Fast rewind back to Oct 2019. I was excited beyond belief that I had been approved for a captain position at my company. It did not come easy, so far it had been a road of working in an office setting, then on a ramp, and spending just over a year flying as a First Officer. While my excitement was absolutely through the roof, little did I know that what'd I learn in that simulator, affectionately called the "sweat box", would have implications on my personal life. But first, a small taste of what simulator time was like!
For imagination sake, we had an unrelated cabin pressurization issue, which minutes into cruise morphed into a engine fire issue. The fire being apparent, required for us to shut down the engine, meaning we had lost of our only source of thrust. Now as we glided slowly to the ground, the weather started to get pretty bad at the closest airport suitable for
landing. Keep in mind that by the time we were in the landing phase, the instruments running on battery power had started to wither away one by one. So along with the challenge of flying what is essentially a 10000 lbs glider, we also had to fly an IFR approach (we cannot see the runway). Eventually we got onto an approach and it seemed like we would make the runway, but just as soon as we caught our breath the winds turned worse off than reported. Now we had to adjust for the wind, and along with that the trajectory to the runway was completely different. To haunt us one last time, our glide slope indicator in the aircraft became unreliable, meaning we could not rely on it to maintain a proper angular descent onto the runway. Suddenly, we found ourselves having to manually do the math in our head while hand flying this approach and switch to some clever techniques to manage the descent. In the last seconds, we planted the plane onto the runway, the last few drops of sweat falling off our heads onto our laps, too.
Sound like absolute chaos? Lose your breath? In a lot of ways, handling emergencies like this IS controlled chaos, and yes even well-seasoned pilots will break a sweat or two managing it, let alone freshly minted ones like myself. In reality, emergencies as complicated as this are quite rare. While every independent emergency we faced in the sim stemmed from a possible malfunction that could happen in real life, the fact that so many of them were combined into a single event is unlikely. Still, it taught me a lot about how to handle these types of events, and it had unknown ramifications in my personal life, too.
In the last few months, I went through a bit of a tumultuous time. What started as a benign health occurrence, had me a little uptight and frightened for what it could be. I have usually been pretty healthy, and this issue had shown up randomly. Doctors were taking longer than usual to get to the bottom of it, and we all know the importance of medical fitness in my career. To top it off, summer flying had been pretty busy. I was flying over 70-80 hours a month which is above the normal average, with the option to do overtime. That is to say all that work meant my sleep and gym time took a major hit. In addition, my family members needed me more than ever to handle some issues going on at home, and as if that was the end of it, the industry showed no sign of getting back to pre-pandemic operations. This meant whatever plans I had for my career had take a back seat, which meant my personal life goals also took a back seat. It felt like one after the other the foundations of my identity were collapsing. After countless pep-talks, a new found love for meditation, and some critical self-reflection I came to some realizations. I have highlighted three of the most important ones in this post.
1: Eventually things WILL go wrong. It is not only possible, it is inevitable.
Leading up to the last few months I was riding the high wave of life, and it gave me the feeling of being invincible which I realize now is one of the most dangerous mindsets to have. It narrowed my vision and as a result I did not look far enough on what is to come. It's easy to fall in the trap of thinking that when everything goes right, nothing can go wrong. In the simulator, while every flight started off on a good note, things eventually took a turn and emergencies arose. What struck me during my reflecting time is that as pilots we always anticipate emergencies. During takeoff, we will have a basic plan to put into action should the engine fail. During cruise, we scan the instruments to ensure we do not find any abnormalities brewing in the background. It's not that we always think negatively, it is that we acknowledge that for all the good in a stable and smooth flight, things can and will go wrong. They might happen slowly or hit us with full force, but the low wave is inevitable. Then why is it that in my personal life I had forgotten this very important lesson? It boggles me to this day, but all I know is that moving forward we must always anticipate for things to go wrong. That does not mean we forget to live in the moment, it just means we must acknowledge the cyclic nature of the highs and lows, and then sip our coffee in the so called "smooth cruise" of life.
2: When things go wrong, prioritize!
When all of my issues started to surround me all at once, I started to lose focus on which were critical, and which I could hold off on. For example, I started to focus too much on my health issue even though the doctors had to do their job before we could act on it. This affected my sleep, which affected how well I could manage day to day life. Then when home issues erupted, I kept trying to work more and more to stay away from it all. In retrospect, I think about why I did not look to my professional training for some clues.
