Transcript
I’m Dr. Cynthia Clark. Today, I want to talk to you about some ways that we look at health a little bit differently. As a little girl, I spent a lot of time on the airfield with my dad, who was a mechanic and a pilot, and he loved planes more than anything, and I had a lot of fun on the airfield.
So as I grew older, I spent some time studying what contributed to the causes of airplane crashes. And I was very excited when Malcolm Gladwell published this information in his book, Outliers. And he talked about the seven consecutive errors that were needed to cause an airplane crash.
Now, why is an acupuncturist talking about airplane crashes? The reason for it is because it’s actually very similar to the way that we can have crashes in our health, and what can cause those catastrophic failures that we weren’t expecting.
So the first mistake that Malcolm Gladwell talks about is a lack of expectations. And this can happen with incorrect information being given or being said. We’ve all seen it happen. You sit down with a group of people, and everybody gets up. And people, different people think that different conversations took place.
If we’re not 100%, clear, then we don’t know exactly what the conversation was. And when you have a life at stake, whether it’s the pilots or the person, then it’s really important to make sure that everybody’s on the same page.
So in your health care, that translates to being ambiguous about your goals. Is your goal to live a full and vibrant life really enjoying every single moment that you’re on this planet? That’s a great goal. And being clear about your goals is having clear expectations about your health.
The second one that Malcolm Gladwell mentioned, is not updating the timeline for changes. So things would happen, for example, this is called scope creep in my line of work. And as the project would go on and it would shift a little bit, then small things could get out of hand. And it’s the same in your health, not observing yourself clearly over time, is the second contributing factor to what can be the airplane crash of your health.
The next two fatal errors in Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, talking about airplane crashes are not communicating delays. So this is critical in the process of airlines, because a small change can really affect a major catastrophe. It’s also critical in your health.
Our analogy here has to do with keeping your metrics, keeping an eye on your metrics on the cockpit dashboard of your health, and know what it is you’re seeing. Don’t be afraid of data. I’m an engineer, and data is my friend, and I’m happy to make sure that I’m looking at data in context. And that’s what we can help you do, too.
And the next one is a lack of prioritization. Now, he categorizes this as poor team communication. But my experience is that anytime somebody says communication, they’re really talking about, what are we talking about? And what we’re talking about here is priorities.
It’s the same in your health, making sure that you’re keeping your eye on the ball and keeping your health priorities clear. Maybe your health priority is losing a few pounds, so then you’ve got that eye on the ball. Maybe it’s to run a 5K, so now you’ve got to lose a few pounds, but you’ve got to do it with purpose. So your diet is going to change a little bit. Whatever it is, whatever your goal is, whatever your mission is, keep focused on it. It matters, it’s really important. Keep your eye on the ball.
The next three consecutive errors that are made in airplane crashes are missing internal deadlines. And you can imagine that if a project is on track, and somebody doesn’t get their job done at the right time, that’s going to throw everybody else off. It’s the same with your health. It’s very important to make sure that you’re being honest with yourself, and that you’re looking to see if you’re staying on track.
You’ve got the dashboard of your health. You’re looking at the cockpit, you’re the pilot of your own health, and are you measuring up? It’s not a place of judgment. It’s just this… a course correction need to happen to make everything right.
I love the pilot analogy, because actually, when you’re flying, you’re almost always off course. When you fly from point A to point B, it’s never in a straight line. You’re always doing a little bit to get back on track. And that’s just fine. We just need to make sure that we’ve got the right metrics and that we’re being attentive so that we know how to course correct to get back on track, and to be honest with ourselves about the fact that we are off track.
The next one is overpromising. And this can certainly be a huge violation in any industry. But again, when we’re talking about planes, lives are on the line. So the way that this, the analogy that we have here is setting too ambitious goals, it’s easy to say, “I’m going to lose 100 pounds in a month,” but it’s not realistic.
It’s setting ourselves up for failure. Even a really, really, really hard exercise program or a too restrictive diet that doesn’t allow us a little bit of leeway, we’ve got to zig and we’ve got to zag can be setting us up for failure. Better to set realistic, maybe even slightly easier goals and achieve them and start creating yourself as the winner that you really truly are, reminding yourself of winning energy, and building upon that.
Finally, the last error is brute force causing new mistakes, rushing to try to get it all done and forcing it. So a little story about my dad here, my dad’s an amazing guy, and he’s a genius at getting himself out of sticky wickets by doing things himself.
He once called me at 10 o’clock at night and asked me to come help him pull an engine out of his car, he was, had it in a storage area. And I said, “Dad, I’ve got an exam tomorrow. I can’t come tonight.” By the time I called him at nine o’clock in the morning, he had rigged up a cherry picker in the storage facility and gotten it out all on his own.
So, my dad’s a genius. And one of the things that I respect the most about him is that when he starts to see his numbers go out of line, he’s got quite a sweet tooth, but when he starts to see his numbers go out of line, he gets very serious about riding the ship.
Now, that’s one of the things I like about Dad, he does it a little bit crazy, which is that he’ll put himself on like an all lettuce diet to try to turn his blood sugar numbers around. It works, but it’s not sustainable. So trying to do too much, too hard can really make it difficult long term.