by Rex Fisher, PhD
NASA provided a terrific example of how to reach your goals.
On July 16, 1969, I was glued to the television along with many other people in the world. The most powerful machine ever built – even to this day – stood on a launch pad in Florida. Atop the 363 foot high Saturn V rocket were three men, who were going to make the first moon landing in history.
The first stage of the mighty rocket fired, and after about three minutes, the Apollo 11 was going over 6,000 miles per hour. Then the empty first stage dropped away and the second stage fired. When its fuel was depleted, it had delivered the astronauts to low earth orbit.
That was as high as the space shuttle ever got! It didn’t have enough power to break free of Earth’s orbit and really go anywhere. You probably know people like that. They just go around and around in circles, never achieving their goals in life. They don’t seem to have enough power to do it. But, the Apollo 11 had one more rocket stage left. It accelerated Apollo 11 from about 16,000 mile per hour to a little over 25,000, which was enough to leave orbit and head for the moon.
It’s a wonderful feeling to have a good bead on things and be moving toward a goal. Sometimes, though, we drift off course. That’s exactly what happened to Apollo 11. A little more than a day after launch, mission control told them they needed to make a course correction. It wasn’t a lot, but when going that fast for that far, even being off a fraction of a degree meant they would miss the moon. Without the moon to slingshot around, they could never turn around and return home. They would die in the cold vacuum of space, millions of miles away from Earth.
Fortunately, mission control caught the error early in the trip, and after a few calculations and a short burn of their engine, they were back on course to make history. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first people to walk on the moon a few days later, but it wouldn’t have happened if someone hadn’t noticed they were off course and could help them take action to reach their goal.
We all have goals. Some are small ones and others are the focus of our lives. It’s easy to become distracted and veer off course, and we often don’t realize it until it’s too late. Some of us are fortunate enough to have family or friends who can warn us in time. Even then, however, we may need help calculating the exact rocket burn that will make the correction to reach our goal.
My wife, Terri, is an expert at helping people break out of orbit or get back on course. She can help you determine the best way to do it and even show you where to find a little fuel for your rocket engine if necessary. Give her a call and don’t miss out on your own personal moon walk.
(Rex is married to Terri Fisher, a marriage and family therapist who provides equine-assisted counseling and family counseling in Itasca, Texas.)