Herman: John L. Herman Jr., Author

You Are Already Gone...

In some ways I wish every person about 22 years old could go through pilot training. At some seminars you “fall” into someone else’s arms to gain confidence that help is out there for you. In pilot training you learn to trust yourself or you might die.

In the regular world they teach you to “calm down” when a crisis arises and think things over…in pilot school your thinking is already done before the crisis hits and when you become aware of the crisis you don’t have to think…you just react…or you might die.

If two cars are coming at each other on an open road both drivers can see far enough ahead to veer off to the right and pass without colliding. In a jet moving at 600 miles an hour when you realize you are on a collision course with a jet heading at you…they told us in pilot training that by the time it registered in your mind that you were going to collide…it had already happened and you were already gone. That concept has stayed with me for forty years.

There are circumstances that happen in life that by the time you become aware of them…it may be too late to do anything about it. But you will still have to deal with the consequences, whether you caused the event or not. Get a disease and you must treat it…break a bone and you must live with it until it heals…overdraw your bank account and it costs a few bucks in overdraft fees. But in life you usually don’t face death, like in pilot training or flying jets.

With outside events, or losses that occur despite your best efforts often comes the pain of dealing with it. Some people think just dealing with the pain is what they have to do. In truth, just trying to focus on the pain is a mistake. Because many times people forget to focus on what is causing the pain and not only work on getting past the pain…what about actually fixing the problem that caused the pain?

If you keep ignoring the problems in your business or your life…and just treat the pain from it…you won’t be fixing anything…just covering up the problem…ignoring the problem on the ground will make it last longer, perhaps causing more pain…by ignoring a real problem in a jet you might die.

If everyone handled their problems immediately as if they might die…wouldn’t our problems be much simpler?

• Posted: 9 March 2009
• Comments: 0
• Category: Business success

Comments