Episode 243: Attitude and Altitude

Welcome back to Live Free Creative Podcast. I’m your host Miranda Anderson, and you’re listening to episode number 243: Attitude and Altitude. The other week I was flying home from Orlando, Florida. Long story short, my middle son has a very best friend who is moving to Europe for good. He’s moving to France for two years, and then his family’s moving back to Sweden where they originate from.

And we are all, we feel like we’re all losing like a second son, this very sweet, good friend of my middle guy. And for end of year goodbye celebration, I took both boys to Orlando, Florida, just for a quick day. Truly it was like a day. We left on Friday night. We spent all day at Universal Studios and came home Sunday morning and it was a fun time.

They both said this is the best vacation ever. We took a bunch of photos and made a photo book to send with my son’s friend and his family and just really great time. All of that to say I was on the airplane flying home. We took a budget airline, just a direct flight from Richmond to Orlando. So, there was no entertainment.

I had been reading, but I was tired of reading, so I just was resting my eyes and, I’m doing my capstone research on creativity and I’m learning so much. There’s a lot of things that I had heard of or knew about that I’m just like knee deep in right now.

The Four Stages of the Creative Process:

And one of them is the four stages of the creative process.

 I want to tell you just very briefly about that, because this metaphor may be something that is around everywhere, but it came to me in what felt like a little bit of insight.

1. Preparation/Awareness

The four stages of the creative process begin with awareness. This is when we are thinking about something. We are preparing our minds gathering information.

Maybe just like recognizing what it is that we want to learn about. We learn a little bit about the project or the problem, and. It’s a building phase. It’s like a thinking about a thing phase.

2. Incubation

The next piece is called incubation. Incubation is when you step away completely from the work of digging up ideas and gathering materials. Incubation is the break that’s necessary before step three, which is illumination.

3. Illumination

So, people talk a lot about. Having a great idea on a walk or in a shower and. Illumination follows incubation because you’re giving your mind that the incubation phase gives your mind time to connect dots that you can’t connect with your focused attention.

When you’re, you’ve done a lot of work and you’re aware of a problem and idea, and then you step away from it, that’s when your unconscious mind starts connecting things that you weren’t even aware of. And it may be pulling them from all different experiences and different fields of experience in your head and different parts of your life.

And then you have this aha moment or this moment of illumination that is typical or stereotypical of a creative, idea that you’re like, ah, Eureka I’ve discovered it, but you didn’t just discover it then It’s the beginning, two phases that help you. Have that sort of blink of awareness and then you move into the fourth stage of the creative process, which is important and often overlooked, which is the verification.

4. Verification/Evaluation

You have this big aha idea, but then how do you go back and make sure that it works properly discovered, dig in deeper and find out more and do all the work of maybe bringing it to pass. This is all a little bit of a tangent, but all of this to say, I had been thinking about different podcast ideas.

Attitude and Altitude in Aviation

And I was sitting on the airplane, so I had just gone on vacation. I was sitting on the airplane, and I started to think about airplanes, and I started to think about, I looked out the window at the skyline of the horizon, the cloud line, we were up in the sky far, and I was just thinking about the dynamics of airplanes, and I was thinking about the words related to aviation, which is a little bit odd.

I know, but my dad is a private pilot, so for the last 25 years we have. Both, flown with my dad in small planes as well as heard him talk about airplanes. He builds aircraft and that’s one of his hobbies now.

He just finished an airplane that he flew for the first time a couple weeks ago. So, I’ve heard a lot about airplanes in my life, in my adult life, which is partly why the word attitude came to me in what felt like a little bit of aha, and I thought about how the attitude of an airplane is really interconnected to its altitude.

And so, today’s episode is called Attitude and Altitude, and I’m going to use that as a metaphor, and I know it’s for sure on a giant motivational poster somewhere, your attitude determines your altitude. But I’m going to go with that today. It felt interesting to me and. Is helpful even if I’ve heard it before or seen it on a t-shirt or a bumper sticker or something.

I want to explain to you a little bit about attitude and altitude and how those concepts in aviation relate to similar concepts in psychology and in our lives. How we can benefit from understanding the relationship between attitude and altitude. Before we go there, I want to start with a quick, mindful moment.

Segment: Mindful Moment

If you can close your eyes. Find yourself in a comfortable seat and feel your weight, the weight of your body sinking into the earth. Imagine that you have roots growing from your feet, from your hind quarters, from your hands down deep into the earth. Now take a big deep breath with me in through your nose and out through your mouth.

