Very interesting article. I have similar experiences, all of them while flying small planes. On two occasions I listened to the inner voice. A friend an I were about to take off on a night flight in a Cessna 152 and as we were doing our ‘run-up’ before takeoff we sort of looked at each other and agreed something just wasn’t right. It was a gorgeous night for flying, but we just taxied right back to the ramp and drove home.

Second occasion I was supposed to fly that same Cessna down to Cincinnati, Ohio with a friend. There were thunderstorms on our route but overall it didn’t look too bad. I then remembered John & Martha King’s saying ‘a superior pilot is a pilot who uses superior judgement to prevent having to use superior skill’. I figured something just didn’t feel right and disappointed (actually quite annoyed) as my friend was, I didn’t do the flight.

The one and only time I didn’t! listen to that inner voice (while flying at least…) was on a flight home from Chicago Midway in a Piper Cherokee. I had a feeling our fuel burn had been higher than it should have been but didn’t pay too much attention to it. It didn’t feel ‘right’, but we were eager to get home. I had the aircraft fueled and with two friends (including another pilot) we took of at dusk for our flight to a small airfield near Ft Wayne IN. Fuel burn was even worse and we were now in a bad situation. At night, low fuel, strong crosswind, short runway with trees at the other end. With the fuel gage effectively reaching zero I got it to a stop with about 10ft of runway remaining… We were very lucky not to crash. Turns out the fuel burn was due to a crack in a rubber component in the fuel system. About half the fuel was going into the engine and the other half was being sprayed and vaporized around the engine. Why we didn’t simply blow up that night is quite the mystery
Wout Wynants recently posted..Close Encounters of the Slithering Kind – The Adventures of Snakeman.

Essentially, you are expressing that your friend thought that he should do something, and he listened. It wasn’t as much about what he should avoid as it concerned what he should do. This is why I believe that the word should can be worthwhile. It could benefit us to reevaluate our outlook concerning this word. Doing what we think we should do with unbridled enthusiasm is dangerous. However, if we do more of what we think we should it could benefit us in most cases.

I used to buy into the theory that the word should is one that causes us to procrastinate, feel guilty, etc. One day I recognized it as a form of intuition and began to examine the favorable aspects of this word, of which there are many!
Sandra Hendricks recently posted..Procrastination Can Be Decreased by Doing What You Should