Lori Allen, Director of Great Escape Publishing, recently shared this motivational article with travel writers/bloggers/photographers in mind.
When I was studying to get my pilot’s license (a goal I never achieved because I eventually moved to Paris and started Great Escape Publishing), my instructor always used to say: ‘Now remember, these planes aren’t made to crash, they’re made to fly.’ On one day’s lesson, we climbed to 10,000 feet, he cut off the engines to simulate an engine failure, and then he tilted the nose of our small Cessna down toward the ground as if we were going to do a nose-dive. He let go of the yoke, and I watched in amazement (and somewhat horror) as the plane righted itself back up. ‘See, they’re meant to fly,’ he said. And it’s not just these small planes that are built to fly. All planes are built this way.
Malcolm Gladwell wrote about crashes in his book, The Outliers. He says it takes, on average, seven mistakes to crash a plane. It’s not enough that the weather is bad, the engine fails, and the pilot went out drinking the night before. It typically takes four more things to go wrong for a crash to happen. The co-pilot must also be tired and stressed, the head engineer must have missed the check-engine briefing, air traffic control is overwhelmed, AND, on the way down, the landing gear gets stuck. Seven mistakes total. Not just one . . . because planes are meant to fly. And the same is true about you.
| Just as airplanes are meant to fly, you and I are meant to function as God designed us to function. |
| A few weeks ago, I spent several days near Orlando, Florida, in my role as a travel and food writer and blogger. The tourism representatives and other writers were millennials, meaning I was their “senior” by close to 40 years. I am light years behind them in their social media skills and most certainly in their energy levels. But, I could make a contribution by doing what I know how to do — ask good questions, look away from my phone to observe the surroundings, take photos of them in all of their various athletic pursuits, listen astutely, be independent and resourceful in unfamiliar places. I can’t be a travel writer in the ways that THEY accomplish the task, but I can “fly” as a travel writer being Connie. |
| I believe that God wants me to “do me” and each of you to “do you.” He was very creative when He wired each of us with specific personalities and skills. If we function as we were designed to function, it is highly unlikely that we will have seven catastrophes to happen simultaneously leading us to crash. Instead, we will FLY!!! “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Ephesians 2:10 Ecclesiastes 9:10 — “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; “ |
