Your Attitude Can Determine Your Altitude

Your Attitude Can Determine Your Altitude

October 17, 2013

Do the things you fear to do and death of fear is certain.

My life on the farm in my youth gave me the tendency of being very shy. Interaction on a daily basis was always with family members. We seldom traveled away from the farm. That quiet, antisocial environment gave me a lot of comfort but not a lot of experience of interacting in a social way. My reserved life style gave me a lot of discomfort when I started school. I attended grades one through twelve, trying never to become the center of attention, always hoping that someone else would take the lead. My attitude kept me bouncing along the bottom. My flight was so low that my feet was always on the ground. 

During my senior year in high school, it was a custom at that time to be given an aptitude test. The test was used as a tool for the graduating seniors to help direct them on their path of life's occupations. At the conclusion of the test, a student councelor spent some time interpreting the results of the information gathered. I sat in the interview, pretty much being told that I was destined to failure. I was told that I should never strive for a leadership position.

You can imagine how that knowledge could have launched me into a future of thinking that my chances of succeeding in life was slim to none. I'm glad that it made me angry enough that I refused to accept their sentence of life without hope. That aptitude test may have been one of the greatest lessons that I learned from school. I became so determined to not let the results of that test be my lot in life. 

I made every effort to claw and climb out of the introverted station that I had become accustomed to. I put myself into every uncomfortable situation that came my way. I found joy in overcoming defeat. I remember writing a statement in my notebook that said, "Do the things you fear to do and death of fear is certain."

In my quest to accomplish big things, I put my heart and soul into being the best heavy equipment operator that I could be. There was something about climbing up into the seat of a huge piece of earth moving equipment and pulling the throttle back and feeling the adrenalin flow. My attitude gained altitude as the black smoke bellowed skyward. My power from within intensified as the track began to roll forward and the dozer shot into the soil causing it to boil over the top of the blade. Talk about casting off fear and taking on an attitude of power! My altitude changed and the wind under my wings strengthened. Good things happened when I was able to look down from an elevated position.

I experienced literally flying through the air in a backhoe on the Upper Stillwaters dam project. During the building of the dam, one of the designs of excavation was to cut a keyway full length of the dam. The keyway cut high in solid rock abutment at each end of the dam. It became necessary for men to climb ropes hundreds of feet up on the mountain face and with jackhammers and explosives, they began the cut. As the workers cut the keyway downward, they soon made room to lift a small backhoe onto the bench to remove the blasted debris. This was made possible by positioning a crane high on the mountain side and lifting the backhoe even higher onto the excavated shelf. It became my job to climb the ropes up to the backhoe that had been lifted into place. Each night shift, I would climb the ropes and excavate the debris that had been made ready by the day shift blasting crew.

On occasion, it became necessary to lift the backhoe up the excavated face and remove loose rock that could be a danger to those working below. The job soon became routine and doing the thing you fear to do and death of fear is certain. Lifting me and the backhoe high on the mountain face became no big deal. 

One evening as I was performing that procedure,being lifted three hundred feet above the excavated surface, I found myself and the backhoe flying high in the air and bouncing back and forth, like a fish on a line. Fear came home again! I wasn't sure I would make it out alive. Eventually I stopped swinging in the air and in the dark of the night, I hung there. All the lights had gone out and the only sound that I could hear was my heart beating like a drum!  

I called the crane operator on the radio and asked him what had happened. After he had examined the situation, he returned to the radio and informed me that a huge rock had fallen on the cab of the crane truck. I asked if he could get me down. He replied that the crane was operable and that he could. I said, "Do it Now!" That may have been the height of my flight!

I am now flying high in this business and enjoying every minute of it.