See if you can hold your breath for a couple counts at the top before you release it.

Okay, slow down. Meet me here in this centered quiet place where you’re grounded in the earth. Allow your thoughts to come and go. Try to focus on the sound of my voice or on the air entering through your nose and exiting through your lips.

On this next breath, I want you to imagine yourself alighting from your body all the way up into the sky, as high as you can go, and peer out over the earth as if you were a bird or a plane. Let’s go look out beyond into the clouds, across the hillsides. Feel the sun on your back. What does the world look like from up here? What does your city look like as it gets smaller and connects to everything else around, how can you benefit from the perspective that you have Way up here?

On your next breath, slowly fly back down into your body. Find yourself in your seat again. Relax with your hands and your feet firmly grounded and flutter your eyes open. Welcome back. I hope you enjoyed the flight.

Attitude and Altitude

Let’s talk about attitude and altitude. Attitude and altitude are both essential concepts in aviation, and they refer to different aspects of an aircraft’s position and orientation in the sky.

Attitude is the orientation of an aircraft relative to the horizon line.

Think about looking at an airplane from the side as it’s taking off or landing the attitude. Refers to the orientation of the aircraft in relation to the horizon.

Most of the time when you’re flying in the middle of the flight, you are hopefully parallel to the horizon. The aircraft, nose to tail is a line that is running about parallel to the horizon itself as you cruise at altitude through the air when you’re taking off. And landing or making any adjustments in your altitude, you are adjusting the attitude of the airplane.

Attitude is the angle. Or the position of the airplane in relationship to the horizon. The pitch is the up and down movement, whether you are, as ascending higher into the sky or descending lower toward the earth, the role refers to the rotation of the aircraft wing to wing. Whether it’s, you’re making a turn, maybe you’re banking a little bit to the right or to the left, attitude determines whether you’re going up or down.

Up toward the sun, down toward the earth. And maybe it makes sense because the etymology or the origin of the word in French means po position, posture, or position. And it typically was used in art and sculpture where the position of the figure. In the sculpture or the painting was its attitude. In aviation attitude again, is the relationship of the aircraft to the horizon line.

Whether it’s going up ascending on a diagonal line upward or the other way, a diagonal line, downward altitude.

Altitude is the vertical position of the aircraft above sea level.

You’re probably more familiar with altitude. Refers to the vertical position of an aircraft above a specific reference point. Usually when we talk about altitude, we’re talking about distance above sea level, so that represents the height at which the aircraft is flying in the atmosphere.

Altitude is important of course, as you can imagine for maintaining the separation between the airplane and the ground. Pilots use different tools to ensure that their altitude is high enough for safety and that as they’re preparing to land, that they have a good idea of where, what the altitude is of the airport in relationship to the altitude of the aircraft itself.

Instruments measure Attitude and Altitude

There are instruments that measure both things inside an aircraft. An altimeter is the device that measures the atmospheric pressure to determine how high you are above sea level. That will tell you about your altitude in the sky, how high you are.

An attitude is determined by using an attitude indicator, which is also known as an artificial horizon line. In an airplane you can look at this little dial in it. We’ll have an artificial horizon like the line across the center, and then it will show, it will move like a compass move, it will move in relationship to the aircraft’s position, whether pitch or roll, whether you’re going up, downside to side, and looking at that meter will give you an idea of what your attitude is at any given moment.

Your altitude matters in an aircraft because you need to know how high you are to ensure that you don’t crash into the ground, into a mountain, into another airplane that’s at the same altitude as you.

Attitude is also important because it helps you main maintain stability. It helps you know which direction you’re headed, whether you want to climb or whether you want to descend, whether you’re going to turn to one side or the other and performing your maneuvers accurately.

Attitude is especially important when your visibility is low, you, a pilot will rely completely on those little indicators of altitude and attitude when they can’t see what’s out there, when they’re in a cloud, when they’re in a storm, when they’re in darkness, those meters of measuring altitude and attitude become important.

I’m winding down on the airplane part. Attitude and altitude are related in that changes in your attitude or the direction. Whether you’re going up or downside to side can lead to your changes in altitude or vice versa. Of course, if your attitude is positioned upward toward the sun, your altitude will increase.

You go up and when your attitude is pointed down, down toward the horizon line, you go down. Your altitude decreases. I hope you have a clear idea in your head about the avionic difference between attitude and altitude.

One determines your direction and position, and one is your distance from the earth that your distance from, sea level from the horizon.

How Attitude determines Altitude in Life

As I was flying in this little airplane from Orlando to Richmond, I thought your attitude really does determine your altitude in an airplane and in your life. Attitude is a funny word. I remember growing up thinking attitude of gratitude, that was something I learned in church. It was something that we talked about in school.

What does it mean to have an attitude of gratitude? What does it mean to have a positive attitude? What does it mean to have a determined attitude? There are a couple different components of attitude. And I want to talk about them, and I want you to think about how they determine your relationship with feeling high or positive or happy.

That upward dynamic or feeling low, and how you can turn those things around if you’re heading down and you want to feel better, you want to stop the downward spiral.

You’ve got to turn that attitude around. You’ve got to adjust your settings so that you’re pointing up again, and when you’re pointing up, that’s when you can climb.

When you’re pointing up, that’s when you can climb.

Let me talk for just a second about what the definition of attitude is regarding our minds and our behaviors. There are three main components of attitude.

Three components of Psychological Attitude: Affect, Belief, and Behavior.

The first is an affective component. That’s how you feel. And attitude in an aircraft relates to the horizon line. How you, what the position of the aircraft is in relationship to the horizon line.

Our attitudes tend to be in relationship to experiences, circumstances, relationships, people issues. So how does that thing make you feel? That’s your attitude.

The second component is your thoughts. What are your thoughts and beliefs about that thing, about that h quote unquote horizon line.

And the third piece of attitude is how your beliefs and emotions influence your behaviors.

So those are the three pieces of attitude.

It has to do with your thoughts, your beliefs, and your behaviors, how you think about it, how you feel about it, and how you act because of it.

Sometimes we form an attitude about something without realizing it. It’s not until we encounter an unusual circumstance that we realize, wow, I didn’t know that I felt so strongly about that, or I didn’t know that I, would react that way in that circumstance because, some of our attitudes are formed by our experiences and things that we’ve seen without our conscious acknowledgement of oh, I’m deciding to believe this way about something.

There’s also, of course, lots of social norms and roles that have a strong influence on our attitudes, how we expect people to behave because of where we’re from. Or because of the family we grew up in. Those types of things are again, an inherited attitude, and we might not know how we feel or think about it until we’re faced with it.

Learning is another way that we can influence our attitudes. This is one that corporations take a lot of advantage of as they market. So, think about different ways that advertisers use. Influence and persuasion to adjust your attitude toward a particular product or service. Has there ever been something that you thought, gosh, there’s no way I would ever want that.

Like, why would someone need that? And then because of the way that you see it in action and other people use it, and maybe the right person is using it and you think, oh, if they have it, then maybe it is worthwhile. And you can see how this is a thought, belief, attitude. And then when you buy that thing, it’s complete.You, you have been converted. Your attitude about things may change because of learning conditioning observation.

The main point here, I think, is that our attitudes are not necessarily fixed. There’s something that can be adjusted. A new awareness can change our belief, which then immediately changes our emotion and changes our motivation for our behavior.

Attitudes are adjustable and flexible. And in fact, the more adjustable and flexible we are, and our attitudes are, the easier it will be for us to make necessary adjustments for our overall wellbeing so most of the time we’re flying in the direction we want to be going.

Attitudes can be positive or negative, and they can also be explicit. Because they’re conscious and we’re aware of them or implicit.

Emotions like Flying

I want to draw this line toward our aviation metaphor. When your attitude is positive, that’s like ascending. You’re climbing further up, you’re gaining perspective. You feel lighter, you feel better.

When your attitude is negative, that’s like descending. It’s coming down, it’s spiraling, it’s looking toward the ground, rather than looking toward the possibilities. When your attitude is explicit or conscious, you’re looking at your attitude indicator, your artificial horizon line. You know whether your attitude is positive or negative.

It you can have a negative, explicit attitude. You can know that you have a crappy attitude and that you’re just like burning it all down. You can also have a bad attitude without acknowledging that, without being aware of it, without it being conscious. And sometimes the only thing that’s needed for our attitude to change from negative to positive is an awareness of the emotions and beliefs and behaviors that we’re exhibiting.

Sometimes we’re just unconsciously following this sort of negative spiral, and the awareness of it is the only thing that we need. Just to look at that instrument and know, gosh, I’m going down. That can help shift the awareness of our current attitude and an awareness of where we’d like to be, how we’d like to feel that can help turn it around.

