On the day of my first flying lesson, a tiny voice spoke to me in a Sicilian-like accent. It pleaded, “Rodney, donta goh, donta goh. I cook you pasta, I cook you pizza. Just donta goh flying today,” I’ll never forget that voice—it came from my grandmother, standing in the kitchen.

I replied, “Granny, why are you speaking like that? We’re not even from Italian.”

Yes, I still flew that day. Yes, I still had Italian food that night. And yes, I’m still not Italian.

Many of us, even those without grandmothers, hear voices. They may be the ones speaking to us when laying our eyes on the printed word or those associated with our conscience and its splintered kin, each with personalities all their own. Most of the time, these voices are supportive. Punctuating our waking moments with helpful suggestions and prodding us to behave in sensible ways, they act as wise overseers.

Occasionally, while aloft, we encounter voices that go bad. These are the ones that attempt to sabotage the means by which we find satisfaction in airplanes. I’m speaking of those voices emanating from the darker corners of our mind. The ancient Greeks knew of these voices, often referring to them as dysdaimon or bad demons .

Bad demons compel us to doubt ourselves, to worry unnecessarily, to be fearful and anxious when those responses aren’t justified. For most of us, these demons remain confined to the dusty dungeons of the unconscious mind. But for reasons that are both known and unknown, they occasionally slither onto the bedrock of consciousness and lay siege to our intellect and emotions. Here, they deplete us of the joys and pleasures we find in flying airplanes. Once these demons assume custody of our mental machinery, we’re forced to make a simple choice. Either we learn to control them, or submit to being controlled by them.

Before Ted wrote me several months ago, he had been flying for many years, accumulating several thousand accident-free, fun flying hours in the process. Then, on one cross country trip, everything changed. Ted heard an alien voice, a nagging voice, that prodded him to worry about his safety. As a result, he made an unscheduled landing to collect his wits (and offload that voice).

Ted said he’d never experienced anything like that before. Before long, Ted would only fly when accompanied by another pilot. Yet, it wasn’t Ted’s ability to control the airplane that troubled him. It was the general feeling of uneasiness that plagued him on subsequent flights. Just for the record, Ted didn’t experience heart palpitations, dizziness, sweating, trembling, chest pain, choking, chills. Nor did he experience panting or rapid breathing, as if he had just eaten a dog biscuit. These symptoms are typically associated with panic disorders and anxiety attacks (or the oral portion of a private pilot checkride). Instead, Ted had come face to face with a bad demon.

As Ted explained it, his sudden onset of discomfort was inexplicable. While we might associate similar events with the trauma of an aviation accident or even a close call, Ted had encountered neither. Experience tells me that there’s almost always a reason behind the sudden appearance of a bad demon, despite the difficulty in identifying the means by which we unknowingly summoned it.

Much of the time, these demons are kept in check because we pay selective attention to the world around us. It’s simply human nature not to dwell on our mortality. We seldom think about how easily frightened we might be by the most banal and common things in our lives (e.g., a seemingly friendly dog that attacks us, perhaps because we at its biscuit) or even how vulnerable our body is to being punctured, squished or bent. That’s why we have little reason to feel anxious about these issues. While we may tacitly acknowledge our vulnerability at times, we certainly don’t dwell on it.

Now consider what happens when a solo pilot, cruising at several thousand feet, stumbles onto the perfect combination of time, opportunity and circumstance to muse about his vulnerability. Suppose, for example, he begins to nibble on the idea of losing consciousness. As he chews on the thought, the devastating and ultimate finality of blacking out might easily lead to feel ill at ease. Now a very bad demon (i.e., a voice) might rise from its slumber and gain access to the waking mind. Never mind that this fellow is in perfect health and has never lost consciousness a day in his life. All that matters to him now is his newly revealed vulnerability (albeit a statistically insignificant one), and the lack of protection against it.

Sure, this fellow might find comfort in wiring the parachute system of his Cirrus SR-22 to an onboard EEG monitor so that it automatically deploys at the first sign of diminished mental activity. The problem is that some pilots with dimly lit stars might find their chute deploying regardless of whether or not anyone actually fainted. Fortunately, there’s a more practical solution to the problem. In situations like these, pilots must intervene on their own behalf to stay their runaway emotions. Here is where we can take a lesson from the past.

Goethe, the German poet, once suggested that he never shunned any of his personal thoughts, no matter how disgusting, grotesque or disturbing they were. To him, these thoughts—representing his bad demons—were part of him and part of the human condition. Instead, he acknowledged these demons, listened to them, and allowed them conditional access to his psyche for one very important reason: so as not to empower the bad ones by ignoring or dismissing them .

Goethe knew that great peril existed when attempting to banish by force of will those parts of his psychic self that he didn’t like. Great mind that he was, he recognized these bad demons as errant or spurious thoughts that didn’t reflect his true values or beliefs. The lesson Goethe and other wise men of antiquity learned was to acknowledge their disturbing thoughts (their demons), listen to their message, then begin talking to them.

Talking to them? That’s right!

Does that sound like crazy talk to you? Are you thinking I’m possessed and need immediate debriefing by a priest? Perhaps FAA psychologists are kooky, too. After all, the recommended strategy for countering irresponsible behavior requires that you to talk to yourself in applying their recommended hazardous thought antidotes. If you still believe talking to yourself is crazy, then you’ve certainly riled the ghost of Goethe and probably vexed the spirits of Montaigne, Shakespeare, Ruskin, Socrates, Thomas Jefferson and many others, as well. These were men who, to different degrees, learned to cope with their personal demons by holding conversations with them.

For instance, in the book Jefferson’s Demons , Michael Beran details Thomas Jefferson’s battle with the many different and sometimes disturbing voices and personas with which our third president struggled. Like most intellectuals of his time, Jefferson was skilled in the classic literature of the Greeks and the Romans. He knew that the ancients perceived these demons and their accompanying voices, as instructional forces that could either hobble a man’s creativity or help him marshal it effectively. Socrates, for instance, was known to chat with his demons, which the great Greek sage recognized as nothing more than the whispers of his conscience.

Like many great men of the Renaissance, Jefferson learned to carry on conversations or dialogues with these internal voices, his demons. In the process, he and others like him, found a way to talk to themselves , letting their wiser parts offer counsel and guidance to their more troublesome personas. This is the means by which Ted and pilots with similar afflictions might come to terms with their demons and the uneasiness and discomfort they produce.

Here’s an example of how this process might play out from beginning to end. Pilots who suddenly find themselves chilled by a disturbing and unreasonable thought (fainting, acrophobia, etc.) should acknowledge this demon and its accompanying voice. They shouldn’t ignore or dismiss it. Then they should listen to it, giving it the benefit of the doubt by assuming its message might contain advice from a part their psyche that’s concerned for their safety. After all, there’s no reason to automatically assume that these demons are against you. The animating force behind all life is the preservation of life. We have every reason to assume that in strange and indecipherable ways our demons might actually be trying to assist us in much the same manner of an admonishing and overcontrolling mother. This is the part of the process that opens the doors of communication between one’s consciousness and the mental machinations that lie beneath it.

The next step is to talk to the demon (if you have passengers, do it subaudibly lest you give them a good reason to start cranking out their own supply of demons).

For instance, you might begin by saying, “OK, thanks for the warning and the information. That’s interesting. I’ll consider your point, but I believe I’ll be fine for now.” Then go about your business.

If you’ve listened to your demon’s message (be it one of anxiety, acrophobia, competence, etc.) you’ll know what to say in return. While I can’t possibly tell you how to talk with your demon in all instances, I can suggest that you treat it as you would a concerned neighbor who is respectfully but stubbornly trying to butt his nose into your business. Reasonable people will listen politely to that neighbor, but then establish a limit line beyond which his nosiness should not cross. Trust your instincts here. Remember, talking to your demon allows you to influence your behavior in much the same way your behavior is influenced when someone talks to you.

Ultimately, your objective is to find a way to make your demon work as an ally for you. Jefferson managed to do just that, using his many voices to turn anxiety into action and chaos into order. Perhaps Beran said it best about Jefferson when he wrote, “He learned better than most people do [about] how to talk to himself—how to cherish the stray pieces of consciousness he found within him. The Renaissance masters taught him to treat his various voices [good and bad alike] like bright playful children, little prodigies who must be given scope for the expression of their elegant (demonic) energies.”

Finally, let’s be clear about one thing. Mentally healthy people hear voices. That’s a fact. They don’t, however, dress them up, drive them places and introduce them to their friends. That’s goofy and a sure sign that someone needs a shrink to help shrink his new friends away. As long as an individual doesn’t have too many bats in his belfry, he can probably deal with most forms of cockpit unease or discomfort by treating it as the ancients did—recognize it as a personal demon, listen to it, talk with it.

Copyright 2010 by Rod Machado (www.rodmachado.com)

Suppose I told you I could get your child to enthusiastically study geography, math, physics, chemistry, and psychology. After you had my head examined, would you be interested? Oh, and as a bonus I can get him or her to hang out with highly motivated, well educated older people who are good role models because they don’t do drugs, graffiti, or tattoos, and they have a great work ethic.