In our sim training, we learned that one key way to handle a big problem is to prioritize it in sequences of safety. This means we prioritize what is most important to deal with, leaving the least dangerous for last. In fact, when we see emergencies in our warning system they come colour coded to signify which are the greatest threat (red), which require attention but not immediate action (yellow), and which are benign (white). My reduced performance in day to day activities was a solid red. It was something I had to grab a hold of and address immediately (good sleep, improved diet, etc). I realized later on, that if I could not get a control of myself, aviation, my home life, my personal life all of these foundations could cease to exist! Thus, it was my red warning. Home issues? Solid yellow! They were just issues brewing up that did not affect the safety of my well-being, but rather something I should give attention to when I have the time. It was certainly not something I could run from, which is how I dealt with it originally. Because yellow warnings, although not serious, have the capability to turn red if we ignore it. So don't avoid them, but certainly don't pour all of your resources either. Health issue? Believe it or not, it was pure white. It had not significant implications, a simple medication treatment for about two weeks solved it all. It was simply the sudden onset and the excessive analysis that scared me, unnecessarily turning benign "white" warnings into false "red" ones.
So what is the take-away here? Learn the habit of prioritizing all of your problems in life. Sometimes when they come, they may come as one or they may pile up on each other. I could not see this earlier, and it caused me to shuffle around my resources too many times while never actually dealing with the issue head on. The way I prioritize might be different from yours, but the act of doing it is the important part. Prioritizing helps us deal with the issues that are most important and not lose ourselves in the process.
3. Emotions and decision making do not mix, and for good reason.
During my period of less than ideal times, one thing I constantly did was mix my emotions into making important decisions. If a FaceTime call did not go right, I would get upset and decide to eat crappy meals for dinner. If work was extra stressful, I'd bring that straight home and skip out on the gym. For over a month, every decision I made depended emotionally on something else and this had serious ramifications. Eventually I realized I was making other aspects of my life worse off. It can be easy to fall into this trap, as we are emotional beings and emotions are so much a part of being well, human! But there is a time and place for them, and decision making moments is NOT one of them. Once again, during my time of meditation and reflection, I understood what a terrible mistake this was, and thankfully it did not cause any major problems for me. That being said, it certainly has the ability to screw things up.
Looking back at sim training, a lot of un-related emergencies arose, but just because it got frustrating at times, and believe me it did, we did not let our emotions mix into the decision-making. Take our cabin pressure problem, we solved it right away, but then the succeeding engine failure was something we just had to adapt to; it's not like we can get our engine magically running again. At no point however, did we get angry or upset or take it out on each other in the sim, for a mistake in the process would have had grave consequences. Bringing it back to our own life, with a cool and collected mind, we should keep moving one issue after the other. Some we will have immediate solutions for, others we will just have to adapt to. But by keeping emotions out of the equation, we minimize our chances of making mistakes, and trust me you will thank yourself later on. Realizing this, I know I sure do.
In Closing
I am in my twenties. That means that during this decade I, along with the rest of you in my age group, will get to see tons of different life issues. Some will be easily rectifiable, others
we must simply adapt to and continue moving forward. No matter the case, always remember to acknowledge that bad times are not only possible, they are inevitable. That is the very cyclic nature of life; it goes up and down. When things do go down, remember to prioritize! This method will help you judge what is important, giving you the power to spend your resources wisely. No one ever made an emotional decision and turned for the better. Emotions have their time and place, but key decision making moments will require your attention and care, as they did mine.
On a closing note, take a look around and note your trusted family and friends. Family is to me during my tough times, what instruments are in an emergency. They help me gauge the situation at hand, can offer information, and sometimes even clues to the solution! As for friends, I keep a small trusted circle. You may only have one or multiple. Either way, I consider them as my co-pilot. No emergency in that sim, or my professional practice has been a solo doing. I have always relied on my co-pilot, amongst everything else I spoke of, to help navigate the last few months. I do not give them enough credit, but credit where credit is due! Reach out to these "instruments" and "co-pilot" of yours. Who knows, you might be just that, for them!
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