Life is Like Jumping out of a Plane
In a recent series of conversations I have had, a theme emerged. The theme was, “how do you keep everything you are doing straight and moving forward?” I struggled to answer this; I didn’t have a clear answer. Then while having lunch with a mentor he challenged me on how I kept up momentum, growth, and structure.
As the conversation continued it came to me:
“Jumps hit it”!!
If you say that to anyone that has graduated from the United States Army Airborne school, they will do two things. Either chuckle or form a tight body position, feet and knees together, slight bend in the knees and waist, hands extended covering their reserve, eyes open and chin on chest. This is a drill that I typed without even a thought, the words and visualization formulated in my mind easily. In airborne school these steps are drilled into your brain, you couldn’t forget them if you tried because you’ve done them a thousand times.
This initial series is just for the exit of the aircraft. There are a hundred more for actions in the aircraft and while preparing to land. At the three-minute call when the aircraft slows, to the time you hit the ground the timeline is about 3 and half minutes. In that time a thousand small steps are executed. All of them needed to be done to safely land on the ground. Add in some complication and you have hundreds of small steps that need to be completed to right the situation. To add to it, being a jumpmaster who oversees all the personal jumping, contingencies and safety checks you have thousands upon thousands of steps executed in succession just to get on the ground. Then the real work begins.
Overwhelmed yet? Me too, thinking about it I’m amazing at how I did this hundreds of times and never lost my cool or froze. However, I didn’t just wake up one day, know all this and execute it perfectly.
Day after day the steps were broken down, repeated, errors made, corrections fixed and retrained into the late hours of the day. For days and weeks on end, every time getting better until it was game day, and we exited a real aircraft. Going through jumpmaster school was the same, stakes are a little higher because others life’s count on your competence.
The point is, I break everything down into steps and while everything might seem seamless, it really isn’t. Everything has its stages, phases, and timelines. When something doesn’t work or a mistake is made, we make corrections, adjust the steps and continue on.
Once we have one portion solidified, we move onto the next.
Example: In jumpmaster school you must memorize nomenclature prior to moving to the next stage. (Nomenclature is a military word for the name, you must memorize every piece of parachute equipment and its name)
You just repeat this process, refine it, and improve every day. Knowing there will be setbacks and struggle along the way. The important thing is you show up, even a failure is an opportunity for growth. Now you know what doesn’t work. You might fail airborne School if you attend, but you surely won’t pass if you don’t get on the bus to attend.
The SO WHAT:
-Break everything into steps
-Understand failure is part of the learning process
-Show up and get to work
We can accomplish anything we set our minds to; you just must be willing to commit to the process. I can remember thinking on the first day of many courses, “I’m not sure I can do this.” However, on the backside I always scoffed at my lack of confidence.
‘To eat a whole elephant, you have to start with the first bite’ -it’s a funny saying. It holds a lot of truth though, start small, grow, add more, make a mistake, reassess, and reenter the cycle. Small things become large things, momentum builds and eventually nothing can stop the forward momentum.