Five Simple Steps to Adjust your Attitude

I am going to share five simple steps to help adjust your attitude. When you recognize that you’re headed toward a crash and you want to, get some lift, and feel a little bit better and aim towards hope and aim towards. Freedom and this feeling of lightness and positive emotion that exists up there in the atmosphere.

1. Recognize and Challenge the Negative Attitude

I want to start with the first one, which is probably the most difficult, which is to recognize and challenge the negative attitude. We talked about thinking traps a couple weeks ago, and thinking traps are great examples of negative attitude adjustments, like things that are pulling you down that are.

Pointing you towards the horizon. So, recognizing and challenge, challenging the negative self-talk, even just the negative talk. It might not even be about yourself. You may have a bad attitude about a situation, about a family vacation coming up that is to a location that you hadn’t planned on and, but you feel like you should go, and you don’t really want to, but you are going to.

You get to choose how you feel about that. You can continue to feel negative about it and complain about it and be frustrated and continue, spiraling downward towards the earth. Or you can find something. That you do like about it. Find something that you can appreciate, that you can control.

Challenge those negative thought constructs. This is difficult. That’s why it’s the very first step recognizing the negative attitude and then wanting to change it and trying to challenge it. That’s where we begin. That’s where we must start.

2. Practice Gratitude

The second thing is important. Practicing gratitude, cultivating a habit of expressing gratitude, regularly, acknowledging and appreciating the positive aspects of your life, however small they are, knowing that even difficult circumstances can have positive aspects.

I’m going to just caveat this with sometimes we don’t want to find the positive. If you’ve just been diagnosed with a terminal illness, you may not in that moment want to find a positive aspect to that diagnosis. You may just want to feel sad and grieve for a while, and that is great.

That’s wonderful. You can do that. And at some point, if you want to see the sky again, if you want to have perspective, if you want to elevate your altitude, you may want to exercise some gratitude. They don’t have to be mutually exclusive things. You don’t have to only grieve or only be super happy and positive about every single aspect of your life.

You can be both. You can be sad and grateful. So, practicing gratitude is one of the most researched, most highly correlated behaviors with. Satisfaction and wellbeing and positive relationships. Gratitude is instrumental in having a positive attitude and they rhyme right attitude of gratitude.

3. Engage in positive self-talk and affirmations

Number three is engaging in positive self-talk, paying attention to your inner dialogue, consciously replacing your negative discussions in your head with positive affirmations. Processing. Self-compassion, self-esteem, leaning towards optimism. All those things point you up.

4. Surround yourself with positive influences

Number four is to surround yourself with positive influences. Think about the 10 people that you spend the very most time with. Are those people’s airplanes pointed towards the sun? If they are, it’s a high likelihood that you have an easier time heading up there with them.

If you’re spending most of your time and experience with people who have a negative attitude or a sort of a toxic outlook on life, or who are complaining about things all the time, or pointing out things that have gone wrong, it’s going to be a little bit trickier to stay elevated yourself.

Find social support with positive people. It plays such an important role in our own attitudes and emotions, who we surround ourselves with. And if you are thinking, gosh, I do have some close friends that are negative, but I don’t know what to do about it. One idea is to compartmentalize and know that you can have those friends and you determine the amount of time that you can handle spending with them, and to actively seek out friends who have a positive outlook and a positive attitude.

That just as a baseline tend to be a little bit more optimistic. Naturally they exist. All of us have a set point where we are either a little bit tilted up naturally or a little bit tilted down. Naturally. Our attitudes not about everything, but like our baseline attitudes and emotional states can be changed fundamentally.

Two Episodes on Making Friends as an Adult: episode 3, episode 179

But generally, we have a baseline happiness set point is another way to talk about that. If you can find people whose happiness set points are naturally a little bit higher, it’s easier for you to maintain a positive attitude. It will be easier for you to also flourish and find wellbeing in your everyday life.

I have several different episodes on making friends as an adult, and if you are at a place in your life right now where you think I could use a little friend refresh, I want to invite you to. Listen to one of those episodes. They’re fundamental, sort of ground level, how to make friends as an adult with lots of ideas that I have actively used over these last few years since we moved to Richmond.

It’s been about almost six years now, which is wild. I probably didn’t have good friends for the first four years. That we lived here and that was way, way longer than I had ever gone without a solid support system that was not my family. I had friends, just not good friends. And in the last couple years I’ve been able to continue to use these same skills and behaviors to form some deeper friendships.

