October 19, 2016 Stephen Limkin

Outside of my comfort zone

flying


Since the age of 25, I have been a nervous flyer. I felt like there was a distinct shift in my level of nervousness on any flight I was on. I’m not sure if it was that I had just married the love of my life and suddenly thought that I had a lot to lose, or if that fear part of my brain suddenly developed and made up for lost time.Either way, if I was flying I would not sleep well the night before, maybe because I thought I would sleep through my alarm, and then have a nasty flight.

I’m not sure if this is actually a win or not but as I have gotten older I seem to be able to hide it better. Rather than clutching the arm of the person next to me, I would internalize my feelings, make peace with my impending death and wait for a sequence of events to happen that would lead to me being a news story on the 6 o’clock bulletin.

For years I have been doing this dance, and it’s totally irrational and crazy. So I asked myself, what if I learnt to fly to overcome my fear of flying? I have used the technique in the past to face my fear of speaking to large crowds, so I started investigating different flight schools before settling on the most media savvy company I could find (of course I wanted to blog about my journey) GoFly Aviation at Caloundra.

After meeting with Damien, the owner of GoFly Aviation, we developed a training pathway and booked in the first flight. Damien and the team have been fantastic, at every turn they have made me feel incredibly comfortable, always asking me if I was ok. I couldn’t have asked for better people to do this journey with me.

So, if you want to see how I change as I conquer this fear, stay tuned. Hopefully I won’t throw up on camera, or have a complete breakdown. At the end of this process I hope that I will not only be a confident flyer, but I will have inspired others to do things that put them outside their comfort zone.

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