Steady Hands in Times of Crisis
Sweet Bites for January 17, 2025
Hi all,
Welcome to another edition of Sweet Bites, Mind Candy’s bite-sized newsletter with thought-provoking finds to send you into the weekend with.
Any of the below bites resonate? Hit the reply button and let me know.
🍰 Mini Bite
Calm in Crisis
Roughly three minutes into the flight, crisis struck.
Heading to North Carolina, U.S. Airways Flight 1549 hit a flock of Canadian Geese and lost power to both its engines.
The pilots would have only minutes to act before the plane crashed.
“It was routine until it very suddenly, shockingly, became the ultimate emergency of a lifetime and we knew it immediately,” the pilot Chelsea “Sully” Sullenberger would later say.
A former fighter pilot, Sully’s instincts kicked in and he worked to turn the plane around. Air Traffic Control quickly worked to clear a path for the plane to land back at Laguardia Airport but Sully knew they wouldn’t make it.
Within moments he made the decision of where he was going to land the plane carrying 155 passengers and crew: the Hudson River.
Discussing what was going through his mind and how he handled the stress of the situation so well, Sully said:
“It was back to my days of being a fighter pilot. And you have to control the workload by shedding all the things that you would like to do but are not the most important things to do. So we had to set clear priorities, do the few things that would help us the most, the most essential things to make our situation better. But do them very very well.”
It was because of his years of experience and quick thinking that Sully was able to land U.S. Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson, saving everyone onboard.
Today, it is known as the Miracle on the Hudson, but to Sully, it was people doing their job extraordinarily well in a moment of crisis.
“It was not a miracle. It was many people rising to the occasion on their own initiative, making it their personal mission in life to see that each life was saved.”
We think of resilience in big moments like this.
Or we think of it when a football team is down by two and need to get within field goal range for the game winning kick. Or the job interview we’ve been working and waiting for.
But resilience isn’t always so loud. In fact, more often than not, the building blocks of resilience are often invisible to most.
Resilience is built in the daily decisions we make and the effort we put in. It’s about really embracing the life we have and using the knowledge as fuel to do better the next time. If Sully had never been a fighter pilot would he have had the wherewithal to handle the situation as he did?
Maybe, but likely not.
Each decision we make, each obstacle we encounter, each setback we must accept are all building blocks for our resilience.
But when we make getting up and carrying on a habit rather than a chore, when we choose to see areas to improve rather than reasons to sulk and complain, we’re building resilience into the core of who we are.
As Sully would remark afterward, you “have to be forward looking and look backwards also, you know, to learn from it, and try and improve going forward. And that’s what I did as a pilot. I would mentally review every flight, always trying to make the next one better than the previous one.”
Resilience is not always big moments. Sometimes resilience is just making it from one moment to the next. One decision to the next. One crisis to the next. Resilience is, in its simplest form, the courage to look at the job at hand and against all odds, continue to push on and make it through, learning every bit you can along the way.
🧘🏻This Week’s Monday Meditation
🦉 This Week’s Wednesday Wisdom
🤔 Thought for Reflection
One of the greatest things that kills resilience isn’t an intolerable ability to go through suffering…
… its never giving yourself a chance to try something to begin with.
When you stop yourself from even trying something due to fear of failure (and in turn shame, embarrassment, etc.), you inevitably cut yourself off from ever finding your potential in the moment.
Take risks. Fail. Try again. Learn from the errors. Grow from the experience.
Pain turns to knowledge. Knowledge to advancement. Advancement to success.
But it all starts with giving yourself a chance to try.
📚 Wisdom
“Not a dancer but a wrestler: waiting, poised and dug in, for sudden assaults.”
Marcus Aurelius
Source: Meditations 7.59
🎥 Short Video to Watch
Happiness expert Arthur Brooks breaks down why the approach of avoiding suffering is a mistake and why it leads us to more suffering.
“Suffering is actually part of life. And when we avoid the sources of suffering, we’re still going to have just as many negative emotions because that’s just the way life works, and we’re not going to get the negative experiences that help us learn and grow.”
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Until next time,
D.A. DiGerolamo
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