You’re still with me, aren’t you? Then let’s talk about the value of allowing a responsible teenager to take flying lessons.

Perhaps you’re one of those parents (or perhaps you know one) who’s reluctant to let their teenager take up flying for one or all of the usual reasons (generalized anxiety, cost, competition for the family plane). While you may have compelling reasons for feeling as you do, I would like to offer a different perspective on why you should enthusiastically nurture and support your child’s desire to fly. More specifically, since you’re probably a pilot already and support the idea, I’d like to offer you a few responses that might help you convince reluctant non-pilot parents that flight training for their child would be the best educational investment they could make.

Social science research now says that a teenager’s peer group has as much (if not more) influence on the development of that individual’s values as the parents. For this reason alone, it’s reasonable to consider that flight training might confer a powerful developmental advantage on any young adult with an interest in airplanes. After all, the moment he begins flight training he immediately starts associating with an entirely new peer group that emphasizes the value of rules, rituals and responsibilities.

Most of the individuals your child encounters during flight training are highly motivated, educated and dedicated people, and most of them will be older and more mature than your child, too. Think about it. Suddenly, your teenager starts singing the praises of someone over 30 who values education, self discipline, self study and self reliance. Even in your wildest dreams as a parent, could you imagine that your teenager might seek out and spend time with such people, especially since these folks aren’t probation officers? Could you imagine having some influence over the new friends your offspring makes? Go ahead, pinch yourself, so you’ll know it’s true.

If this weren’t reason enough to support your teenager’s flight training desires, consider that it’s not even the most important reason for doing so. There are few things as sad as young people without a sense of purpose or passion in their lives. Sure, they may be good kids, but they’re also bored and boredom provides absolutely no developmental advantage whatsoever. Nature and teenagers abhor a vacuum (or a vacuum cleaner), so it’s going to be filled with something. This is the primary reason young people should be exposed to as many new and novel ideas as possible (specifically, ideas that don’t involve puncturing, piercing or indelibly coloring parts of the body). You hope that something clicks and triggers a burning desire—the Holy Grail for most parents—deep in their child’s psyche. If there’s any chance that flight training will trigger a passion for learning in your child, then you owe it to him or her to explore the idea. It may just change the way they look at the world. It may also disabuse them of the notion that being tossed into a Mosh pit at a Radiators From Space punk rock concert and body surfing a wave of human hands is Nirvana, itself.

A third reason to consider flight training for an interested teenager is that it’s an honest way of developing self respect. For the past quarter century, the self esteem movement in this country professed that simply making young people feel good about themselves was the key to generating productive and responsible behavior. You see this in physical games where nobody loses because a score is seldom kept (thus, nobody has their feelings hurt) and everybody wins because you get a trophy for just showing up. Lack of self esteem was even touted as the real reason behind the irresponsible and criminal behavior of young people. Social science, however, has shown this premise to be false. In fact, most of the really bad boys and girls in prison aren’t short of self esteem. Scientifically speaking, criminals score extremely high on self esteem scales. It turns out that the value of self esteem as it applies to positively changing someone’s behavior is primarily determined by how it’s earned, not the way it’s conferred.

Telling young people to have pride and self respect simply applies a veneer of feeling good, but doesn’t teach them behaviors that both generate and sustain self respect. In the end, the common sense view prevailed: people more deeply appreciate what they legitimately earn, not what they’re given (or told they should have). Learning to fly an airplane is a responsible, authentic means of generating pride and self respect. Give an interested teenager flying lessons and you’ll teach her that study, discipline and practice are personal qualities to be admired and acquired.

If you’re hesitating about your child taking flying lessons (or are the doting aunt, uncle, grandfather or grandmother), I hope you’ll consider what I’ve said, and give the gift of flight. When you learn something new, you become something new. So give your child a chance to become something new by introducing him or her to aviation.

(This story originally appeared in AOPA Pilot magazine.)

Dear Rod:

I imagine that in the course of your time as a pilot, you’ve flown long enough to personally know someone who has died in a plane crash?

Several years back, a fellow CFI died in an airplane crash along with his student. The part that is most vivid in my mind is that my instructor desk (at the former school I used to teach) was at the front of the CFI office area, right near the door; I remember this instructor’s smiling face (he was always happy) saying that he’d see me later, and I told him to have fun. Just a couple of hours later that smiling face was a cadaver at a crash scene. It was all very sudden and totally unexpected—the contrast, for me, was between the moment I told him to have fun and the moment he was dead.

