High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 369: First Lead Yourself with Elizabeth McCormick, Former U.S. Army Blackhawk Helicopter Pilot & Motivational Speaker

Episode Date: September 12, 2020

As a sought-after keynote speaker, Elizabeth teaches from her professional life, sharing stories about her time spent as a decorated Black Hawk Helicopter Pilot and Chief Warrant Officer 2 for the US Army. She has received many awards in the army, and supported United Nations peacekeeping operations in Kosovo, receiving the Meritorious Service Medal for her excellence in service. In 2011, Elizabeth was awarded the US Congressional Veteran Commendation for her commitment to serving her country and community as a disabled veteran.   An authority on Leadership and Veterans Issues with the media, Elizabeth has been seen on ABC, CBS, FOX, CW, MSNBC, and been featured in the Wall Street Journal, and more. A best-selling author, her personal development book, The P.I.L.O.T. Method; the 5 Elemental Truths to Leading Yourself in Life, has sold more than 35,000 copies! Elizabeth also has more than 19 total books out; with her series of small format business success tip books: Soar 2 Success in a variety of Leadership, Culture, and Entrepreneurial topics.   In this podcast, Elizabeth and Cindra talk: Why we need to FLY – First lead yourself How she keeps service front and center in her work The 5 elemental truths in the PILOT Method 3 lessons she learned in the military about mindset How you can find your message in your mess You can find out more about Elizabeth’s free course here: www.soaryourlife.com HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE: www.cindrakamphoff.com/Elizabeth HOW TO ENTER THE PODCAST GIVEAWAY TO WIN $500 CASH: www.drcindra.com/giveaway FB COMMUNITY FOR THE HPM PODCAST: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2599776723457390/ FOLLOW CINDRA ON INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/cindrakamphoff/ FOLLOW CINDRA ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/mentally_strong Love the show? Rate and review the show for Cindra to mention you on the next episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/high-performance-mindset-learn-from-world-class-leaders/id1034819901    

Hey, my name is Cindra Campoff and I'm a small-town Minnesota gal, Minnesota nice as we like to say it, who followed her big dreams. I spent the last four years working as a mental coach for the Minnesota Vikings, working one-on-one with the players. I wrote a best-selling book about the mindset of the world's best and I'm a keynote speaker and national leader in the field of sport and performance psychology. And I am obsessed with showing you exactly how to develop the mindset of the world's best so you can accomplish all your goals and dreams. So I'm over here following my big dreams and I'm here to inspire you and practically show you how to do the same. And you know, when I'm not working, you'll find me playing Ms. Pac-Man.

Yes, the 1980s game Ms. Pac-Man. So take your notepad out, buckle up, and let's go. This is the High Performance Mindset. Welcome to episode 369 with Elizabeth McCormick. This is Dr. Cindra Kampoff, your host of the High Performance Mindset Podcast, and I am grateful that you are here ready to listen to another episode. And today I'm excited to share with you some lessons that I learned today from Elizabeth McCormick. You know, there's been a lot of change in my life, as I'm sure there's been a lot of change in yours. This week, I live in Minnesota, and my kids are going back to middle school, two days in person and two days online at home.

And it's been a lot to adjust to in terms of family and the family structure. And I'm sure you're dealing with similar changes in your life as well. And today, Elizabeth and I talk about why it's important during all of these changes to first lead yourself. And she gives us really practical strategies that we can use to be able to handle anything that's coming our way right now. Now, Elizabeth is a sought-after keynote speaker where she teaches from her professional life, sharing stories about her time spent as a decorated Black Hawk helicopter pilot

and chief warrant officer, too, for the U.S. Army. She's received many awards in the Army and supported the United Nations peacekeeping operations in Kosovo, receiving the Service Award for her excellence in service. And in 2011, Elizabeth was awarded the U.S. Congressional Veteran Accommodation for her commitment to serving her country and the community as a disabled veteran. Now as an authority on leadership and veterans issues within media, Elizabeth has been seen on ABC, CBS, Fox, MSN, NBC, and has been featured in the Wall Street Journal and more. She's a best-selling author and her personal development book,

The Pilot Method, Five Elemental Truths to Leading Yourself in Life, has sold more than 35,000 copies. She has more than 19 total books out with her series of small format business success tip books, Soar to Success, and a variety of leadership culture and entrepreneurial topics. And in this episode, Elizabeth and I talk about why each of us need to fly or first lead yourself, how she keeps service front and center in her work and why that's really essential. These five elemental truths in this pilot method to help us be stronger leaders. She talks about three lessons that she learned in the military about mindset

and how you can find your message in your mess. She also provides a free online course that she shares with us at the end of this episode. So make sure to check that out. And two things, you can find the full show notes and a transcript of our interview today at cindracampoff.com slash Elizabeth. So that's cindracampoff.com slash Elizabeth. So that's cindracampoff.com slash Elizabeth. And if you haven't already, you can head over to Facebook

and join our Facebook group that is specifically for the High Performance Mindset Podcast, where we share behind the scenes and more tangible strategies and inspiration for you to be your best self. Again, you can head over to Facebook and search for High Performance Mindset Podcast Community.

