The Daily Stoic - The Day My Ego Almost Killed Me | Fighter Pilot Michelle Curran (PT. 1)

Episode Date: September 10, 2025

When failure can mean life or death, you learn fast what ego and fear really cost. In today’s episode, Ryan talks with Michelle “MACE” Curran about the brutal reality of fighter pilot training, how she battled imposter syndrome in a male-dominated world, the mistake that gave her a call sign for life, and why fear is an essential part of real courage.Michelle “MACE” Curran is a former United States Air Force fighter pilot with nearly 2,000 hours of F-16 flying time. She flew combat missions in Afghanistan and honed her skills across the globe, becoming the second woman in history to serve as the Lead Solo Pilot for the Thunderbirds, the Air Force’s elite demonstration team. Known for her signature upside-down maneuvers, Mace performed for millions, inspiring audiences at airshows and flyovers like the Super Bowl, Daytona 500, and Indy 500.You can follow Michelle Curran on Instagram @Mace_Curran and learn more about her work at https://macecurran.com/📚 Check out her book The Flipside: How to Invert Your Perspective and Turn Fear into Your Superpower, which just released this week!👉 Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing to The Daily Stoic Premium - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content coming soon: dailystoic.com/premium📖 Preorder the final book in Ryan Holiday's The Stoic Virtues Series: "Wisdom Takes Work": https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us:  Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee 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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students of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating, and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are and also to find peace and wisdom in their lives. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I am deep in the world of fighter pilots these days for this book that, that I am working on about Stockdale. So I've been fascinated by what draws someone to that,

what makes someone do that. What's the personality you need? Is it big ego? Is it the adrenaline junkie? Is it fearlessness? Is it a death wish? It's something I talked to Terry Vertz about, who was not just a graduate of the Air Force Academy,

but went on to be an astronaut. He's now running for Senator here in Texas. I don't really like roller coasters. I don't like G-forces. I don't have any desire to learn how to fly as some of my friends have done as they've gotten up there in their careers. It's sort of a rich person hobby, I guess. That doesn't interest me. But what does interest me is people's interest in it and what that personality type is and where there's truth behind the stereotype and where there's not.

And actually, my guest today confirms that, you know, a fighter pilot's actual success, their ability to stay alive is in many ways the opposite of what you would see in the movies, like Top Gun or whatever. That ego will get you killed. If you have a death wish, gravity is more than happy to oblige that. If you're an adrenaline junkie, if you're fearless, in many cases, you are a danger to yourself and others. So I got this email a couple of months ago, said, I'm Michelle Mace-Current, former U.S. Air Force F-16 pilot,

Thunderbird Solo Pilot. She said, you know, she wrote this book that I think is largely based on some of the Stoic principles. She said, you know, the idea that discipline creates freedom, that we have to practice discomfort before it's forced on us, and that our response to adversity is more powerful than the adversity itself. I think that's all right. And so I was really excited to have this conversation.

and I think it went great. I've had a number of different pilots on the podcast over the years. Congressman Adam Kinsinger was an Air Force pilot. Senator Martha McSally was a pilot. William Carey was a Navy pilot before he spent all those years in the North Vietnamese prison camp alongside Commander and Future Admiral Stockdale, who, as I said, I'm writing about now. I've always loved, if you've read any of the novels,

of James Salter, who is a Air Force pilot in Korea. They're some of the most beautiful descriptions of flying and the sort of fighter pilot life that you can imagine. I've raved about John Boyd over the years. The book Boyd, the fighter pilot who changed the art of war is one of my all-time favorites. I've spoken at different military bases over the years. I've got to sit in an F-16.

My kids are obsessed with planes. We were just down at the Naval Air Museum in Pensacola. They also like the Armaments Museum, which has a bunch of cool planes and missiles down in Fort Walton. So as I said, my guest today is former U.S. Air Force pilot Michelle Curran, aka Mace, that's her call sign. And in today's episode, we talk about some of those stereotypes, what it was like becoming one of the few female fighter pilots in history, how her ego did get in the way of her success early on, and how she got her call sign. Mace has over 2,000 hours flying the F-16, and that's one of the planes that John Boyd was responsible for. She flew combat missions in Afghanistan. She honed her skills across the globe,

becoming a second woman in history to serve as the lead solo pilot for the Thunderbirds, which is the Air Force's elite flight team, you know, the parades and stuff like that. She's known for some of her crazy upside-down maneuvers. She's performed for millions of people all over the world. air shows flying over things like the Super Bowl, Daytona 500, the Indy 500. It's a fascinating life that very different than mine. But that's why I wanted to talk to her. And you can follow her on Instagram at Mace underscore Curran. And you can check out her book. The flip side, how to invert your perspective and turn fear into your superpower, which was just released this week. And that's my point. Like when you hear fighter pilot, you don't think fear using

fearlessness but but she's saying fear is a superpower so it's about that inversion it's not what you think and uh i would argue as i do in courage's calling that that not having fear is dangerous engines thought this too look i think this is a great episode i can't wait for you to listen to it and uh let's get into it did you always want to be a pilot no no no not at all I was, so I grew up in a rural part of Wisconsin out in the country, farming town, not a military, not an aviation family, but I was a shy introvert who was like socially awkward, but also super adventurous and driven. And as I got into high school, my parents were like, so we do not have a college fund for you. Let's put those good grades to use. Yeah. Air Force ROTC rose to the top.

Yeah. I wanted to see the world. Wanted to do something exciting. Seemed like a good fit. But at that time, I wanted to be an FBI agent. Okay. So I was like, cool, I will go on the Air Force's dime to college as a criminal justice major. I'll do four years in the Air Force to pay back that time.

I'll get out and I'll apply to the FBI. Yeah. I'll be competitive with my military experience. So that's the grand plan as like a 17-year-old. I go to college halfway through. We visit Tyndale Air Force Base down in Florida. And I'm standing. It's like in the panhandle on the Gulf.

Yeah, yeah. So a beautiful area. But I had seen fighter jets maybe do a flyover before. for like a national anthem, which I did think was cool. Yes. But now I'm standing on the ramp, like right there. Yeah. Two F-15s take off, full afterburner to go to a training mission, and I am just awestruck.

Like, goosebumps. Yeah. What do you think it was? The power or the grace of it? Like, what do you think hit you? I think, like, the sound that the jet makes on takeoff with an afterburner, when you are that close, it is, like, killed some of my hearing surely in that moment. Of course. But like goosebumps, just sheer excitement.

I loved roller coasters growing up. Okay. And in my mind, that was the adult job that was like riding a roller coaster. Yeah. Turns out there's a little bit more to it than that, learned later. But it was just this moment of sheer excitement, inspiration. And then I think what really mattered is the next year when they're like, hey, who here wants to compete to be a pilot? Right.

I thought about that moment. And I was like, throw my name in the hat. Had you met a pilot before? I think we had some career days in ROTC, but I was very intimidated by them as a cadet. Were there many female pilots? No, not. I had never met one. And, you know, even going into the Air Force and actually making it to be a fighter pilot, which is super competitive, at that time when I went through that program around 2010, 2011, about 2% of fighter pilots were women.

Wow. Yeah, not a lot of us. So you see them take off and you're just like, that's me. that's what I want to do. Yes, exactly. Young, dumb, not understanding how stacked against me the odds were, which I think... It's better not to know. Good thing, yes, because I don't know if I would have gone after it had I known how hard it is. So when you're seeing them, you're seeing the planes, is your first thought, like, there's a person in there doing that? Like, do you think you were attracted to the idea of being the person that has that power, that control over that

thing. I always loved the idea of flying growing up. I didn't even take my first commercial flight till I was like late elementary school. Okay. And I just remember being so excited by the concept of it. Yeah. But not really connecting the dots that it was something I could go do. Yeah. And I used to have dreams as a kid, this is just weird now, where I would have my superpower be flying. Right. I would like fly around in my backyard, in my house, up the stairwell. And I think I just love this idea of peer flight where it's like, you connected to the machine. Yeah. And in my mind, a fighter jet was, like, the only way to really do that.

You think about a cargo aircraft, it's just not the same. Sure. No, I was like that. Like, I mean, I loved books as a kid. Like, people asked, like, did you always want to be a writer? And I loved books, and I read a ton. But the idea that there was a person making them, it occurred to me, like, embarrassingly late.

Like, I mean, obviously you see the author on the back, but those weren't real people to me in any more than, like, actors. or professional athletes were because like it's not like those are your parents' friends or it's not like you see those people walking around town. It's totally foreign and unattainable that like a regular person is doing that thing and that you could be that person. 100% and not to get ahead in my story, but later in my career, one of the coolest things was to get to be that person for other people.

Yes. Yeah. When they meet someone and they go, oh, this is a person. a regular person. Yeah, and they came from the town that I came from or a state like mine or their parents also. That's why representation is obviously so important across the board is that it makes something that it's not just makes the possible, the impossible possible. It makes something that didn't even occur to people conceivable. Exactly.