First of all I still continue to love instructing and flying and am a very big proponent of teaching my students safety by my own example—enough said. I guess what I wanted to ask you is this normal? Not ALL the time, but sometimes I catch myself wondering while I am bidding my dog and cat goodbye (for my trip down to the airport) if this is the last time I will see them? Now I want to stress that it isn’t a fearful thought, just sort of like a passing thought, a brief ponderance on the notion, so-to-speak.

Do other pilots/instructors have thoughts like this? The part I find silly about the whole thought is that one’s life could just as easily end by doing just about anything (driving to the corner market, or going to the ATM). So, why should going off to fly cause the thought to pass through my mind…?

Thank you,

No Name Please

Greetings Member of Witness Protection Plan:

You ask a question that happens to be on the mind of more than a few pilots. Yes, you’d be surprised to know how many pilots actually wonder whether or not the last time they left home to go flying will actually be the last time they leave home. There are several significant reasons why some pilots think this way and they’re worth a little exploration.

Most of us who’ve flown for a while know of someone (either directly or indirectly) lost in an airplane accident. And if we don’t actually know someone who vaporized themselves this way, then we willingly go in search of someone like this by subscribing to magazines and periodicals that describe aviation accident scenarios in great detail. It doesn’t take long before the accumulation of these stories tip the balance of our aviation risk-reward scale and start us thinking about our chances of lifting off and returning to earth in one piece.

What makes matters worse is that all pilots carry genetic coding in the form of an instinctual fear of falling. Eons ago, we lost those big grasping hands and feet, the tail we use for balance and those powerful muscles we used for jumping which made high treetops and bananas look less inviting, and the ground, more appealing. It’s not much of a stretch to see that flying might arouse our instinctual fear of falling by reminding us that we can fall if we fly wrong.

So it’s pretty hard to deny, much less ignore the ever increasing collection of reasons we accumulate supporting the idea that it’s possible for us to actually get hurt in an airplane (which, of course, doesn’t mean that we will). As a result, we often respond psychologically to protect ourselves from this perceived danger. It appears that our response typically evolves through four distinct stages.

Most of the time, we dedicate very little conscious energy to thinking about the bad things that can happen to us in an airplane. We go about our flying business until a significant enough event (be it an aviation accident, an accident report or simply a discussion of accidents) causes us to question our ability to actually fly an airplane safely. Never mind that we might have flown without an incident for decades or that we might be considered the safest of pilots by our peers. When doubt takes root, the mental stew that brews in our noggins is often disturbing enough to cause us to personalize these aviation accidents. It’s as if we emotionally and somatically (physically) project ourselves into each airplane accident, wondering what would happen if we had been the person doing the flying. This is the first stage in which we typically experience our nascent anxiety about flying.

Next we posit what it would be like if our presence were suddenly removed from the planet. We begin to think about what our homes would feel like if we never returned because we managed to demolecularized ourselves in an airplane accident. We run these mental scenarios as we leave home, not because they’re therapeutic, but because they’re symptomatic of an ever increasing—but not yet debilitating—fear about our future (or whether or not we’ll have one).

The stage that follows next is where be begin making excuses not to fly. We actively look for reasons not to go to the airport and get in an airplane. In a sense, on some conscious level, we act to sabotage the thing that once gave us great pleasure. And here’s the great irony. Once we actually get in the airplane and fly, we feel just fine. When airborne, we wonder what all the fuss was about in the first place.

The fourth and final stage is where the risk-reward scale tips one way or another. If the scale tips toward the side of perceived risk and excessive anxiety, then the pilot doesn’t receive as much pleasure from flying as he or she used to. The discomfort associated with flying wins the day and the pilot often hangs up his or her headset and seldom returns to the airport. On the other hand, some pilots manage to sustain a sufficient balance of risk to reward or pleasure to discomfort and continue to fly, despite the ubiquitous anxiety they have about flying. Yes, they still occasionally wonder if they’ll ever see their family, their home or their dog again when leaving for the airport. They aren’t, however immobilized by these thoughts, despite the fact that, in some small way, flying is less enjoyable to them than it once was. On the other hand, there’s another group of pilots that have found a way of controlling and even diminishing their anxiety while simultaneously increasing the pleasure they receive from flying. These are the folks that have something valuable to teach pilots who’ve been or are being immobilized by their fears.

The pilots who are able to sustain their aviation pleasure and keep their anxieties at bay know one very important thing. They know the antidote to apply to counteract the debilitating thought patterns that diminish the pleasure they receive from flying. What’s the antidote? Well, brace yourself for impact. Here it comes, and it’s framed in the form of a self-referential statement: I know I can choose to fly as safe as I want to fly. This is the antidote that gives pilots great comfort and helps them derive great pleasure from flying airplanes. Furthermore, they actually believe the statement because it’s absolutely true.

