Today we dive into the Wheel of Life technique that you can use to become the absolute best version of yourself, and have the most fulfilling career and life you possibly can.
Yes we know, that all sounds a bit dreamy and corny, but here’s the cold hard truth:
The happiest and most successful people inside and outside of aviation all have 1 thing in common: they know how to identify what to focus on, set ambitious goals, and also keep themselves motivated to actually reach them 🎯
So what’s the secret? No secrets really, just some very important but basic self development principles!
What are those?
Well, that’s exactly what we’re going to talk about! ⤵️
We don’t publish all our Notes from the Cockpit (like this one) publicly, some are shared only by email. Get the next one sent straight to your inbox ⤵️
How to Increase your Drive and Ambition
While ambition is nothing more than aiming to achieve big things, your drive is what actually keeps you going from zero to hero!
Not everyone needs or wants to achieve big things, but feeling a reason to keep going and growing, is an extremely effective way to be satisfied and happy in life overall.
You know how much you’ve had to sacrifice to get to this stage in your life. Not to mention days away from family and missed birthdays.
Missed moments with your kids, moving across the globe to get those hours, and feeling fatigued after a full night of flying, being a pilot is a hell of a ride!
However, we’re pretty lucky that our craft has so many areas where there’s never a point where learning really stops.
If you’re struggling with motivation, things can look very negative sometimes. Having a true sense that you can grab life by the balls and aim to crush your goals, is obviously a really effective recipe for success.
However, it’s not something that most of us are born with. If you don’t feel motivated at all, it’s time to create some of that drive!
How? Here’s how!
We’ll use most of these throughout the Wheel of Life technique below.
Using the Wheel of Life Technique
The Wheel of Life technique is an amazing method to identify what requires the most attention in your life and what is going well. Being happy is more than having a successful career and just getting stuff done.
You need to zoom out and evaluate where the pain points really are. What is going ace, and what needs desperate attention? So where to even start?
Don’t worry, by the end you’ll have it all figured out! This is a practical exercise, so get your pen and paper out! You ready?
1) Draw a circle
2) Divide it up in 3 main categories: Your relationships, your career, and your health.
3) These 3 can be divided even further like this:
These categories summarise the most important areas of human life, and what makes us either fulfilled or depressed.
4) Now, here comes the challenging bit. You are going to score each category from 1 to 10.
However, be careful here! You shouldn’t just look at ‘Is this category of my life what I want it to be or not’.
For instance, in the body category, you should NOT be scoring based on if you’re in perfect shape yet. Instead, score it based on how aligned your life currently is with achieving your personal health goals.
Have you developed the habits to reach the goals you want here, are your daily actions currently aligned with the goals you have?
Also, you might not even be interested in some categories. Let’s say you’re not interested at all in religion or spirituality, then the ‘Soul’ category might not be something you want to focus on at all, and that’s absolutely fine: Easy 10!
However, if something like mental health for instance is important to you, but you’re already scoring pretty high on it, it might still be worth picking that instead of something you care less about.
If yes: score it high – if no, score it low!
In other words, you’re scoring how well your life is currently designed to eventually max out these categories based on your specific goals!
For each slice, write in 1 sentence what a 10 would look like to YOU. Don’t let anyone else tell you what a 10 looks like (including us). What is a 10 to YOU? This makes the scoring much easier to do!
After you’ve done this, fill the slice based on your score. When you’re done, you get a really good overview of what is going well, and what needs your attention in life:
5) Now, for the categories with a lower score, you need to ask yourself 2 questions:
- Why did you score it the way you did?
- What are you going to do about it, and HOW are you going to do it?
Visualise what it would look like if you have these categories absolutely nailed, how would it increase your overall happiness?
Pick your focus points based on how much positive impact they would have on your life. Addressing everything at once is usually not a good strategy, as you simply don’t have enough time.
Once you have identified the areas you want to focus on, it’s time to set goals in a way that maximises your chances of success. Each slice you want to work on can have multiple goals. So what’s an effective way of setting goals? Let’s go over it!
Make a Plan to Reach your Goals using the SMART Model
So how should you go about this then? Well, whether you want to fly a light aircraft around for the rest of your life, or have 30+ flown types as a test pilot and aspiring astronaut, it all starts with effective goal-setting.
There are many ways to go about this, but one of the most effective and proven goal setting models is SMART. Heard about it before? If not, here’s a breakdown.
Specific: Be Descriptive
The more details you can give yourself when describing what success looks like to you, the better. What specifically are you aiming for? Just saying “I want to be a captain” is not going to do you any favours.
What aircraft have you always wanted to fly? What is the lifestyle you’re aiming for? What about flying is it that makes you want to grab life by the balls?
Write down as many details as you can, and make that list bring up an emotion in you that gets you excited. You’re going to need it!
Measurable: Can you Track Your Progress?
Working towards your goal will be tedious if there is no sense of progress whatsoever.