And I get very much on a soap box with the see it to be it thing when it gets written off is like, like, little girls know they can be pilots. It's because they don't want to be pilots. I'm like, no, they, it literally doesn't occur to a lot of them. Well, I think that I've talked about this before, you know what a NEPO baby is? Yeah. Obviously, there's advantages, but I think the big advantage is that you just saw your parents do something that, again, most people don't even know where to start with.

You're like, mom has an agent and she goes to work at a movie set. And so that becomes conceivable to you as a thing a person could do. Exactly. And when you can put that beyond just like a poster, and you can talk to that person. And you can see that they're a real person with normal mannerisms and they're relatable. And I think that's why I love talking about the fear I've had and the self-doubt and all of that because I can just see how that connects the dots in such a more effective way. Yes. Because they're like, oh, wait, Mace is a person like me. She just worked really hard at this one thing. Yeah. Opens the world of possibilities. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.

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That's the power of Dell AI with Intel Inside. Upgrade today by visiting Dell.com slash deals. That's dell.com slash deals. Most people probably don't know that, like, the levels of competition that you have to go through to get to something like being a fighter pilot. Because there's lots of, there's like everyone that joins the military, there's everyone who's interested in flying, and then there's the people who are physically capable of doing it. And it's this winnowing process that probably is, I mean, do you have any idea what the percentages are, like, of how. Like how many slots there are and how many people that want to do it? I don't know the big numbers, but if you look at my pilot training class, it's just a little segment.

Mind you, these are all people that are medically qualified. They've already either commissioned through ROTC, the Air Force Academy, they've gotten their four-year degree, got in a pilot slot. Out of 25 people, you know, halfway through, we get cut in half, kind of in a small portion of us moves on to this track to set you up for a fighter or a bomber. there were six of us, I think, in my class, and we had two fighter aircraft available. So two people out of 25 when I would say three quarters of the class wanted to fly fighters actually got them. And the fact that I was one of those two still blows my mind. Well, like in the Navy, you know, they have that expression, never give up the ship, right? And one of the things that hit me about, like, just how elite the sort of pilots are across the board

is that they don't have any expression like that for the plane. I remember someone told me once that, like, as they talk about, how they talk to pilots about ejecting, if there's a problem, they're like, you're more valuable than the plane. And they don't just mean that, like, morally. It's like, no, no, the plane's worth $30 million, but an elite fighter pilot is worth way more than $30 million. You know, it's just the idea that, like, how rare they are and then the amount of training and the amount of trust and the clearances and all the things that go into being a fighter pilot. these are like multi, multi, multi, multi million dollar assets ultimately. That's how sort of rare and elite it is. Yeah, and that's why we incur a 10 year commitment.

Yeah, right. Like you want to be a pilot. Okay, we are going to train you for two to three years. And at the end of that, now your tenure starts counting down. So your time in the military to pay back your scholarship goes from four years to 13 to 14. No big deal. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. You're an indentured servant essentially just for them to let you in on the secrets. of the training and how the aircraft work and all that. And it just takes a lot of reps to get good. Yeah. Years. Yeah. And you think about, like, how could a fighter pilot be worth more than a $30 million

aircraft? And you think, how much does it cost each time one of those planes goes in the air? And then you think about how many thousands of hours of practice, that's probably most of the math right there. Just like if you had to look at, like, the DOD fuel costs in your career, it's going to be an unfathomable number. I haven't, I'm not going to do that, Matt. Yeah, right.

Yeah, just eat, because, yeah, it's like 10,000 hours or whatever the number is to master something. And it's not like sitting around noodling on a guitar where the, the practice costs are free. Although I would say the bulk of our learning takes place outside of the cockpit. Yeah, sure. But I just mean to get the, the true flying hours, each time there is a. cash register going off. It's just that gas pump, like max speed ticking up every time.

Is there a big difference between, like, imagine there's basically no substitute, though, for in the air training. A simulator is great, but you just have to do it and do it and do it and do it. Yeah, I would say the sim is really good for introducing new concepts and just trying those first few swings at bat where you're just horrendous and they're like, okay, you died. Let's reset and try again. Right. Right. It's just free to fail over and over and monetarily and for other reasons, right? So I think the sims were heavily used for practicing emergencies and then new concepts when you're a student, when you're young. You don't use them that often once you're kind of in the thick of it and you're experienced, but you might go fly a one hour flight. Yeah. And there is no substitute for just the task saturation that happens airborne. There's just so many things. And the seat of the pants and nine G's on your body. Like we cannot simulate that. But,