Look forward to seeing you over there in the community. And if you enjoyed today's episode, share it on social media and tag Elizabeth and I. I am at cindracampoff most places. Besides on Twitter, I'm at mentally underscore strong. And Elizabeth is at pilotspeaker on social. We look forward to hearing from you, and let's bring on Elizabeth. Elizabeth, I'm so excited that you are here today on the High

Performance Mindset Podcast, so welcome. I'm so excited to be here. Thank you. We were just chatting about how we first met, and I first met you at a National Speakers Association conference at Epcot. We were having this reception, and I remember talking with you. There was a few of my colleagues, and we were talking about speaking and marketing books. I'm really excited to have you on the podcast. I've been following your work since then, which is, I think, a couple of years ago at this point. Yeah. I'm excited that you're here. I'm glad to be here.

And I just want to say, I can't wait till we could be live at another event again soon. Exactly. Isn't that so true? Me too. So to start us off, Elizabeth, I'd love for you to tell us about your passion and a little bit about what you do. Oh, so now my passion is I kind of have it boiled down to a tagline is to inspire through experience. OK. So everything is about how can I make a better experience when people interact with me, when they, you know, when I'm at a speaking

engagement, when I'm, you know, through my book, I mean, just my website, everything is about, is about inspiring through that experience. So, and then I speak, I write, I've written 19 books now. I am doing a lot of online courses and videos and other things too, because that's where we are right now with the world right now. So just any way I can, I can share my message and I can, I can tell you like the passion is every day. I don't share my message or, you know, whatever knowledge I have that I can impart every day. I'm not sharing it is a day somebody's not getting it. Yeah. And when we're not sharing our gifts, we're withholding them back and we're, we potentially

could hurt someone who could be helped. So that when I got that, when I shifted that, that has, I like, I hit the ground running every morning because I don't want to inadvertently hurt someone by not giving them something they might need. I think that's a really powerful message to start, Elizabeth, because there's a few things that I'm thinking about. I'm thinking about maybe young people who are just getting into speaking or, you know, into podcasting and maybe they're holding themselves back because of what people will think when they post something on, you know, your video on Instagram. But I like this idea of like, if I'm holding back, I'm hurting somebody

and I'm not serving the way that I can serve with my gifts. Yeah. It's, it, it truly was a, a big mind shift for me that I had about nine years ago. And I started speaking 10 years ago. So, so the first year I kind of played small, I didn't put myself out there as much. I didn't, you know, push things out as much. And I still, I'm not like the best person to do a live or a live stream or anything like that. It's not my favorite thing to do. Um, but that doesn't mean I don't have things accessible and out there in other, in other modalities and other forms. What do you feel like was the moment that you decided to kind of play big in this way and really get out there with your message? Was there a moment? Was

there just an aha, you know, tell us about nine years ago, what maybe helped you think of this in this clear way? Yeah. So actually I had a coach that I was working with and, um, you know, I, I knew I was, I was already quote professionally speaking, but yet my website wasn't done and my book, my book wasn't done. And I had all these things started and all this activity without propelling it into actual like finished marketable things and so I was working with a coach and she

was talking to me and what we figured what we ended up like in this conversation having is at one point when I was in the military, I was stopped and physically abused by another, my coworker, another pilot, and it went on for almost a year. So it was very traumatic. Like it was, it was a traumatic experience. It, I don't recommend it. Um, I mean, I don't mean to say that in just or lightness, but it just, it, it was, um, it had a big impact on me. It affected a lot of, it affected everything in my life at that time. And, uh, I realized that I was, I knew I could be successful, but what I didn't know was if he found out or heard about me, he is that person is that how that would impact me so I was playing small and giving someone that you know at this point it was 12 years earlier I was giving someone from 12 years in my past power over my decision making now. Yeah. So and that kind of, whoa, what am I doing? You know, why? You know, so what? If it you know, I can handle myself

better. Now these things happen. I still have the 57 pages of police reports here. You know, if I need them. So you know, I kind of had to kind of own my past and own own that struggle and then from there once I released that I could release and say okay you know what I'm not here to do anything other than to help people in this world and inspire people and help people and and that that is my gift that is what I'm here for through my stories, through whatever it is that I do. And if I'm not helping people, then by not offering things, I'm creating that barrier that could be hurting them. And that just shifted me. Well, I think first the aha moment, it know, it's great that a coach was helping you figure this out, but I mean, I know there's people who are listening who are thinking,

yeah, there's something I need to let go of too in my past that's impacting me, that's holding me back, that I'm playing small because of, you know, so an incredible example there. Tell us a little bit about, you know, maybe kind of go back a little bit and tell us a bit about your decision to join the military. You were a Blackhawk helicopter pilot. I'm sure we're going to talk a lot more about that, but tell us about, okay, why did you decide to join and a little bit about what that was like for you there. Yeah. So I didn't know it was hard. I didn't know the army had only let women into the, into aviation and flying helicopters about 15 years, 13, 15 years. I've seen different data. And before that, I didn't know any of that stuff.

I was an unemployed wife. Okay. I had college. I, you know, was ended up, the only job I could get was working in a pizza place. And I was just, I was coming from a place of misery. So I realized the marriage wasn't working out. I realized me living by him with him at the military base and get working in a pizza place wasn't working out and uh and i talk about this in my book the pilot method is you know sometimes you're in situations where you feel like you have nothing in your control and that's exactly what i was in in that moment where i felt like there was absolutely nothing i could control i couldn't control where i lived i couldn't control that i couldn't get a job other than pizza. I, you know, I could, there was so little in my control in that environment at that time that I had like that two in the morning, aha, going, I need to start focusing

on what I can control. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And I totally shift out of the negative and out of focusing on those negative things and into the positive. And so that's, that's when I, when I did that, then I said, okay, what, what can I control? So I looked at, I call him in my speech, the starter husband. Yeah. So it's the only nice thing I can say so the starter husband I looked at him and I thought okay you know we're we're married I'm stay I'm here but I'm not happy with the job I'm you know and I kind of looked at it all objectively without that emotion and said okay what can I do and so I decided that if he could be in the military, I could be in the military. I could do that.

Again, didn't know it was hard. So I decided to join the military. And once I did that, I decided I wanted the coolest job. Yeah. Didn't know what that was, though. So I researched it. I asked around. I interviewed a bunch of people.

And everyone said the coolest job was being a helicopter pilot. I'll do that. I know it was hard. I'm thinking about what you just said about being hard. And I'm thinking about like being a woman in that space where you're right. they're just starting to let women be a pilot, right? And just in general, being the military, I've not been in the military, but I've worked in a lot of like male-dominated. Male-dominated, yeah. Yeah. And it's not easy. It's hard. It's hard to navigate. So I appreciate that. Well then, okay. so take the male dominated environments that you've been in and add in physicality so like physical fitness that we have to do every morning and wearing boots

and wearing um you know wearing a heavy backpack rucksack they called it having carrying a heavy rock and climbing up mountains and hills and carrying a weapon and I mean all the other physical pieces of it that really aren't geared towards women like body armor doesn't fit for a woman rucksacks aren't built for women you know um so it was a totally different time uh but again I didn't I didn't know and it wasn't until I actually got into flight school. So I had to go through basic training to warrant officer candidate school to flight school. By the time I got to flight school and I found out that, that when I had submitted my application, basically it's a packet.

When I submitted my packet and went to the Pentagon and when they had that meeting at the Pentagon, they only had two spots in the nation. Wow. I didn't know that. I didn't know any of that. And it wasn't until I was, you know, immersed in that environment in that they told me that, because I have to tell you, if I had known there was only going to be two spots in the entire United States of America, I would not have been so confident in any of those other situations. But what I really learned from that is, you know, we're not always meant to know all the obstacles and our odds and everything else.

It really has to come from your vision and your belief of yourself and your abilities first. And once you have that, what happens is it's so beautiful. Once you have that belief in yourself or a belief in a vision and, and, and you know, that's going to happen. What happens after that is suddenly all these opportunities that support that vision start happening. Yeah.

Well, I think it's also like about energy, right? The energy you put out there and those things, you know, then end up happening. And I appreciate what you said, Elizabeth, about like, you weren't focused on the obstacles, but if you were focused on the obstacles, then that might have changed your mindset or your confidence. And so many times we can be focused on the things that are ahead of us. And then we kind of lack effort because we're not even sure it's possible for us. How do you get through the hard parts? Oh, stubbornness.

Stubbornness. I just, I refuse to quit. Like they wanted me to quit. When I got into flight school, I was the only girl in my class. And, you know, I drew a flight instructor, instructor who had gender bias and didn't want me to succeed. And when, you know, he tried to fail me every day. I mean, it was painful every day. He tried to fail me and I just showed up. And so that's, that's another thing that I really learned. And I really stress

is that when things get hard, there are lots of people in this world that quit. Like they, they quit, but if you really believe, and that's the key thing, because if you, you know, if, if it's not your underlying underlying passion or how you make a living or, you know, and it's hard and, you know, some things aren't for you and that's okay too. You know, don't stick with something that that's not a good fit for who you are and how you want to show up in the world, but when it is and things are hard. And I just kept like every morning I'm here, here I am. Okay. Here I am. You know, I just refused to allow anyone else to determine the next steps for me. Like you felt like you were, when I think about how you even

got to the military, it was like, you wanted to control what you could, right. You wanted to control your life. And it's like, you could have listened to, uh, you know, this flight instructor that said that women shouldn't be able to fly, but it was like, you decided to be in charge of what you were doing instead of letting other people dictate that. Exactly. Exactly. And so, you know, for everyone, you know, watching or listening, I'll tell you, you know, so much of success happens when you just show up.

Yeah. You just, you know, be our present, our focused, our intentional and say, you know what? I'm here for whatever, whatever this purpose is. But I think a lot of people, they, they don't, they don't show up or, or they show up on autopilot. They're not intentional. They're not, they don't give it their full, the gift of their presence. Um, and when they do things. So, uh, so much we can dive into. I know, right? So give us a sense of when you left,

left the military, what, what made you decide to, all right, you're good with that, you're done with that, that was your decision to leave. And then, okay, you became a speaker, right, and an author. Tell us a bit about that transition from military to keynote speaker. So I actually worked in corporate America for eight years. So I started off in inventory management and got to purchasing management and worked up to commodity and vendor management. And then in my last job, I was in over eight years, was an international contract negotiator. Nice. Really, really good skill, right? So I specialized in the international markets. And it's been an amazing skill that

now to transfer over to negotiate speaking contracts. Right. That's what I was just thinking. It's become really helpful for me. But what happened is I was working in the corporate job and I worked with three different companies over the eight years. And over those three, over those three companies, the last one I worked with ended up being five minutes from my house. So I went from driving 45 minutes to an hour in Dallas traffic to five minutes from my house. So all of a sudden, I had like an extra hour to two hours a day, depending on traffic. And I said, I'm going to

