Bill Hybels, In His Book Courageous Leadership, ...

Bill Hybels, in his book Courageous Leadership, (p. 249) uses this illustration. He has a sailboat and every summer his sailing crew and he have to deliver his sailboat by water to various harbors around the great lakes for regattas. Some of them are a long ways away. Sometimes he runs into storms along the way. And more than once he has wondered if he was going to make it.

But then he reminds himself of another pers-pective. Bill got his pilot’s license as a teenager and has flown across Lake Michigan often. Flying across the lake gives quite a different perspective. If you are up high enough you can see the entire lake. So when he is on a boat on Lake Michigan in ugly conditions, he tries to put himself in a pilot’s perspective. He says to himself, “From up here the other coastline is already visible. From up here the harbor is in clear view. The waves appear manageable.”

He says, “Believe it or not, with that viewpoint in mind, I can hang in there. I can keep going. I can believe that I’m going to make it, providing I persevere. But I need that other perspective to give me hope and renewed determination.”