SkyQuestCom's Personal Development Blog

1942: the world’s darkest hour. A glimmer of hope shines abright in the man who joined the Army Air Corps at a tender age of 19. He name is Og Mandino. Og received his officer’s commissions and silver wings as a bombardier. He was an “officer and a gentleman” two weeks before he could legally vote.

Soon afterwards, he was assigned to a B24 liberated crew and after several months of grueling training in a desert, they finally flew their plane across the country and then across the North Atlantic. From that date near the valley of Rittenbaum, Og flew 30 combat missions over Nazi Germany. He was thankful to God that his missions were successful and that his 45th bombardment group survived.

As Og recalled those frightening missions over enemy territory, he became convinced that the prime reason that they reached so many targets so often was because they had been briefed thoroughly before each mission. Hours before dawn at usually around 3 o’ clock in the morning, the general would go into the mission hut with a flashlight and clipboard at hand. He’d lean over, shake the clipboard and tap each officer and say “Please be in the meeting in 45 minutes”, and then he went on to the next.

So off they went to the mass hall to grab some food and go on into a large briefing room. Inside, everybody who is flying a combat mission that morning would sit down with their clipboards and take notes and gather all the information they could about the mission and their targets for the day.

One of the brilliant people who conducted the briefing was Donald Clark. Donald was an intelligence officer and the owner of Random House, the world's largest English language book publisher.

Og and his fellow officers were told the route to follow to get to the target, what to do and what to avoid. They were also instructed as to what the weather was going to be when during take-off, what the weather is going to be along the way and what the weather would be at the target. In specific detail, they were told how much cloud cover they had at the target, the wind velocity at the target and the kind of opposition they could expect from the ground.

In short, by the time Og and his bombardment group lifted off in the dark in the morning, they had been thoroughly prepared to reach their goal. Og was certain that the clear mission briefing was the reason they kept their lives in enemy airspace.

According to Og, he compares the life we live in today to a mission. In life’s mission, the target is success, financial security, happiness, peace of mind, love, self esteem and other goals. Everybody has the same goals, except that unlike combat crews, there isn’t anybody who could brief them on the long mission called Life. Nobody ever told us what to do, what to expect, how to act, how to deal with the best way to get to the target and what to avoid.

Here’s your chance to let Og Mandino become your briefing officer. After more than a quarter of a century talking and writing about success, he will brief you on what you need to do right now if you want to get to your target, no matter how awful you think you might have wandered in your life. Learn from Og Mandino’s life changing video seminar “Target Success” right here: http://www.SkyQuestCom.com/learning.