How do fighter pilots respond rather than react?

When life throws things at you, do you respond, or simply react? Observe, Orient, Decide Act.

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

from “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl, my favourite book, as I wrote about here, with a story about round the world cycling too

When life throws things at you, do you respond, or simply react? Are you “response-able”?

This past weekend I was out of my bike on lanes and hills that were new to me, often with pretty rough surfaces. In only around two hours of riding, there were many opportunities to respond, yet if I had reacted (to bumps, potholes, ridges, debris on the road etc), many of these could have resulted in a crash.

So, a simple tip from fighter pilots on how to respond, and, fast, is in what the call the “OODA Loop”. Ooda stands for:

• Observe — what is happening here. Gather all the information you can using all your senses
• Orient — see reality, objectively, for what it truly is in the moment, free of your biases.
• Decide
• Act