Leap of Faith

It is the moment of truth. After weeks, months, maybe years spent planning, second-guessing, and dreaming, you've finally arrived at the point of no return. You're ready to take a chance -- a big, ambitious, sweaty-palms chance. It could be a new job or career, a product unlike anything your unit has ever produced, or a radically different strategy for your company. Whatever it is, the risks are high. This moment is a lot like being miles above the earth, poised in the open doorway of a plane, with a parachute strapped to your back. Time to take that big leap. Can you do it?

Cheryl Stearns can. She's one of the world's top skydivers, having held more than 30 world records, including most jumps by a woman in a 24-hour period (352, or one jump every four minutes). She has won the national skydiving championship 21 times and won the world championships for civilians and for military personnel a total of 7 times. In all, Stearns, 46, has made more than 14,000 jumps -- more than any other woman on the planet.

As a child, Stearns used to dream that she could fly. When she was older, she couldn't wait to experience the real thing, so at 17, she convinced her parents to give her $40 for a one-day parachuting course. Her parents hoped that skydiving was a passing fancy. It wasn't. When she accompanied her brother to visit an Army recruiter in Scottsdale, Arizona, Stearns saw pictures of the Golden Knights, the Army's elite skydiving team, and knew that she wanted to join. Five years and 1,500 jumps later, she became the first woman to make the team.

Stearns's latest world-record attempt is her most ambitious -- and most dangerous. She plans to ride in a hot-air balloon to the edge of the atmosphere -- more than 24 miles up -- and skydive to earth wearing what amounts to an astronaut suit. Stearns expects to break the sound barrier and hit 800 MPH or more, which is far faster than the 737s that she flies in her day job as a pilot for US Airways. Talk about a leap of faith.

Fast Company met with Stearns at the Golden Knights drop zone at Raeford Airport, near Fayetteville, North Carolina. In preparation for an upcoming competition, she was practicing her specialties: style and accuracy jumps. In between dives, she shared her rules for practicing big leaps, taking them, and landing on your feet.

Practice perfection.

Stearns is a preparation freak. Before she gets on a plane, she runs for about an hour, during which time she visualizes hitting dead center of her target with her heel. She does this repeatedly, honing a kind of tunnel vision. "I visualize the center instead of the whole round thing," she says. "If I thought of the whole target, I would be training my body to be less precise." Then, using a small practice pad, she steps on the target circle between 100 and 200 times. Although she plans to land on her right foot, she practices using her left as well, in case she finds herself out of position. "This wakes up my brain and sharpens my 'eye-foot' coordination," she says. It's a monotonous routine that might seem unnecessary for a skydiver of Stearns's caliber, like Tiger Woods practicing tap-ins. But that's why she does it. She takes nothing for granted.

Look before you leap -- but know what to look for.

One thing that Stearns can't control is the elements, namely the wind. Gliding to the ground with a 252-square-foot parachute designed to catch and hold the air, she's like a surfer riding a wave. She reads, then adapts to, the wind currents. "When people miss the target area, they ask, 'Where did those winds come from?' " she says. "I say, 'It was there. You weren't paying attention.' "

First, Stearns assesses the conditions at ground level. "I can stand here and tell you that this is a 2-to-3-MPH wind. I know by how much my hair twitches and by how the leaves in the trees move. Today, there's very little wind, so I can get on top of the target all the way down. But if there were high winds, and I didn't take them into account, I could land two miles from here."

In the plane, Stearns checks the wind streamer, a one-pound weight with a crepe-paper tail that gets tossed at about 2,000 feet. If the streamer lands one mile south of the drop zone, she jumps one mile north of it. "Nature is always changing," she says. "It's out of my control, but I rarely get fooled because I'm not paying attention."

Forget "no fear" -- you need the right kind of fear.

Jumping out of an airplane requires a leap of faith. In yourself. In your equipment. In whatever gives you strength at that moment. You need to have confidence and courage, but too much confidence is a dangerous quality in a skydiver. "That's what kills people," Stearns says. Oddly, the one emotion you need is the one that might prevent you from leaping in the first place: fear. You don't want to experience so much fear that you're paralyzed, but an awareness of the danger is crucial. It protects you from your own ego and from peer pressure to push your abilities too far, to show off. "I can watch someone and know that he's headed for a serious injury," she says, "because he doesn't even know what fear is. He thinks he's invincible. Maybe, if he's lucky, he'll have a close call that will wake him up."