get involved in my community. So I was able to get involved with my kids and their school and the community more than I ever had before. And so as I'm getting involved, you know, people are like, Oh, you know, so what do you do? You know, boring contract negotiation kind of stuff. And they're like, and then somebody says, Oh, don't let her fool you. She was a helicopter pilot. And so all of a sudden, it started going like this, everybody started finding out that I was a I was an army veteran and a helicopter pilot and they, you know, so all of a sudden I get this request. Will you come speak for career day at our school? Will you come speak for this assembly? Will you come speak? And so I would speak one place and I'd get 10 more requests. So I'd speak another place and I'd get five new requests. So all of a sudden,

I hear I'm working, I'm still working a corporate job and I am getting all these phone calls on my voicemail, right? When I get home at the end of the day. So I came, would come home and I get these voicemails and I would, some of them I would do in my lunch hour if I could. And some of them, I had to say no to. So I was turning a lot of them down again, working, working the corporate job. And, um, one of them calls me and I call them back and I'm turning it down. I'm busy. I'm traveling to Japan and Sweden and England. And I actually traveled more in that corporate job than I do for a while as a speaker internationally. And so I'm turning it down and they're like we'll we'll pay you and I'm like shut the door I could get paid I mean I've been doing this for like eight months right for free for schools and stuff which was fine but you know and I do pro bono once in a

while too now but I'm just like, how much will you pay me? And they told, I think it was like $500 for a 40, a half hour or 45 minute lunch thing. And I went, wait, that's more than I make an hour in my corporate job. And I went, I'll take a vacation day. I can do that. So I took a vacation day and I did the gig and then I got another five requests and these requests started to pay. And I, so I use my vacation time and did a little bit here and a little bit there. I did some of them. And I remember my keeper husband I have now. Yeah. So my keeper, he's, he's like, you know, Elizabeth, you are, you're really good. You need, and I'm like, you're my husband. You're supposed to say that. Right. I'm like, and he's like, no, you're really good. You need to do this full time. And I'm like, no, no, no,

no. I'm getting a great salary with benefits and traveling the world and all this, you know, you know, yeah, exactly. It's safe. I know what's coming in. I had never been an entrepreneur. So I had been a little bit in network marketing for fun, but I'd never like full-time entrepreneur. And my dad was a business owner. My dad owned a construction company and he worked his booty off all the time. So I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, I'm good. So, uh, I, you know, about three months after I started getting some paid engagements, I, um, had, we had a, it's January, 2009 to give you an idea of the timeframe. Okay. I walked into a division level meeting. So our company's division, 250 people in a meeting,

our CEO from the Sweden headquarters was coming in to do a, like a state of the union kind of address, like the state of the company. And January, 2009, it was a pretty, we were in the midst of a recession, right? Right. And so the CEO came in and put a PowerPoint up and the PowerPoint was like, Oh, state of the economy. It was all down. Right. Right. Slide number two, four words. You're all laid off. No way. Yeah. Laid off 250 people with a two page PowerPoint. I was like, and in the back of my head, all I could think was, I know what I'm supposed to do. Oh, wow. I'm supposed to, I'm supposed to go out and speak and do this. So everybody else was screaming and crying and pandemonium and oh my gosh, it was a mess. And I'm going, all right, right on. Yeah. So I went through that.

They actually came to me and they're like, Elizabeth, you know, all those multi-million dollar contracts you've been negotiating us in for two years. We now need you to negotiate us out. No way. Yeah. Yeah. Talk about a tough job. So they asked me to stay for six months. So for six months,

I would draw my regular salary and I would negotiate us out, but they didn't want me to travel anymore. I had to use this new website called Skype. Skype was brand new back then. I had to use this new website called Skype to communicate with my vendors over internationally, which meant six in the morning, 10 at night and weird hours. And I would have to negotiate out us out of all these contracts. So, um, but you know, without travel, I'm home every night. It gave me a chance to start working on that website that I didn't finish until my coach kicked my butt and start working on my book, which I didn't finish until the coach kicked my butt. So, you know, I started going through all that. Because you're helpful. Yeah.

A coach is a good thing. You really, really, it's good. It's a good thing to hold you accountable. So, but I went, so I went through all that and, you know, and the great thing is I knew my end date. So I could say yes to new requests that were coming in as long as they were after that date, right? And they were like, oh yeah,

and the severance you would get if you left today, if you stay till the very end, we're going to give you that severance plus a bonus. So I actually was able to fund my transition because of that. That's wonderful. And Elizabeth, as you were telling me that, you know, I thought about a few things. I thought about like, sometimes our biggest difficulties are our biggest gifts, you know, and how I like this Katie Byron quote, Byron Katie, and she says, life doesn't happen like to you, it happens for you. And you know, that there's all this like messages about how you should be speaking.

