Of course not. If he had, there’d be no story to tell. “I really didn’t have any thoughts,” he says. “There was nothing on my mind but what we were trying to accomplish, just the job at hand, which was to bring the plane down safely.”
How can you always be coolheaded, especially at a trying moment? The key, our experts agree, is self-confidence.
We know what you’re probably thinking: Easy for us to say. Sure, Captain Haynes had confidence in his flying skills, but what about decisions that involve whole new sets of parameters you’re not familiar with? Having self-confidence can be hard when you lack experience, agrees Dr.Johnson. His advice to young doctors who get hung up trying to decide if they’re doing the right thing is to look to the good decisions they have made in the past to reinforce their confidence. There’s no reason you can’t do the same.
The heart of this issue is trust… of yourself. It’s an attitude that has at its core an acceptance of yourself and your decisions regardless of what anybody else thinks or any mistakes you may have made, says Albert Ellis, Ph.D., president of the Institute for Rational Emotive Therapy in New York City.
