LANE WALLACE

The result? On her first attempt, Destiny clipped a wing, resulting in the landing gear collapsing. But the plane remained upright and it was likely the passengers would have walked away. On her second and third attempts, she did decent landings. Jeremy, on the other hand, described his attempts as ranging between “an air-field lawn job and Hindenberg disaster.”

 

What accounted for the variation in outcomes? According to Jeremy, it came down to one simple difference: “Destiny believed in herself. I didn’t.” Their initial mindsets—Destiny’s, that she could, and Jeremy’s, that he couldn’t—had real-life impacts on their ability to land a plane successfully.

 

Reading that piece took me back to a piece of advice I got long ago, from one of the most skilled pilots I ever had the good fortune to have as a friend and mentor. Right before I left on my first solo transcontinental trip with my Grumman Cheetah, he said, “Remember. Half of being a good pilot is believing you’re a good pilot. Every time you walk up to that airplane, you have to believe you can and will do what it takes to land it safely.”

 

It sounds like obvious advice, the kind of “think positive” mantra one might see on a mo-tivational poster. But in practice, it’s a challenge to remain humble enough to respect the hazards of flying so you don’t make cocky mistakes, while still maintaining that essential belief in your ability to ensure a successful outcome. Numerous flight instructors have told me that in their experience, male students tend to struggle more with the first half of that challenge, while female students struggle more with the second. So it’s both striking and encouraging that Destiny had more inherent confidence in her ability to land a plane than her male counterpart.

 

But as with so many lessons flying is particularly good at teaching, the power of our belief to impact outcomes—and the factors that influence that belief, one way or another—has implications far beyond aviation.

 

The people who end up changing the world are those who believe they can. And by “world” I mean anything in our lives, from our own feelings, relationships and work situations, to entrepreneurial breakthroughs, to larger organizational, community and societal issues or injustices.

 

Having been raised by parents who believed not only that the world could be changed for the better, but that it was our collective human and civic obligation to do everything we could to effect that change, I used to assume everyone felt that way. Over time, however, I’ve learned that’s not the case. Many people believe things are the way they are and can’t be changed. Some of them come from strict, rules-based backgrounds that discourage fighting any existing system or idea. Others have what psychologists call an external locus of control: a belief that “life outcomes, successes, and failures are determined by outside forces—such as fate, luck, chance, or powerful others—rather than personal actions.”

 

I actually doubt any pilots subscribe to the “external locus of control” belief system. It’s incompatible with the whole concept of commanding an aircraft. But that doesn’t mean we’re never at risk of having that belief in our ability to successfully impact outcomes shaken.

 

For starters, there’s the almost-daily battle most women fight against believing they’re not “enough.” That, sure, maybe the world can be changed, and outcomes can be successful … but maybe we’re just not good enough to make that happen. Unlike, of course, all the other fabulous, successful, perfect women out there who are.

 

But there’s also the risk presented by the double-edged sword of experience. In theory, the more life experiences we get—the more problems and challenges we work through, and the more skills and knowledge we build in the process—the greater our confidence in our abilities should become. And, generally speaking, that happens. But those same experiences almost always shatter any youthful belief that things will always work out, or that bad things only happen to other people. So ironically, even as we gain greater ability to handle ambitious challenges, we often become more hesitant to take on those risks. Because we don’t just know we can fail. We have visceral knowledge of how painful that can be.

 

So what do we do about that? Well, when I start to feel “not good enough,” I remind myself that all those perfect-seeming women are fighting the same battles I am. I’ve yet to find a woman who feels as fabulous, in the honest midnight of her soul, as others think she is. And, as with being a good pilot, I remind myself that half of being enough is believing you’re enough. But I also give myself permission to be a work in progress. To look at my failures in a way that allows me to learn from them and either let them go or work at becoming better.

 

Combatting the hesitations and discouragement that come from painful life experience is harder. But I’ve found two tactics that help. First, I keep a tally of all the times I’ve succeeded; all the skills I’ve learned, and all the miracles I’ve pulled off when, through determination, effort, and sometimes sheer force of will and belief, I’ve turned night to day and seen the world change as a result. And that goes for tough landings and in-flight emergencies as well as career successes, beating bureaucratic systems or making a profound difference in the lives of those I love.

 

Second, I ask myself why a new endeavor or challenge matters. Because intellectually believing we can impact outcomes doesn’t matter much if we stop trying. And that gets tempting, the more times life dishes out discouraging or painful results. Picking ourselves up and diving back into a new challenge, with the full, fierce, force of belief necessary to have a chance at success, takes energy. And nothing motivates us to find that determination and energy again like a goal that really matters to us.

 

We learn to pick our battles as we get older. But if something is important enough, it helps infuse us with the energy we need to rekindle our belief and attack the hill again. And keeping that belief alive … well, that’s a goal that matters in and of itself. Perhaps even more than anything it allows us to do.