In aviation, the attitude indicator tells you how the aircraft is positioned relative to the horizon. Nose up, nose down, wings level, wings banked. Pilots trust it over their own senses, because inside a cloud your senses will swear you're flying level while the airplane rolls into a slow, steady turn.
Life isn't much different. Most people aren't crashing. They're banking one degree, feeling perfectly level, and wondering years later how they ended up here.
Three things you can't control
You can't always control the turbulence.
You can't always control the weather.
You can't always control what happens around you.
Read those again, because most of our stress lives in fighting them. The economy, the other person's choices, the timing, the news. Real turbulence, real weather, and almost entirely outside the cockpit.
One thing you can
You can adjust your attitude.
Not your mood — your position. Where's your nose pointed this week? Toward the thing you said mattered, or slightly away from it? Are you climbing in your health, or descending so gradually it doesn't register? Is your marriage level, or has it been banking for a while?
The instrument doesn't care how you feel about the answer. That's what makes it useful.
A one-degree correction
Nobody fixes drift with a hard turn. You find the horizon and make a one-degree correction — the smallest change you will actually hold. Then you check the instrument again tomorrow.
Sometimes a one-degree correction is all it takes to begin changing your destination. Over a long enough flight, one degree is the difference between where you meant to land and somewhere a hundred miles away.
The practice
Check your attitude. Pick one area. Level, climbing, or descending? Answer honestly.
Correct your course. One degree. Small enough to repeat.
Keep moving forward. You correct in motion. The flight doesn't pause while you adjust.
Drift is automatic. Direction is intentional.
— Randy