[OSList] - Re: Trust (long)

[David Osborne]

Thanks for sharing Derek. It's helpful for me to hear your wisdom at this
time as one who has a habit of rushing !!!

David


On Sun, Feb 2, 2014 at 4:52 PM, Derek W. Wade <dwade at kumido.com> wrote:

> You all rock. If "learning is remembering something you already knew,"
> then I'm delighted with the gift of learning I've received from this
> conversation.
>
> Back when I used to fly airplanes upside-down as a competitive sport, I
> received a simple, profound lesson that I now realize I can apply to Open
> Space.
>
>  I was having breakfast with my coach, world aerobatic champion Nikolay
> Timofeev. He was going to compete later that day in the "Unlimited"
> category -- something he had been doing for many years -- and I was going
> to fly my first competitive routine in the much less complicated
> "Sportsman" category. A pilot's first Sportsman flight is a milestone: its
> the one and only time in your aerobatic career to win a "best first time"
> award. I was nervous and concerned about time; gulping my coffee,
> obsessively looking over the plan of figures to be flown and judging
> criteria for each, checking and re-checking the timetable of the day.
>
> I was nervous both because it was my first time flying at a more advanced
> level, and also because we had had a few bobbles the previous few days,
> including the canopy of the aircraft coming off in flight and falling to
> earth who-knew-where. So I would be flying open-cockpit, the wind in my
> face for the first time. A lot of unexpected firsts that were out of my
> control.
>
> Something compelled me to ask, "Nik, what's one piece of advice you can
> give me for this flight?" I was hoping for something about altitudes or
> airspeeds or specifics of the maneuvers to be flown.
>
>  Nikolay finished chewing his bite of toast, took a measured, deliberate
> sip of coffee, set his cup down carefully, laid both his hands palm-down on
> either side of his breakfast, and said, "before flight, you must do
> everything slow. Everything. You drink coffee, you do slow." He
> demonstrated with a careful lift of his cup. "You walk out to airplane,
> slow. Steady. Starter will be run around, get everyone in airplanes, go go
> go, now now now. You breathe. You put on parachute slow.  Get in airplane
> now -- but get in slow." He accentuated with smooth, meditative movements
> of his hands, as if doing tai chi at the breakfast table. "Touch airplane,
> feel it. Breathe. Slow. That is best thing for this flight. All flights."
>
> It was a bit of a slap in the face -- what, I can't just have some
> pointers? Doesn't he realize how many things I'm dealing with here? But I
> did as he said. I left myself enough time that I could be deliberate and
> unhurried with all my preparation. The starter did indeed try to hustle me
> along when it was my turn to line up, but I smiled and yelled "thank you,
> got it" before I began buckling the chute on.
>
> It was SO hard. At every step I felt the need to check on something, to
> adjust some tiny little detail. But I did it. Slow and deliberate, just
> breathing with each motion. Paying total attention to one thing at a time.
>
> It was the best flight I ever flew. It felt like the airplane had turned
> transparent and I could see everything with 360-degree vision. At one point
> I was in the middle of a maneuver called a hammerhead turn -- a vertical up
> line until you run out of airspeed and then the engine's torque pivots the
> plane to point downward -- and saw that my path would take me into a cloud.
> Entering a cloud is illegal, and you're required to break off and restart
> your flight with no official penalty, but it can break up the judges' flow
> and result in lower marks.  Without thinking I pulled the propeller pitch
> back to act as a speedbrake  -- nothing I had ever been trained to do --
> and completed that figure just under the cloud.
>
> Hours later I was still working out why it had worked, and why pulling the
> throttle would not have worked. I didn't feel like I had made the decision,
> I felt  like the plane and I both did it. It mattered: I received best
> first-time and best overall in category for that flight.
>
> Earlier in this thread, Harrison said:
> "...coming to the circle scattered, confused and anxious is a good way to
> fry your soul and create an environment that matches your state."
>
> And, David Osborne  wrote:
> "Trust = the safety condition for self-organization."
>
> So my lesson from you all is that whether the circle is drawn in the sky
> with an airplane, or drawn on the ground and made of people, its critical
> to treat that circle as a magic circle; to enter it with all awareness,
> calm, trust, and respect due a place of power.
>
> I thank you all for the insight. I'll remember that flight -- and Nik's
> lesson -- any time I attempt to Open Space.
>
>
>
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>

--

David Osborne



www.change-fusion.com | dosborne at change-fusion.com | 703.939.1777
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