I think the debrief portion afterwards, which might be, might be an hour, but it might be six hours, depending on what the flight is, even though the flight time was only an hour, that is where your brain has the time to actually be like, oh, I jacked that up, and here's why. So we always say, like, the flying portion, of course, is essential. But that debrief period and how that's handled and how mistakes are addressed is where the actual learning happens. Yeah, that's interesting. So, yeah, you might go, okay, they flew a thousand hours. plane or that plane, but there's an hour of prep and then an hour, then there's the walk around and then there's the taxi. There's all the other, and then there's the debrief, and then there's

just the time you spent as you were walking home later, thinking about it. It's all of that is accumulating as the reps and the experience and just the sheer amount of cognitive and physical resources put towards getting good at a thing. I don't think there's enough resources to get good just based on time in the actual cockpit. Yeah. It's like in training, I came into that program with a zero flight experience. I had never piloted even like a Cessna. Right.

They're just like, this is how you talk on the radio. And it's like you push the button and I'm like, the, like radio on, brain off. It's like draining from a fire hose. Yeah. Everything is so overwhelming. And so for me, simulators were key. But we also really rely on something called chair flying, which is. is just sitting and visualizing.

Right. And so when you're really new, I literally had a cockpit poster of the aircraft in my office at home. I would sit in a desk chair and I'd be like, this is when I'm going to say this. I'm going to reach for this switch. I'm going to look here and do this. And I would just do reps. Right.

And I don't think I would have made it through the program if I hadn't done that. Yeah. It's like for a comedian, obviously you have to get up and go on stage. There's no substitute for that. But if you're not walking around going over the things in your mind, over and over and over again. No one's going to give you enough time or opportunity to be bad to get what you need. And the repercussions of being bad are high. Yeah, and the entitlement of just like, oh, I'll work it out on stage or I'll figure this out in the air. You know, like, again,

yeah, you're incurring a bill. There's a cost to it. And so you do have to sort of walk through that stuff. I think about like as a writer, like how many books are you going to write in your life? probably not very many. And so if the only place you're getting practice is in published books, you're doing a lot of learning when you should be at your best, right? You have to be writing other things. You have to be finding other ways to get analogous reps. So are you like an adrenaline drunky? I think people probably think pilots are just like not afraid. They love the rush of it. And that's what makes them good at it. I think when I was young, yes.

I'm 38 now and my risk assessment has drastically changed. You know, now that I'm not in the Air Force anymore, I get asked to fly with friends who have different airplanes all the time. And if it's a person I don't know that well, it's some like old Soviet jet that's been rebuilt, I'm just like, no, I'm good. Right. Like, I'm not going to crash in that after all those stuff.

I would be very disappointed in myself. But I still love roller coasters. I would go skydiving again in a heartbeat. I've done it once. I think those things feel very safe. It's a free adrenaline rush. You only had to skydive once? They don't make you practice it over and over again?

No. So we do some other stuff. We like get towed behind a boat and do like parasailing and we disconnect from the boat to practice like landing and water being in the water way down with gear under a parachute. So that's kind of slightly stressful but sort of fun. Down in Pensacola we do that. We do some other stuff where we like jump off of little towers just to practice. the landing. I did the tower jump once at Benning or Bragg or something. And yeah, to go to your

point about like there's other ways to get the practice, you realize like there's just like a magical distance that above this distance humans don't like jumping. You know, like as soon as you can imagine yourself dying from the thing, your body's like, nope. And so you really just, you don't have to fly all the way up in the air and practice jumping out of a plane over and over again. You can just jump 50 feet off the ground a lot of times. For sure. And it's really the the decision to pull the ejection handle that you need to like be clear on because that's you know that's going to be you could break your arms and legs just from that yeah and all like once you pull that you're just along for the ride everything else is automated yeah yeah yeah you're going the airplane's

going it's a shock people pass out people break arms like you said it's I get asked so many times in Q&A on stage have you ever ejected I'm like no I think you would know like it's just not a common thing yes right I mean that's a 30 million dollar decision or whatever And your body is permanently damaged from it. Yeah. It's the worst case scenario. They're not like, how do we make this comfortable for the person? No.

It's that or die. Yes. Every other thing has already been tried and is impossible. And now you're doing that. But to answer your previous, have you ever been skydiving or bungee jumping? I hate heights and I don't like being scared. So I'll take this. So I kind of enjoy being a little bit scared.

Skydiving, I had no problem with because I feel like when you're that high, you don't have that instinct of like, oh my gosh, if I jump out of this, I'm going to smash into the ground. Sure. And then I went bungee jumping. It was actually here in Texas. And it was a short bungee jump at like a fair. Yeah. It was like 70 feet tall.

