Think of a plane coming in for a landing at night.

As the plane descends, the pilot is guided to the runway by rows of lights.

We can also use “landing lights”* to guide us during times of transition or even crisis.

If you are dealing with a big decision, or a chaotic situation, it’s useful to write down what you do, and do not, want; and what you will, and will not do.

What are your landing lights in a given situation?

Writing those down helps you navigate big transitions.

Landing Lights for a Planned Change

Let’s say you are looking for a new job.

Write down five or six things that are critical for making a decision that works for you.

You might have certain financial numbers you need to hit. You might not want to travel much.

So your “landing lights” for the new job might look something like this:

• Would this job require me, my spouse, and our dog to relocate? — We are willing to move, but housing options must be dog-friendly.

• Would this job pay enough for us to live comfortably in that location? — We need X amount of income coming in.

• Would this job require nights, weekends, extensive travel? — Nights and weekends are okay, but I don’t want to travel more than 3 times a year.

• Would this job require a commute that takes longer than 30 minutes? — I want a commute under 30 minutes.

You write down what conditions are critical for you to make a life-giving change.

Landing Lights in Times of Chaos

Perhaps you are not voluntarily making a change, but you find yourself in a fast-moving and chaotic situation.

Landing lights help you navigate the turbulence.

Write down important boundaries in a time of relative clarity and focus. Then you can refer back to them when things get chaotic.

If you are making important decisions, what will you do?

What will you NOT do?

Which lines will you NOT cross, when others are working hard to shift the goal posts?

Writing these down will help you stay strong.

A recent New Yorker article, “Inside the War Between Trump and His Generals,” gives us a case study of how writing down your values and writing down the lines that you will not cross, can keep you focused on what matters most.

General Mark Milley was appointed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2019, during the Trump administration. Milley soon found himself under relentless pressures to use the U.S. military in ways that were illegal, and that violated norms for democracies.

After his disastrous photo op at Lafayette Square, where protesters had just been violently dispersed, General Milley decided to resign. However, colleagues convinced him it was critical that he stay on as long as he could.

Milley wrote up a couple of documents that clarified his thinking.

The first document was his unsent resignation letter. In that letter, Milley had listed his values and principles, and how those conflicted with the administration.

In writing the unsent resignation letter, he had articulated for himself a powerful written list of his values.

After that, Milley wrote down some landing lights; and indeed, a common phrase for administration officials working toward a peaceful transfer of power was to “land the plane.”

Milley wrote down four commitments to guide him through the storm:

“Milley put away the resignation letter in his desk and drew up a plan, a guide for how to get through the next few months. He settled on four goals: First, make sure Trump did not start an unnecessary war overseas. Second, make sure the military was not used in the streets against the American people for the purpose of keeping Trump in power. Third, maintain the military’s integrity. And, fourth, maintain his own integrity. In the months to come, Milley would refer back to the plan more times than he could count. [emphasis mine].” (Glasser and Baker 2022)

Writing down these landing lights externalized Milley’s thinking.

It allowed him to consult his past self, with these written commitments at a time of clear and focused thinking. His clear and focused thoughts were then available to him whenever events were moving fast, and the pressure was on. His unsent resignation letter also crystallized his values and commitments.

And here we also see that Milley also drew on something common to both military and monastic communities; and others that live by written guidelines: he consulted with other members of the communities that shared his values.

Values and ethics shared by groups can help those groups to hold firm against strong external pressures:

“Professions can create forms of ethical conversation that are impossible between a lonely individual and a distant government. If members of a profession think of themselves as groups with common interests, with norms and rules that oblige them at all times, then they can gain confidence and indeed a certain kind of power. Professional ethics must guide us precisely when we are told the situation is exceptional. Then there is no such thing as “just following orders.” If members of the professions confuse their specific ethics with the emotions of the moment, however, they can find themselves saying and doing things that they might previously have thought unimaginable.” (Snyder 2017, p 40)

Milley’s advisors included:

• his past self, who had written down commitments and values in a clear and focused way, through both the unsent resignation letter and the landing lights described above

• history books, particularly about the ways authoritarians seize power by generating and exploiting crises

• colleagues who were serving or had served in high ranking government positions who understood the personalities, pressures, and ethics involved

From ancient times, wise people have paradoxically insisted that we must externalize our values, to internalize them.

From the biblical story of writing down the Ten Commandments on stone tablets (twice! …in a culture with a powerful oral tradition, no less), to following a rule of life or personal framework, to making and keeping oaths, we draw on deeply rooted practices when we make the effort to write down what we will, and what we will not, do.

Writing down and reviewing your values helps you live them out.

Externalizing your ethics-based decisions and principles by putting them in writing gives you access to another wise advisor: yourself, in a time of relative focus and clear thinking.

General Milley’s story is a case study for how this works.

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Notes

*The “landing lights” metaphor comes from Mark Wickstrom’s book, listed below, filled with visual thinking tools to navigate relationships and life decisions. Wickstrom is a pastor who has used these concepts in pastoral counseling, so there is some God-talk in this book; although many of the tools are drawn from secular therapies.

Digression: When we lived in western Alaska, sometimes med-evac flights had to land in the dark in rural villages which had air strips, but not landing lights. In those cases, villagers would drive their four wheelers to the airfield, line up on both sides of the air strip, and shine their headlights.

References

Wickstrom, D.M. (2015) Sensible Grace: Visual Tools for a Better Life. MDW Press, LLC.

Glasser, S.B. and Baker, P. (2022) ‘Inside the War Between Trump and His Generals’, The New Yorker, 8 August. Available at: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/15/inside-the-war-between-trump-and-his-generals (Accessed: 10 August 2022).

Snyder, T. (2017) On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. 1st edition. New York: Crown.