Don’t Let Yourself be Bullied by your Superiors!

That almost sounds like a “Vive la revolution!” call to arms, but it isn’t… instead I would like to challenge the concept of the existence of superiors. I come from the corner that God has created all of us in his own image as equals. In that paradigm we have no superiors beyond an allegiance to the one who created us.

Why do we feel that we are pulled in so many directions; why are we intimidated by people who are in positions of authority over us then? Because our universe, which revolves around us, is only as stable as we make it through our actions, and inactions, our decisions, and our indecision. This is the core of my message today, but I will put in an aside: I also feel that no man is an island. Our universe is inextricably linked to the infinite number of universes that surround us, each centered around each person with whom we interact.

Now that we have all of that esoteric jumble out-of-the-way, let’s apply it to a scenario we encounter as pilots: Don’t let yourself be intimidated by air traffic controllers. When we choose to operate our aircraft in controlled airspace, we subject ourselves to rules and regulations and other people (universes) who are charged with helping us maintain our place in the system. We try our best to always be on the right side of those rules, but when we step outside of those boundaries the controllers are there to nudge us back into compliance. If we view these people as our superiors then we set up and adversarial relationship potentially. We are content as long as they are correcting someone else, We are offended when they correct us.

We have set them up to be in a position of authority over us rather than a position of collegial assistance.

Sometimes we truly did make an error, sometimes they mistakenly believe that we did, and often times the truth lies somewhere in between.

So the core of this message is: when we are intimidated or offended by someone else’s input, it is became they have challenged our dominion over our destiny.

The best antidote to that condition is to continually strive to do everything in our power to stay on top of our game and responsible for our actions.