Category: stalling

Regaining Lift: A Stall Recovery Guide for Life

Regaining Lift: A Stall Recovery Guide for Life

AP2

“Time doesn’t heal emotional pain, you need to learn how to let go.” ― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

During my adolescence, I was bullied relentlessly for over two years.

It was one of the most challenging periods of my life. I was at boarding school at the time. Halfway across the world from my parents. I felt isolated and alone. So, I withdrew.

That was how I defended myself.

Fast forward several years, long after the bullying stopped, those defences turned into a prison. The more I struggled against them, the stronger the walls became. Eventually, that prison became a fortress, and I found myself in a deep depression that lasted over a decade.

It wasn’t until I came home from work one day that something changed.

I found my son playing on the living room floor. All he wanted was to play with his dada. I remember looking at him without feeling anything – not a shred of joy. I wanted nothing to do with him. At that moment the shame was too much. I went to my room, closed the door, and began to cry.

The walls came crashing down.

Then, something remarkable happened. I found the bottom of the pool. I recall looking around the room with such clarity. It was like I was using my eyes for the first time. And I knew what I had to do. Something I’d been putting off for years. This time I didn’t hesitate.

I picked up the phone and called for professional help.

The Mistake I Made

Now, I’d like to say the rest was history. But that’s not how this story ends. Rather, it’s how it started.

A big mistake I made was thinking that waking up would happen instantaneously. Like my alarm going off in the morning. 

That somehow the grand cosmic reason for my being would become apparent, and I would live happily ever after. (What a dope.)

The brutal reality is that letting go is a slow, arduous process. (On second thought, it’s just like my alarm going off in the morning!) It’s a process we must practice over and over again. 

We first recognise that we’re struggling, and then we let go – we sink into our emotions. Once we find our feet again in the present – once we find the clarity and perspective we need – we push off the pool floor and rise to the surface. 

We then take a much-needed breather before repeating the whole process over again.

A Stall Recovery Guide for Life

Of course, this is far easier said than done – especially if you have been clinging to your defences for a long time. 

So, we need a roadmap – a set of steps we can follow to help us do that – to first shed our defences and then find the strength to pick up our swords and fight for the life we want. 

This brings me full circle to the stall recovery pilots employ in real life. I believe the series of steps they take provide a useful framework that we can use to recover whenever we suffer from a loss of lift in life. Happily, it follows an easy-to-remember acronym I made up called RAPID, which stands for:

  • Recognise (take the autopilot out)
  • Accept (let go of the controls)
  • Push the nose down (come back to earth)
  • Increase thrust (protect your energy)
  • Do it again (climb away/pitch back up.)

This RAPID framework also provides a neat structure for my high-flying book. I plan to do a deep dive into each of these sections over the coming months as I go about researching/writing it.

For now, I want to give you a brief outline of each section so you can get a good idea of where this flight is headed. (And as a way to wrap up this initial series on stalling.)

Anyway, here it is. 

Step 1: Recognise (Taking the autopilot out)

We can’t solve a problem we’re not aware of. If we don’t know we’re stalling, what hope do we have of recovering from it? We first need clarity before we can take appropriate action.

We need to understand what our stall warning alarm is really telling us (whether that alarm is grounded in reality or not). To do that, we need to build self-awareness.

How do we build self-awareness? By taking the autopilot out. This is step 1.

Step 2: Accept (Letting go of the controls)

The point of increasing self-awareness is not self-improvement but self-acceptance. (The paradox here is that self-acceptance leads to genuine change.) 

This is the equivalent of letting go of the controls.

We must accept where and who we are – whether we like it or not – to regain control of our lives. A significant part of this section will explore the shedding of the defences we use to protect us from feeling vulnerable.

I’ll briefly highlight this point for now: Letting go is defined by a willingness to feel vulnerable.

Step 3: Point the nose down (Coming back to earth)

The paradox of vulnerability is courage. We derive true strength from our willingness to shed our armour and show who we really are. This gives us the courage to take action.

Not any old action – an action grounded in reality based on a set of intrinsic values. 

Invariably this means we must sacrifice something – just like a pilot must sacrifice height for lift, we must do the same. We must give up what we want to do and instead come back to earth to do what we should.

That means prioritising people over productivity, and our values over validation. 

Step 4: Increase thrust (Protecting your energy)

The other thing we must prioritise is our health and well-being.

In aviation, we have a saying: Energy is life. Without it, we cannot maintain lift. So it is with us. This is why we must protect/prioritise our own health above all else.

This section will look at how we do that. It will also explore time management – how we can protect not only our energy but our attention as well.

Step 5: Do it again (Climbing away)

The final step is a reminder that letting go is a practice we must repeat. To help us remain grounded as we return to our lives and chase our goals and ambitions.

A significant threat when recovering from a stall is re-entry – pitching too fast too soon before we’ve gained the energy and lift to sustain us over the long haul.

So this final section will look at life balance – how to balance the four forces of life – to help us stay grounded when we’re flying high, whenever we encounter some of life’s inevitable turbulence.

Closing Thoughts

In a nutshell – this is my 5-step guide for regaining lift in life.

Just in case you think I’m pulling all of this out of my pilot’s hat, well, I am. But, after some research, I release that these steps closely follow the methods used in ACT, CBT, and DBT. Quote, “Three of the most effective methods to improve anxiety, mood and self-confidence.”

To land this post, I want to make a final point. 

I’ve defined stalling as a loss of meaning (lift). Stalling is inevitable because change is inevitable – because loss and heartbreak are inevitable. That’s why I think it’s wrong to think in terms of trying to avoid stalling.

The major issue we have isn’t a loss of meaning. It’s an inability to accept and process that loss of lift.

That, ultimately, is the whole point of letting go: so we can move on for the purpose of rebuilding the meaning of our lives. Hopefully this guide will help you do exactly that.

This is part six of a series of posts on the subject of stalling in life.

Part 1: Stalling: The Aerodynamics of Life

Part 2: Stalling: Why We Lose Lift

Part 3: Stalling: Why We Lose Lift (2)

Part 4: Stalling: The Paradox of Meaning

Part 5: Stalling: Why Letting Go is the Key to Regaining Lift

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You can find more of AP2’s writing here at: https://wiseandshinezine.com

You can also find him on Medium at: https://anxiouspilot2.medium.com

Stalling: Why We Lose Lift

Stalling: Why We Lose Lift

AP2

Last week I said the reason we stall in life is because we lose meaning. Of course meaning, lift, purpose (whatever you want to call it) is the reason we do anything. The meaning we give our life is the reason we get out of bed in the morning. Otherwise, why bother?

In its deepest sense this means depression. Depression is a loss of lift. Most people think of depression as a kind of sadness but that’s not correct. While sadness is often associated with depression they are not the same thing. 

Sadness is a feeling. Depression is a more like a lack of feeling. It feels like a heavy fog blankets everything. All you want to do is let that fog envelope you. It’s a form of retreat from life. A deep withdrawal. A shrivelling of the self.  

It’s a loss of hope, either in yourself or the world at large. As it happens that’s the primary reason we give life meaning. Meaning gives us hope. When we fail to see the meaning in something we lose hope. This causes us to give up. 

This is happening to us collectively on a staggering scale in the modern world. A scale that is only increasing. To quote some rather alarming statistics:

Clearly then, something is up. It certainly ain’t the sky!

If we take the premise that the underlying reason we stall stems from a loss of meaning, and if we also take the premise that the main reason we lose meaning stems from an inability to let go (meaning we’re unable to accept something), that begs a number of questions. 

Why have we lost meaning on such a colossal scale, especially in the modern developed world? What it is we’re unable to let go of? What can we do to save ourselves before it’s too late? 

Undeniably these are complex and difficult questions to answer, but since I’m writing a book, I best have a crack. Let’s start with the obvious before taking a rapid nose dive off a cliff!

Heroic Individualism

On the surface it seems the reason we stall is a matter wanting something we can’t have. It’s like being grounded as a pilot. The desire to fly leaves us wishing for a different reality. 

Of course, we want to be out and about, exploring the world, playing with our mates. We want to be getting rich, ripped, promoted and recognised for being the hero (or heroine) we all imagine we could and should be.

We all want to have the perfect glistening bodies, deeply meaningful careers, and raise perfect children who would never fart in public. We want a bigger house, a faster car, a fatter paycheque.

We want adulation from millions of ardent fans. We want to conquer the world and leave a legacy so our name may live on for all eternity.

That’s we want, if we’re brutally honest.  

The question is why? Why do feel we must have everything, do everything and please everyone? Why is what we have never enough? 

Performance coach and author Brad Stulberg calls this condition heroic individualism. “An ongoing game of one-upmanship against both yourself and others, paired with the limiting belief that measurable achievement is the only arbiter of success.” 

As he explains, “men describe it as a cumbersome need to be bulletproof, invincible.” Whereas “women report feeling like they must be everything always, continually falling short of impossible expectations.”

The big issue with heroic individualism is the underlying belief.

We aren’t driven by a deep internal value system – or moral compass – but a deep seated fear that who we are and what we have isn’t enough. A fear that we are way off course, miles away from the destination we should be, and heading in wrong direction still. 

