Let me give you the example from the book — Page 139, Lesson 213

I want to walk you through two important categories of stress that we haven't covered yet: imaginary stress, which is also called anxiety, and organizational stress. Let's start with imaginary stress, or anxiety. Both human beings and animals can suffer from stress even when there is no actual stressor present. That's the key point here — the stress response can be triggered without a real, immediate threat. What's happening is anxiety: the feeling that a future risk exists, combined with a sense of being unable to cope or a lack of self-confidence. Let me give you the example from the book. Think of a dog being taken to the vet. The dog experienced pain during a previous visit. Now, on the next visit, even though no painful stressor is currently present — the vet hasn't done anything yet — the dog shows signs of anxiety. The same thing happens to us. Many of us have similar feelings about a visit to the dentist. That anxious anticipation, even without a current stressor, will inevitably affect our performance. Here's something really important for you as a pilot: unpleasant events in life may be apparently completely forgotten, but the anxiety associated with them can be brought to the surface by one of your senses — a scene, a noise, a smell. That sensory trigger can distort your perception. This anxious apprehension can be strong enough to trigger the General Adaptation Syndrome, or GAS, response that we discussed earlier. So a smell in the cockpit, a certain sound from the engine, or a visual scene could bring back anxiety from a past event you thought you'd forgotten, and that could distort how you perceive what's happening around you. That's a real threat to safe flying. Now let's move to organizational stress. This is stress generated by the organization you work for. In the aviation industry today, financial pressures on companies can cause pilots to work under considerable pressure. The book gives specific examples: small unserviceabilities may be carried — meaning minor defects on the aircraft are not fixed; duty hours are stretched to the limit; checks are rushed to make a slot time. These are all ways that organizational pressure creates stress for pilots. The book gives an extreme example to make the point clear. The president of an airline that was in financial difficulties instructed pilots to fly below the legal minima in bad weather. They were also instructed to ignore maximum take-off weights and to reduce minimum fuel reserves. As a direct result of these decisions, the airline suffered three serious accidents in a short period. That's a stark illustration of how organizational stress, driven by poor management and short-term financial concerns, can lead directly to catastrophic outcomes. The key takeaway here is this: if management continually exerts pressure on its employees to operate in ways that are more consistent with short-term monetary concerns than with safety and good practice, then the whole company will develop what we call organizational stress. It's not just an individual problem — it becomes a company-wide condition that affects every pilot and every decision.