We can indeed choose to choose to fly as safe as we want to fly. Period! You can’t, however, say the same for driving a car, can you? No, you can’t. That’s because you don’t have control over what other drivers do on the road, but you do have almost complete control over what you do and what happens to you in an airplane. In other words, you have nearly complete control over the safety statistic outside an act of God. That’s right. If you are clobbered by a meteorite on the downwind leg, well, that will teach you to hold a heading, right? Acts of God are things for which no one can prepare. They are, after all, acts of God, and are so rare that we shouldn’t even think about them. Then again, we can control nearly everything else that affects us in an airplane.

Years ago, the head of NASA Dryden once told me that their pilots are safer flying one of their experimental jet airplanes than they are when walking on the ground at Edwards Air Force Base. That’s because NASA’s flight operations are conducted within the scope of a pilot’s ability to actually influence and control the safety statistic. And this is precisely the way general aviation pilots can fly their airplanes, but only if they choose to do so.

In fact, if you want to reduce your chances of getting hurt in an airplane to nearly zero (no, not zero, but close to it), then do the following things.

• Never allow yourself to be airborne with less than 1/4 fuel in your tanks (you can “choose” to do this).
• Never fly in weather that’s beyond your capability to handle (you can “choose” to do this).
• Learn good stick and rudder skills sufficient to fly by the seat of your pants, and keep proficient at these skills (you can “choose” to do this).
• And finally, prioritize everything you do in the following way: Aviate, Navigate and Communicate, in that order (you can also “choose” to do this).

Most pilots bend their airplanes and a few bones by neglecting one or more of these four items.

It’s important to understand that fate isn’t the hunter here. But if fate were the hunter, it would certainly be so when driving a car rather than flying an airplane. So if you want to be scared, please be scared in your car. In an airplane, there’s no need to be scared. There’s only a need to be cautious and to choose to fly as safe as you desire to fly. The odds are really on the side of the cautious pilot here. Sure, there will always be someone who crashes an airplane, but in almost all of these instances, it’s because he or she didn’t choose properly. Even the NTSB says that 75% of accidents are primarily a result of pilot error. That means the pilot had a choice in three out of four instances but didn’t choose properly. If we had a little more courage as a society, we’d probably up the NTSB’s number to 95%.

So the next time you (or anyone else) begins to wonder if this is the last time you’ll ever return home, make a simple choice for yourself. Choose to fly safely. It’s within your ability to do so. Even in those small and rare instances where you may not actually have control (think catastrophic engine failure here), you can still regain control if you’ve practiced your emergency skills (think emergency landing skills here) before hand.

As a final note, I have several articles on this subject in my Rod Machado’s Plane Talk book as well as on my web site at: (http://www.rodmachado.com/_available_products/plane_talk_book.php).

Here’s a question asked by a fellow pilot a while back that, I don’t believe, made it into my Since You Asked column in AOPA Flight Training magazine. Some questions and answers are a bit more fun than educational and aren’t quite ready for prime time.

A fellow pilot named Rick asked the following question: As a CFI I’m curious about the most difficult/strange/wild student you’ve ever had. Care to share?

My response follows.

Dear Rick:

I’ll gladly answer your question because I think it’s instructional and something of which all CFIs should be aware.

I experienced one of my most unusual students more than 30 years ago, as a young CFI. He was a middle aged private pilot who hadn’t flown in 20 years and needed a flight review. He was also a doctor who always showed up fatigued, with his eyeballs glazed over, and he mumbled a lot to himself. This didn’t bother me, because he acted just like I did after a full day of flight instructing. It was only later I found out that he was on drugs, which explains why he offered to medicate me during our first lesson (I thought he was kidding. He wasn’t). I respectfully declined the offer, then mentioned that if he flew properly I might not need medication.

On the first lesson, he nearly taxied into a parked gas truck. The worst part is that he had to go out of his way to get close to the truck. He claimed he didn’t see it. On the second day, he landed with brakes on. I had to stab at his thick barrel-like legs with my pointy little arms just to get his feet off the pedals. A few days later, a senior CFI at the airport pulled me aside and told me the truth about this fellow. He apparently had worn out four flight instructors in his recurrency attempt, totaling over 35 hours of dual in the process. When each CFI caught on to his game, they’d furlough him. The doc would simply get a new logbook and try for a fresh start. Yes, this type of thing happens. I, too, was really upset and promptly furloughed the doc. He suggested I might not be so upset if I were medicated. No thanks, doc.

The moral here is to trust your gut. If it quacks like a doc, it probably is one. I knew something was wrong with this fellow but chose to ignore my instincts. I try never to make that mistake again.