So we feel we must keep striving, pushing, whipping ourselves in a desperate attempt to make up for our lack of being, to get our lives back on course – to climb to the highest possible cruising level for our lives to hold any meaning.

It’s the equivalent of pulling full back struck and applying maximum thrust 24/7. You’ll certainly see some short term results. But eventually, rather quickly, you’ll burn out and stall. It’s not sustainable over the long haul. 

This is worth stressing: Whether you feel need to do everything or struggle to do anything, in either case you are driven by a sense of hopelessness. 

Ultimately, if we don’t learn to accept ourselves for who and where we are, we will always feel out of control. This is important because a sense of control is central to maintaining hope. If we don’t feel we have any control, eventually, we lose hope.

When this happens we get a visit from the existential worm at the core. (I’ll talk more about Mr wormy head next week)

Hedonic Adaptation

Unfortunately a lack of belief isn’t the only issue when it comes to stalling. In fact, there are a number of psychological flaws that fuck us up in the modern age. 

One of those flaws is something behavioural scientists like to call hedonic adaptation or set point happiness. Something I like to refer to as the pursuit of unhappiness.

Harvard psychologist Tal Ben-Shahr, who coined the term “arrival fallacy”, describes it as living under the false illusion that once we make it (whatever that means) we will find the kind of lasting inner peace and contentment we desperately crave. Then, only then, we will live happily ever after. 

But even when we do arrive, even when our wildest dreams are realised, that happiness is short lived. Despite sacrificing everything to achieve our dreams, it’s a mere “blip” on the radar of life. We immediately start thinking about the next best thing. How that next promotion, fatter paycheque, or faster car will give us everything we need.

This is because we all have a set-point of happiness. Some of us have a higher set point (bastards) while others have a lower set point (poor bastards), but the vast majority of us (regardless of sex, gender, age, class etc) lie somewhere in the middle.

And somewhere in the middle looks like this: “Life is okayish, I guess. Not bad, but not great either. Certainly room for improvement!”

Of course, this set point is continually reset based on our life circumstances. So, if we win the lottery for example, what happens? We’re happy for a while, because, well, we just won the fucking lottery! But, eventually, much quicker than we would like, we get used to it.

We get used to our new lavish lifestyle – we get used to the big mansion, the 5 sports cars, the jet-setting. The existential worm at the core catches up with us. (There he is again.) We start to feel that something is off. That money really isn’t everything. (Shocker!) That we didn’t want the world after all.

The good news is that hedonic adaptation works in reverse. 

If you have a divorce, for example, or end up in accident that leaves you paralysed – studies have shown that although your life on paper becomes worse, you readjust. Things feels awful for a while, but then get use to this new normal. You accept it – sort of – and move back to your default level of slight dissatisfaction. 

Loss Aversion

The problem is (here’s where I open my bay doors and drop a bombshell on you) we don’t see this. 

The same way we think gaining that next promotion or winning the lottery will solve all our problems, we think that losing what we already have will be an unmitigated disaster that will end in the collapse of humanity itself (I may be exaggerating).  

This is because we suffer from something known in psychology as loss aversion (which goes hand in hand with something else known as a negativity bias). Loss aversion states that, on average, the pain of losing something is three to four times greater than the happiness of having it. 

Lettings go hurts – a lot!  

This brings us to the next critical life lesson: We are terrible at predicting what will make us happy.

Mother Nature – that cruel mistress – wired us this way. She’s got us convinced that we need to keep climbing to the flight level above us, even though, in reality, it won’t make us any happier. On top of which she convinced us that letting go and descending to a lower altitude would be a massive mistake, even if the turbulence at our current one is unbearable. 

The reason for this is simple: survival.

To think back a few thousand years – for the vast majority of our evolution – we really didn’t have much stuff. The stuff we did have was invariably necessary for our survival. So we clung to those things while going after whatever scraps we get our scrawny little mits on. We kept hunting and gathering because we needed to! We needed to save up for the inevitable rainy day. Of which there were many.

The grass is always greener for a good reason. Once upon a time, the grass was always greener.

To come back to issue of meaning. When our survival is at stake that’s meaning enough. But past a certain point, the issue isn’t about our survival but the survival of our things. We cling to our things – our jobs, our relationships, our privileged lifestyle, our beliefs – because those things define who we are. They’re what give our lives meaning.

And right now in the modern developed world at least, it seems we have everything to lose and very little to gain. This scares us to death – quite literally.

(I’ll pick this up next week.)

This is part two of a series of posts on the subject of stalling in life.

Part 1: Stalling: The Aerodynamics of Life

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You can find more of AP2’s writing here at: https://wiseandshinezine.com

You can also find him on Medium at: https://anxiouspilot2.medium.com

You can also email him directly at: anxiouspilot2@gmail.com