And it feels so good to have a couple, a handful of people who are me. Go to friends who I want to be there for regularly, who are there for me regularly. Go back and listen to those episodes. I’ll link them in the show notes so that you have them as resources if you’re looking to make some new friends.

5. Practice mindfulness and self-reflection

And number five. Number five is to practice mindfulness and self-reflection, engaging in mindfulness or meditation. Brings about self-awareness. It helps you observe your thoughts and emotions without judgment, which can lead to a greater acceptance, and the ability to respond positively to challenges in your life, circumstances that you can’t control.

Headspace free for 30 days with the code LIVEFREE

I did a mindful moment at the beginning of this episode. I have talked multiple times about the Headspace app, which was my entry into meditation practice. I have a coat where you can get 30 days of the Headspace app for free. The entire app opens for you for 30 days, and if you like it, then you can join.

I love Headspace. I’ve used it for probably four years now, and. Really appreciate the accessibility of the mindfulness and the meditation practices. I will link my code in the show notes and want to invite you, whether it’s the Headspace app or some other way to practice mindfulness and self-reflection.

We really underestimate the power of that in our lives, I think. So, the four steps for adjusting your attitude are to recognize and challenge the negative thoughts to practice gratitude. To engage in positive self-talk, to surround yourself with positive, optimistic influences and to practice mindfulness and self-reflection.

These five things all seem so simple. Sometimes I wish there was like a switch I could flip or like a, a. Pill I could buy or something that would just do it for me. The truth is that these very simple ground level ideas of making small adjustments and being a little bit gentler with us and being a little bit more aware of our thoughts and the way that we might be, slowly spiraling engines off toward the ground and we’re about to crash before you crash, pay attention, look up and know where the horizon is.

Where am I headed?

Which direction does this attitude get me?

Does my attitude point me up toward possibility or is it pointing me down?

The higher you go, the safer you are from the turbulence.

Something that I learned flying with my dad in a small airplane was that when you’re high off the ground and you hit some turbulence, you’re a lot safer than when you’re close to the ground and you have some turbulence.

When you’re up in the air, you know you’re 9,000 feet up and there’s gusts of winds that are blowing you around a little bit. You have space, it doesn’t feel super comfortable because you’re still bouncing around inside the aircraft, but you have, you’re not going to hit anything because you’ve got some altitude.

Where if you were heading down, or you are, whether you were just taking off or whether you’re landing, or whether you’re just cruising low, and you get bounced around by some wind or an unexpected storm, you’re a lot less safe. You’re a lot more likely to crash and to get hurt and for your airplane to be destroyed.

How does that relate to our attitudes and altitudes in our life? As our altitude increases, as our attitude points us up and our altitude increases, our ability to be resilient in the face of challenge also increases. We give ourselves some space to manage whatever comes at us, where when we’re down and we’re pointing down and we’re facing down and we’re, just cruising along, not very thrilled with life, not very happy, not very hopeful, and then we’re hit by something unexpected that’s difficult and challenging.

We have a lot less space to manage it. Practicing a positive attitude and an elevation in our life is building resilience so that we can manage difficult things that come our way. Inevitably, difficult things are going to come our way. You’re in an airplane for long enough, you’re going to go through a storm.

That’s just the way of it. The higher you are, the more you’ve practiced a positive attitude. Leading to an elevation in your altitude, the more protected you are from difficulties in your life, throwing you all the way to the ground.

Your attitude determines your altitude.

I hope that you’ve enjoyed the metaphor that I shared today about improving your attitude so that you can fly high, improve your altitude, and feel a little bit more protected from the storms.

I am always just in wonder at the simplicity of the things that help us dramatically in our lives. I’m glad that you’re here. I really appreciate you listening and sharing some of your attention with me today. If you’re enjoying the show, I would really appreciate that you share it on social media. Just take a screenshot of you listening and share it on Instagram or on Facebook or Snapchat or wherever else people are sharing things these days.

Let people know that you love listening to live free creative podcasts so that our audience can continue to grow. And if you haven’t left a rating or a review over on iTunes, that means the world to me. I would hugely appreciate the couple minutes that it takes to leave a five-star rating and a quick sentence about why you like the show.

Fly high this week, friends. I hope that you have a great one. I’ll talk to you next time. Bye-bye