Breaking Through Uncertainty - Welcoming Adversity

Written by Jim McCormick


We all question our ability at times. Uncertainty plagues us. It is even more intense ifrepparttar ability we are questioning relates to something we have never tried or not succeeded at inrepparttar 101280 past.

Set backs are common, but we rarely welcome them. We are inclined to respond negatively to adversity. It may be time to revisit that reflexive response.

I had an experience recently that caused me to reconsider whether a negative response to adversity is always justified when I was confronted with a life-threatening situation.

It was mid-morning on a warm and pleasant Saturday. I was inrepparttar 101281 midst of my first skydive ofrepparttar 101282 day. It was my 2,123th jump since having taken uprepparttar 101283 sport fifteen years ago.

After about one minute of freefall and 5,000 aboverepparttar 101284 ground, I parted ways with my fellow jumpers to get far enough away from them to open my parachute safely. I initiated opening around 3,000 feet aboverepparttar 101285 earth.

My parachute opened with some twists inrepparttar 101286 lines betweenrepparttar 101287 parachute and me. This is not that uncommon. What was different this time was that I was not able to clearrepparttar 101288 twists.

The twists inrepparttar 101289 lines caused my parachute to take on an asymmetrical shape. Receiving asymmetrical inputs,repparttar 101290 canopy did what it is designed to do and initiated a turn -- that's how it's steered. The problem occurred whenrepparttar 101291 turn quickly became a rapid, diving downward spiral that was spinning me a full 360 degrees about once every second. This was a problem.

I looked up to assess my canopy and saw something I don't often see -repparttar 101292 horizon clearly visible ABOVErepparttar 101293 trailing edge of my canopy. This meant my canopy and I were now on roughlyrepparttar 101294 same horizontal plane. In that I could seerepparttar 101295 horizon behind it, I was actually above my parachute and it was leading our fast spinning parade rapidly towards mother earth.

My first need was to acknowledge that I was not going to be able to solve this problem. This is not as easy as it seems. Having successfully completed over 2,100 jumps without having to resort to my second parachute, it was hard for me to believe I had really encountered a problem I could not solve. I had a natural inclination to assume I could fix this problem as I had all those inrepparttar 101296 past.

Sound familiar? It's always easy to lapse into denial when confronted with a problem. Until we acknowledgerepparttar 101297 problem and our possible inability to solve it - or to userepparttar 101298 methods we have used inrepparttar 101299 past - we don't have a chance of making things better.

Fortunately,repparttar 101300 urgency of this situation caused my hard-headed nature to yield much quicker than usual. That decision probably took a second or two. The next step, having acceptedrepparttar 101301 need to follow a different course than inrepparttar 101302 past, was to determinerepparttar 101303 course. Fortunately fifteen years of training and practice before every day of jumping took hold.

I looked straight down atrepparttar 101304 two handles on either side of my chest - one to release me from my malfunctioning canopy and one for deploying my reserve parachute - and realized I needed to quickly get them in my hands. I could not help but notice when I made eye contact with them, as had been ingrained in me during my First Jump Course way back in 1988, that by nowrepparttar 101305 rapid spins had turned me back to earth and there beyond my toes was once againrepparttar 101306 horizon. This was bad!

she deserves to live

Written by daniel nzenwata


It is true that we all have to die someday. This is destiny. However it is very wrong for a person to choose to compel another person to die especially when that person is not inrepparttar position to decide otherwise, and still hasrepparttar 101279 chance of staying alive. Mrs. Terri Schiavo may have been in a persistent, vegetative state forrepparttar 101280 past seven years,repparttar 101281 bottom line is, she is still alive. It does not matter if she cannot communicate for now,repparttar 101282 argument that she is not cognizant ofrepparttar 101283 beauty and wonders happening around her are also an issue of today.Tommorow will change this situation The insistence that her movement is nothing more than neurological tics are not more than a doctor’s professional view. Yet these tics are still movements.No dead

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