A Flight Simulator for Your Life

Everyone knows the value of a flight simulator for minimizing the risk of learning. Can you imagine NASA sending up a spacecraft with astronauts without them practicing in the simulator first? Remember how upset Sigourney Weaver’s character was in the movie Avatar, when Jake Sulley arrived on Pandora to “drive” his avatar with no simulated practice?

Well, what about flight simulators for the rest of us? Have you ever thought of how great it would be to put in hours of practice before going into some of those risky situations in your own life? Practice makes perfect. We learn through repetition. But most practice, most repetition, brings with it a risk of failure, or of rejection. What if you could practice without that risk? What if you could construct, and spend time in, the optimal flight simulator for exactly the situation you need to master?

Well, you can! Your mind, your creative faculties, can summon up your own custom-designed flight simulator on demand, at absolutely zero cost!

Logging Your Hours

1) Chose a situation you want to practice. Maybe it’s asking your boss for a raise. Or asking your child to pick up their room. Maybe it’s a sales call, or a presentation you’ll be making.

2) Close your eyes, and start the movie. See yourself doing it, or even better, see the scene as if through your own eyes. When it’s your turn to speak, you can even speak out loud if you like, or you can simply imagine what you will say.

3) Be clear, specific and detailed. Flight simulators are not general. They are just as detailed and realistic as the actual situation would be. That’s how you want your movie to be. Fill in all the details. Don’t worry if you don’t know how it will actually be – allow your creativity to flow, and allow yourself to be inspired as the movie unfolds.

4) Give yourself opportunities to practice with potential obstacles. Just like in a NASA flight simulator, you need to test yourself. Of course it’s great to visualize everything unfolding easily and perfectly. Who wouldn’t want that? But don’t miss the opportunity to practice and perfect your responses to challenges. If you’ve already lived through and figured out how to handle some of the possible breakdowns in your “simulator”, imagine how much more prepared you’ll be to deal with those issues should they happen in real time.

5) Simulate the PROCESS, not just the desired result. Too often we know how we want the movie to end, and we tend to put all our attention there. It’s like the Olympic Athlete who dreams of standing on the podium and having the medal placed around their neck. If that’s all they practice, they are not going to be the best in their event. They have to practice, both physically and mentally, the entire event, in detail, from beginning to end. So do you. What will you do, and how will you do it, how will you feel and what will you say, to get the desired result?

6) Repeat until you’re comfortable. Each time you run through a simulation, you’re building your skill, your strength, and you’re ability to handle the real time situation with grace and ease. Create different variations, different, “What if…” scenarios.

7) Use what you learn and discover along the way. You will find that by playing the situation through multiple times, and really imagining it in detail, you will anticipate and solve some of the potential issues in advance, thus coming into the actual event that much more prepared. Perhaps you realize that there are preparation steps it would help to do in advance. Great, do them. Or you realize that you don’t really want to ask for that, but rather something else would yield a better result in the long run. How powerful to have come to that without any cost in the “real” world.

It’s Not Just Free, It’s Priceless

This internal flight simulator capacity is one of your most potent tools for success. And it’s one you have complete control over. Invest the time, log your hours, and watch the payoff mount.