How can you make it measurable? Are there milestones or checkpoints where there’s no doubt that you’ve made significant progress? If so, mark them down!
After having defined your goal(s) in the most descriptive way possible, it’s time to design a roadmap.
What do your checkpoints look like? Is it a certain exam, a licence, starting your own business, going to a networking event, the list can be as long as you feel is relevant.
Achievable: Is Your Goal Realistic?
While being ambitious is a great quality to have, it’s important to keep in mind that your goals should be realistic.
If you set yourself up to fail by having something that is extremely out of reach, you need to be aware of it.
Take astronauts for instance. In our circles there have been a few people who have dedicated themselves to the ESA astronaut selection process.
It’s a super ambitious goal to have, but the fact that they had 22,500 applicants for only a few positions, is a humbling fact.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have it as a goal. You should absolutely give it everything in your power if that is what you want, but at the same time it’s not going to make you a complete failure if you don’t succeed. It’s simply an extremely difficult game to play.
This also does not mean that success rates should discourage you. This might sound counterintuitive, but you can dedicate yourself to something despite knowing the odds are small. That’s exactly what determination will do for you.
Here’s a good way to summarise it:
Without these 2, you’ve lost the game from the beginning.
Relevant: Is your Goal Aligned with your Values and Interests?
Your strengths, personality, and interests should all line up when setting goals. This obviously costs a lot of time to figure out, but is crucial to absolutely nail.
Ask yourself 3 questions:
There’s an intersection between all of these. Whatever it is, that’s exactly the area you should explore. Pursuing something that doesn’t fit in these 3 questions is often a waste of your precious resources and time.
Time: Give Yourself a Deadline
While you don’t want to put unnecessary pressure on yourself, having a defined point from which you want to achieve X or Y can help with designing your roadmap, and give you more motivation.
It might not necessarily be something you get to decide. For instance, your VISA could run out in 8 months, or you want to start a family in a few years, or buy a house, or any of the other thousand reasons something could be more pressing.
Either way, deadlines help us stay focussed and committed to what’s most important to us in life. Use this to your advantage!
How to Embrace Failure
Now there’s usually 1 major problem for us that could screw up everything we’ve worked so hard towards: failure. Yep, we all hate it with a passion. So what are the best ways to deal with that one?
Change your Perspective
You need to start seeing failure as an opportunity to become a more finetuned professional.
The best people in the industry are all people that have failed many many times, they just had the willpower to not get beaten down by it and get back on track ASAP.
Identify Learning Points
What is your weakest point?
Is it your personal skills, technical skills etc. Try to accurately identify it and come up with a plan to get better at it.
Don’t just look at where to improve when things go wrong though, it’s especially important to identify when things go right!
Avoid Toxic Self Blame
While critical self assessments can be really valuable, you can definitely overdo it.
It becomes toxic self blame when you blame yourself for outside influences that you don’t have any control over.
If you talk negatively to yourself a lot, try to become aware of this and see if you can identify where that habit comes from.
Persist and Try Again
Persistence or perseverance is what separates the pros from the amateurs. It’s easy to give up when things get tough.
Whether it’s sacrifices you have to make, hours and days spending time on something you’d rather spend with your friends and family, or simply not losing your cool after you fail an important milestone:
Get up again and keep going!
Keep a Journal
Keeping track of both the good things you’ve achieved as well as the areas you struggle with can be a massive boost to your performance.
Imagine you screwed something up during a training flight. During the debrief that same day, 100% of your mind is occupied with what went wrong and what to do about it.
However, 3 weeks later you won’t remember as many details.
Keeping a journal and coming back to it when you want to nail that next test has helped a lot of pilots become the best of the best.
Actively reflecting on your performance is a more powerful tool than most people give it credit for!
How to Stay Motivated While Overcoming Obstacles
No matter how well you’ve planned out your goals, there’s always going to be hurdles on the way. Most of our success is going to depend on how well we’re able to adjust.
Building a house with the stones that are thrown at you is a good way of looking at it. We can’t control everything, and there’s a lot of luck and being at the right place / time involved in the aviation industry.
If you finished your CPL and IR test right before COVID started, there wasn’t anything you could’ve done to change the fact you were likely going to be jobless for a while.
However, adapting to the situation and not letting your mindset get affected by external factors is a huge variable.
What are the main ways we can use to overcome obstacles? Here are the most effective ones, in 1 overview!
Conclusion
Becoming the best version of yourself definitely means having a strategic approach to goal-setting. Drive and ambition are both super beneficial with this.
The path to success for most of us is unfortunately almost always riddled with obstacles. Your ability to adapt, stay organised, and maintain a positive mindset are crucial to become successful, no matter where you want to end up in the aviation industry.
Remember to take care of yourself, and if we can assist in any way throughout your journey, please feel free to reach out, our details are in our about page!
We don’t publish all our Notes from the Cockpit (like this one) publicly, some are shared only by email. Get the next one sent straight to your inbox ⤵️
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