And you know, like all these people wanting to hear from you, but it's like this full time job was safer. Yeah. And so the all these messages were happening at the right time for you to make this transition. Until it becomes the sledgehammer of unemployment or something, you know, I mean, sometimes it takes something, you know, sometimes you don't hear the tap on the shoulder. It requires the two by four or the sledgehammer to tell you, hey, you got to make this change. And, and so you better do this. like oh shoot so uh it was you know it was um it truly truly was and is a great message to make out of the mess yes so and i i mean even even the eight years i served in the military just shy of eight years every single place i went it was drama after drama

after drama just i mean every from the you know the recruiter saying you can't do this to the flight instructor who tried to fail me to, you know, the first duty assignment at Fort Drum was the stalker. And then after that, and while I was in Germany, we got deployed to Kosovo and I was injured. So, you know, it was like eight years of soap opera and people would call me and be like, I want to hear what's going on with you, Elizabeth, because you make my life look normal. And I'd be like, oh, thanks a lot. But what would I be talking about now? Right. If I hadn't gone all through, through all that then. So, you know, we truly, truly, it is, we don't always see that message in the mess. It's not until we can get on the other side. And I'm a firm believer that speaking

can't be therapy. So you kind of got to work out your stuff before. We've seen that happen. It's not pretty. No. Well, and I'm thinking about your F.L.Y. acronym as I'm listening, Elizabeth, and your F.L.Y. acronym is First Lead Yourself. And tell us a little bit about that acronym, because I think in this moment, right, where you get laid off, you have to choose speaking or you decide to choose speaking. You don't have to, but you decide, right? Like you had to lead yourself through that. And even as people are listening, no matter what they're struggling with, you know, can you, can you move this message and find the message in the mess? So you have to lead yourself first. So tell us about what that means. So that's really evolved over time. Um,

leading your, leading yourself is hard. You know, it's actually easier to lead other people, but what we realize is, is what we may not realize is that we're sabotaging when we don't lead ourselves well, because people, they don't follow, they don't follow always what we say, but they certainly follow what we do. Yes. Right. And especially parents, leaders, I mean, no matter entrepreneurs, business owners, I mean, there's not anyone who wants to buy from a lack of confidence entrepreneur or business owner. I mean, no matter what position you are in, how you show up in this world. So we talked earlier about showing up, but how you're showing up in this world, that's the fly, is you controlling how you show up, how your confidence, your communication, your interactions.

I mean, and now we've added in, you had in the whole social and the perceptions that exist around social media and everything else. Everything you do, it matters. So, you know, that's, that's what fly's all about is just being more intentional about how you want to show up in the world. And nobody else controls that, but you. Right. And I think that takes a lot of awareness of yourself, you know, like stepping back and thinking about how do I want to show up? Like what's important to me. And I think about, I agree that leading yourself is the most difficult, others, but it takes a lot of like mental strength and regulating yourself so that you can like lead

in accordance with like your values. That's what also I'm thinking about. Like, how do I want to show up in the world? What's most important to me? It does. It requires some self-reflection. Yes. It requires, and I think, you know, for me, I'm connected to spirit and God. And so for me, what I, what I see us doing is we filled our lives with so much busyness, so much activity and busyness that we don't allow any quiet noise for that spirit or God or whatever it is you believe in to talk to you. And, and, you know, I call it the tap, the tap on the shoulder. It can, it could be a two by four sometime, but I call it the tap. So like when you get that tap on the shoulder that says, you're supposed to be doing this. Like if we have the TV on and YouTube and every, you know,

the radio in the car and it's so much noise, it doesn't get through. So that was a little tap when you got all these messages that you should be. Well, no, that was a two by four, two by by four you're gonna lose your job you don't get you don't you you must do something so yeah no sometimes sometimes you know I and what I've learned over the years is when I listen to that voice okay it comes more like the more I honor it by listening the more it comes in. And like my grandparents have passed. And I was very, very close to my great grandfather when I was very young, like six years old.

And, you know, I can feel them. You know, I can feel them watching over me and talking to me and through, through spirit, through, you know, whatever, what, again, whatever it is you believe, I can, I can feel them. And I know, I know that they're, um, if, if not necessarily watching over me, they're in my corner, right. They want me to be successful and have that. And so, um, you know, that kind of, it's, there's a peacefulness in that, right. Yeah, absolutely. To know when you have that. And so, you know, that kind of, there's a peacefulness in that, right? Yeah, absolutely. To know when you have that. That's beautiful. I wanted to ask you also about your pilot acronym. It's something that you speak on in your book. Tell us a bit about,

oh, there we go. There we go. The pilot pilot method perfect i i don't wear the helmet otherwise it really messes up the hair it's about five elemental truths that you call them and how they're connected to leaders leadership and kind of this idea of fly like first lead yourself yeah Yeah. So, um, you know, I, I struggled with this cause I wanted to write this book and I had the, I knew I wanted pilot to be an acronym and it was, it's actually, it was a really cool process that I had to come up with it. I'm big, I'm a big visual person. That's why I've got like up here, I've got skies, a limit, just fly. I'm not bossy. I'm motivational. Um, like things like that, like that. And so when I was working on the book, I had these white sticky papers, the big poster papers up in my hallway that I walked by every

day, multiple times a day, and I wrote it out. And then every time I wrote by and thought of a different word that started with a P or an I, or, you know, in each letter, I kind of worked it through that way until I have one that really spoke to me and resonated with me. So the P is about potential because if you don't believe in your potential, no one else will. It's, it is truly that simple that again, no one wants to follow somebody that's wishy-washy or uncertain or anything else. So I firmly believe that that is foundational to everything we do. It comes from within and how we show up. And I have some, a free, a little free gift for your listeners and a certain strategies I'll share with share too. So that'll help with that because I, that's

tactical. Like it's not just, I'm not just saying it conceptually to believe in yourself. I'm going to give you three strategies to help you that you can do right away as soon as you watch the video. So because I've learned like, okay, this isn't normal. And I've been through it when I was in flight school and I had to combat negativity every single day and show up. And so I've been there and I've had to find these strategies. So I've got the strategies for that to help too, but that's potential, believing it. And then I is implementation. Because it doesn't do any good to believe in your potential if you don't do something with it.

