לבנות ביטחון עצמי
נתקלתי במאמר הזה ממש במקרה ביום הראשון של השנה האזרחית 2010. יום קודם היתה לי טיסה מעפנה בהר הארי. טיסה שלוותה בפחד...
(הערת המתרגמת: המאמר נמצא באתר Flygirl, אתר בלוג של מרחפת בעלת הישגים מדרום אפריקה בשם גיינור שומן, המכנה את עצמה "Flygirl".
הקדמה למאמר: החוויות האישיות של Flygirl בבניית הביטחון העצמי:
Flygirl כותבת בשנת 2009: השנה גיליתי שהסביבה היא גורם חשוב בבניית הביטחון העצמי. הגעתי למקום בו אני מרגישה רצויה ואהובה - וכעת אני יכולה להשתחרר בטיסות. והשמיים הופכים להיות מקום ידידותי - מגרש משחקים בו אני מרגישה שוב כמו ילדה קטנה.
Flygirl כותבת בשנת 2008: חלק מהטייסים המקומיים מכירים את ההיסטוריה שלי ואת המאבק בפחדים שאותו ניהלתי בשנתיים האחרונות. כאשר לפתע התחלתי לטוס טיסות מרחק של 100 קילומטרים ומעלה ועשיתי זאת בהצלחה חמש פעמים בעונה, הם שאלו אותי כיצד התחולל בי השינוי? מה גרם לי להתמודד עם פחדי ולחזור לטוס היטב כמו בעבר - ולמעשה, טוב יותר מבעבר?
התשובה שלי היתה שלא התגברתי על הפחד, אבל הבנתי מה מקורו וכיצד לקבל את הפחד, לעבוד איתו ולמרות קיומו: להנות מהטיסה. היה לי המזל לפגוש מרחפים שעברו חוויות דומות והנחו אותי כיצד לבנות תוכנית התמודדות, צעד אחר צעד.
תודה לגקו וולמרנס על תובנותיו ועל המאמר שכתב.
זה קורה לכולנו. אתה מרגיש בטוח בטיסה שלך וממריא ביום קצת מחותחת...משהו קורה ואתה מאבד את בטחונך.
It happens to all of us. You’re feeling confident about your flying, then take off on a bit of a gnarly day, and something happens that sets you back.
אתה מתחיל להמנע מלטוס בימים שנראים לך חזקים או סוערים. אח"כ אתה מוצא את עצמך מתרץ מדוע לא כדאי לטוס גם בימים טובים ורגועים, וכשאתה סוף סוף משכנע את עצמך לצאת לאוויר - אתה מביט בשעונך ומכריח את עצמך להישאר באוויר עוד קצת, לפחות שעה. אתה לא באמת נהנה מהטיסה.
אם כך הוא המצב, במהרה תמצא את עצמך שואל שאלות כגון: "למה אני מענה את עצמי?" בנקודה זו, יהיה זה רק הגיוני למכור את הציוד ולפרוש מהספורט לצמיתות. טייסים רבים עושים זאת - אחוז הנטישה בספורט הרחיפה הוא גדול מאוד.
נטישת הספורט בצורה שכזאת בדרך תשאיר טעם של כישלון. זוהי הסיבה שטייסים רבים, גם אחרי שחוו קריסה מבעיתה או חוויה מסמרת שיער אחרת שמערערת את ביטחונם העצמי, לא ממהרים למכור את הציוד: הם שומרים את ציוד הרחיפה שלהם בארון, כי יום יבוא וביטחונם העצמי יוחזר - ואז הם יחזרו לשחקים.
It won’t be long before you ask yourself why you’re doing this, why you’re torturing yourself? At this point, it becomes easy to justify selling your equipment and getting out of flying altogether. A lot of pilots do – which will account for the high attrition rate in our sport.
Stopping flying will virtually always leave you with an intense feeling of failure – so much so that many pilots, after taking a life-changing collapse or hairy close call will not sell their kit and just get out of it, but keep it in a cupboard to go back to “once they’ve regained their confidence”.
אבל איך עושים זאת? אם אתה טייס שמצנח הרחיפה שלו נרקב בארן אבל עדיין שותה את נס הקפה שלך בבוקר בספל עם סמל של "רוח הקודש" - אתה כנראה אחד המורעלים שלעולם ישאף להיות באוויר. אני מקווה שהמאמר הזה יצליח להחזיר את ביטחונך העצמי. But just how do you do this? If you’re one of those pilots who still have a glider in the cupboard and still receive your flying mag, you probably have an intense desire to fly. I hope this will help.
נתחיל.
First up, remember that there are no quick fixes, and nor are there one-size-fits-all solutions. Use what you can from this article, and accept up front that the road to recovery is going to be a long one.
The bad news is that you can only regain your confidence in the air, not on the ground. It’s like pulling a tooth to make pain go away. The good news is that the pain actually does go away.
However, you need to choose your moments to put yourself into the air. Choose badly and you worsen your condition, choose well and you will reinforce your confidence. What it comes down to is being in control again – over the conditions you choose to fly in, the equipment you use, and the mindset you arm yourself with.
Tip # 1: Take a step back.
If you’re a competition and cross country pilot used to flying big air, don’t force yourself to fly strong conditions. Take a trip to the Garden Route and do some coastal flying. Try winching De Aar in winter. Fly before the day really switches on. Whatever you do, don’t beat yourself up. You’re not a sissy. People who break legs don’t start running after the casts come off. They nurse themselves first. Why shouldn’t you?
Be honest with yourself and with your fellow pilots. Too many pilots hide their fears by finding excuses and staying away, hoping that they don’t have to face their mates.
