Becoming

Transcript of this video:

The Doctor Killer is the nickname given to a relatively sophisticated light aircraft in the aviation community, and they call it this because it’s the kind of plane that is sometimes bought by recently qualified and rich pilots, like doctors, in the hope of really advancing their flying career.

The trouble is that it is so sophisticated that they sometimes aren’t able to properly control it and they end up having accidents, hence the name.

They become too invested in this idealized version of their future, of who they’d like to be, and they lose touch with where their skills actually lie.

And it’s a mistake I’m sure we’ve all made at various points in our learning journeys.

Equally, we can make the other mistake of being very invested in the notion of who we are to the point where we block ourselves from change and growth.

This is made most dramatic where a student or passenger has to take over the controls of an aircraft when the pilot becomes incapacitated.

There are a number of YouTubes that show the communication between the temporary pilot and Air Traffic Control, and the air traffic controller has to very calmly talk them down and help them, you know, acknowledge where they are, but help them actually land a plane for the first time.

And it’s the most dramatic example I can think of, of the principle that my friend Cathy Salit puts in her book Performance Breakthrough.

That we are who we are and who we are becoming.

And perhaps the most interesting growth experiences and the things that make us want to belong to a team is where we can hold each other in that space, that paradoxical space of who we are and who we’re becoming.

Photo by Maria Teneva on Unsplash