What’s your life profile look like?
Continuing on the analogy of the science of flight and life, today I would like to share the concept of your life profile.
When an airplane goes from one airport A to the next airport B, the captain takes a route from A to be.
And for all flights, the profile of the root is similar to the one below:
The different steps can be summarised as below:
- Parked: the airplane is at the gate, and all systems are checked.
- Taxi out: once everything is ok, the airplane is heading to take off.
- Take off: a very critical step where the plane accelerates to be free from the ground.
- Climb: the aircraft is free from the ground and is climbing to higher altitude.
- Cruise:the aircraft has reached its cruise level, a steady altitude for most of the journey.
- Descent: The plane is close to its final destination and initiates its descent.
- Approach: The airplane has the final airport in sight and starts the approach to align for landing.
- Landing and Taxi in: The aircraft touches down and very quickly heads to its final gate.
For most of us, our life has a very similar route profile and can be depicted as below:
As long as we enter in life, we spend our childhood being prepared for adult life. Once we are adults, we get in line in a regular job, saving for our retirement. Before this hypothetical retirement, we have a phase where we are “seniors”, reminiscing the past glory and feeling like we do not fit in this new world.
Then, if we are lucky, we retire and die.
Quite a dark view, isn’t it?
This was my perspective in life until some years ago, when I had a wake up call.
I was in my routine and doing business as usual. Then I was diagnosed with spondyloarthritis and had to stay one week at home because I could not walk.
That week at home, I took the time to reflect on what I would like my life to look like, what legacy I would like to leave behind.
I believe that we can add a layer above the initial layer with the 3 “I”:
- The Initiation phase: in this phase, we are the ones who are being initiated by our elders.
- The Influence phase: in this phase, we start our own view of the world and we start to influence the world based on our own perspective.
- The impact phase: This is the phase where we focus on our impact in this world, which can go beyond our physical presence in this world.
Of course the 3 phases are not as linear as below and can overlap.
What kind of life profile do you have? Leave a comment below.
You can read my previous article on “How to use the fantastic four to reach the next flight level in your life?”
Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash
