Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Fighter Pilot: What It Takes to Perform Under Pressure | Commander Kristen Findlay

Episode Date: May 15, 2024

Imagine what it takes to land an $80 million fighter jet on a moving target — in the middle of the ocean — at night.The extreme precision, split-second timing, and unwavering focus required for such a feat are beyond the grasp of ordinary experience.Our guest today, Commander Kristen Findlay (née Hansen), knows precisely what it takes to land an F/A-18 Super Hornet on an aircraft carrier – in rough seas and in the dark, where every decision can have monumental consequences.Kristen is a distinguished Naval aviator whose career spans two decades of sustained high performance in military service. She’s accumulated over 2,700 hours of flight time, 66 combat sorties over Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, and just under 500 carrier landings. As a prior TOPGUN instructor - yes, just like the movie - and current Commanding Officer of Strike Fighter Squadron 122 (The “Flying Eagles”) she leads and trains some of the Navy’s most elite pilots.Kristen's career experience now extends to Hollywood, where she served as a technical consultant and pilot for the hit film, "Top Gun: Maverick.” Epic.Kristen offers a unique perspective on leadership, teamwork, and mental toughness. In this conversation you’ll hear valuable insights into high-stakes decision-making and the lessons we can all learn from a life lived at full throttle._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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You fall back to your basic level of preparation. You have no choice but to land the most excruciating seconds of your life. Knock it off. Shut up. You have 18 seconds. Just do it. Welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade and training a high-performance psychologist.

So I want you to imagine what it takes to land an $80 million fighter jet on a moving target in the middle of the ocean at night. The extreme precision, the split-second timing, and the unwavering focus that is required for such a feat, it's beyond the grasp of ordinary experience. Our guest today, Commander Kristen Finley, knows precisely what it takes to land an F-18 Super Hornet on an aircraft carrier in rough seas and in the dark, where every decision can have monumental consequences. Kristen is a distinguished naval aviator whose career spans two decades of sustained high performance in military service. She's accumulated over 2,700 hours of flight time, 66 combat sorties over Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan,

and just under 500 carrier landings. I mean, talk about performance over time. She embodies it. And as a prior Top Gun instructor, yes, just like the movie, and current commanding officer of Strike Fighter Squadron 122, the Flying Eagles, she leads and trains some of the Navy's most elite pilots. She is a leader of leaders. Kristen's career experience now extends to Hollywood, where she served as a technical consultant and a pilot for the hit film Top Gun Maverick. I mean, how fun is that? Kristen offers a unique perspective on leadership, teamwork, and mental toughness. And this

conversation offers valuable applied insights into high stakes decision-making and the lessons that we can all learn from a life lived at full throttle. So with that, let's dive right into this conversation with Commander Kristen Findley. Kristen, I am so stoked that you're here at the Mastery Lab. Thank you for coming in. Thank you for having me. This is so exciting. Awesome. So let's just start kind of with the basics. How are you? I am super stoked. It's a get to drive down here today, see new scenery for me, and get to meet you and your staff.

So it's been a super fun morning. Yeah, very cool. Okay, so let's just start. I've been wanting to talk to you about a lot. Like there's three main things that I want to talk about. I want to talk about performance and specifically high performance preparation for it, and then how you navigate high stakes environments. Okay. So we'll, we'll talk about that as one chunk. I also want to talk about your consulting business, I guess, with Top Gun. And the third, I want to get into burnout and fatigue and high stress over many

years for you, decades of working in high stress environments and how you manage that. So let's first start with, it was the USS Truman that I got to spend some time on. And so why are they bringing out a sports psychologist? I got to work with the XOCO HUDs, which is the heads of departments, and the fighter pilots while they're somewhere in the mid-Atlantic. And as we were prepping for the week that I was going to be on the ship with them, the CEO asked me for a deck, my talking points. So I sent it over, and he sent it back like, this is not acceptable.

And it was something about peak performance. This was early in my career. And it fundamentally shaped me because I was like, wait, what do you mean not peak performance? And his note was, I'm interested in sustaining superior performance during combat. I said, oh man, my sports stuff seems really flimsy right now. And so it was awesome because I think both of us, pilots, HUDs, and XOCO, and myself, we were all trying to learn together

best practices from both industries. And I want to learn from you. When I say peak performance, what happens for you in your mind? And then when I say sustaining superior performance, what happens for you? It's funny you mentioned sports. I grew up playing soccer. So I think a lot of the way I look at my career now in aviation and just kind of how I look

at life, I think it was very much shaped by soccer. Just that's what we did growing up. Everything was trying to get to the next team, taking feedback, you know, trying to you have to make that count. Like every game has to count. Every flight has to count. Every training session you have has to count because that's a finite amount of time I have to build what I need to on game day or in combat. So, you know, whether you're doing a sports team or you're in an airplane, that concept, I think, is the same thing. I think what hit me at an early age, too, when we're talking about,

you know, I could have a great soccer game one day. I was a goalkeeper. But the next day, if I went out and let in three goals, like that doesn't necessarily, like it kind of erases everything. So when it comes to performance and peak performance, they, I almost feel like they have to go hand in hand because it has to be consistent. And I remember growing up, they're like, cool, you have moments of brilliance, but you're not consistent. So I think if you're really at your peak, you're almost able to, you know, you can consistently perform well that people can now start to trust you. Like whether it was in the net of, hey, if the ball gets by us, it's not going to get by you. Or you're in the aircraft or,

hey, even on a day that we're not super stroking, we're at least at a performance level that you have my back, I have your back, and we're going to be able to accomplish the mission. So I don't think you can really have one without the other. Maybe on the championship day, I have to have the best day I've ever had in my life, maybe, or, you know, on that one day, a combat that we hope we never have, you know, I hope I'm stroking at 1000%. What does stroking mean? I guess for me, like everything's just moving along. You know, like I'm thinking quickly, everything's coming naturally. I'm just not, I'm not struggling. Everything's clicking,

I guess is the way I define that. That's the stroking. At least for me. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. So when I hear you talk about that peak performance where the CEO and what I've come to adopt now is that like the peak performance idea is like there's a mountaintop, you get to it and then there's a fall down. Like, and you're saying, right, you want to, you, you design your practices in a way that they all count. Each practice counts, each moment counts. And that would lead to sustaining superior performance or sustaining excellence, if you will. So let's go into practice, how you would ready yourself to be able to do the thing that you are tasked to do. How can you

teach some of the best practices for preparation and readiness? And I'm thinking about focus. I'm thinking about mindset. I'm thinking about self-talk, mental imagery. Your checklists are pretty, and your imagery are pretty robust. So I don't want to lead you down a path, but when you think about preparation, can you talk about some of the ways that you do it? makes it through first contact and things start to fall apart. You're like, this is not the way I planned it. But I think the preparation piece is so key because it allows you to start making informed, flexible decisions from that point. So if I have done all of the prep work, I now understand that if this initial thought process doesn't happen, I know the consequences of that and I can easily either cover for them or just flex to a new game plan. We do a ton for, for me personally, I'm definitely a preparer. I think that was actually a, something I had to unlearn a little bit. Like it was, if I

wasn't prepared for it, I just kind of fell apart or I froze. I, it took me a long time to be able to show up and just kind of flex and then be confident enough that I knew enough that I was going to be okay. Wait, you hold on. You are dropping so many gems in here. So you preparation fall to the level of your training, not rise to the occasion. I completely agree with you. And I don't think a lot of people do. That rise to the occasion has there's so much energy behind that, but I don't,

I haven't experienced it that way for myself, nor with the teams I work with. So let's, let's open that up for a minute. Okay. Talk about how you prepare. Is it like, is it a deep focus where you're like a cat staring at a mouse, like nothing can pull you away? Or is it that type of deep focus that allows you to be agile and flexible later? Or is it something different than that? I think it's probably a combination. Depends on what task I think is a big determination of that. So in general, I'm a steadier. So, and a lot of aviation is a lot of studying procedures, numbers, and all of that. So I want to have for me all of that so ingrained in my head. I can recall it without having to stop and think about it because I don't have time to

stop and think about it. I just have to be able to do it. I want to be able to focus on what I'm doing. But most situations, at least airborne or in sports, are usually dynamic. So I have to be able to focus on what I'm doing, but still have enough wherewithal around me to be able to incorporate my surroundings into whatever task that I am doing. We do a lot of teaching. And some of my commands before, we would have these enormous slide decks on PowerPoint, for example. And it's

a bit of a robotic way to teach. And a lot of people would be like, oh my gosh, Top Gun and Weapon Schools, we hate listening to your lectures because it's all memorized. So we have, for example, I had about 350 slides. I had speaking points in every single one of those slides. And to get through our murder board process, we'd have to- Wait, what did you call that? We call it murder boarding. Which is? You keep practicing over and over again until the staff is like, you're good enough to go. So you would have- Murder board? It's less gruesome. It's less gruesome than what?

Than it really is. Like 10 people would sit in a room. You would give your lecture. They would take copious notes down to, hey, like on slide 50, your T's were touching. Like we have a level of detail. It's kind of a running joke. But literally, if you had two T's on the page, they're not allowed to touch for aesthetics the way we do stuff. You're not allowed to look at your slides. So you'd have to be able to reach over and fast forward every single one of your slides without looking and just have everything memorized behind you. So I could just sit here and talk to you and slide forward and just know what I was supposed to say on that slide and hope I didn't press twice. So there wasn't a slide

behind me that does not have the same bullet points. So that speaks to the importance of having a base knowledge, right? So you would drill to get your knowledge base in an orderly way so that you could bring emotion forward, so that you could bring connection forward. I would say most people would argue mostly that it's a very unemotional way to teach. But what it taught me though, and I knew I would get nervous in a bunch of people. But to your point of preparation, I knew that I needed to essentially be able to deliver the first five minutes of my lecture pretty much blacked out. Like I knew I was going to get out there and just kind of freeze a little bit.

And I had to know it so well that I could just be on complete autopilot, completely detached and get through that. And then I could start to, you know, relax a little bit, get in my rhythm and start to like interact. But for that particular, uh, skillset, like I had to be so focused that I could just do things automatically without thinking. And that's not necessarily, if I go out and fly a mission, a lot of chair flying is good. Like we have simulators that can help us with that. So I need to have kind of like you said, that baseline knowledge set. And then on top of that, you start bringing in the dynamic portions of if this, then I

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Finding Mastery is brought to you by David Protein. I'm pretty intentional about what I eat, and the majority of my nutrition comes from whole foods. And when I'm traveling or in between meals on a demanding day, certainly, I need something quick that will support the way that I feel and think and perform. And that's why I've been leaning on David Protein Bars. And so has the team here at Finding Mastery. In fact, our GM, Stuart, he loves them so much. I just want to kind of quickly put them on the spot. Stuart, I know you're listening. I think you might be the reason that we're running out of these bars so quickly. They're incredible, Mike. I love them. One a day, one a day. What do you mean one a day? There's way more than that happening here. Don't tell. Okay. All right. Look, they're incredibly simple. They're effective. 28 grams of protein, just 150 calories, and zero grams of sugar. It's rare to find something that fits so conveniently into a performance-based lifestyle and actually tastes good. Dr. Peter Attia, someone who's been on the show, it's a great episode, by the way,

is also their chief science officer. So I know they've done their due diligence in that category. My favorite flavor right now is the chocolate chip cookie dough. And a few of our teammates here at Finding Mastery have been loving the fudge brownie and peanut butter. I know, Stuart, you're still listening here. So getting enough protein matters. And that can't be understated, not just for strength, but for energy and focus, recovery, for longevity. And I love that David is making that easier. So if you're trying to hit your daily protein goals with something seamless, I'd love

for you to go check them out. Get a free variety pack, a $25 value and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash FindingMastery. Before we dive into more of the training, let's set the scene. In your words, what do you do? I guess my first reaction was like, I fly airplanes. I guess it's a little more complex than that. They're not just airplanes. Yeah. Yeah. Usually at a, I guess at the base level, all of us would consider ourselves naval aviators. Get to operate some really cool machines on a daily basis. As I've gotten more senior, that's evolved to being responsible for people as well, which is a different aspect of the job.

That's very rewarding and fulfilling and challenging in different ways than just being an operator. So are you still operating now? I am. Yeah. So you're operating and teaching? Yes. Okay.

And so what was the most, I don't know, I guess, exciting jet that you would fly? F-18s. F-18s, flat out. And that it's honestly, we don't necessarily change platforms at all. Oh, you don't. So it's not like you, it's not like there's a minor league to, to the F, all the way up to the F-18. No, we go through flight training and then depending on what was available, we call it

needs of the Navy and that, and then how well you did. It's kind of racked and stacked. You put in your wishlist and if the Navy had openings for that slot and that you were high enough on the wish list, you got what you want. And then kind of go from there. And so you picked the super hornet. I did. I actually flew legacy hornets. We sometimes call them baby hornets, F-18A through D.

So I did that for three of my operational tours. And we've subsequently phased those out. we're all Super Hornets right now. Describe why the F-18 got that name and what that, what the jet's capabilities are. I'm actually not sure how we named it Hornet and Super Hornet. Um, yeah, I'd have to, I'm not sure who gets to decide that or who decided the Joint Strike Fighter was lightning. I'm not sure who comes up with that. For us, we consider the F-18 a fourth gen. This fifth gen is kind of your stealth fighters.

And we're kind of a jack of all trades. We're the master of nothing but mediocre at everything just because you have such a broad range of skill sets that you can't necessarily perform all of them perfectly all at the same time. Okay, so what are those capabilities? There's speed, there's some sort of axis envelope turning type of stuff. I'm saying all the wrong words, I'm sure. But what are the main capabilities that the F-18 is? So we would probably define it as I have an air to surface capability. So I'm able to drop bombs if we have to. We have an air to air capability. So if bad guys come out with other fighter airplanes, we could fight each other there.

And then what's unique to the Hornet or the Super Hornet is we can land on an aircraft carrier. So I can take my runway wherever I need to for operations and park it off a coast and run missions from there. So she's maneuverable. So we can dogfighting as everybody's kind of familiar with. So all of those kind of, I can fight my way in to a target and fight my way out and then land on the boat afterwards.

Land on a boat. So pedestrian, isn't it? Yeah. So it's a $65 million craft. Oh, good. It's probably more. Oh, the Super Hornets. Yeah, that's probably about what it is these days.

At least that's what I read publicly. So not that anyone's buying any of them, but it's a serious investment. And you're landing them on an aircraft carrier, which is being on a flight deck the few times I have, it is one, I learned that it's one of the most dangerous places to operate or work. And it's a bunch of 20 year olds running around like with green vests and yellow vests or whatever they are, like they've all got, it's amazing orchestration of talent and bodies and coordination, I guess, of, of you guys doing your thing, but you're landing on a surface that is undulating up and down and sideways. And you've got, you've got to hook it. You've got a little

thing that drops down and you're going how fast and how short of a runway is it? Oh, I should know how long it is. It's something like shorter than a football field or something. I'm not, I forget. We're about a hundred, 130 to 140 knots, I think coming down. What does that mean? Like miles per hour? Close to miles per hour. It's not exactly, but it's close enough.

So a hundred ish miles an hour landing on something that I think it is smaller than a football field. There's two wires. Some have four, the newer ones have three. Three. Okay. And you've got, you're trying to catch the first one, I would imagine. Three is actually. You want to collect all three or all four? You shoot for the, we target one, we call it targeting a wire and it has to do with

hook to ramp. So I would like to, you know, you would drop the hook. So it's lower than the rest of the jet. I don't want to be closer to the deck than I have to be with that. And then they're probably usually targeting around the two, I think on a three-wire ship. I've never actually landed on a three-wire ship. But you know, the first one is there, but it's not necessarily what you're aiming for. It will definitely stop you though. Yeah. You're aiming for the middle one. Yep. Yeah. Got it. Okay. Can you explain what it's like to land on a carrier at night? Somebody once described it and I think it's a good description of shut off, open your closet and just look into a bunch of blackness and just kind of chuck yourself into the closet and just complete blackness. And you're like, there's nothing out there. What am I flying towards? Obviously a gross exaggeration, but I mean, there are nights that the only thing you see out there is these little bobbing lights and

nothing else. And you're like, this was a terrible idea. And then we all kind of stack up on top of each other. Everybody has their own altitude as you wait to come down. And I think the best thing that makes me feel better is everybody else out there thinks this was a terrible idea too. Everybody does. Yeah, we were like, who thought this was like smart? Let's turn off the lights because you might need the land, you know, during combat, I guess, with lights off. They will usually, but you have to have the lights on

and they're at least on the deck. We're more worried about other signature patterns than the lights. That's usually the least of our worries. So as long as I know where the ship is and you can get me behind it, I think from a procedural standpoint, night is sometimes easier

and that I get to start after the ship and just fly straight at it for a couple of miles and I can be lined up. And we have some very cool technology that we've recently introduced that make this a little easier. But I mean, it doesn't matter how many traps that you have, like you land at night and your feet are just shaking off of the rudder pedals. And then they want to taxi you all around the carrier deck. And we actually taxi with our feet. So just, you know, you're trying to- Once you land.

Yes. And they unhook the hook. Okay. So you're trying to steer and your feet are still shaking. Okay. So that's what I wanted to get to because this is what the pilot shared with me. He said that the only way that he could describe it to me is, he says, you drive a car, right?

And I said, yeah. He goes, imagine that your entire, this was his experience that he could describe it to me is he says, you drive a car, right? And I said, yeah. He goes, imagine that your entire, this was his experience that he could relate it to. You're driving desert road, your whole family's in the car. And again, he had a wagon behind him where he had like a moving wagon where he had like a, I guess a U-Haul or whatever filled with stuff. And he said a truck driver was coming at him and it's a single lane highway. And he couldn't tell if the truck driver was in his lane or not. It was dark. And sure enough, the truck driver was, they were in the same lane coming at him. So he had to make this maneuver, swerve off. As he's swerving off the road into the dirt shoulder, the U-Haul is now parallel to the car, which is not where it's supposed to be.

His whole family is screaming. He's driving, trying to figure it out. He said he figured it out. He doesn't know exactly how it happened. And as he slowed down and came off the shoulder, he says, what do you think that would be like? I said, oh, like the adrenaline would be coursing. And he goes, that's what it's like to land. He goes, that's the only time I felt that

type of shaking in the feet as you talked and you're pedaling as you do that. So how do you manage adrenaline? How do you do that? Personally, I find that I start singing to myself because I start overthinking it, especially the last couple of, it's about, we call it 18 seconds in the group. And that is from when I could be on my instruments, but around 18 seconds before I land on the ship, I usually switch over to doing everything visually. And that 18 seconds, it's a bunch of fine motor skills and a lot of things that can go wrong very fast. And I find that if I start overthinking it or if I start worrying about how all the different ways I could screw it up, then I'm inevitably going to screw it up. So I have found over the years somehow that if I sing to myself and I'm not a singer,

I sound like a cat dying. So I just have to pick something in my head that if I start going there, I'll just start singing a song to try to blank everything out in my head. And then, uh, and after that, just kind of training takeover that into some self-talk, you had talked about that too. I definitely talked to myself like it was on a sports field, like, and I was definitely brought up in like the tough love category so like right up of knock it off shut up you have 18 seconds just do it like just so that's the way you're it's almost like you're coaching yourself or is it is that self-talk voice somebody else coaching you probably coaching myself I do it in the third person for sure but I'll kind of almost just yell at myself like hey

you don't have time for this like you need to focus. Oh, I love that. Yeah. So it is task focused and it is aggressive. For me, it is. Yeah. No, I think that all too often we want to say be positive. And there's a huge platform for that. And I'm much more interested in what works, but not the cost of like, you stupid, what the hell's wrong with you? Like not that type of chipping away at the core of the person, but the directive, directive and aggressiveness in the way you speak to yourself, I think is really important. Just to note. I think like, I don't necessarily go to like, Oh, you're stupid. Like, so let's

say I don't, you don't hit a wire, right? You have to go around again and try it. I think there is something, especially in our environment, you have no choice but to land. Like there's, like, there's no other choice. You know, I can't just decide I'm going to go home and take the jet and land it on shore. That, that is not my choice. So at some point I can miss. And then I love Ted Lasso's like be a goldfish, you know, kind of like learn what I need to learn from that situation. But that's come and gone. And now I have I have to try it again. And I've done it a million times, not a million times,

but like I've done it. I know I can do it. Like relax, you know, shake it out, try again. And then, you know, sometimes we call it having a night in a barrel. People have done gone around like five, six times how to hit the tanker. And like, we kind of all joke about it and you can't joke about it too much because you're like, that could be me in two days, you know? And then just realize, again, I have no choice, figure it out and stay focused. And you're, you're eventually going to get down. I know how the skillset to do it. I it's all mental at that point. And will you, so then that sounds more positive. All right, you got this figured out. No big deal. You know, let's take another crack at it. Will you breathe in that state in, in that, in those moments, or is it mostly a cognitive? A little bit. I probably don't breathe as much

as we joke, wiggle our toes. So exterior or we'll say, Hey, if you realize you're squeezing the black out of the stick, our control stick and our throttles are black. So if you find you're really gripping them too hard, the wiggle of your toes tends to work in a lot of those situations. It's enough that you focus on something else and relax. Because a lot of it is physical. Like if you're flying the aircraft, it's a fine motor skill. So if you're tensed up, that is going to translate to something you don't want the aircraft to do. So you know, they're all down on the line and now it's time to get hyped up. You got this focus, you know, the talk changes depending on what phase

of the game or what phase of flight you're in. A thousand percent, super sophisticated that you're able to notice those nuances or to know those nuances, but what you do is very sophisticated. It's a serious craft. And so I would expect, I would anticipate that you would know the differentiating, how to differentiate between different types of self-talk. The wiggle of the toes for the psychobiology nerd that's listening is that there's a bottom-up approach and there's top-down approaches. And that interface between physiology and psychology is kind of where like, not to be corny, but that's where the magic happens. It's that interface between the two. And sometimes the bottom up, literally toes being bottom up, but it's a placeholder for using your physiology to impact your psychology.

And you can go the other way around. Self-talk is definitely top down. And so you've got strategies for both. Breathing is like an interesting one right in between the two. So you would use some bottom-up, literally relax the fine motor muscles, and then some top-down. For the listener that also maybe would miss the detail that you're talking about, fine motor skills are the first to be compromised when we're anxious, right? And so there you are, violinist, vocalist, right? And fighter pilots, apparently, fine motor skills. All right. Can you share with me a time that you really struggled, whether it's landing or I don't know if you've had combat experiences that have been like really hard.

I do not do dog fighting well to this day. We call it basic fighter maneuvering or BFM. It does not come natural to me at all. Well, that's interesting. Some people it does. Yeah. I have some friends. I have a buddy that was probably one of the best in naval aviation. It just made sense to him. He could max, we call it max performing the aircraft. So putting the jet in regimes that are right on the edge, you could just see every visual cue when it came to energy states

between his aircraft and the other aircraft and just could just absolutely own anybody he was fighting. Every time I thought I was getting good enough to like maybe hold my own against him, he'd just go out and kick my butt again. I can do it, but it takes a lot more effort for me. And I have to do it consistently. It's a very perishable skill for me. Um, and I don't, I don't enjoy it. Not because it's hard. I very much enjoy doing hard things and being challenged. It's just something that like starting out, like I had a bad experience with and I'm just never learned to really love it. And when I was in the effort, we call it the fleet replacement squadron, which is what I'm in charge of right now, ironically. So this is a good, in my current position to remember when I was young and learning and how much of a mess I was back then. And that maybe everybody can be taught with a little bit of work. But I just could not get it. I kept failing flights that involved dog fighting. And it was, you know, from a confidence standpoint, it's just

real a bummer. You're like, I got, we call it rolling a class. So the class I was learning with, I had enough difficulty that were like, you're going to see that one again. And we're going to give you like, hold you back essentially. Yeah. And it's sort of like, Hey, I don't have time to, to have you see all these flights again. I'm going to put you back with the class behind you to go through that process again, which for a bunch of type A's is a real struggle and, you know, kind of hits the ego, but it's also a great lesson. And I think somebody once said, I don't know where I picked it up. They're like, Hey, make this the best thing that ever happened to you. And it kind of, when I look back at it, the extra time that my instructors took with me, and I had a fabulous group of instructors that were, um,

just really willing to work with me. And I think as a whole, our organization is phenomenal with, if you have a good attitude and you want to learn, we're here to help you. And they were with me. Um, but I definitely had to get over, um, you know, like, all right, I've dug myself a hole. If I screw up again, there's no more rolling. They're just going to kick me out of the program. So, um, for me, I would have to definitely, I write down trends. Like, so every flight would be very deliberate of, hey, I'm having trouble with this. Let's, this is what I'm going to focus on on the next flight. And just kind of like slowly, methodically worked my way through it.

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Just head to FelixGray.com and use the code FINDINGMASTERY20 at checkout. Again, that's Felix Gray. You spell it F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y.com and use the code FindingMastery20 at FelixGray.com for 20% off. Is that like a hot wash at the end that you would just quickly get down your experience? We have a very long debriefing process. So after a flight, you would, you know, write everything up on a whiteboard and then we watch tapes and then we... What does it mean to put it on the whiteboard? We would, we call it drawing arrows. So I would draw what I thought my aircraft would do. The instructor would draw

what their aircraft do. We compare, because a lot of dog fighting is a lot of geometry. So you would draw up the geometry of the fight and then write what you're, hey, I think at this point, this is where the train came off the tracks. Like this mistake cascaded. Concretely, what would a mistake be? Let's say I sold, I'm going to say, I'll explain it, sold too much energy. Like I pulled too hard back and I depleted all my airspeed. And that left me at say an energy deficit that was unrecoverable and it allowed somebody else to gain an advantage. Would that be like the somehow got the rear wheels loose and you weren't able to keep the edge of the envelope, the power unit going?

Yeah. For example, except you're like, hey, like I pulled too hard there and I skidded my car out, you know, and then from there it was kind of all over. Um, so we would debrief, you know, Hey, find those points or, and down to mechanics too. Like, Hey, how did, where did I point my aircraft? Did I point it in the wrong place? Cause that, um, ends up, you know, putting you in a bad position. Did I, you know, did I, I used to what we call bust the deck. So we have a training floor. So I am never going to go talk about like top gun. You said you busted the deck, you know, like that's a thing, but it's a safety. What does that mean? So I would pick depending on what, so like we're at sea level here. So I would say, all right, 5,000 feet. I'm just never going to go below that. I'm going to pretend that's the, like the real floor, like the real ground. If we hit that in training, then I'm just never going to go below that. I'm going to pretend that's the real floor, like the real ground. If we hit that in training, then I'm dead. So without actually dying,

which is convenient. So I was doing maneuvers that when I was learning that I would go through that hard deck and that's a safety thing. They were like, if you don't learn how to do that maneuver without either by knowing what altitude you started with or be able to do it correctly that you don't lose so much altitude that you hit the deck, then we're going to have a problem. Okay. So it's busting the deck. Yes. Got it. Okay. So you've actually busted the deck is what we all have and everybody has. Okay. Totally got it. So when you bust the deck in that moment, there's two things I want to pull apart. In that moment, when you realize that you might have, might have not, how do you manage that?

And then afterwards, when you're in front of your peers and your instructor, and it's being called out that you've made a fatal, quote unquote, mistake, how do you manage that? So can you bring me into your mind in either of those scenarios? So first of all, the biggest thing I need to realize is real time that I did it in the cockpit. So I need to be aware that I've made the mistake. So it's almost worse if my instructor is the one it is worse. Did you realize there's, so there's no big red light that comes, you know, on like, Hey, you just, you just crashed. It's not like that. No, you've got to know that you went to four, nine. Yep. And then I have to stop the fight. So you stop it. You stop there. The second I do that, it is expected that I will say, we call it knock it off. That means we're done fighting. So I hit it. I'll say knock it off deck. So I hit the deck. Knock it off. We're done. It sounds like a, it's like what I would say to like a friend if we're almost about to fight. Hey, listen, knock it off, dude.

Right. Like, so where did that come from? Knock it off. I'm not sure the Genesis of it. Okay. So you'd say knock it. Sorry for my rabbit hole there. So you'd say knock it off. So you pull out of the menu or out of the, the, the exercise. All right. And then how do you manage those next 10 seconds? So for us, like airborne, it's pretty simple. Like I would write it on my new board card, like, hey, our second fight, I knocked it off for deck and then we just set up and do it again. It becomes problematic when I was a student and I was doing it habitually, like that trend

is really bad, which is what got me in trouble. And I had to work really hard at being like, anytime I did a maneuver, I was like, I cannot afford to break the deck anymore because it's going to be the end of my career if I continue to do this. So when you knew that that was like, let's put it in golf terms, I cannot put it in the water. Terrible thinking. And we all know that, right. We want to focus on where we want to place the ball. By the way, I don't golf and I don't fly jets, but so how would you course correct from what you don't want to what you do want? I give myself a little bit of a buffer and execution. So like right now, I know I haven't done a lot of that

type of fighting and I know I'm not proficient. So I will give myself a couple of extra thousand of feet and be like, today, I'm going to start this maneuver high enough that I know that I'm probably going to land out at seven or six. And that's not right either, but at least I'm alive. And then when I get better at it and I start building confidence and being more proficient at it and be like, all right. And sometimes at the top of the maneuver before I'll do it, I'd be like, you just got to do it, you know, stop being scared and make it happen. So that's that tactical, aggressive coaching. Yeah. I think that's probably the best way to describe it. Give it a little buffer and then just be like, at some point, like you got to make it happen. And what gives you the right

to say that you can do it? What do you back yourself with? Somewhere like deep down, like I, I am pretty positive in, or I guess I give myself enough grace that I'm like, I can do this. I can do anything that I put my mind to. And I think deep down, like I've been lucky enough to have that. And then on top of that, I have done it before. So mentally, I know like I am capable of doing it. I think my challenge is trying to get through what we call like chaff, like all of the negative stuff, all the bad experiences and before and trying to like connect like my innate confidence that I am capable of doing everything and my knowledge that I have done it before. And then just kind of at some point of, you know, jumping off the diving board and being like, all right, like you got to put your head underwater at some

point, you know, like when you're, you're learning how to swim. Um, and so I think I struggle sometimes on being able to make that connection, especially cause I'm not comfortable in that particular mission set. And I do always struggle with it. So it's a very much of like, almost, I have to get out there, pump myself up and get, get kind of the heart and the mind together. Uh, once in a while, you just, you just beautifully outlined, um, the actual experience with when people are speaking to themselves is like, I know I've done it before. Sometimes we haven't done it before, but I know that based on A, B, C, and D, my history of those, I can get to F, G, and H. Is that right? Yeah. I can get to F and G. There's some credibility there,

but there's still a leap because you haven't maybe done the thing recently, or you haven't done it well, or you haven't fully crossed the chasm there. And so what I'm trying to understand is the intellectual piece that you go through, and then you're resting on your history. But what gives you that deep knowing that you can do anything you put your mind to? Where did that come from? I don't know. I really don't. So tell me about the dining room table when you're growing up or the breakfast table when you're growing up. My mom was very active in our lives.

She did a lot of, she did a lot of our coaching, like worked in the school system. I think, you know, looking back, they never told us we couldn't do anything. Like I would come up with all kinds of crazy ideas of things I wanted to do. Like be a fighter pilot. I think I had started out wanting to be an astronaut. And I think my, when I was super young, like I was upset about having to go to kindergarten and missing shuttle launches. And I think my parents were like, yeah, that's adorable. You'll, you'll grow out of it. And then, you know, now my mom's like, I think like, why did you want to do this fighter pilot stuff? I thought you just wanted to go to space. And I'm like, like, that's safer, I think like, why did you want to do this fighter pilot stuff? I thought you just wanted to go to space. And I'm like, like, that's safer.

I'm like, what are you worried about? But I think they just kind of let us. My mom was an athlete. My dad wasn't. But he was kind of I always like to think of the brains behind the operation when we were learning how to play soccer. I remember him reading soccer books. Like, I have no idea what the sport is. And my mom would go out and coach.

So I think maybe it was just because nobody ever told us, no, they're like, if you want to do this, go, go do it. If you don't want to do it, you have to finish the season. Cause if you're a part of the team or finish what you started, but if you would like to try something else, have at it. Did your parents help you experiment or did they help you say yes? It could be both. I think say yes. And I think helped almost be more focused than experiment. I think we're a much more of the, you finish what you started. If you're a part of a team, that means that you're kind of, you have a responsibility to that team and you stick with it until it is an appropriate time to either move on or change what you wanted to do.

I'm going to come back to the whiteboard, I promise. But what does it mean to be a great teammate? I think that other people can rely on you. I think reliability is a big thing, that they're going to show up and that they're also there to help you and not, for lack of a better term term backstab. I think what was interesting going into one of my last tours, there's usually multiple squadrons in what we call an air wing and an air wing is the full, full body of aircraft that go on an aircraft carrier. But there's, you know, four F-18 squadrons and helicopter squadrons and Hawkeye squadrons. The best piece of advice was like, Hey, you might be in charge of your squadron.

And you often think of like your squadron as a team, but where he's like as a commanding officer, you're still a part of a team that's all trying to get the air wing to the best place. And I thought that for me was a mental shift because I had always thought of our squadron as like your team unit. And I hadn't really thought about taking all of those units together and building them up. So it was still the teammate concept, but it was a switch in like mindset because you always feel like you're competing with other squadrons. And then it was an interesting point for me because it was just a different perspective on what is the team and who is the team to you. Okay. So I talk about this with businesses all the time. Who is your team?

Is it your peers? Is it your direct reports? You know, are you a team to your supervisor? Like, how do you think about the team that you're on? Inevitably, the leaders say it's all of those. You know, sometimes I'm on a team with the direct reports. Sometimes I'm leading a team. And that's why I wanted to understand from you what it means to be a great teammate. So you just went from like peer to peer, the reliability. And then you said, yeah, but the collection of my peers, color squad, also needs to be a great teammate to the other wings. Did I get the right language?

What's interesting about that is, at least in the military, if you're competing with your peers, there's also a promotion aspect to it, right? So there's only so many spots above where we're at now. Same in business, same in sport. Exactly, right? But at the same time, if I am spending so much time worrying about competing with those people or making myself look better, then I am not helping the organization as a whole. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep. It starts with how we transition and wind down. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep. It starts with how we transition and wind down. And that's why I've built intentional routines

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Like the first thing that comes up to mind is I'm going to beat you. Yeah. Okay. And that's where I was for a long time. And the image of Muhammad Ali standing over his competitor that he's just knocked down was something that fired me up for a long time. And then I became really fatigued by that. And I thought that the shift, I went back to the Latin origins, competition, compitier means to compete within. And so it's that thing that you're trying to help yourself be better, help others be better. And that's the real competition as opposed to competing against. And so did you make that migration or was it always like, I'm just trying to be better than you?

I'm more of a benchmarker. So for example, like if like I want to be better than you, but like you're only because you're a benchmark to me becoming better. Like you have a skill set that I need and I think that you're only because you're a benchmark to me becoming better. Like you have a skill set that I need. And I think that you're the most credible person with that skill set. And if I assimilate those skills, I will move forward. It had nothing. It was never personal of like I am going after you like less of the Muhammad Ali.

Like I'm standing over you. It was more of like that is a skill set stepping stone. That was more in sports. I don't think I've had that necessarily in the, my military career, because I think as a whole, um, and if you're like, you, you find people almost more of a mentorship, like you collect your basket of mentors and different people that you can go to and ask for, for advice and skillsets. I think. I think I have gone the route I have in the military based on people that I thought that were most credible. Like I wanted to go to say the Top Gun route because it was my training officers and the

people that were wearing the Top Gun patch that I had the most respect for. So I didn't necessarily look at them as being I want to beat them as more of like I want to be like you. And we're all kind of competing to with each other to get better as a whole, not necessarily going after people as individuals. There you go. Okay. All right. So let's go to, before we get into Top Gun, let's get into the whiteboard, the debrief. Okay. So that's in, in business, it's hard to think about preparation in sport. It's really easy.

There's lots of practices and we know exactly what we're practicing because we want to have that capability at a later time when there's more pressure. Sometimes practice is the bigger pressure actually. And is that true in combat training? It depends. I don't think, I think in sports, you're probably always more fighting for your job. Like, you know, if you're having bad practices, you're not going to be on like the A team or like the field. Um, I think in aviation, um, you're all, you're kind of already, if you're in a squadron, I don't want to say you've already made the team because you, you know, you always say you're only as good as your last landing or your fight, but like you're, you're working together as a group still to like, to move forward. So I don't think it, we have the same amount of pressure as I'm trying to, you know, get on the team. Yeah. And then obviously there's no higher standard than combat, you know, pressures, but so let's just, let's hold that for a minute. But the debrief process is something that is very familiar in the business world. So we go do a thing and then we talk about it probably way too much. Can you put a structure that you found to be valuable in your debrief process that others

might be able to use in their business ventures? It's actually standardized for us. So you'll hear anybody on the, at least on Naval Aviation, we say, we go through what's called BATSESI and that stands for our brief. So after we land, the first thing I'm going to talk about is like, hey, we briefed this flight. Like we talked about how it was going to go. Did anything I say, did I miss anything that would have been important that affected the flight? Or did I say anything that was wrong? And then that affected the flight. During the flight.

During the flight. But this is after we get back. Right. Yeah. And so like, hey, did I, did there's anything that would have been more helpful or was confusing? And then we talk about what's called admin. So administration, like let's talk, if I was on a football team, let's talk about, did the bus break down between the hotel and the, like the, the field, stuff like that. Then we talk about what's called tactical administration. I would say, like, did the microphones go down as the coach was trying to make a play call? Like, stuff that's, like, getting into the fight,

not just from point A to point B. And then we talk about execution. That could, if it's just a quick rundown, we might just thumbnail it there. Big picture-wise, we will spend two to three hours rewatching the fight, going through all the comms. That's like a whole different process. And then we talk about, did I have any safety or training role violations?

Did anything go wrong? That almost, you know, somebody almost got hurt or killed doing let's discuss that. Um, and then we go, we do that every single time, like right off the bat. And how long does that last? That's like 10 minutes, maybe that's super fast. And then if we were doing another type of mission, like our biggest missions, like air to air, we went out and we were fighting and like other people, um, that could be a six hour debrief after that.

That's watching tapes. Yeah. So the Batsy is, we call it a hot wash. So it's a, like a 10, 15 minute immediate. And you've got, we just do one up, one down, or what went well, what do you want to work on? Those types of very simple framing. And so you've got four or five, it's not five. Is it five?

Something like that. Yeah, framing. And how many people are on the team that are debriefing? Depends. It could be there. We usually don't operate obviously alone very often. It could be two, four to 20, depending on what type of mission you're going to do. And if there's 10 people in a meeting, how do you get done with it in 10 minutes?

Whoever's the flight lead runs it. And then it would say, like, if we were in a room together, I'd be like, all right, anything from the brief? Anything from you? Nope. Moving on. Got it. Okay. So one person drives the whole thing. Yep. Very cool. Okay. Awesome. So let's go into one

more piece before we get to Top Gun about mental imagery. And it's expensive to fuel up a jet, to turn it on, to launch it, to land it. It's an expensive venture. And it's risky every time you go up. I don't know what that risk is, but there's some obviously inherent risks, especially if you're landing at night on a carrier. So how would you use, or how do your teammates use mental imagery? I think everybody does it personally. It's not something we do as a group, unless you're a Blue Angel. The Blue Angels are fascinating in the way they run through their stuff. They'll walk it through.

They'll sit down as a group and visualize everything they're doing together. So I think they're the only group that we have that do it as a team. And obviously, that's a very specific skill set that those guys do, and it's amazing. I think for all of us, it's whatever is working for your own preparation. Like if I'll sit there and study and kind of walk through stuff as I'm studying, or if, you know, before you go to bed at night, you're kind of walking through, you know, different steps of what you have to do.

I think when we brief, we as a whole walk through stuff, I think that's how we do it is through the brief, because I will give you an example, like, all right, kind of, I guess, if you are walking through a play like basketball or football, like I'm going to draw part of the play. And then we as a whole are going to have a Q and answer session of like, all right, I'm going to go right. And that means, okay, you're going to go left and you're going to go down the center of the field. And we'll walk through a couple of those examples to get everybody thinking. And then we go fly it. I think that's probably the answer.

So that's like the pre. Pre, yeah. Okay. And I don't know this from my research, but have you been in combat air to air fights? Not air to air. I've done three overseas tours to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. Okay. And so what's the air to surface? and is that is that a obviously it's got a consequential mission what is the inherent risks in that i think for all of us to so when we were and this is in an f-18 yeah so for operation iraqi freedom and enduring freedom for those we had air superiority so i was never worried about another enemy aircraft coming to try to shoot me down with with a missile um on the surface there was not a lot of surface

to air missiles that were being shot at us so i could pretty much fly wherever i wanted to without worrying about somebody shooting at me from the ground air superiority means that essentially like i am like we own the skies like no there's no it's not contested okay i think all of us who are doing any like air to surface deliveries so there's usually we have what's called a joint terminal air controller so with jtacs on the ground and if those guys getting shot at or they have a target we coordinate with them um to you know drop whatever ordinance we have on the bad guys or something that needs to be taken out. And I think the biggest risk for all of us

is we're always mortified of getting it wrong. I think one of my old leaders once said, he was like, we can't afford to get it wrong because if you don't put that weapon exactly where it's supposed to be, you're not on a range anymore. I'm in a city. You're flying someplace that there's civilians out there,

buildings you don't want to take down. And the seconds it takes to release an ordinance from your jet to when the guy on the ground says good hits are the most excruciating seconds of your life. Time just stops and you just feel like you're holding your breath the whole time. You're like, please, God, let me have gotten that right. And this is going to go where you want it to go. Oh. Just because if anything went wrong with that, you're just like, you can't take it back after the bomb comes off your jet. And you do a lot. All of those targets had been vetted.

You do a lot of back and forth to make sure everybody is on the same page. But mistakes happen and you just hope to God it's not on on your watch and how would you make a mistake in that moment because what i'm hearing is that you're putting yourself in the right position and then you're waiting for somebody to give you like a go no go we do so you'll get to a point of um let's say you you know there's a building that our guys are getting shot at and in your there, they give you coordinates for that building. And then there's a give and take between there's a two way conversation we have and places that that could go wrong. What happens if I put the coordinates in wrong? Or if they've been trying to talk me on visually your point of view from the sky.

Oh, so it's not. Oh, it's very different from his point of view on the ground so you're saying like three buildings to the right of the ridge or like potentially depending on what type of scenario it is sometimes they are just like hey you have a gps guided bomb here are the gps coordinates just put those in and drop like yeah right so that that that's there's very few mistakes there right there shouldn't be right So as long as I didn't finger fire something and I should have been able to pick that up because we've talked about, I'm reading things directly, that's pretty generic. But if we're talking about three buildings down, you're like, well, there's a lot of buildings that

look like that. And he'll be like, by the hill. And you're like, cool, dude, I see 10 hills. I know you see one. And in those moments you are it's not coordinate driven from the apparatus it's you have to you have to time it properly is that what we're saying like sometimes you might not know based on the intel which building it is let's say this is a terrible scenario isn't it and then but you have to be flying at the right altitude, right speed to be able to time how that bomb will land. Sometimes we do it by timing. I think a lot of the scenarios I've been it's just been more of like, let's make sure we're on the same page. Like he might not be able to give you exact coordinates.

They can usually get you pretty close. And then it's a lot of using your onboard systems to get coordinates that are tighter. But I'm the one generating them now. And you just want to make sure that you're like, or they'd be like, hey, follow this white car. You're like, well, my system, all the cars look white. You know, you're like, how do I make sure? How do you do that?

How do you, I'm sure that you'll say practice, but like, how do you know at what speed and altitude that when you press the button, it's going to hit the target that you want it to hit. I guess practice and studying at that point, like the, the mechanics of releasing the, and like our engineers over the world have done a fabulous job of creating systems that take a lot of the employment stuff out. So like, like sometimes maybe, but there's a lot of, you know, all of the release parameters going in and there's pretty big baskets. I'm usually more worried about making sure that I've found the right target and that you have the correct clearance. All the powers that be above you de-escalate from that? Let's say it is quote unquote successful. How do you de-escalate from that? box something I wasn't supposed to unbox. The whole system had to reboot. So I am, all of us will tell you, usually there's a lot of screaming in the cockpit. And then every time you key the mic to talk to somebody else, you're like, oh yes, how's it going? You know? And then you're off the mic. I'm like, oh my goodness. I can't believe I screwed that up. So it was a little

contained panic and then bring it back down to focus. I think over the years, having done it a couple of times now, I know that I will kind of be like, oh, my God, I'm supposed to go do this now. And I'll blank out a little bit. This is like while you're still on the ground. No, like airborne. Because your missions are long. So when you get called in, you go from that boredom to like, oh, it's time to do something. So over the years, I kind of know my first reaction is to kind of be like,

oh God, I didn't kind of freak out. And then quickly bring it back in and be like, okay, here we go. Like fall back on those habit patterns that you're like, all right, I kind of need to black out again and just hit all those habit patterns, checklists that I have. All of that exists. I know that if I'm behind the jet jet so i'm just having a slow day or things start to go what does that mean behind the jet you're like sluggish like you're missing things so the jet is operating we say that like the jet always operates at it's like you know baseline zero but how am i operating that day if i'm operating slowly or the situation has now become so dynamic that i'm off of my like normal habit patterns. I think all of

us will just, I know for me, I just dropped back to my checklist, like checklist or base zero, like, Hey, I know if I'm, I don't want to miss anything right now. I'm going to do this methodically and make sure I have everything taken care of. What do you do to build your base for readiness? So what does your preparation look like? And I'm thinking like big rocks, like sleep, nutrition, you know, I mean the top gun, we should slide over to that part of the conversation, but like it, it looks a little reckless, you know, at least from the movies, like ripping beers right after whatever. And you know, I, that, that to me is not what I imagine that your life was, but I don't know.

So how do you prepare for that level of readiness? Well, I can't rep airs on the aircraft carrier, so that part we can't do. Okay, so when you're on the carrier. Yeah, I think if it's a big mission, you're probably spending a couple of days like running around with your hair on fire. So that's really important.

So all strikes happen from a carrier with F-18s? Because we're not defending our coast. Yeah. Once in a while, you'll end up, sometimes like the Marines, you'll see the Marines will operate from a shore or you could have what we call a detachment, like a small group out. But almost all of our, in the Navy, everything is coming off of the aircraft carrier. When we were doing sustained operations, it was more dynamic. You would go out there, you would kind of be on call. And if somebody got into trouble, they'd call you in. Once in a while, we would have a planned strike that

involved a couple of days of really planning on what you need to go out there. A lot of our training missions are far more complicated than we do in real life. And a lot of that is to really go through how we mission plan together. Who do I have to talk to? Who are my stakeholders that I have to bring in to make sure that all the variables are at least accounted for? How are we going to integrate with each other? How do you do that? How do you communicate effectively with stakeholders? We do in our mission planning process, we essentially have stakeholder meetings throughout the mission planning process. I think not only us and probably in business too, identifying all the stakeholders is kind

of difficult, especially when you're a junior. You're like, oh, I haven't been bit. Once you get bit by it once or twice, you're like, I should have probably talked to this person. So the next time you do it, you're like, you tell your buddy, you're like, make sure you talk to this dude before because they had this key piece of information that, that I missed and I wish I had. Um, so we will gather, you know, through the mission planning process, tell everybody, you know, Hey, where's everybody laying on this? Uh, did somebody have a request for information that you bring back to the group? Does that change our plan or are we still okay? Um, and then we eventually, we call it the good idea fairy time is

over. So at some point, you know, a okay plan is better than no plan at all or a perfect plan. So we're like, doesn't matter. We're going with it, you know, unless it's going to create mission failure or sometime we'll run with it. Yeah. So is the discussion phase and decision phase, like there are two different phases, right? And then there's the take an action phase. And if you were to take, just think about those three, is discussion the bulk of it? Decision is smaller and then the action is the second largest. Does that seem right? Yeah, I think when you first get a mission, and again, it's been more of training in this

stuff, like, hey, we're going to create a complex scenario to see like get everything working together it takes a lot of you know you get the flight leads in the room of everybody who has big big parts of the puzzle and we just like you know how would you like napkin face like how am i how am i gonna figure this out okay um and our decision phase two you usually have to get your plan approved by your next tier up. So you present that to them. And the big thing for us, too, is to be clear when you bring it to the boss. And I'm sure it's the same with business of this is what I'm concerned about. These are my head hurters. And here are the risks that go along with each.

This is what I would like to do. Do I have your approval for it? You also have to make sure that I'm telling you the consequences of that too. Or if you don't go along with this plan, like this is plan B, but the following consequences are going to come with plan B. So we spend a lot of time trying to teach our, we call them like our strike leads. Like how do you present that information in a way that is going to let your boss make the appropriate, essentially risk decisions on like what he is willing to take on in risk and how that affects his, um, call it commander's intent. Like, how did you want to, um, what, what are you trying to achieve with this,

with this mission? So let's go back to, um, preparation. What's your commitment to sleep? More now than it was when I was younger. I would say for years I was like, I'll be fine with six or I like staying up late and then I'll get up whenever I have to. My husband likes to go to bed early and I still don't like getting up early. So I noticed with that, that eight to nine is wonderful and I don't fall asleep on my computer anymore. So I think I don't function on no sleep like I used to, and I know it and I can really feel it now in ways that I couldn't feel it when I was younger. I could get maybe one or two days of not sleeping well. And then I need like a day or two of like, I'm, I'm not going to do well if I don't go

take a nap. Very cool. Nutrition. Working on it all the like, I'm not going to do well if I don't go take a nap. Very cool. Nutrition? Working on it all the time, I guess. Something I'd like to focus on more and kind of dabble in, but then time like, hey, I would love to go home and look at my cookbook all day and cook this fabulous meal. And then you get home at six o'clock at night and you're like, what's in the fridge? Okay, chicken nuggets and pizza. Breakfast of champions. And how about your inner life? How do you invest in your inner life? I think, you know, we're talking about, you know, kind of balancing things. I do a bad job of

completely checking out when like, and I think that's kind of part of the job, uh, you know, as a, a CO or like, um, we like your CEO, meaning commanding officer. Yeah. You're, you're always kind of on duty. Like if something happens, like I'm all, we're always going to have texts or emails that you have to take care of. So, you know, we're all my, and my husband is in the military as well. And he was a commanding officer and is, uh, now the XO of our base. So we will be on leave together and you're like, you're the CEO and XO and he's the XO. So he, we were both CEOs together actually, which is pretty cool. And now I moved on to a different squadron and he moved on to the base.

So I call him, he's like our mini mayor of the, of the base, but we'll be on vacation together. And it's like, well, who has to take a phone call or who's doing a situation report? And we're like so much for a vacation. We're taking like, you know, calls in the morning and it doesn't like, as you know, it doesn't really allow you to ever like ever really drop the pack. So I do that poorly. Um, I do better job of maybe taking leave or like fitting things in, but I also am terrible at like filling every amount of white space on a calendar. And then there's just no break. You're speaking to what I think many of us

struggle with, right? There's the morning shift, there's the small break for dinner with the family if we're so fortunate, and then there's the evening shift of emails. Meetings in the mornings, an afternoon, and then emails at night. And in research for this conversation, you've talked articulately about burnout, like the pace and the speed of business, your business needing to do more with less. Can you open that discussion up a bit for us, what it's like and what your insights are there? Like starting out when I was in flight school, somebody I think said, hey, this business requires a high level of performance over a long period of time. And it kind of like brings back to your peak performance discussion. You're like, well, what does that look like? Because to do this, you kind of always have to be kind of at peak performance.

I can never go down that mountain. I have to at least stay halfway up the mountain at all times. And then I think all of us are in this business are very type A as well. You're like, I don't just want to do this job. I want to do it well. And I want to build up credibility and maintain that credibility. And I know that for a lot of us, once you get more senior and you start having other responsibilities that aren't necessarily flying, I think it causes a little bit of guilt with us that I can no longer be as good in the jet as I was before because I don't have time to do said preparation. Like I don't have the four hours of the day to just sit there and study and rehearse. I have to, you know, we have 400 sailors in the squadron that all need care and feeding

because they are what makes the jets fly. And if they're not taken care of, none of this happens. So you just get into kind of this constant spiral of a little bit of guilt because I'm not operating at the level that I want to a little bit of, man, I'm really tired because I feel like I've been on all day. And then for me too, I'm like, man, I'm not working hard enough because back when I was younger, I used to be able to burn the candle at both ends. And that got me to where I am today. And that is not necessarily the same recipe for success now as it was 10 years ago. And then I was lucky enough to get married last summer. So now I have a family for the first time. And I think everybody would agree it's not really a balance.

It's a choice. And it kind of depends on how you fill each bucket. And I'm lucky enough to be married to somebody who understands the job and that, hey, tonight I have a mission. I have a mission tomorrow. I need to stay late to study. We understand what that means. Or I have to take this phone call because one of our sailors got hurt. We understand that what that means. And that's unique to our relationship. But at some point too, we're like, you and I just

need a break together and not be called by the squadron, you know? So that's a new ball for me to juggle in my personal life, which is fun and fabulous, but also just one more thing that you're trying to keep above board at all times. For the hustler, the grinder, the somebody that's maybe early in their phase in their career, and they're really good at something, and they're grinding away at it, and they're putting in all the right hard work, and you recognize that that's important, but not sustainable. How do you speak to that person? So I think we get, and we're seeing that a lot in our junior officers.

So where I'm at right now, everybody has done a deployment already or been like done an operational tour. So this is what we call their production tour. They're on shore. They're not going to deploy. But at least in my squadron, the op tempo hasn't changed. We have somebody is going on what we call a detachment. So a training mission every couple of weeks. So you're only home for a couple of weeks before you leave again. And you can see them just like a lot of them are starting new families. A lot of them were like, hey, I'm at a point I can make the decision to get out.

And I've just been grinding away. A lot of them were on COVID cruises. So that was unique. Part of the cool thing about the Navy is you get to see the world. Well, during COVID, you were never allowed off the ship. So they had all of the grind and none of the respite from that grind. They never got to go play with elephants in Thailand or some of the respite from that grind. They never got to, you know, go play with elephants in Thailand or, you know, some of the really cool things that you remember afterwards and forget all the crap.

So they didn't have that. And then we've just had very candid conversations, you know, that come in for we have what they call their reps, you know, like, hey, how are you doing? What do you want to do? How can we help you with the next step? And usually just tell them at some point, at some point, remember to take care of you. I think big Navy would probably get mad at me for saying this, but you know, there's definitely all of us have this, you know, God and country. And

we, we want, we have seen what it's like to be a part of something that is bigger than ourselves. And that is very valuable to us. And I think sometimes it just takes somebody to be a part of something that is bigger than ourselves. And that is very valuable to us. And I think sometimes it just takes somebody to be like, it's okay if your family comes first. Like I can't look at, I don't feel like I can look at one of my guys who's like, hey, I've had this really long conversation with my wife. And I think it is best for our family. If the next thing I do is not necessarily in the Navy. Finding Mastery is brought to you by iRestore. When it comes to my health, I try to approach things with a proactive mindset. It's not about avoiding poor health.

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I love that. So right now you can get 25% off all mattresses at lisa.com plus an extra $50 off when you use the code finding mastery at checkout. That's lisa, L-E-E-S-A.com. The promo code is finding Mastery for 25% off, and then plus an extra $50 on us because quality sleep is just too important to leave to chance. And I don't feel like it's my job necessarily to tell them like, yeah, you should reconsider that. At the end of the day, the Navy's not going to be with them when they're 80. Their wife is. So I think just a little bit of a difference in perspective and letting them know it's their choice and it's OK.

And if we would love them to continue their Navy journey because all of the people I work with are fabulous and are excellent pilots and instructors and somebody you want to stay within the organization. But if we force them into that, nobody's happy and they're not going to be the productive members of squadrons that we want them to be. You've also written about and shared your insights around dating. Can you talk about the uniqueness of being a fighter pilot, being female? How many female, like when you're going through school, how many females were in your class? None. I think the first other female pilot I had was in my third command. There's a lot more now than when I started, but there was only, I think, two of us in the entire air wing on my first cruise. And there's definitely been more of an influx.

I do not know the exact number. I think over aviation, it's at least maybe 25% to 30% now. I'm getting those numbers wrong. You're early. I'm early. I think I'm on the edge of the ladies that really ate some glass to get to where I am at. You did not eat glass?

I don't think so at all. I think I had it. I was never not treated as an equal. Any mistakes I made were my own, not because of my gender. I think everybody always gave me a fair shot and it's been part of the family for better or worse the whole time.

There you go. So you consider it a family? I do. We always say like our military family. And I think that is definitely really a thing. My dad laughs. He's like, you can go anywhere in the country and just show up on somebody's doorstep. You know somebody there. I'm like, yep. And you just pick up where you left off. And you go out to sea with somebody for 10 months at a time. It's a unique relationship at that point that carries with you for life.

And I think that's one of the really, really cool things about the military. But the dating part does get complicated, though, when you go out for those 10 months and you're like, yeah, I know it started us down this path. But, you know, the idea of family and business, I don't I don't think it's right. You know, family and sport. I don't think it's right. Family and military, my friends that are operators, when I, when I talk about like, this is not family in sport and business and they go, uh, can we talk, you know? Yeah. And so the special operators that are my friends, they're like, Hmm, it's different though, you know, with, with our team, you know, our, we do have like deep bonds

with each other. I, and I go, yeah, I totally get it out of respect. So I nod my head to what you just said there. So dating, um, first of all, before we go to the dating, like how'd you walk into a room when people didn't look like you and you were trying to take somebody's job in an untraditional way. How did you navigate that? I think it was just probably too like hardheaded or obstinate to really like notice the difference or also I think maybe from sports and I've been on some like panels where we're talking before when it comes to like diversity or like how do you not look like everybody and be okay with it I think maybe looking back at it I've spent so many times trying out for sports teams trying to stand out that like I guess maybe it didn't bother me when I walked in and nobody necessarily looked at me but I don't I think for all of us I don't identify

as being like a female pilot I'm just a. Everybody puts their light suit on one leg at a time when they walk in. It actually took me years when we started to have more females around. It became more surprising to walk in and be like, oh, there's a couple of chicks in here. Cool. Where did you guys come from? I almost noticed that more than I did being the only one for years. And I used to hate it because the boys would do it to me on purpose too. They'd be like, good afternoon, gentlemen. And Kristen, I'm like, can you not and Kristen me? I get it. It's like at this point, neuter term, we're fine.

Is that, is that hazing? Is that what, what would that be? Was that like super aggressive? Oh no, it was just like out of good fun. Cause they, we just kind of, we poked the bear. How do you know the line between that? I think you have to know the person. I think that's really important of like understanding who you're with, what like – how much they can take, what they find funny. You know, if you have to – you know, somebody – when I first joined my squadron, one of our sailors was like, man, they are – it's going to take them –

they're going to be so afraid to talk around you. I like actually um or no I think she said oh they're going to give you so much grief you know and I was like actually it's going to be the opposite they're going to be afraid to say anything around me because they don't know how I react and it's going to take them time to figure out like that I like I have a pretty like I'm not going to react to a lot so uh and that's really how it was. Usually, you know, if you get somebody new, you kind of feel them out and you're like, hey, where you're at. Like, you know, this is our culture, but I don't necessarily want you to feel uncomfortable here. You know, how are you going to fit in?

You kind of, you know, feel each other out for a while and then go on for there. In general, everybody has pretty thick skin and likes to likes to each other and poke the bear a little bit but it should always be done and kind of out of good jest and not necessarily things that are harmful have you had to raise your hands and be like don't say that again not for anything that's like been about me or done about me and i haven't like and i haven't really very few instances like around like usually if there's anything that has been said that was out of line um not to me i like i remember a situation in another squadron something was said about somebody that was out of line and she didn't say anything back her squadron mates went to bat for her and we're like we're

not okay with that you mess with my sister and you don't do that. That's pretty cool. It was really cool. Yeah. Let's talk about Top Gun, the movie. What was your role? I get to fly a couple of days with Phoenix and with Bob as their pilot, which was a ton of fun. And so what does that mean? Like you were, it's a two seater. Yeah, we had a two seater and they had, uh, the jets were rigged with, I want to say something like six cameras that were looking back at the actors. And there were about, I think, two over-the-shoulder cameras looking at whoever was flying like our head. So it looked out the front and then obviously they did magic to make it look like everybody

was sitting in the front seat. Yeah, they did. But they were not, you were actually driving their flights. Okay. What was that like? Like how real was it? Did they do a nice job? I thought they did a great job.

And that one, I think it's entertaining. I think all of us were really excited on how it came out. I thought it was a great movie. Yeah, it was really fun. And I think it's a testament to one, the staff wanted to get it right, which was really fun. And I think it's a testament to, one, the staff wanted to get it right, which was really nice. And the pilots or the actors that were the pilots in the movie, they were just such a fun group of people. And then from my point of view, how often do you get to go to work and get to be part of this insane Paramount production? And we were kind of all looking at each other.

We're like, wow, you guys' lives are so cool. And they're like, we get to go on a plane today. You know, it was just the back and forth. And they worked really hard at trying to get it right for us on what it's like to be in a ready room. They would hang out with pilots, go to our officer clubs, hang out in the briefs that they were allowed to hang out with. And I think looking at the group,

they kind of all have the different types of personalities you might see in a ready room, except for you don't end up with the very over-the-top, like I'm better than you are attitude. That gets squashed out real fast in our community. We don't appreciate that. So kind of like the, what was it? Hangman's character, I think.

Yeah, right, right't we don't like that okay like nobody's better than anybody else nice try you can maybe think that internally but you don't you don't speak it yeah okay so they they kind of missed on that that was drama drama but it's also like a homage back to you know uh maverick and iceman from the first movie so it's a little bit of a tie there personality wise. What was their training to be able to handle the Gs? They did a whole workout process. They did a great job of, you know, getting them in different types of aircraft, getting used to pulling Gs. They did all of the overwater

training that we had to do. So they were at least very much used to being in an airplane before we put them in F-18s. I think that was still, I think they had fun with it. We'd get back and everybody would just be laughing about who did what and how many people threw up or didn't throw up, which is super common sitting in the, even to this day, you put a pilot in the back seat, it just feels different. And when you're not at the controls, it is very easy to not feel good. To be a passenger on that.

Yeah. And how many g's were you able to do with them we were doing seven and a half over and over again because part of what they were trying to do is to get the look of the you know the facial distortion yeah uh you can't fake that but i was laughing with uh lewis pullman one day i was like okay like lewis this hurts you know you're doing it over and over again almost I was like, the more you act, dude, the less we have to pull. Like, we'll convince them we're pulling less Jews. We're just joking around.

And all their video came out amazing. We would get back and like, oh, my God, you were doing that back there? That looks great. Oh, that is really cool. What a great experience. It was really cool. Yeah. And so if we work backwards, you're a consultant on the movie.

You were flying the actors, and then you're backwards a Top Gun instructor, still are? I graduated Top Gun. We will say Top Gun instructor are the guys that get to stay on staff and teach, but I'm what's called a Strike Fighter Tactics instructor. So once you graduate Top Gun, you're an instructor later on. And to get into Top Gun, is it harder to graduate or harder to get in? I think harder to get in.

It does have an attrition when you get there. Some of it is timing. You know, I was talking about like, he make this the best thing that ever happened to you. When I was struggling with BFM and the RAG, it offset my timing enough that when I applied for Top Gun, the competition for the slots was a little different. And I was able to have more space to potentially get in.

