Who is Flying Your Plane?

Have you ever been minding your own business, enjoying your life, and along comes a random person that does something annoying or upsetting and gets you riled up? It can happen in traffic, at the grocery store or at work, and the situation can change your emotional state in seconds.

Then you tell a friend, and a family member and another friend and then another family member. By the time you have shared your story of being wronged in some way or another to a bunch of people, your blood is boiling and your blood pressure is through the roof. The sad part of this scenario is that usually nothing any of our friends or family members have said in response to your story is making you feel better, and you are still feeling angry and quite possibly irate by this point.

I can’t say it any better than Michael Jordan, when he was talking about losing to a rival basketball team on the Netflix Series, The Last Dance; “As soon as they got us complaining they’ve got us. And they did”.

When we get angry and start complaining, we are giving our power away to that random person and then they are flying your plane. They might be flying your plane toward the trees or the ground, or taking you to the left when you want to be going to the right. Why should you relinquish control of your plane to someone else? Tune into the conflict and make the decision to let it go. If our emotional spectrum ranges from joy to rage, I am going to try to get as close to joy as I can and as far away from rage as I can.

Whenever you find your thoughts about an event or a specific person commandeering your plane and taking you for a nose dive, I encourage you to take back piloting control of your plane and rise up. Make the choice to resist the urge to start complaining and repeating the event to other people. Guide your plane back to soaring through the puffy clouds and get back to enjoying your life.