So implementation and, and accomplishing something and making progress on, you know, on yourself, on a project, whatever it is you're working on is essential. And then L is leadership, which is kind of like, I really debated on that because the book is about leading yourself and I'm making leadership one of the, one of the five things. But what I did is I broke leadership into a simple three, three steps and it's communicate, aviate, navigate. So it's kind of a little can acronym inside, inside a pilot because we all leadership is about how we communicate leadership's about how we aviate and that's taking action. So it goes back to implementation and then navigating it. That's about creating a vision and casting that vision

that people want to follow. Awesome. And so it's a real simple framework with underneath leadership. And that I teach is a whole day workshop now all by itself. Like I could go all day. I can write a whole book just on can now. And then, oh, is optimal. I don't, I don't know. I'm kind of, I've got, I don't know. I've got so many ideas and, um, maybe love it. Maybe. And I've got a couple of ideas in the cook and things cooking in there. Uh, O is optimal performance, you know, and so that became, that became a lot of self-reflection, like how, like as a pilot, we couldn't like like nobody wants to fly with an average pilot no like you know who here wants to fly with an average pilot you want the one who got an a in

class or you want the one that got a d you know i mean it's like pretty no-brainer right so you know but how i really started to do an analysis for on pilots and our activity and like what we did and why are we high achievers? Why do we do what we do? And some of it comes to the responsibility of carrying people in the back, right? Even as a helicopter, I carry, I flew generals and VIPs and the secretary of defense. So, you know, there's an expectation of excellence there. And so how do you set that expectation? How can you like physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually show up as your best self on a consistent basis? So instead of a peak performance, which I hear a lot, cause you got the peak, you get the valleys and the average

of that ends up being an average performance. What we worked and strive for that I wrote about in the book was about maintaining and sustaining and a sustainable optimal performance. So your average is the curves are smaller and your average is a little higher. So that's what optimal performance is about. And then tenacity, tenacity is like, it's simple, but not easy. It's tenacity, not giving up. How do you show up when it's hard? How do you, you know, push on when everything feels like it's against you? You know, and I think at some point, not, it probably won't be the next book, but at some point I really want to talk and talk and dive into deeper and do some research on, on how, like when to quit. Yeah. You know, cause I think, I think that's a really,

like, that's a big struggle. I mean, that's a big struggle is when should you stay and when should you quit? And I think, and the whole, like, I'll probably make it about critical thinking and decision-making and everything like that. Cause I might like all that just is kind of swimming in my head. That's how I work. So it's all kind of this idea is all this up here. And I'm thinking like, how, like, Ooh, there's something there, right. That people are struggle with. I think people struggle with it. And I think about, you know, tenacity, it also means to me grit. And it's like, sometimes we can be too gritty and we can kind of push too hard I'm thinking about our detriment right and it can hurt us yeah it can hurt us like there have been times I've

pushed on something so bad that it reflected negatively on me and it wasn't the right thing to do and and looking back with some emotional intelligence I I go, yeah, probably should not have done that. Yeah. Or we push too hard towards a goal, you know, and then we, you know, for me, it might be that I'm not taking care of my kids and my husband and my family, because I'm so focused on this one thing. And it's like, okay, in hindsight, yep, I should have kind of backed off from that, you know, like balance and harmony. And how do you, how do you find all that, but also the decision-making around that. So I find that really fascinating. So I'll probably, you'll see that from me within the next few years. I'm like, it's been percolating in here for a

while. So don't really take my idea. Yeah, there we go. So here is the pilot method and you can obviously get Elizabeth's book. That's actually called The Pilot Method right there. And I saw it on Amazon the other day. So it's there. And give us other ways to get it right. It is on Amazon. However, if you buy it from pilotmethod.com, I will autograph it and send it to you personally.

So I always recommend buy it direct. Yeah, that's always better than Amazon. Than Amazon, yeah. Amazon goes through the publisher and if it's signed, it's signed to somebody else. Like they'll say, oh, it's signed. Yeah, I signed it to that person. So it's a great incentive.

So people are keeping track. P for potential, I for implementation for implementation l for leadership o for optimal performance and t for tenacity and elizabeth i wanted to ask you one question about optimal performance right this is the podcast about really performance and mindset so when you think about um being a pilot and what you just said about you had to be your best self. I mean, even as a speaker, you have to be your best self every day, right? So you give the best to your audiences, but how did you train yourself to do that in maybe what might seem like really a pressure-packed environment where you got, you know, all these big important people in your helicopter, but you had

to really be on. So how did you train your mindset to be able to really perform on demand? So, you know, so again, I'm going to go back to fly first, lead yourself, how you show up. Obviously I'm military, so we love our acronyms, but so how you show up is, is important. I figured out, I created, I got three strategies to boost your confidence, to help you and how you, and how you show up in those situations. I'm going to give those as a gift to everyone. However, for the other piece with that is, is also taking care of yourself when you're not on.

And I think that's the piece where we get really out of balance. And so what I, what most people don't know is unless we're in combat situations and then all bets are off, but in a training mode, I, as a pilot, I would have, I could work for 12 hours and then I had to take 12 hours off. Like it was like forced that we were going to take that time off and recover and, and, and recuperate. And, you know, whatever we did in those 12 hours, like we were expected to do a lot of times when we were in a high, high operational tempo, we would have to do our physical fitness on our own instead of with as a unit with the group. So we'd have to take care of, take care of our physical self, our emotional self, our families, our spiritual, all that. And, but it was, it was, it was required

because when we show up to work, we can't be thinking about what's going on at home. Especially when lives are on the line. And I still look at like, even speaking, right. Even a video, even a podcast like this, like I'm fully present. I'm here for you. I'm here for you watching or you listening. And, and there's a responsibility with that. There is. There is. And so when, when you look at that and say, okay, we have a responsibility to show up at our best, it kind of changes things. It creates a sense of urgency and importance and, and how you, how you show up, you know, again, physically, mentally, emotionally,

spiritually, how you show up, it impacts everything else you do. I think what you just said is powerful. Like we have a responsibility to show up at our best, you know, and I think an attribute of that is being fully present. And that's hard because there are a lot of things that are really distracting, a phone that's probably in your pocket right now, like it's the most distracted time we've ever been in. And so it's like, but just this commitment and responsibility that you have to show up as your best self. Yeah. You know, there's a whole training I do around focus because as a pilot, it's like,

you know, we're, we're focused on what we're doing, but what we're doing is encompassing everything. Right. So it's a little bit, a little bit of a different um thought process around focus but i i think the the fact is our brain doesn't multitask well it doesn't unless it's muscle memory right and so that's one of the things when i talk about you're flying we there's a reason flight school was 42 weeks 42 weeks to learn how to fly because when you start flying real missions without an instructor pilot you can't think about how you fly it has that has to be muscle memory right and your training memory and because then you've got to layer in a mission of general uh you know some you know whether other things that happen you have to be able to respond to those without thinking about how am I still going to fly? Yeah, for sure. There's a reason that commercial pilots have to have like 15, I think

it's 1500 hours now. So I'm not a commercial pilot anymore. So I can't, I can't don't quote me, but there's a reason why it's like 1250 or 1500 hours before they can even get a license to be commercial now. Like it used to be 500, you know, so they've increased those requirements and everything because, and there's a reason for that, because again, there's more safety in that and there's more security in that and there's better insurance for that commercially. So, you know, there's things like that that are so important to have focus on.

And what we do is we, we, we're paying attention to our phone instead of our children. I know. And I can't even tell you. And I asked this question when I teach this, that this focus piece, I'm like, how many times have you been doing something, um, when your children are speaking to you and then you don't remember what they said. Right. Or you're not fully present. So you're not, you don't, you might have said yes to something that you don't really want to say. So a good example is you're cooking something on the stove, right? So if you're cooking something on the stove and you're, it has to be stirred and you're stirring it, stirring is muscle memory. When you're stirring it because it's muscle memory, you can now focus and have a conversation with your children and remember it and retain it. But when you move to measuring

and you're having to read a recipe or calculate a measurement or, you know, measure something that requires that you're in divide your focus, and then you're not going to retain what's going on. So once you start getting aware of when, when can you multitask versus not multitask? So another great question for everyone listening is how many times have you driven home from somewhere and you get home and you realize you have no idea how you got home, right? Cause you having a conversation, you're on the phone, hopefully on a, on headsets or, you know, or Bluetooth, but because something else is going on, it's distracting your attention. And the fact is that's not good either. It's not, it's not most accidents happen two miles from your house.

Yeah. So that's not the time to go on autopilot because you know where you're going. So, you know, things like that is that is when we shift our awareness and we, when we recognize when focus works and when it doesn't work, we can, we can increase our performance, right. Or high, high performance. We can increase our performance because then we're utilizing it. It's a, it's a tool. It's a resource of knowing when our, when we need to apply focus versus when we can divide. Yeah, I think that's really helpful.

And just this idea that you can train your focus, but especially this present moment piece, I think is powerful. Elizabeth, so I always ask my guests to tell us about what failure is to them. Like, how would you define failure? Give us an example of it. And it's pretty awesome because I have a wide variety of examples and I can share them with you of what failure is, which kind of shows us that there's not just one definition, but how do you define it? So I look at failure as opportunity. It's an opportunity to learn. It's an opportunity to get better. It's an opportunity to improve. It's an opportunity, you know, to try something different. So to me, if it's not even a failure, right, then it's failure is when I do the same thing over and over again and becomes insanity, like Einstein said, right? So to me, that's failure is when I don't learn. But yeah, opportunity is definitely, I like to learn. It doesn't mean I like to fail, but I like to learn. And what I've learned is,

and I talk about this in my speech, is we can be in our comfort zone or we can be in our potential zone, but you can't be in both at the same time. Because your comfort zone, you get what you already got because you're going where you've already been. And the potential zone is when you're trying new things and trying new things has a risk. It has a risk of things not going instead of failure. It's not going the way you thought it should go. Sometimes it's better. Like I've had projects where I thought it's going to go here and it went here and that's even better. Yay. You know? So is that a failure? It went somewhere different, but it's still good.

