The Black Box

The Black Box is not a tale of a great man. This story is about someone like you: a human being endeavoring to make tomorrow better than today. Each chapter recounts a formative experience and concludes with a Black Box: an explanation of how a given situation helped me develop the mindset required to thrive in that type of environment.An airplane’s black box records flight data as well as the voices and radio transmissions in the cockpit of the airliner. When an airplane crashes engineers look into the black box to learn about what went wrong. However, black boxes also have stories of success, but they are rarely referenced for those narratives.Your black box is filled with helpful memories, but so often you fail to look into your black box to pull wisdom from it. Sometimes we avoid looking into our black box because it means seeing our hardships replayed, seeing things that cause us fear and pain. As you peer into my black box, it will inspire you to look into your black box. Our black boxes are filled with explanations of why we crash as well as stories of how we have soared above turbulence. Most of these chapters have been developed as self encapsulated stories from which a moral can be drawn without reference to previous chapters. I share the story of my life knowing that my achievements outstrip those of the average person only by a modest margin. The validity of this work lies in the distance between my starting point and where I stand today. This book is about you. It should drive you to consult your black box as you adventure through life.