Like our fit rep cycles end up being. What's a fit rep? Like your evaluation cycles are for a lieutenant are in January. So what happens if you roll out in January? Everyone is rolling out with you right after the same time. So your competition for say, like back in that day, your Top Gun class was like triple what it would be on an off cycle. So I was lucky enough to be on an off cycle that gave me a little bit more opportunity, but you have to apply for the class. They have to, you kind of rush it in a way. Like they want to make sure we say like, hey, are you humble and approachable?

Like I want to be able to teach you. People have to be comfortable in asking you questions. I have to walk into somebody else's ready room and be able to constructively integrate with them and instruct with them. And if they don't think you have the right personality for that, you don't necessarily get into the class. You've got to have flying skills and then humble and approachable are two of the characteristics. Are there any other key characteristics to be a Top Gun?

I'm probably thinking I'm probably missing a couple in there. I know there's a third. I can't think of it off the top of my head. But the baseline ability to do that. And then also, do they want to hang out with you? Like you're going to be on a staff and, you know, work in really long days. And if you're not somebody that I want to spend that much time with you. It's funny. I was part of the draft selection for eight or

nine seasons with an NFL team. And one of the criteria was in a very rudimentary, I mean, it's very sophisticated process. And then it would kind of come down to, would you like to play pickup basketball with this one? You know, like, do you want to be around this person and would you enjoy competing in that way? And if the answer was like, I don't, I mean, that's a person that's like kind of lame, you know, like, yes, they are six foot

four, jump 41 inches or whatever, you know, 40 time. But like, so it's actually a big deal, you know, that that fit, if you will. I think there's a lot of us that would say I would rather have somebody that is less talented in the jet and has a better attitude than somebody who is God's gift to naval aviation. And I don't want to be around because especially if you're out to sea, um, I've done a seven month cruise, a nine month cruise and a 10 month cruise. And by like month four, everyone wants to murder each other. No matter what, it doesn't matter how tight you are. You're just like, I have been in this closed space with all of you and everything you're doing is driving me batty. But if you don't have somebody who at least is going to be self-aware

that you're just a little on edge and that you're somebody that I don't enjoy being around in the first place, then that month four to month 10 gets just so much harder. Thank you so much for sharing your history, how you got here, the way that you've navigated high stress, high pressured environments, both psychologically, emotionally, and the way that you're leading other people now. Really appreciate the conversation. And I've asked all the questions. I don't know if you had any questions for me, but I'm super grateful that you came in

and were able to share so articulately how you do what you do. Thank you. It was a ton of fun for me. Yeah, that's really cool. You've been on the frontier and you're on the frontier in lots of ways. Like doing what you do is certainly on the frontier. And I know sometimes maybe when you're in it, you don't necessarily see it. But as a civilian, we recognize it. So for folks that want to push

into a frontier, and you did it two different ways, gender and talent. And so from a talent position, you're doing things that most people would dream of doing. And you did it in a time that it sounded like you were like the second phase of kind of early in. That still counts a lot for me. And so what would you suggest to people? What would you whisper into their ear to a young kid, maybe somebody just graduating high school or college, and they want to do something really special with their life? And the places that they want to go, they don't have role models that look like them,

whether it's a boy or girl or male or female or non-binary, transgender, whatever it might be. What would you whisper into their ear? Who cares if nobody looks like you? I think looking back, I picked things I wanted to do and never paid attention to necessarily who was doing them. So I know that is very personal to me and not necessarily the way other people see it. I definitely hear people say all the time, you have to see it to be it. And I know I have trouble relating that to me because it just wasn't my truth or the way I looked at things. And I don't know if that's because nobody told me no, or maybe it was because I wanted to be an astronaut and they had astronauts that were females back then. Um, I'm not, I'm not sure, but I would say to like anybody, just, just go on, do it. If you have, at this point, like don't let anybody tell you no. It might take a couple of tries, but it's less of necessarily like who you are or what you look like or, you know, who you are as a person. But just that particular skill set, if it's something hard, it's probably going to take a couple of tries at it.

And then to remember, it's probably not because of what you look like or what gender or any of those things. It's probably just because it's unpack that a little bit. I don't think it's necessarily because you're a girl. It's because of X, Y, and Z. And we have to kind of separate the two of those. So I think when people are like, hey, I want to really break into this, just realize, like, you know, kind of separate the facts of things being difficult and what it takes to get there and the resilience it takes to keep trying from the, oh, it's just because of what I look like. And that does obviously exist in the world, but I think we've kind of opened the aperture in today's day that that matters a lot less. Not always, but I think it matters a lot less. And then who is somebody else to tell you you can't do something? So just kind of be obstinate and say, who are you?

Like, you can't tell me now. So that's a little bit of a chip on your shoulder that you – I believe that you're a great competitor. Like just feeling how you show up in this room and how you're able to articulate and the word choices that you have. One, I would imagine you'd be a great teammate. But two, I would imagine you would help people be better that are your teammates because you're a competitor toward a standard. And I think that standard is excellence. But would you use a different word than excellent?

Was it the army? It was like, be the best you can be, which sounds super hokey. But at the end of the day, that's what it comes down to. It is, isn't it? And when you think about being your very best, how do you think about that? I get, I get all kind of like, that is so lame, but then I say it all the time because like, what else am I trying to do? I think that's a good way of putting it. Like if I'm not showing up every day and try to do my best at it, then like, what's the point? And that might be because I am very type A and I have a hard time.

I don't like pickup games. Like I have to be like playing the game or I have to be practicing something. Like I don't like just somebody who's like, hey, let's just go play pickup soccer. I'm like, why? Like, and I love soccer, but I'm like, no, we have to be like doing something for a reason. So I tend to be like, no, like, you know, goal orientated or let's all do this for X, Y, and Z. Well, it's hard for me. And I had to learn along that like my level of like hard work or what I think is excellent is not what everybody else thinks. And that's hard to, especially when I was learning how to be a training officer, or it's probably this, like essentially a good coach, right? It's different from everybody, how everybody's

motivated, how everybody thinks is differently. So I can't force my thought process or what I think is excellent onto somebody else. Now there's usually a bar that they have to hit, but they have to, it is okay if they hit the bar in a different way than I would hit the bar. And that was a very much of a learning process for me that I'm still figuring out now. If there was one thing that your mom hydrated and nourished in you, what would that be? I probably get my competitive nature from her, I think a little bit it was uh that or just you know the it was definitely a tough you know tough love hustle like you're fine get up you know and like i think looking back at that um especially doing what i do now um that was good to have and then a couple of you know gems

from dad over the year like i remember he had me set up the television. He doesn't remember this, but it was very formative for me. And he gave me the instructions and we're like, all right, figure it out. I don't know how to figure this out. Like, it's not like I, if I did not do well at thinking outside the box or if it was, if I didn't know how to do it, I would like, well, I can't figure it out. So he looked at me, he's like, well, if you want to be an engineer, you're going to have to figure it out eventually. And I was like, oh crap, he's right. And it like, well, I can't figure it out. So he looked at me, he's like, well, if you want to be an engineer, you're going to have to figure it out eventually. And I was like, oh, crap, he's right.

And it like, it made me more competitive of I have to go figure it out. So things like that over the years. So you are an extroverted thinker, introverted feeler? Ooh, it's funny you say that. I took one of like the Myers-Briggs tests. I am right down the middle yeah one of my friends say i am a quiet extrovert uh i think probably introverted feeler for sure if i'm around my people like people i know i'm very extroverted um if i'm around people i don't know, I'm very introverted, which my husband finds very amusing because he is full extrovert.

So if we were at a table, we were skiing, for instance, and there's two seats at the end of the table, I'm like, I'm not going to ask for those two seats. That's their space. And my husband will walk up and be like, hey, how's it going? He's best friends with them in five minutes. It's not you. It's not me. He has to prove to me that they're okay with us intruding first. Yeah. Okay. You're slightly neurotic. Yeah. Yeah. Not very agreeable. Like you've

got your own ideas. Depends. I don't like necessarily like ruffling feather. Oh, maybe not probably getting more roughly as I get older. Um, if I agree with it, I guess I'm like pretty agreeable. Yeah. Like if it is something that is triggering of like, like, like hits me to my core that that's like something I fundamentally don't like. Right. I will definitely ruffle feathers pretty early.

But if it's something I'm like, yeah, I'll let that ride. High in conscientiousness? I would try to be. I don't think I am always successful in it. And I think you're incredibly, people around you would like to be coached by you because you have a positive, productive narrative as opposed to a destructive negative. Would you agree to that? I try. That you definitely have to ask my junior officers and they will not hold any punches. So I probably get it right sometimes.

Not always. Your mistakes would be you take in too much information? Maybe the opposite. I've actually over the years had realized I have to ask more questions before. Oh, so I would have thought that you're more of an information gatherer than a decisive. I think I've learned there were times definitely when it like the more senior i get um i was like no it made a decision and then or my i would have made a decision and then have watched my leaders ask more questions and the outcome was different than i initially thought

it was going to be and i was like oh yeah they were right that's why they make the big bucks like i should have done that oh interesting yeah so, like the other day was the first time I've really been like, Ooh, I'm not sure what my action should be right now. I need to sleep on, on this and then gather more information. Oh, got it. Okay, cool. Kristen, what a, what a, what a joy. Thank you so much for sharing again, like how much you bring to the world.

And it's really nice to know that you're on our team. Thanks. Appreciate it. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no cost way to support is to hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you're listening.

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