Do you want to live your dreams in life? All great things start in the mind first, and then spread into reality second. Mentality is the force that separates the winners from the losers in life. The winners are those who are fighting to live their dreams. The losers are those who complain, blame, embrace excuses, and rely on blind luck to live their dreams. I have experienced being both a winner and loser in my life. This article is about the winning and losing mindsets I have lived: “The Kite-Flying Mindset,” and the “Fighter Pilot Mindset,” and how both mindsets have either helped or hindered me, to live my dreams.
The harsh truth in life is that we all only get one shot to experience life on earth. If you waste your time here, your experience here will be gone forever. We don’t get a second shot. You only get this one chance to live. So if you want to live your dreams, you must choose to embrace a mindset that wills your dreams into existence. You must accept the fact that your reality is always a choice, and that choice is always up to you.
Before I jump into describing the two different mindsets that I call: “The Kite-Flyer Mindset,” and the, “The Fighter Pilot Mindset,” I first want to paint a huge, broad picture of what the journey to living your dreams looks like.
HERE ARE FOUR SIMPLE STEPS TO LIVE YOUR DREAMS:
1. Listen to the voice of your soul. Discover what your soul wants to do in this life.
2. Practice at your talents to become naturally great at the things your soul wants to do.
3. Determine the best path to your dream life.
4. Learn how to fly yourself there.
Notice how I worded step number #4. “Fly yourself to your dream life.” That sentence is vitally important to how I am going to describe the mentality it takes to create and live your dreams below. So how do you fly yourself to your dreams?
You must abandon the Kite-Mindset of living life, and embrace the Fighter-Pilot mindset, and go on a mission to live your dreams in life. So what is the fighter pilot mentality? The equation below will lead to all true wealth. Let’s explore the concept:
THE FIGHTER PILOT VS. THE KITE FLYING MINDSET.
When my wife and I first got married, we argued a lot as we searched for the best way to live our dreams in life. Even though we argued a lot, we were lucky in some ways. We both wanted to live the same dreams, so we were both very motivated to get to the same destination. But we were unlucky in other ways. We had two different mentalities about how we should get to that life.
The paths you can take in life are endless to explore, and like many young marriages, our attitudes, opinions, and ideas were completely different when we first got started. We learned very quickly, that when pursuing your dreams, there isn’t a one size fits all approach.
My wife ⸺ (And I when I was younger) ⸺ lived in a mentality we call the “Kite Flyer Mentality.” But as I got older, I now advocate for the, “Fighter Pilot Mentality.” So what’s the difference between these two mentalities, and how do they relate to creating wealth? Let’s get into that now. Ask yourself as you read this: Which mentality do you have? Is this mentality working for you, or not?
The Kite Flyer Mentality.
The Kite-Flyer mentality is a mindset based on blind-luck and hope. It is a mindset that is basically a fantasy that our lives are like kites, and the winds of life will just naturally blow us toward our dreams in life. A kite-flyer just hopes that everything will work out for them in life. But things happen outside of our control all the time.
The unpredictable circumstances outside of our control are what I call “the winds of life.” When you embrace the Kite-Flying mindset, you just hope that all the unpredictable events in life will blow you to places you will love and enjoy. But unfortunately, when you embrace the Kite-flyer Mentality in life, you don’t get to choose what reality you end up in, because the winds that carry you to these places are unpredictable and inconsistent. When you embrace a Kite-Flyer mentality, you simply hope everything will work out for you. But anyone who has been alive for more than twenty-five years knows, that in life, hardly anything goes as you expect.
My wife embraced this Kite-Flying mentality of living because it looks like an idealistic and attractive mindset to have. It doesn’t take a lot of commitment or sacrifice to fly through life like a kite. It looks whimsical and fun from the outside looking in. There IS NOT a lot of deep thinking, strategy, or hard work that you have to do to master this mindset. You just have to do your best. React to what the winds of life bring you, and hope you get to live your dreams in the end.
But if you want to build wealth and live amazing dreams in life, there’s a major problem with this mentality. The major problem is that to whimsically ride in the winds in life, means that you’re forced to leave so much of life up to chance. Without strategy and deep-thought guiding your decision making, you lose control of where this mindset and lifestyle will take you. When you leave life up to chance, there’s a better chance that you will be swept to places you DON’T want to go, than to places you do want to go.
