Lessons from skydiving (7) - Take one step at a time

Every one who has aquired his driving license heard this one example from his/her teacher:

While driving at night you might stumble across a deer standing on the street.
Even though it recognizes your headlights, understands they pose a threat to its life it will not move. Blinking lights will not change the fact that it does not move.
It is caught in-between two things:
escaping to the right and escaping to the left.
Unable to decide what to do it remains standing still and will eventually end up on my BBQ.


One of my favourite sayings goes someting like this:

"In any given situation you can do three things: the best thing would be doing the right thing, the second best choice would be doing the wrong thing. The worst thing to do would be nothing."

Still, only one thing a time. If you would try to do the best and the worst you would end up having done nothing at all.


A few months ago I was at the hospital at around 9pm. This time not because I had hurt myself but because I had night services at the department of pediatrics.

We (me and a colleague of mine) where talking with the doctor in charge, discussing the last patient, treatments,... And as always students would recieve some advices for their future in the medical field.
One of the most important advices I recieved that night from a nurse. She said:

"If you are ever in charge of the walk-in clinic, please, finish one patient after another. Even if there are nurses, other doctors pressuring you to do something else, keep calm and finish your work.
Last week we had a doctor who just had finished medical school and was doing his first night shift. He got so carried away with trying to treat 3 patients at once to save time, after one hour there were still the same three patients in there and an uncounted number of patients was already or still waiting..."


I experienced the same thing while falling with 200km/h towards the earth this summer...
As I mentioned in a previous post I had some problems when starting to skydive. I still have but back then lying still while falling was problem enough.
Even though I had my trainer with me, giving me signals, my mind was racing with thoughts like
"Is my head back?" (He is giving me the signal to make my legs longer so I start to extend them more...)
"How do I get my pelvis down more?" (Again the legs- longer signal...)
"What´s the next step in the program" (Still the legs- longer and somehow he is looking pissed..Why, I´m doing all I can...)
"How high up am I?"...

So instead of just fixing one problem at a time I multi-tasked several ones and ended up doing not much the right way.
I´m not sure if it is because men can not multi- task or because it´s just my problem but nothing got better, only worse and I was lucky to pass that level.

The making of an elite warrior, SEALs, Green Berets, Rangers, Nightstalkers, you-name-them, they get one principle taught from the beginning: One evolution at a time.(this line in particular was taken from the BUDs- Phase of SEAL- training)


Set priorities and then do one thing, 100%, give it all you got until you are done, then do the next thing.


Or like they say in the Zen- Buddhism: Plunge yourself in the moment, immerse yourself completly. Be the moment.


Train hard and enjoy life!
All the best,
Harry