Get Lost!
Did you know that commercial aircraft spend over 95% of their time going in the wrong direction?
It’s true. A flying instructor told me during a lecture on navigation.
While you are in the air, going on holiday you spend most of the time en route temporarily lost.
The on board computer does thousands of tiny course corrections every minute. So tiny that you will never know they took place. Using transponders on the ground the aircraft moves left and right to correct course all the way to your destination.
The point is that to get to your destination you will also be making course corrections to get back on track. This is perfectly normal but you must know where you intend to actually get to or you will never know you are off course in the first place.
Paul Browning
Tag:Get lost
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11 Comments
We are where we are because of our past decisions.
Don’t like where we are? Simple. We didn’t plan our destination.
So we don’t like where we are? We need to get somewhere else?
We need to set our destination and figure a way to get there.
I know that I have spent the last twenty years going in many different direction. Unlike the aircraft though I haven’t had a destination. I have just relied on the fact that I could just get by on what ever I was doing at the time and never really working towards a goal. This is one of those I wish I knew then what I know now moments. I am working towards a destination I just hope I can stay on course. It is good to have a resource like this to help me realize my goals and the fact that it is ok to be off course as long as you make the correction to get back on.
Its easy to get lost. It might not be easy to reach your destination. But it is very rewarding to reach your planned destination, once you have set out your plan and continually adjusted it to stay on track, as the roadblocks appear.
I think that in order to really be able to correct your path, you need to constantly evaluate your goals. You won’t know if you are off-course unless you have taken the time to analyze the direction you are going in.
I’ve decided to start thinking about getting lost in a different way. When I get off course (literally or figuratively) I try to think of it as an adventure. You are suddenly somewhere you never thought you would be. You don’t know what you might find there.
This is good insight for keeping perspective. Being willing to go with the flow is an important part of being able to keep up with one’s goals.
Now that’s something you don’t hear everyday. It is amazing how this can be applied to our own lives. ” you’ll never know your lost in the first place coz you don’t know where you’re going anyway.”
In life we pretty are much lost all the time as well. An example of this can be seen everywhere, most of the youth don’t even know what they want in the future having a “come what may attitude”. As the christians would say, trust your instrument “trust the Bible”.
I like Allison’s comment — when you get off course think of it as an adventure. Look around, see what you can learn, add the expereince to your base of knowledge. The outcomes might be unexpected, but seldom terrible.
To follow on, I beleive that the experiences gained from unexpected excursions are a great advantage for people who’s jobs are to troubleshoot problems. All those different experiences and adventures help you to make connections and think “outside the box” to solve unusual problems.
Gene, you say this is one of those “I wish I knew then what I know now” moments. Almost all of us have those moments. The important thing is to realize that while you cannot go back to re-do what you did back then, you can look forward, and take steps to change. You’re on course now, and realize that going off course now and then just calls for making a correction. Good luck on achieving your objective.