Right. And you're seeing the opportunity in it. Yeah. And because I'm seeing the opportunity in it, the cool thing is when I look at it that way, I see the opportunity in it. Yeah. And because I'm seeing the opportunity in it, the cool thing is when I look at it that way, I see the opportunity in it. What happens is I see more opportunities from it. I think so many times that people like let fear of failure get in the way of choosing the potential zone, which I like what you just said, you know, that it's like, well, I shouldn't really put myself out there because I might fail. Right. But when we define it more as like, it's just an opportunity to learn and grow and pivot and figure out new ways of doing a project or whatever you might

be doing, it gives us freedom to like choose the potential zone. The fun stuff doesn't happen in your comfort. Well, I guess some fun stuff could happen in your comfort zone if you're already doing fun stuff. But the real truth, like especially in business and growth and leadership, I mean, all these areas, the real exponential growth happens when you try new things. And there's always a risk. But the thing is, there's a risk staying in your comfort zone too. And that means you don't reach your full potential. That's what I think.

Exactly. What do you think the risk is when you stay in your comfort zone? Well, it's the risk of missed opportunity, right? Of missed potential of things. It's more better things or more success or more, whatever that is, you know, more financial success, more, more success or more, whatever that is, you know, more financial success, more, you know, what, whatever that is, you potentially lose that too. And I think it's interesting what you said, Sandra, about fear. I think more people are afraid of the fear of success because it's a fear of unknown than they are afraid of failing. Yeah. They don't know what this, what success and what, um, uh, what they don't know what success is going to look like. They haven't visualized it. They don't know, they can't see it. And because they can't see it, they stay, they stay back in

comfort. And they're unsure maybe if they can handle it or if it is really what they want because they really haven't thought about it. Yeah. That's what I, that's what I, I think it's interesting. I think, I think that's a bigger fear or, you know, the fear of looking silly to your friends or, you know, I think there's a bigger fear around that than actually the fear of failing itself. Because most are pretty forgiving like you make a mistake and oh my bad you know most people are are pretty forgiving of trying something new and it not succeeding but fear of the unknown fear of what what a huge level of success that they're not familiar with will look like. Really good. Awesome. I didn't expect us to go to this place of like

philosophy potential. So like my brain is like, awesome. Elizabeth, you have shared so much stuff with us. Tell us a little bit about how we can find more about your speaking, about your 19 books, the free gift that I know that you want to share with us. So tell us about. Let's just focus on the free gift. And when you're there, you're there in the free gift. You'll see off to the side, there's options. So if you want to get some books, I have entrepreneurial books, I have business books, I have pilot method, of course, go to pilot method.com or you there's a, there'll be a link there too. But the gift is I have a $99 motivational course called soar your life. It's actually the courses master, master your motivation, but the domain to get to it is soar your life. So so s-o-a-r like okay pilot soar s-o-a-r your life.com

and with that link that overrides the 99 price to free nice so yes free we love free so you know it's just a way i can help right now so So it includes the, what I normally give out for free is the three confidence boosters. So I normally give out that, but right now with COVID and everything happening and I'm, I'm seeing that people are struggling with their motivation, their internal inspiration. I call that and they're struggling right now and I want to help. So, so here's the deal. Sawyerlife.com for you, Sawyerlife.com. You can share that. In fact, please share that. So I'm pilot speaker on everything social. So share it, tag me, send it out there, give it to your friends and family, coworkers,

use the threes boosters as a strategy to, to help increase productivity in your team. You know, whatever it is that you need, it's there. And it's a gift. Yeah. I want us, I want us to be more motivated. So soaryourlife.com and you can reach out to Elizabeth anywhere on social at Pilot Speaker. We'd love to hear what was important to you from Elizabeth's message today and the podcast. And I always like to wrap up with a good summary. Okay. So I know we talked about a lot of different things. I'm like, where do I start? But I appreciated just when you were talking about the military and how

it was so hard, but you didn't give up. And that was really like an intentional decision that you refused to quit. You didn't allow other people to dictate what you were going to do with your life and your opportunities, even though, you know, women shouldn't be there and the other messages that you got. So just like embracing the hard, the hard things, that's, that's what I took from there. And then she's got pages y''all. Just saying. I know. I just turned it to page two. Okay.

So pilot stands for potential implementation, leadership, optimal performance, and tenacity, and how those really help shape us to be, to fly ourselves first, right? To lead ourselves first or fly. And then at the end, when we were talking about like, you have the responsibility to show up as your best self. So embracing that and really like thinking about how you want to show up in the world, being intentional with that. And then this last conversation about failure is opportunity and kind of moving towards your potential zone instead of your comfort zone is the way to keep growing and learning and being your best. So way to crash it today. I'm grateful that you have been on the

show with us today. And thank you so much for being on. Well, and I hope you all have a high performance mindset with syndrome. Love it. Way to go for finishing another episode of the high performance mindset. I'm giving you a virtual fist pump. Holy cow. Did that go by way too fast for anyone else? If you want more, remember to subscribe and you can head over to Dr. Sindra for show notes and to join my exclusive community for high performers, where you get access to videos about mindset each week. So again, you can head over to Dr. Sindhra. That's D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A.com. See you next week.