Pull Your Head Out of Your Cockpit

When you drive a car, you have things going on all around you and some of them can kill you. If you are paying attention to the kids fighting in the back seat and you miss the traffic signal, bad things can happen fast. "Timmy, stop teasing your sist" - WHAM. Airbag in the face. The same applies when you fly an airplane. When your head is down in the cockpit looking at instruments and dials, trying to get that damn radio to work, things can sneak up on you and…WHAM. Scorch marks on the granite.
My son and his girlfriend struggled with their relationship for a couple of months before breaking up. Now they are back to being friends and able to talk about movies, computers and movies like they used to. They rediscovered casual conversation. They stopped focusing on the relationship and started focusing on the things they have always had in common with each other.
These things are related. Anytime you are conducting a complex operation, it is a process of input and output. When you allow input relating to one part of the task to overide other inputs of higher priority, output loses its relevance to the immediate reality. Such as: while you adjusted the radio, you inadvertently put the aircraft in a 30% nose down attitude.
When you are struggling to resolve an issue with another person, if you let your head get too far into the cockpit, you can crash your relationship.
It’s a “heads-up” flyer that really knows how to coax the best out of the airplane. The flyer that keeps everything balanced and is making sure not to get channeled is the one that brings the aircraft back after facing the unexpected. Where the nose is pointing is always part of the action. A heads-up flyer doesn't get his or her attention dragged too far into the cockpit. The heads-up flyer knows where the nose is pointed. A light and smooth touch on the stick provides a much better ride than the “heavy handed yanking and banking”needed to make an emergency recovery from a tailspin.
When dealing with the people you love, don’t get channeled by the little stuff. An interesting conversation about fringe interests will usually go farther than all of the “he said-she said” accusations that you can stand.
As we roll into the holiday season, call someone and put some heads-up attention on a relationship that hasn’t been what it could be. Spouse, parent, child, friend, sig/other. But don’t try to do it by rehashing what’s wrong. Get your head out of the cockpit, figure out what’s going right and get that part working for you. Ease the throttles back to cruise and point the nose in the right direction. Then re-evaluate and decide how important that broken radio is.