The Elements of Flight with a Little Extra
February 25, 2015
Every day, I work on being positive and realistic. One of my routines is to begin and end most days reading or listening to something positive and inspirational. Often I will share these tidbits of wisdom with others. Recently, I shared a story from one of my favorite speakers. He compared people to the elements of flight.
Being in aviation, this really got my attention. His message went something like this:
As we go through life, we should seek to be around those who demonstrate four elements of flight. Not only should we seek to be around people with these critical characteristics, people should want to be around us because we share these same attributes. The characteristics are:
- LIFT: We should want to be around those people who lift us up!
- THRUST: We should want to be around those people who thrust us forward.
- DRAG: We should avoid those people who drag us down.
- WEIGHT: We should avoid those people who weigh us down.
Case in point: after I shared this story with one of our Senior Executives, he immediately demonstrated the values of “lift” and “thrust” by improving on the idea. He suggested adding one more word: “Vector.” I cannot agree with him more! We need to know how to begin our journey, but we also need to have a good idea where we are headed. So, I’ll add his suggestion to the list:
- VECTOR: We should want to be around people going in our same direction.
Do you ever wonder how members of the same family, raised in the same environment sometimes become so different? One person is positive and successful, and another in the same family is the opposite – miserable and throwing never-ending “pity parties.” To me, we all make conscious or unconscious decisions as to how we will live our lives. I hope that you will consider using these elements of flight as a guide to your personal journey.
As the famous Zig Ziglar used to often say, “Your attitude in life determines your altitude!”
It is apparent that he, too, understood that principles of flight are also important in life!