Welcome to the Fulfillment@Work Newsletter
Published by Joel Garfinkle, Dream Job Coaching
ISSN: 1533-3906

Contents

1. Who Is Packing Your Parachute?
2. Quotes of the Week

Feature Article
Who's Packing Your Parachute?

Sometimes in the daily challenges that life gives us, we miss what is really important. We may fail to say hello, please, or thank you, congratulate someone on something wonderful that has happened to them, give a compliment, or just do something nice for no reason.

Charles Plumb, a US Naval Academy graduate, was a jet fighter pilot in Vietnam. After 75 combat missions, his plane was destroyed by a surface-to-air missile. Plumb ejected and parachuted into enemy hands. He was captured and spent 6 years in a communist Vietnamese prison. He survived the ordeal and now lectures on lessons learned from the experience.

One day, when Plumb and his wife were sitting in a restaurant, a man at another table came up and said, "You're Plumb! You flew jet fighters in Vietnam from the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk. You were shot down! "

"How in the world did you know that?" asked Plumb. "

I packed your parachute," the man replied.

Plumb gasped in surprise and gratitude. The man pumped his hand and said, "I guess it worked!"

Plumb assured him, "It sure did. If your chute hadn't worked, I wouldn't be here today."

Plumb couldn't sleep that night, thinking about that man. Plumb says,"I kept wondering what he might have looked like in a Navy uniform -- a Dixie cup hat, a bib in the back, and bell bottom trousers. I wonder how many times I might have seen him and not even said good morning, how are you or anything because, you see, I was a fighter pilot and he was just a sailor."

Plumb thought of the many hours the sailor had spent on a long wooden table in the bowels of the ship, carefully weaving the shrouds and folding the silks of each chute, holding in his hands each time the fate of someone didn't know. Now, Plumb asks his audience, "Who's packing your parachute?"

Everyone has someone who provides what they need to make it through the day. Plumb also points out that he needed many kinds of parachutes when his plane was shot down over enemy territory - he needed his physical parachute, his mental parachute, his emotional parachute, and his spiritual parachute. He called on all these supports before reaching safety.

His experience reminds us all to prepare ourselves to weather whatever storms lie ahead. As you go through this week, this month, this year...recognize people who pack your parachute! WHO is packing your parachute?

If you want to learn how to Find Your Dream Job, click here:
http://www.dreamjobcoaching.com/coaching-overview.html

If you want to learn about Executive Coaching, visit:
http://www.GarfinkleExecutiveCoaching.com

~ Joel Garfinkle
Dream Job Coaching:
Live Your Dream Life!

Quotes of the Week

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. - - - - Oliver Wendell Holmes Work in the invisible world at least as hard as you do in the visible.
~ Rumi

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