Decision Making Impacts Lives
We all know that your decisions can impact you life. For me, this is personal. I knows first-hand the value of the sharing of information between people. I am now a retired military combat veteran; I am currently a helicopter EMS pilot where I transport gravely sick and injured patients by helicopter to the hospital. It is more than just what is going on inside the helicopter. I often walk into the hospitals with the medcrew while they work with the hospital staff. A lot of times you will see family members off to the side: their lives have just been shattered. There are times when these life altering experience are based on split second decision.
Maybe it was a car accident? Even worse maybe someone made the decision to drink and drive and he or she hit your loved one. Maybe it was the choice of someone to use drugs?
Lessons Learned From Experience
I have experienced many lessons throughout the duration of my career, but there was one night in 2001 that ultimately changed my life and became the motivation for my life’s mission. During routine shipboard training off Marine Corps Air Station New River, NC, I was the lead pilot of one of two CH-46E helicopters during training that night. Due to ‘human error’ in the second aircraft, the helicopter impacted the water, killing three Marines, including my good friend and combat air crewman Clark Beaty.
I would later learn that a similar mishap took place in a different training exercise a few years prior. Had knowledge from that experience been properly shared after the first mishap, the 2001 training crash could have possibly been prevented.
The importance of sharing your experience and knowledge
From that moment, I understood the impact and power of ‘the sharing of experience and knowledge’ in decision-making. Every day of our lives we are faced with having to make decisions. I believe that if we recognize the strengths of our own knowledge and experience, and capitalize on the experience and knowledge of others, we will ultimately make better decisions and avoid making mistakes we might have otherwise made.
The Convene Communities app does just that. It allows like-minded individuals to learn from one another. Sharing our experience and knowledge is not always a negative experience. It could be a topic such as soccer or becoming a parent for the first time. When I was about to become a father for the first time I asked questions and read books. By the time the delivery came I considered asking the doctor to step aside because I felt like I was so experienced that I could have delivered my son. I had no idea the amount of ‘lessons learned’ that I was facing for the next 18 years. We spend our entire lives seeking knowledge. We learn from each other’s experience. Convene Communities will help you become part of that journey, some have been there and done that, and others are just beginning.
Real Life, Real People, Real Experience