Sully jordanmarsh6, March 29, 2021April 5, 2023 Alright so I am going to start waking up at 6:00a every day; I will exercise for a solid thirty minutes (no breaks!); then I will drink an all-natural organic vegan antioxidant protein loaded smoothie (so natural); then I will read my scriptures for another thirty minutes (super righteous); then I will shower (so fresh and so clean). What a great morning routine and I will be ready for the new day right at 6:15a! Wow! I’m going to literally beat down the door to each new day! I’ll also solve world hunger by noon and run for president by dinner. I mean I am obviously being a little dramatic but if we’re honest with ourselves we have all probably thought along these lines when considering how we’re going to be better. We take literally EVERY flaw we see in ourselves, decide that we’re going to change all of them at once, and also expect that overnight we are going to execute our plan to perfection. As I consider how we approach changing our habits, I’m reminded of the movie Sully. Sully is a true story about an emergency crash landing that pilot Chelsey Sullenberger made in the Hudson River after the engines of his plane both failed three minutes into a flight out of JFK airport. After the crash landing, some early data showed that one of the engines was still functional, which if true would mean he could have made an emergency landing at a nearby airport rather than endanger the lives of everyone onboard by landing in the Hudson river. The National Safety Transportation Board (NSTB) also is shown running simulations where under the exact same conditions the plane was able to safely make it to a nearby airport. This threatens Sullenberger’s pilot license. This next part I am about to tell is why I am telling you all of this in the first place. Sully sits at what seems like his trial at the NSTB. The simulations are shown to him where the birds hit the engines and the pilots immediately decide to divert to a nearby airport; this is done on a large screen in front of a crowd of people. In his defense, Sully makes an interesting point: the simulation doesn’t take into account any human element. The simulation pilots knew in advance what was happening, and the exact moment those birds hit the engines they immediately decide to crash land at a nearby airport. Sully argues that in real life, the pilots would not know what to expect and would not immediately know to turn the plane towards the nearby airports. An astute point, don’t you think? The board decides to re-run the simulations in front of everyone, this time with a 38 second pause before the plane moves towards the airports; in theory, to recognize that the pilots are human. Both simulations dramatically show that those planes would not have made it to nearby airports, but also would have crashed in metropolitan areas potentially harming many more people than just those on board. The number of metaphors to habit formation I can draw here are sky high. First, we simulate a perfect experience. Those aircraft simulations assumed a perfect response from the pilots; they react perfectly to an adverse event and safely land. We, similarly, assume that overnight we’ll be able to bag our old habits and immediately become the version of ourselves we want to become. It’s just not that simple. Second, how about the crashing of the plane when the humanness of the pilots was taken into account? Doesn’t that remind you of how your unrealistic plans to change will crash and burn once you realize you’re human? The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg talks about an idea I find fascinating: keystone habits. A keystone habit is one habit that when adopted, leads to the easier adoption of other good habits. For example, if you develop a habit to exercise regularly, it may become easier to eat better. Or if you develop a habit to read for thirty minutes before going to bed each night, you may get better at sleeping longer and better. I love this idea because it focuses our attention on improving just one thing about ourselves. When we focus on just one thing and give ourselves room to fail sometimes because we’re human, we might just improve a lot about our lives in the process. Self Improvement