I'm kicking off a new series today.  

The series is built around a simple but powerful idea: success as an air traffic controller is a choice.

If you've been reading for a while, you know I'm a big fan of Dr. John Maxwell, the leadership author. 

I've been pouring over his books trying to improve areas of my own life. This new series is built on his book "Success Is a Choice," and we're going to work through it and figure out how it applies to us as controllers — and to you as students and young people chasing this career.

Maxwell opens his book by saying you have to commit to choices that bring success. 

If you're already at the Academy, you've made several of these choices already, even if you didn't think of them that way. 

You chose to apply on USAJOBS when the FAA put out a bid for controllers. 

You chose to pursue this dream. 

Then you took the test, and apparently you did well enough to get here.

You've made choices all along the way to reach the point you're at right now — whether that's the Academy or a CTI school. You took your dream and put it into action. That's not something everyone does. 

A lot of people have a dream and just leave it sitting there. 

You didn't. 

You chose to act on it, and that's the beginning choice, the foundational one everything else builds on.

It doesn't really matter what your motivation was — maybe you were just looking for a job, maybe you had family who'd done this work and it planted the seed. 

The motivation that gets you to act isn't nearly as important as the fact that you chose to act at all.

Here's something to understand as you move forward: talent alone is never going to carry you. 

This is especially true at the Academy, and just as true at CTI school. 

At CTI, you're going from almost no knowledge to gaining real skills — they're teaching you, giving you tools, but it's on you to turn those skills into talent. 

If you're at the Academy and came from a CTI background, you already have some skills in your pocket. 

Either way, your instructors — in the classroom and in the lab — are going to keep handing you more and more skills. 

But those are skills you have to choose to develop. Nobody does that part for you.

Maxwell puts it this way: "Talent is God-given. [Success is] doing a great job of playing the hand you've been dealt." 

Every one of you has talents, areas where you're naturally strong. 

What matters is what you choose to do with them. 

Are you content sitting on what you've got, or are you determined to become as good as you possibly can? 

There's even a Dr. Seuss quote in Maxwell's book that fits surprisingly well here: "You have brains in your head, you have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose." 

Every one of you has the brainpower and the talent. 

What you choose to do with it is up to you.

The next crucial step toward success is believing in yourself. 

You have to believe you can do this genuinely difficult thing — succeeding at the FAA Academy, or succeeding at your CTI program. 

Neither one is easy. They're both incredibly demanding.

When I was instructing in Oklahoma City, we used to tell students that the three months at the Academy is remarkably similar to military boot camp. 

The difference is that boot camp hits you mentally and physically, in large doses of both. 

Taking care of yourself physically will absolutely help — it does wonders for your ability to adapt and push through — but make no mistake, the Academy is boot camp from a mental standpoint.

Here's the thing about it: the Academy is designed to challenge you. 

It's going to knock you down, let you get back up, and knock you down again — sometimes within the same lab scenario. 

You'll have a stretch where you're buried under five things at once, then a quiet moment, then boom, five more things land on you. 

It's built that way on purpose, and you need to prepare yourself for it. 

Part of that preparation is believing you deserve to be there in the first place.

I've worked with students who simply didn't have confidence in themselves, and it's brutally difficult to push through everything the Academy throws at you without that belief. 

Go back to where we started — you chose to apply, you chose to take the test, you chose to go through every single step the FAA required to get you into a car or onto a plane headed to Oklahoma City. 

At any point along that road, you could have stopped. 

You didn't. 

You kept going, even without knowing exactly what was waiting for you — and I'll tell you, even if you know someone who went through it a few years ago, the program changes constantly. 

Be careful where you get your information, because it might already be outdated.

It's not only about confidence — it's about trusting that you have the capacity to actually become an air traffic controller. 

And without some kind of support system, it's going to be hard to hold onto that belief for the entire program, because, again, it's designed to knock you down and make you question whether you belong there. 

When that happens, you have to fall back on your belief that you have the potential to get where you're trying to go.

Maxwell tells a story in his book that I think about often. 

A professor stood in front of thirty senior molecular biology students before handing out the final exam. He told them he knew how hard they'd worked all semester, that most of them were heading to medical school or grad school, and that he understood the pressure they were under to protect their GPA. Because he was confident they knew the material, he offered an automatic B to anyone who wanted to skip the final.

The relief in the room was audible. 

A bunch of students got up immediately and thanked him for the lifeline. 

He asked if there were any other takers — last chance. 

One more student decided to leave. 

Then he handed the final exam to everyone who stayed. 

It was two sentences long: "Congratulations. You have just received an A in this class. Keep believing in yourself."

The students who left didn't believe in themselves. 

The ones who stayed did.

Believing in yourself is everything. 

Maxwell closes that chapter by saying you should live the life you were meant to live — try to see yourself as you could be, and then do everything in your power to believe you can become that person. 

I think that's the first and most important step toward becoming a successful air traffic controller.

If you're reading this before you head to Oklahoma City, get this belief locked in now. 

If you're already at the Academy, take some time — it doesn't have to be long, even just one evening — and work on building it. 

Write it out, journal it, record yourself saying it on your phone so you can listen back. 

However you do it, take the time to reinforce your belief in yourself and your belief in your own potential.

You can still get to this point, and it can help — it might even be the difference between passing and not passing.

Every student I worked with in Oklahoma City had potential. 

Every controller I've ever worked alongside has potential. 

Once you do, you're already on your way to making it happen. 

Next time, we'll build on this with the second piece of the puzzle: firing up your passion.