or condition that would be viewed as negative, we aren’t happy about it.  But as we mature and grow, we can find that it made us better prepared/qualified/able to do something else and be successful at it.

What “disadvantage” did or do you have, that could be or is actually, an advantage?

We repel what we despise

I was asked by Junior Achievement to give a talk to 350 middle school students.  I didn’t know how attentive the audience would be, but it went really well and I was impressed with them.

In my talk about entrepreneurship, I asked them “How many think it’s better to be rich than poor?”  Most hands went up. “How many think it is better to be poor?” To my amazement, about 30 hands went up. I asked again to make sure they understood the question.  

For whatever reasons, some kids were conditioned to believe that being rich is bad. (Why is another conversation.) Here’s my question – Do you think these kids will strive to be economically successful?

And so it is with us.  If a part of us doesn’t like a result, despises it, is envious of it, thinks it is not good for us, etc., we will repel it in our lives.

We may look at the winners and say “Who do you think you are? You aren’t better than anyone else! You’re just lucky that’s all! You cheated. Nobody likes you….etc.”  With this attitude, as much as we’d like to win, we won’t try, because we told ourselves winning is bad.

When you look at the sucessful people in your profession, sport, or town, do you say to yourself “I want to be like them?”

Driving at night

Most people are afraid of the unknown.  We don’t want to start unless we can see the whole road; unless we can see the finish line.  This leaves us only taking on small challenges.

But even if we can’t see the entire journey, if we can action in the direction we want to go, it will illuminate the next step. Like driving a car at night, we can drive as far as our headlights will shine, then we can see farther.  

In this way we can travel 1000 miles…to dawn.