For example, as my wife lived in her Kite-Flying mentality, and waited for the magical winds of life to take her to amazing places and experiences, she ended up wasting a ton of time. As she waited for the winds of life to blow her to awesome dreams, she played way too many video games, watched way too many movies, and lived aimlessly as a lot of valuable life passed her by. As she floated through life being afraid to take control of it, (because she was afraid of making the wrong decision) she ended up spending more of her time wasting her life than creating an incredible adventure for herself.
In a similar way, when I was younger, (in my teens and early twenties), I also embraced the kite-flyer mentality to justify my occasional drug use. Rather than investing my time into navigating my life, and executing a strategy that would lead me to live my dreams, I chose to embrace a partying lifestyle that seemed fun and exciting at first, but unfortunately added no positive influence or direction to my life.
For me, it was just a lot easier just to come up with a $5 bill to get high and feel incredible as I floated through the winds of life, rather than think deeply about my life and create a plan to live my dreams. That is how the Kite-Flying mindset can fool you and ultimately take you nowhere. It is easier to live in a fantasy world and think that you are going somewhere cool in life, than to actually execute a plan to get somewhere cool and live your dreams.
The problem with the kite-flying mindset is that your dreams become reliant on hope and nothing more. And unfortunately, hope is not very substantive force to change things. Sure, hope is great as a motivational tool, and gives us an emotion to start building on. But without action applied to our hope, hope is as useless as a Canadian winter breeze when you’re freezing to death.
The major problem relying on a Kite-Flying mentality to create your dreams, is that you become overly reliant on hope. As I said above, hope is a powerful force when it’s mixed with action. But when you base all your future fortune on nothing more than hope, your life will begin to resemble an aimlessly floating kite lost in an unpredictable wind.
And just like a kite flying in the wind, there’s probably less than a 1% chance it will drift to somewhere beautiful in life that will make you happy. The truth is, it’s 99% more likely that a lost kite will blow into a tree, smash to pieces when it hits the ground, or get electrocuted as it drifts into electrical wires. The major problem with the Kite-Flying mentality is that you give all direction of your live over to the unpredictable and inconsistent force of nature that is life.
If you want to build wealth, and increase the percentage of chance that you will live your dreams, you have to take control of your life. As I woke up from the daze of partying in my early twenties, I realized I had to create a strategy and steer myself to a successful future if I was going to live my dreams. This is what I called the mindset that both my wife and I embrace now:
THE FIGHTER PILOT MINDSET:
In the fighter pilot mindset, you embrace the same mindset of a Fighter Pilot. It is your responsibility and mission to take control of your life and navigating yourself to your dreams. Rather than viewing life as an unpredictable wind to float through. You must see life as a sky, and your mission is to fly through this sky and reach your destination. Rather than flying a real fighter plane. The plane you must learn to fly is composed of your emotional, spiritual, and financial health. The healthier and stronger you are, the better, faster, more powerful plane you have to fly.
The Fighter-Pilot mindset makes you realize that the success and future of your life is ultimately up to you and your performance. Life is so much more than an aimless breeze to float through. Your life is at stake! If you want to succeed in the battle of your life and live your dreams, it’s up to you to do it. You have to understand that every day, and every flight, can be your last. You have to prepare for it. You have to be great at studying other successful plans, and become create at creating your own plan. You must practice your talents and skills until you become great with them. You must study the risks you take, and just like a fighter pilot, you must become confident that you can turn those risks into success stories as you fly.
The goal in life is to take the winds of life and live your dreams inside of them. Either these winds are going to be flying you, or you are going to be flying them. It’s up to you to decide who is going to be in control of your life. The mentality of Kite-flyers is to just hope that everything will work out for them. Fighter pilots make sure they will live their dreams and everything will work out for them no matter what happens to them.
Embracing a Fighter-Pilot mentality is the first step to take if your a determined person and you want to live your dreams. Fighter pilots win. Fighter pilots become leaders. Fighter Pilots create their dreams as they fly through the winds of life towards them.
