Personal Autopilot

A friend asked me a why am I why do I question today. It had to do with how can I make decisions in a split second that most people would worry about for a week before making. I knew the answer, it has become part of my personality. It occurred to me that the answer may be of use to people other than myself or those I train/have trained for specific tasks.

The answer is that I don't really make those decisions in that split second. A good deal of what I do is go through life on autopilot. It doesn't mean I don't think but rather that I have thought things through before they happened.

While a soldier I developed a number of "conditioned reflexes". Things which you get trained to do that at first may seem to be against so called common sense. For example if shoot at you run towards the bullets not away. It is a combat skill. Running away puts your back to the shots and lets the shooter or shooters take their time and get off aimed shots. Attacking and firing yourself takes away that advantage from them and can reverse the element of surprise which they thought they had. This is a single example of something you do which you have thought about ahead of time and decided how you would act. First Aid training is another example of this type of thing. You act despite the fact the situation is usually gross, dire and sometimes dangerous. You have thought out the what to do before hand.

All of us do this many times a day in whatever our jobs are.

I find that I have expanded this to cover almost every aspect of my life. Things I have thought out ahead of time I act on without thinking. In some cases it is very specific things. In other things more general, for example I am comfortable with my personal moral code to trust my first reaction.

For example I sometimes step in if I witness violence. The police advise against this because of risking my own safety. I look at as I would rather call for Police than for an ambulance for someone or worse a hearse. Plus I have the training to take care of myself in such situations most of the time. It even applies if there is no emergency but for everyday things. Do you help someone or ignore a situation? It depends on what is happening but if you have thought about such things ahead of time you will most likely do what you had decided you would do if the situation ever came up. Even simple things. Has someone in front of you in line forgot their purse or wallet for example. You normally have to think how well do know them if at all. Can I afford to pay for what they meant to get. Do I have the money on me if I can and know them well enough to risk lending the amount or maybe not even care if you are paid back. I tend to think that the old saying what goes around comes around applies. Some call it Karma. My Grandparents put it as " the people you meet on the way up are the same ones you meet on the way down ". Or that deeds both good and bad are remembered.

My Grandfather had another saying. PPPPPP six P's or prior planning prevents piss poor performance. When I got older I found out where he had picked it up. It is a warning given to those learning to become instructors in the military. If you are ready for something because you have thought it out before hand you are less likely to do a poor job of whatever it is.

It is also one of the advantages of getting older. Not an advantage of age but one of experience and planning.

I can trust my personal autopilot program because I am the one who wrote it and keeps it up to date. What it does is what I have programmed it to do ahead of time. As life changes things I have to update the program. We can't anticipate everything. However it is far better to have planned for as much as possible than to not plan for anything and "freeze" when an action could have been "pre-programmed"