If you tell them you’re on the road to recovery and your confidence is low, they won’t encourage you to launch and come after them on a gnarly day. Quite the contrary – they will understand and encourage you to fly when it’s cool.
But what’s cool for them won’t necessarily be cool for your mindset and current fear threshold. Respect your own fear, and act on it. Rather step back and fly tomorrow if you think today is going to be too daunting for your level of confidence.
Tip # 2: Change your equipment
If you’ve been flying a hotship or even a performance wing, consider a step down to a DHV1/2. If you’re already flying an intermediate, consider one that is less agile. Again, don’t beat yourself up about it. There is no disgrace in downgrading.
Choose a glider that dulls the feedback. You don’t want too much information, and you don’t want one that surges a lot and needs a lot of attention to fly. Agile gliders tend to translate strong air movements into violent surges that exaggerate the intensity of the thermic activity. You don’t need that. Straight and level is good at this point.
Choose a glider that is very efficient in very light conditions. This is crucial – it will allow you to fly in much lighter conditions where other pilots choose not to fly, giving you more space and less to concentrate on. Secondly, the air will be a lot more benign. Softer thermals are harder to work, but also have less hard edges. It makes you want to stick around longer.
More importantly, flying in light conditions with a dulled-input glider not only smoothes out your flight, but introduces an aspect of confidence recovery that I think is the most important of all – it forces you to concentrate on something other than your fears.
Imagine this – you’ve managed to drag yourself out to your local thermic site early one Saturday. You promised yourself a flight before things got too rough. You even promised your better half that you’ll be back early. So you launch, and instantly find yourself sinking out badly.
Damn and double drat! You realise that if you land now, it will take an hour to get retrieved. By which time you probably won’t want to launch. So that’s it – your day is blown.
Then you find a small thermal, and desperately start to circle in it. It stays at zero, and there is just no way on earth you are leaving this bit of lift. The zero turns into a 0.2 up, and still you cling to it. After twenty minutes and only 80m height gain, you finally land, exhilarated! Why?
1.Because you were too busy to be scared. 2.You managed a 20 minute flight in impossible conditions. 3.You managed to avoid a hell of a walk out. 4.You are still alive, contrary to your own predictions! Changing your harness to a more stable one with a longer distance between karabiner and seat board also helps. Closing the chest strap adds to stability as well, but be aware that the more you close the chest strap to stop yourself from rolling from side to side, the less body steering ability you have, and the more you are dependent on using brakes to turn. This could be recipe for spinning the wing.
Another bit of equipment advice comes from someone who has gone down the route of regaining confidence after a reserve deployment on a comp wing himself: former SA sports champion Craig Richards recently downgraded to a Standard class wing and is so back on form that he is chasing the big guns around comp tasks on full bar, sometimes even leading tasks.
Craig’s advice is to reset your vario to a slower and acoustically less intimidating beep rate. He recommends setting the vario tone to half that of the factory setting, i.e. a beep for every 40cm of height gain. This makes a 3 up sound like a mild bump, so you’ll soon find yourself looking for “stronger” thermals!
All this advice underlines the importance of the right choice of equipment for your state of mind. Choosing equipment that allows you to fly in lighter, less intimidating conditions also opens the window of enjoyable flying and decreases the level of danger.
What works for you in light conditions is a matter of flying style. I prefer a flat-turning wing that I can slow down, full knowing that I may have to forego the ability to tightly core, while others may prefer a high-banking wing that they can throw into the core and keep it there. If you think that a high-banking, fast glider would not work because of the higher centrifugal forces needed to stay in a small thermal, then choose something that will leave you feeling more in control.
Tip # 3: Set yourself goals
There is nothing more confidence-destroying than taking off in strong conditions and just parking above launch, shaking like a leaf, while one thermal after another blows through and makes you feel like a punch-bag.
Setting yourself a target of staying in the air for 30 minutes or one hour will not help you overcome fear. Not even if you fly late afternoon in valley release. It will only reinforce the bad stuff, because you will have nothing else to focus on and to take your mind off your fear than just watching the clock. Avoid this. If you have to fly in these kinds of conditions, set yourself a task out into the flats or along the ridge – anything to focus your efforts and your attention away from your fear.
The secret is to set small goals and achieving them. You’ll find you gradually set yourself bigger and braver tasks. To fly further, you may have to stay up longer and brave slightly stronger conditions as the day heats up. But, since you have a goal, you’re prepared to put up with these because you are focused.
Achieving these goals reinforces the positive elements of flying and makes you go back for more, rather than finding excuses not to fly. The important point is to make them small so that you can achieve them. You need all the reinforcement you can get right now.
What kind of goals and tasks can you set yourself?
See how far down the ridge you can get on a very light day. See how long you can stay up on a very light day. See if you can top-land on a very light day. The latter is my favourite. Not only will this force you to focus so hard that there will be no time to be scared, but there’s an added bonus: you will top-land in the presence of many pilots who will appreciate your world-champion skill and daring!
On a serious note, landing to a round of applause makes anyone feel good. It means that your peers recognise and applaud an exceptional achievement for the conditions at hand. So what if it’s also an indication of your low self-esteem at this moment? Recognition is your medicine for overcoming fear. Administer in large doses!
Recognition and goal achievement are two weapons in your arsenal of reinforcing the positive aspects of your flying. The more you do it, the more the bad bits of flying recede into distant memory, leaving space for only the positive bits. You have to empty your basket of bad memories by filling it with good experiences.
Jaco Wolmarans
Emails: [email protected] e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
Website: www.wordsource.co.za and www.aerogear.co.za
Last Updated ( Thursday, 09 July 2009 )