My wife and I fought the first year of our marriage over which attitude we’d embrace as we pursued our dreams together. Sure, the freedom and care-free nature of the kite-flying mentality does seem attractive at times. But unfortunately, when we examined the results we experienced living in a Kite-Flying mentality, we realized that the Kite-Flying mentality really hadn’t gotten us anywhere cool in life. The Kite-Flying mentality really only led us to wasting time and daydreaming of fantasies that will probably never exist.
But the results we experienced when embracing the Fighter-Pilot mentality were amazing to us. The Fighter-Pilot mentality was responsible for everything good that has happened to us in live, such as: starting a business, saving 50% of our income, buying an investment property, and exploring the deepest questions about life. These results inspired us to embrace the fighter-pilot mentality for the rest of our life.
In conclusion:
Kite-Flying mentality = Hope, daydream, and a reality based on fantasy.
Fighter-Pilot mentality = Missions, objectives, strategy, commitment. The reality you live is based by the actions you take to create it.
Kite-Flying mentality: Reality is outside of your control.
Fighter Pilot Mentality: Your mission is to live your dreams. You do everything you can to create that reality that you dream of.
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This is fantastic, Billy! Living your life by going any which way the wind blows is a recipe for an unfulfilled life.
It occurs to me, too, that many of us get stuck in the Kite-Flyer mentality because we believe we’re good people — and as good people, good things should happen for us. Yes, we might get lucky, but in general, things are not just handed to us in life because we’re good.
Hey Thanks Mrs Groovy!!!! I was a little nervous when I published this that I didn’t communicate this as clearly as I wanted to! It wasn’t an easy article to write! But I can tell by your comment, that everything I was trying to say, came through loud and clear which makes me feel a lot better!!!! Your comment perfectly summarized what I was trying to say, and I couldn’t have said it any better. We either have the choice to create our reality to our liking, or live in a fantasy where we hope we’ll naturally float into a reality we’ll love. The best way I have found to live life is to invest your time and effort into creating your reality, rather than whimsically hoping you’ll drift into a perfect reality.
That was interesting. I do think the kite metaphor does a great job of describing a lot of people’s lives. I also think there is a huge amount of luck involved in how life turns out for both kite flyers and hot shot jet jockeys. I have been extremely successful, am financially independent and retired early with much more than I need. I have taken care of my health, both mental and physical but my success stems nearly totally from having had great parents and having been born at the good end of the intelligence bell curve. Being nice and kind to others and being grateful for every day came from my parents and solving difficult problems effortlessly came from having a faster brain. Nothing had much to do with working hard or having a great game plan. I feel like a very happy kite that never saw any bad winds.
This was a great comment, Steve. Your comment screams you are a grateful and humble human being, and I am sure that attitude has helped you tremendously as you happily sailed through the winds of life. Continue to be grateful, humble, and successful. Enjoy every moment of it. There are millions of people in the world who unfortunately will never have the opportunities, and see the summits of life that you will be able to see.
As for me, I was a kite on a very similar trajectory as you early in my life, until an unexpected tornado appeared and almost totally destroyed me. (This tornado was mostly caused by bad decisions I made so I am to blame for it appearing) If I would have remained a kite, the tornado winds I experienced would have ripped me to shreds. The only way I was able to escape that tornado I encountered, was to embrace a fighter-pilot mentality and learn how to fly through the tornadoes I experienced.
If any readers want to learn more about the tornado I experienced that forced me to adopt this fighter-pilot mentality, subscribe to my email newsletter as I publish that story for new readers at the bottom of every newsletter. Thanks Steve.
“…[T]o whimsically ride in the winds in life…you’re forced to leave so much of life up to chance.”
Brilliant, Billy. Brilliant.
Man, this mean’s a lot coming from you!! The idea for this article came from where many great ideas come from: My wife and I at first struggled through our first year of marriage to find the right words to describe our feelings and frustrations about each other and life. We fought at first about the best way to live life. Then we argued over which strategy was correct. And then we started to understand each other, and come up with new words that described what we were feeling and experiencing together. Suddenly words like a “Kite-Flying attitude” and “A Fighter-Pilot attitude” became normal words in our house that we both understood, and it helped us work together because we could both understand what the other person was going through. Now that we both are trying to become Fighter pilots in life, our marriage is so much healthier because we both have the same goals of what we want to accomplish and we can go after those goals together.