“Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, Drink the wild air‘s salubrity.” Ralph Waldo Emerson preface of ‘Considerations by the Way’ published in ‘The Conduct of Life’,(1860, revised 1876).
Tag: emotion
Go Beyond Happy
Scientifically studying how humans get to be and stay happy is one of modern psychology’s success stories. Positive psychology, with its insights into pleasure and achievement, has benefited millions. But there should be more to life than happy. And this new powerful book, The Power of Meaning: Crafting a Life That Matters, by Emily Esfahani Smith (2017), is a gateway …
Anne McClain on Facing Fears
Anne McClain has faced down many fears, and is now going to be rewarded with sights that are literally out of this world. She’s been an Army combat helicopter pilot who deployed to Iraq, an instructor pilot and a test pilot. She is currently a NASA astronaut, in the pipeline to fly to Mars. Quote is from an interview …
Don’t Let Your Emotions …
Never get emotionally worked up in the cockpit — you’ll only die mad. Best be like the WWII British poster, keep calm and carry on:
You’re Not in a Dangerous Situation Until
Scott Crossfield — fighter pilot, aeronautical engineer, first person to fly twice the speed of sound and X-15 chief engineering test pilot — quoted in the classic book X-15 Diary released this week. He is also quoted as saying: In all of this business there’s a requirement of intense concentration—if you can train yourself to be self-disciplined. If you close the …
Listen to Your Plane.
Former NASA chief astronaut and USAF test pilot Charlie Precourt has a good article in the July edition of EAA’s Sport Aviation magazine. It’s on the normalization of deviance. That’s something we learnt about from studying the Space Shuttle accidents. And something we can apply every time we go flying. Listen to your plane. Don’t let standards slip. Don’t normalize …
Death Before Embarrassment
One of the best books written by a test pilot/astronaut is Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut’s Journeys by Mike Collins. He was a USAF test pilot, spacewalked on Gemini 10 and went to the Moon on the historic Apollo 11 mission. Here he talks about an interesting airmanship trap — Death by Embarrassment: It’s hard to admit a slip or …
Pilot Perception
Some pilots will make an emergency out of a bad magneto check. Others, upon losing a wing, will ask for a lower altitude. In thrust we trust! And opposite aileron. Lots of opposite aileron. For more details on this and other damaged but flyable F-14s see this article on aviationist.com. And for the equally amazing F-15 see this very cool …
The Sky in My Mind
(Quote is from a 15 March 2016 Rolling Stone interview.) Lots of science now adding to lots of personal testimonies that a little meditation every day reaps huge rewards in life. Better focus, better calm attention, less distracted. All this can make you a better pilot. So why don’t aren’t more people trying it?
Effortlessness and Yet Such Total Presence
“Rowing at its best occurs when you are gliding through the water with such effortlessness and yet such total presence that you almost seem to disappear. Rowers use the term ‘swing’ to refer to that magical kind of condition when the boat seems to fly over the water and a lot of effort disappears from the stroke. The athlete becomes …