What Does Your Life Profile Look Like?

Initiation, Influence & Impact

Continuing on the analogy of the science of flight and life, today I would like to share the concept of your life profile.

When an airplane goes from one airport A to the next, airport B, the captain takes a route from A to B.

For all flights, the profile of the root is similar to the one below:

The different steps can be summarised as below:

1. Parked: the airplane is at the gate, and all systems are checked.
2. Taxi out: once everything is okay, the airplane will take off.
3. Take off: a critical step where the plane accelerates to be free from the ground.
4. Climb: The aircraft is free from the ground and climbing to a higher altitude.
5. Cruise: the aircraft has reached its cruise level, a steady altitude for most of the journey.
6. Descent: The plane is close to its final destination and initiates its descent.
7. Approach: The airplane has the final airport in sight and starts the approach to align for landing.
8. Landing and Taxi in The aircraft touched down and quickly headed to its final gate.

For most of us, our life has a very similar route profile and can be depicted as below:

As long as we enter life, we spend our childhood being prepared for adult life. Once we are adults, we get in line in a regular job, saving for retirement.

Before this hypothetical retirement, we have a phase where we are “seniors,” reminiscing about the past glory and feeling like we do not fit in this new world.

Then, if we are lucky, we retire and die.

Quite a dark view, isn’t it?

This was my perspective in life until some years ago when I had a wake-up call.

I was in my routine and doing business as usual. Then, I was diagnosed with spondyloarthritis and had to stay one week at home because I could not walk.

That week at home, I took the time to reflect on what I would like my life to look like and what legacy I would like to leave behind.

I believe that we can add a layer above the initial layer with the 3 “I”:

1. The Initiation phase: in this phase, we are the ones who are being initiated by our elders.
2. The Influence phase: In this phase, we start our own view of the world and influence the world based on our own perspective.
3. The impact phase: This is the phase where we focus on our impact in this world, which can go beyond our physical presence.

Of course, the 3 phases are not as linear as below and can overlap.

What kind of life profile do you have? Leave a comment below.

You can read my previous article (Friendly Link):

Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash