Thursday, October 05, 2017
A Fear Of Flying..And Other Things...
By: Donovan Baldwin
Many years ago, I had a terrible fear of flying.
Not sure what got rid of it...maybe my first marriage. That was enough to make me think I could handle anything.
Anyway, on one flight, my boss, a PhD psychologist, tried to talk me out of it in a clinical way. He told me just to shut my eyes, and imagine myself riding horses with him on his little patch of land, which we had done a few days earlier.
After a minute of this, I burst out, "Shut up, Richard! We're in a metal coffin in the air and we're all gonna die!"
Said it rather loudly, so I wasn't too popular for the remainder of that flight. Kind of miffed my boss too.
He gave up, and I white-knuckled it to the destination.
Even I laugh at the story now, as I doze off while the plane's taking off, landing, or at any part of the flight.
The point is, that when we believe something, believe it to our very core, just throwing some words at us isn't going to make us change our minds.
Richard even tried to quote statistics about the safety of flying. I had heard them all. They didn't do anything to ease my irrational fear of flying.
I guess that's also the point.
If we believe, often even the facts won't be enough to change our fear of failure or expectation of defeat.
We don't want to let go of belief, even when we know we are wrong.
Still, the plane did land safely, and you and I have done a lot of things we thought we couldn't. Guess that's the real story here.
Not sure what got rid of it...maybe my first marriage. That was enough to make me think I could handle anything.
Anyway, on one flight, my boss, a PhD psychologist, tried to talk me out of it in a clinical way. He told me just to shut my eyes, and imagine myself riding horses with him on his little patch of land, which we had done a few days earlier.
After a minute of this, I burst out, "Shut up, Richard! We're in a metal coffin in the air and we're all gonna die!"
Said it rather loudly, so I wasn't too popular for the remainder of that flight. Kind of miffed my boss too.
He gave up, and I white-knuckled it to the destination.
Even I laugh at the story now, as I doze off while the plane's taking off, landing, or at any part of the flight.
The point is, that when we believe something, believe it to our very core, just throwing some words at us isn't going to make us change our minds.
Richard even tried to quote statistics about the safety of flying. I had heard them all. They didn't do anything to ease my irrational fear of flying.
I guess that's also the point.
If we believe, often even the facts won't be enough to change our fear of failure or expectation of defeat.
We don't want to let go of belief, even when we know we are wrong.
Still, the plane did land safely, and you and I have done a lot of things we thought we couldn't. Guess that's the real story here.
Labels: donovan baldwin, failure, fear of failure, fear of flying, life lesson
