Can I have your attention, please?
It’s time for a little New Year’s motivation.
Now, before you groan, complain about yet another email claiming to help you achieve your New Year goals, and delete this email altogether, hear me out.
When I was a kid, spending weekends hanging out at the mall with my friends, there was a store we used to like to visit. Many graduation presents ended up coming from that store. You may remember it—it had the cheesy posters that college students had hanging on their walls. They often took these posters to their first job because—hello— they included such mantras as “There is no I in TEAM” and “The Road to Success is Always Under Contruction.”
My favorite one, though, might be “Your attitude determines your altitude.”
Read that again.
YOUR ATTITUDE DETERMINES YOUR ALTITUDE.
So cheesy! But I can totally see that rocket pointed at the sky and those big words written in a Galactic-like script:
Your attitude determines your altitude.
That was the one teachers liked to drop when anyone started complaining about all those pesky math problems she assigned for homework. “When are we going to use this?” we used to mutter under our breath.
As it turns out, ALL. THE. TIME. (Don’t believe me? Try tripling a recipe to cook for a crowd, comparing prices at the grocery store, or managing household expenses. Just yesterday, Gavin told me there’s no formula he uses more than the one about “percent change.” It’s vital to his business!)
ATTITUDE IN SPACE
Anyway, that quote about attitude is more than just a cliche. In the world of aeronautics, attitude isn’t the mood that determines your behavior; it’s the position that determines your destination. To be sure, the sky isn’t even the limit. When you’re riding in a rocket, up and down are totally relative.
When I first heard this, my mind was BLOWN.
Attitude is part of the description of how an object is placed in the space it occupies. Aircraft and spaceships use attitude to determine position. In order for the ship to go in the right direction, attitude must be monitored and controlled. If even a tiny mistake in the way the ship is pointed isn't corrected, the ship can end up millions of miles off course. Expensive equipment would be lost, to say nothing of the astronauts aboard and what that would mean for them!
Behavioral scientists might have hijacked the phrase, but rocket scientists invented it.
An example: Apollo 8 flew more than 580,000 miles and landed just 1.6 miles from its target point in the Pacific Ocean. That mission set the standard for landing accuracy, inspiring eight more Apollo missions that flew all way to the moon and back to land less than two miles from their intended targets. None of this would have been possible without calculations of attitude.
So…let me ask you a question:
How’s your attitude?
Nothing causes remorse quite like the realization that time has run out and you didn’t do any of the things you said you were going to do. Like me, you probably have a general idea about how you’d like this year to go. Maybe you’ve created your own 2023 dream list. But how do you get there?
Let’s get started.
The first and easiest thing to do is to point yourself in the right direction.
Once you’ve got the orientation right, now all you have to do is stay the course. But that’s the hard part. You have to keep going in the right direction. Spaceships stay on course by adjusting attitude with tiny thrusters containing compressed gases. As the thrusters release the gas, the spaceship undergoes micro-modifications to get it back on course.
In my university physics class, we worked a lot of problems that included the phrase “all things held constant” and “without friction.” In real life, though, all things are NOT held constant, and friction, unfortunately, is our constant companion. Something or someone is sure to thwart our best-laid plans. Reading about attitude, however, provides me with encouragement. Even rocket scientists have to continually make adjustments in order to get where they need to be. Mid-course corrections are not only necessary, they are planned.
And that’s good news for us, too.
Constantly evaluating where we are ensures we’re on the right path.
I think sometimes we don’t want to think about the things that might hold us back or the things that could go wrong. But that would be a mistake. As you begin this year, go ahead and plan for the minor adjustments you’ll have to make along the way. When things go off-course, as they inevitably will, what might you need to do in order to get back on track? Planning for setbacks ensures we’re not caught off guard. No one wants to be blindsided by something that could easily be corrected with a tweak here or a nip there, especially when that something could have been anticipated before it even happened.
OK…so how do you do this?
Designate several times throughout the year to check-in with yourself and figure out what needs to change so you can stay on track with your own far-reaching goals. You’ve already heard that writing down and sharing goals increases your chances of achieving them. And that’s true. But don’t just write them down. Review them. Often. Assess yourself. If needed, find an accountability partner. My friend, Jen Soong, and I have been doing this for years. She lives 2,500 miles from me, but once a month we get on a Zoom call and celebrate wins, encourage each other in the places we’ve fallen short, and challenge one another to keep going when the going gets tough.
Every month, Jen helps me adjust my attitude—and in more ways than one!
If you’ve been wondering how I know all this stuff about spaceships and Physics, it’s because I’ve been listening to Michael Collins’ fascinating memoir called Carrying the Fire, about his time as a NASA Astronaut. And if you’ve never heard of Michael Collins, it’s because he’s often called “the forgotten astronaut.” While Buzz and Neil were out frolicking on the moon, he was the guy who had to stay behind, orbit the moon in the command module, and ensure they all got back to earth safely.
I’m cheering for you!
And in the spirit of being cheesy (and space exploration in general), I’ll leave you with a mantra from another poster:
“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.”
(Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)