“When flying your vessel of life through the mist, do not overcorrect – it’s all in the wrist.” ~ John Peitzman (JP)
Most of us get excited for change and engage in a host of activities attempting to alter our lives, not realizing that small steps may be much more effective.
I used to fly helicopters. I specifically remember when learning to do this the tendency to overcorrect. In doing so this made things so much worse.
I recall very clearly sitting next to my instructor when learning how to hover in place – one of the most difficult tasks to perform. As soon as I would feel the craft lean right, I would move the cyclic (control stick) to the left with my arm and things would get worse. We would bank left and, again, I would compensate by making a fast correction back to the right and we would be out of control very fast.
The instructor would have to relieve me immediately and take over the controls from his seat in order to avoid crashing. I came to learn this is a type of ‘rite of passage’ that all helicopter pilots all go through… until they learn the secret.
What’s the secret? To not overcorrect – it’s all in the wrist. When you feel the helicopter lean right… a very small adjustment to the left with the wrist is all you need to keep things in order. Anything else throws things out of control very quickly.
This concept is a great model for a lot of situations in our lives that we wish to ‘correct’ in some form or fashion. What’s the lesson? To not overcorrect. To realize that often times a slight adjustment can be made to make right what is going wrong.
We leave a relationship after one fight. We change careers after one bad quarter. We quit a course because we fail one test. We enroll in new courses before we have finished one. We ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater’.
We can find ourselves overcorrecting and overreacting in so many situations when really all we need to do is to apply some common sense and take some very minor steps to sort things out.
Don’t overcomplicate the solution. In doing so, you can make the problem you are addressing much bigger and much more difficult to solve. You can cause a crash.
