OppThink Example: Chuck Yeager Breaks Sound Barrier

Chuck Yeager is known as the first human to fly faster than the speed of sound (aka Mach 1). The sound barrier was called that because test pilots circa 1947 noticed that, as a plane approached Mach 1, it would experience violent shaking and seem to be breaking apart. The conventional belief, therefore, was that no plane could break the barrier, since it would break up first.

As test pilot Yeager took his X-1 closer and closer to Mach 1 over several test flights, he got a taste of all the problems that other test pilots had encountered, direct data that correlated with the prevailing barrier belief: his plane would shake violently, seemed to be reaching its breaking point, a point where even the rivets seemed to be coming undone.

Now, the natural reaction to such extreme turbulence is to back off, slow down, get back to a safer speed. But how do you break a barrier that way?

On October 14, 1947, when Yeager got to that critical point just shy of Mach 1, the point of shaking and apparent plane-breaking, the point where most people's fears would be screaming in their ears to take the safe, intuitive action of slowing down, Yeager did the opposite. He went faster.

And a funny thing happened on the opposite side of all that barrier baloney. According to Yeager, “I noticed that the faster I got, the smoother the ride." His OppThink action was confirmed as the right course to take. With this, Captain Charles Yeager sailed safely and smoothly past Mach 1... and into history.

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I find it fitting that Yeager also took another OppThink action, of a slightly different type, before the great flight even began. He had injured his ribs a couple of days before his historic flight, hurting himself so badly that he could not even close the hatch on his X-1. He needed the help of a piece of broomstick he and his engineer fashioned as a hatch-closing assistive device.

Most people would have thought, "I am injured and in intense pain and in no condition to fly, let alone fly at a speed no one has ever flown before."

Not Yeager. His OppBelief was, "I am flying the X-1 today, and I will find a solution that enables me to do so." The broomstick did the trick. Pain, schmain -- there was work to be done, and an imaginary barrier to expose as false.

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In summary, Chuck Yeager assumed two crucial OppBeliefs on October 14, 1947:
I will fly today with injury (even though most believe you don't fly with painful injury)
and
I will fly faster near Mach 1 (even though most believe that may destroy the plane).
Thanks to these beliefs, plus superior skill, he accomplished his goal of supersonic flight.
Becoming a legend was icing on the cake.