I use to love sailing as a kid. There is nothing like sailing on a clear day. Water calm. Breeze perfect. Sun shining. Out and about on Sydney Harbour Flying is like that. I have my private pilots license and sometimes manage to find an excuse to a plane somewhere for business. Somewhere that would take us 2 to 3 hours to drive, is an hour flight. You get a clear day, and it is easy, but if you hit turbulence, if you hit a storm, if you encounter lighting, you have to deviate, you have to change course, you have to go around the obstacle. Now our deviation or our course correction or the change in our circumstances do not change the outcome of the trip, most of the times they do not change the destination. The only real impact is that we have to be patient, we have to persevere. But what if the weather is really bad? What if we had fog on the ground here and thunderstorms all the way to the job site? The two major reasons that people in small planes die is because of fuel starvation (ie the plane ran out of fuel), or a pilot responds to undue or perceived mental pressure to fly when they are stressed, tired or have to meet a deadline. That’s right, they felt they HAD to fly. They HAD to leave now. The safest way to fly is to always get into the plane having settled in your mind your not going to go. You approach your plane expecting there to be no fuel, looking and expecting there to be damages, broken gear, oil leak. You make sure you have enough time to drive, that nothing can’t be put off till tomorrow. When you approach a plane like that, it nearly always goes smoothly every time and its nearly anti-climatic. I can hear the naysayers… You’re just being negative, we need to declare that every day’s a Friday !! No friend, I am being realistic, most days feel more like Mondays to most people. They look at their week, and all they see are obstacles in the way. I’m not talking about denying the obstacles, nor am I talking about living in denial of the obstacles. I am talking about navigating around the obstacles–that’s how you make progress in life. A storm on the ocean, doesn’t mean you will never sail again. In fact for me it was always the opposite. I loved the rush of charging headlong into the storm, it might blow me off course, but then it was me and my boat versus the elements. We had to work out a strategy of how to tack and how to position ourselves to make our destination. Perseverance and patience are the things that keep your hope engaged. Delay does not mean denial friend…it just means you have another day on the ground to plan. Or it means you drive, or it might simply mean you just have to change course. The destination is the same, the strategy is now just a little different. Everyday is not a Friday – I don’t want a week of endings, I love beginnings too much. No…every day is exactly what it is meant to be….an opportunity to position yourself for success and look forward to an adventure.
