"The most effective way to do it, is to do it."

Earlier this past week (on May 20, to be exact), the world quietly celebrated the 87th anniversary of Amelia Earhart's Transatlantic solo flight.  Notably, she just the second individual to have flown solo across the Atlantic Ocean.  Charles Lindbergh was the first to perform the feat just five years earlier in 1927.  Earhart's flight would take her slightly under 15 hours to travel from Newfoundland to Derry, Northern Ireland.  What is perhaps less well known is that Earhart made the same trip in 1928.  While working as a social worker in April, 1928, she received a telephone call from a Captain Hilton Railey asking her, "Would you like to fly the Atlantic?"  She wasn't really going to fly the airplane - she would only be a passenger.  She wouldn't even get paid for her trouble.  What was her response?  She said, "Of course."

Earhart could have been (she probably was) offended at the slight and said no to the offer.  She could have demanded a larger role on the flight.  But she didn't - she seized the opportunity.  That's what the great ones do - they put their personal feelings aside and take advantage of every chance for greatness.  The actual pilot, a man named Wilmer Stultz would have had to do the majority of the flying anyway.  Visibility was terrible, and Earhart hadn't learned to fly using just instruments yet.  After landing in in South Wales, someone asked Earhart about the trip, she replied, "Stultz did all the flying - had to.  I was baggage, like a sack of potatoes."  She added, "...maybe someday I'll try it alone."

Guess what?  She did.  Undoubtedly, had she refused to fly, even as a passenger, she would have never gotten the chance to fly solo across the Atlantic.  She leveraged her newfound celebrity - the press had dubbed her "Lady Lindy" (some would argue that she and Lindbergh looked so much alike, they could have been brother and sister) - and used it to promote aviation.  She continued to fly, eventually learned how to fly using only instruments, and performed her remarkable feat on May 20, 1932. 

Amelia Earhart lived by her quote - "The most effective way to do it, is to do it."  Simple, but remarkably eloquent.  How often do we get bogged down trying to decide whether to start a new position, tackle a challenging project, or setting a "stretch goal"?  How often do we focus so much on the risks of doing something, that we never even get started?  I think it happens more often than we like to think.

I am reminded of something that happened in my own life, many, many years ago.  For two years, my friends and I on our high school swim team talked about the chance to do something really incredible.  We had a really strong team and knew that there was a chance we could win the state swimming championship.  Our coaches used to sit down with us every year before the start of the season to go over our team goals.  Our senior year, one of us spoke up and said that we should set the goal to finish in the top 3 at state.  To his credit, our coach acknowledged that he thought we certainly had a chance to do just that and wrote the goal on the chalkboard.  After a few minutes of uncomfortable silence, one of my teammates spoke up.  I don't remember exactly what he said, but it went something like this, "We've been talking about this for the past few years.  I thought we wanted to win state.  I think we should set the goal to win it all."  Very quickly, the rest of our team rallied around that goal.

We were fortunate to have someone push us.  It was even better that the one pushing us was one of us.  I am confident that our coach thought we had set the bar too low, but I also am confident that he believed that we should set the stretch goal and not him.  It was our goal.  We owned the goal. 

Fear is powerful.  There are times when it can take over and get the best of us.  But no one ever got anywhere without taking risks.  Amelia Earhart certainly did not.  Sometimes, all it takes to get started, is to do just that.  Get started.  Sometimes, "the most effective way to do it, is to do it."