How to Be Like Amelia Earhart

1. Don’t allow others to define you
   Earhart was praised after her Friendship flight, but she didn’t believe her press clippings. She looked for a way to earn that praise, and if she hadn’t, her name ­might have been forgotten a long time ago.
2. Be honest with yourself
   Earhart wouldn’t allow herself to take credit for what Friendship pilot, Wilmer Stultz, had done, even if the credit came from the president of the United States.  “I was just a passenger on the journey—just a passenger,” she told the New York Times.
3. Set clear-cut goals
   After the accolades she received from being part of the Friendship crew, Earhart wanted to be worthy of the admiration she was receiving.  She was a pilot, not a passenger.  She soon set an ambitious goal for herself: to become the first woman pilot to solo across the Atlantic Ocean.  It would be an extremely dangerous flight, and Earhart gauged her chances of successfully completing it at “one in ten.”  She also said: “Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.”
4. Study successful people
   Earhart kept a scrapbook of successful women and studied their lives carefully.  She also developed her own philosophy about being successful.  “Women will gain economic justice by proving themselves in all lines of endeavor, not by having laws passed for them,” she wrote.
5. Do what you love
   Earhart said that from the first time she was in an airplane “I knew I myself had to fly…To want in one’s heart to do a thing, for its own sake; to enjoy doing it; to concentrate all one’s energies upon it—that is not only the surest guarantee of its success, it is also being true to oneself.  If there is anything I have learned in life it is  this: If you follow the inner desire of your heart, the incidentals will take care of themselves.”
6. Don’t take things for granted
   Anita Snook taught Earhart to check everything on her airplane. This included being sure the plane had a full tank of gas.
7. Prepare for worst-case scenarios
   Earhart studied stunt flying so she’d be familiar with the unexpected.  This was needed when her plane went into a spin during her solo flight across the Atlantic.  “A knowledge of some stunts is judged necessary to good flying,” she said.  “Unless a pilot has actually recovered from a stall, has actually put his plane into a spin and brought it out, he cannot know accurately what those acts entail. He should be familiar enough with abnor­mal positions of his craft to recover without having to think how.”
8. Ask questions
   Earhart learned from asking questions of experi­enced pilots.
9. Care about others
   Whether it was girls excluded from sororities or sol­diers wounded in battle, Earhart gave of herself and helped others. This helped her become the kind of person that Amy Guest was looking for.  She wanted a girl of the “right image” for the Friendship flight, and Earhart was selected.
10. Keep challenging yourself
    Earhart may have lost her life doing what she loved to do, but this was the way she needed to live her life.
11. Evaluate risks
    Most of our daily decisions aren’t about life and death, but even so, evaluate the risks of anything you do.  Earhart’s formula was to “decide then whether or not the goal is worth the risks involved. If it is, stop worrying.  To worry is to add another hazard.  It retards reactions, makes one unfit.”
12. Accept responsibility for your decisions and actions
    Earhart accepted full responsibility for her attempt to fly around the world and wanted to alleviate her husband of any guilt.  She wrote: “I know that if I fail or if I am lost you will be blamed for allowing me to leave on this trip; the backers of the flight will be blamed and everyone connected with it.  But it’s my responsibility and mine alone.”
13. Don’t worry about failing—just try
    Earhart’s attempt to fly around the world was the perfect expression of her life’s philosophy.  Earhart said: “I want to do it because I want to do it.  Women must try to do things as men have tried.  If they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others.”

Used with permission from Women of Influence by Pat & Ruth Williams with Michael Mink (Health Communications, Inc., 2003).

8 Responses to “How to Be Like Amelia Earhart”

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• Zelda Thomson says:

  December 20, 2020 at 6:17 am

  First off I want to say superb blog! I had a quick question in which I’d like to ask if you do not mind. I was interested to know how you center yourself and clear your thoughts prior to writing. I have had trouble clearing my thoughts in getting my thoughts out. I truly do enjoy writing but it just seems like the first 10 to 15 minutes are usually lost just trying to figure out how to begin. Any suggestions or hints? Kudos!

• Shelley says:

  February 5, 2014 at 7:59 am

  Very interesting suggestion.

• heather says:

  January 25, 2014 at 9:19 am

  really great article! helpful for school project AND in teaching my kids some lessons on character traits!

• Annie Jones says:

  March 8, 2013 at 7:56 am

  Hi corporate gifts, So glad you found this article helpful. There are so many inspirational people in history and in our world today. Some of us are blessed to have inspirational people within our lives. Does anyone want to share a story of true inspiration in your own life? What do you want to inspire in the lives of those around you because of that one person?

• Doris says:

  November 14, 2011 at 11:38 am

  Glad it helped Victoria!

• Victoria says:

  November 9, 2011 at 6:32 pm

  this gave really good advice; this helped me on a project for school by having to get three character traits and i got it this really helped alot (;

• rylee says:

  March 2, 2011 at 11:53 am

  we should all live by those ideas, they might help us in the long run, i know i will try harder to live like her

• rylee says:

  March 2, 2011 at 11:46 am

  these are very good philosophys to live by