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I was just doing some housekeeping on my PC and found this letter someone had sent to me
The opportunity to attend Keith’s seminar came like a bolt from the blue. I knew that I had to confront this fear but I wasn’t really thinking about how or when. The call came through a friend of a friend who knew about the ‘Cyprus Incident’ and thought of me. I’m now wondering if there is such a thing as fate!
I flew many times throughout my life. I’m not really sure where it all went wrong but on Boxing Day 1999 I refused to board a plane taking me and my husband (then boyfriend, yes he still married me?!) to Cyprus to celebrate the millennium. Since booking the holiday, I’d spent £400 on hypnotherapy and obtained Diazepam from the Doctor just in case. But I knew for months that there was no way I was boarding that plane. Even as we took the dog to the kennels I knew I’d be back to collect him in just a few hours!
Since that incident, my way of dealing with my fear of flying has been to simply avoid it. My husband has never put too much pressure on me so it had all been quite easy really. However I now have a son who is almost 5 and is desperate to go on a plane. I have to do it without flinching for his sake.
So, there I was on my way to Winchester, no idea what I was going to. I’d never heard of Keith, never read his book, listened to his CD or visited this website. In fact I had no idea what kind of day was ahead of me. When I arrived the first thing I thought was that everyone already knew each other by the way they were chatting away. I soon found that this wasn’t the case; it was just that people were keen to share their experiences. Some had worked with Keith before and were eager to assure us newcomers that we too could overcome our fears.
If anyone had told me what the seminar involved, I would have been very sceptical but I couldn’t have been more wrong. Most of the day was spent with the group discussing numerous images of the whole flying experience. I had always felt that the less you knew about aeroplanes the better but here I was enthralled by all this new stuff I was learning. It really is fascinating. Most of all I kept thinking ‘how can this man be so passionate and enthusiastic about something that I am afraid off?’. That passion and enthusiasm really did rub off on me.
When we looked at the images of fluffy white clouds viewed from the window of the plane, my first thought was how beautiful they were and when Keith played a recording of the engines roaring just before take off I remembered how I used to love the sound of all that power. I really feel that the experience enabled me to remember some of the things that I used to love about flying and now that I have been able to revive those thoughts and feelings I need to keep the momentum going and will be attempting a flight with Keith really soon.
I know that I can’t take him on all my holidays in the future but wouldn’t it be great if we could bottle some of that passion for flying!