News from HQ: Ready, set, go

With the new year underway it would be entirely appropriate to have a fresh list of New Year’s Resolutions tacked onto your refrigerator door at home, or on Post-it notes stuck to your office wall at work. Making resolutions is a tradition for this time of year. To achieve real success with those resolutions, it’s necessary to not just make them, not just attempt them, but to evaluate them periodically throughout the year.

How much weight did you lose? How might you ramp up those efforts? When will you revisit your progress and make a decision to continue, or amend your plan? Those are the kind of important questions we need to ask ourselves as we embark on a complex or challenging endeavor. 

Just as we can come up with resolutions for bettering ourselves, we can adopt resolutions to improve our flying clubs, too. Maybe you’d like to consider transitioning your club from non-equity status (leasing an aircraft) to an equity position (owning an aircraft). Perhaps your goal is to grow your membership in 2017, or add an additional aircraft, or move into a larger hangar that has room for social activities. Whatever your goals might be, your likelihood of achieving them is much higher if you commit to these three steps.

• Write your goals down.
• Goals that are specifically written can be revisited, and when necessary, revised. Goals committed to memory often become distorted over time, or forgotten. If you really want to make something happen – write it down.
• Commit to a plan of action.
• Having goals is admirable, but achieving them takes work. Once you know what you want to accomplish, get with your fellow club members to discuss how to go about making your goals come true. Then commit to a specific plan and divide the duties up between the club members. Many hands make light work, and having friends to work with makes all the difference in the world.
• Evaluate your progress.
• Even the best of plans can go awry. There may be unforeseen issues that derail your progress, or perhaps you find you can achieve your goals much quicker and with less fuss than you imagined. Either way, pick a time in the future to evaluate your progress, plot a change of course if necessary, and set off on a journey to success again.

The important thing to keep in mind is that you can do almost anything you can set your mind to doing. If you write down your goals, commit to a plan of action, and evaluate your progress from time to time, your chances of success are far better than they will be if you omit one of those steps.

And of course, you always have the crew at AOPA ready to help you out. With five You Can Fly Ambassadors roaming the countryside and a dedicated team of resource specialists at our home base in Frederick, Maryland – your odds of success in 2017 are looking better than ever.

Let’s do this!