Probably more dangerous than most of the other things are done because it's some carny. Yeah. Probably my worst risk assessment of my life. I should have gone off like a bridge in New Zealand, way safer. Right. And I just got stuck on the edge and I was like, I can't. Right.

And I finally did. Yeah. But that was way scarier than jumping out of an airplane. Interesting. So is it scary to fly a fighter jet? No, most of the time, no. You definitely are very focused and heightened stress level, especially when you're inexperienced. And as those reps get in, it gets more and more comfortable with anything.

But there are, honestly, when I talk about deployment flights, four to six hours apiece, a lot of boredom interjected with extreme stress for a very short amount of time. Right. And that's the same, whether you're flying a training flight, whether it's fly. flying for the Thunderbirds, it becomes routine until all of a sudden it's not. Right. And you never know when that's going to happen. And when it does happen, you have to be ready to respond to it and not let your adrenaline sideline you. Yeah, it's like handling those moments of sheer terror, not like this sort of low existential fear.

It's just like this moment of, holy shit, what's happening right now. Yes. Yeah. And I imagine the sort of lull, the boredom lulls you into a place where there's a contrast there. You know, you're not like you're not at that stress level the whole time and then you kind of, you're bored. Yeah. I talk about the Yerkees-Dotson curve where it's like as you move right on the chart, it's higher levels of stress. They call it arousal, but everyone misconstrues that for what it is. And then on the left side, performance goes up, right? So far left corner where the curve is at its lowest, it's boredom, it's complacency, it's disengagement. And then as you move right on the stress level, you get to a point in the bell curve where performance is maximized. Because you're focused, you're

in that flow state, you're engaged, you're aware of information coming in, you're able to process it. and then you get to fall off the backside of that curve as stress increases and you get into like the overwhelm we call it a helmet fire oh it's obviously your helmet's not literally on fire but when you're a student you're constantly being like go they had a helmet fire if smoke could come out my ears it would be right like I'm not I'm not listening to radio calls I'm not responding because I'm just overwhelmed yeah there's that sort of sweet spot because if you're not nervous you're probably not taking it seriously yeah but if you're too nervous you're also not taking it seriously

because you're caught up in your feelings about whatever the thing is, most of which is probably all in your head. Sometimes it's real in the jet, but yes, a lot of times you blow it out of proportion. I mean, you hamstring your own ability to keep it from becoming a catastrophic thing because you're stressed about it

becoming a catastrophic thing. I think, so people probably assume fighter pilots are not afraid, and then I would assume they would, assume that they are egomaniacs. Those are the sort of two stereotypes of the fighter pilot. How true are either of those? I think we can thank Tom Cruise for that. Partially true for both, I would say. I think you get to the point where it becomes your routine job and fear is not something you think about on a regular basis until something unexpected happens. Early on, you just do it scared.

Yeah. honestly especially you know first flight in combat learning to fly for the thunderbirds flying super close to the ground upside down super close to another jet like we don't do that in the combat air force and one of the things we always say is you have to kill your survival instinct yeah because your body just you're like oh get away from me I don't want to be that close to another airplane sure or I as a solo pilot I did those head-on passes looks like a game of chicken like we're each going 500 miles an hour and we pass like 50 to 70 feet apart yeah you shouldn't you shouldn't you shouldn't do that. No. So you have to transcend something. Yes. Even in a training scenario, dog

fighting training, we have a 500 foot training bubble. Right. So to get to like 50 feet when you're head on each other, you're just like, I can't do it. And it's really difficult to overcome that. So fear is a thing, but it's generally people just, they're able to compartmentalize it. And they do it anyway. They do it scared. And then egos, when you're young, I think they're more of a factor. I, my first squadron, there was a lot of jockeying for a position with the young pilots, the lieutenants, the captains. You're friends with everyone. Yeah. Like, you trust that person with your life, super tight knit.

But you're also very aware of how everyone's doing. Yeah. You don't want to be made to look bad. And I think a lot of it is like you feel like you're really establishing your reputation in this career field. You're going to be in for a decade. Yeah. And you don't want to look incompetent. Right.

And for me, for a long time, I thought I was like too humble. Like I wasn't boisterous. I wasn't loud. I wasn't type A. And I felt like I had a hard time fitting in in that culture. Yeah. But in hindsight, I realized that my ego was actually getting in the way because I saw asking questions, asking for help, letting people know I was struggling with a concept in the airplane as weakness. Yeah.

And I felt like I could not show weakness in that environment. Yeah. there's an ego, people don't think about it this way, but there's an ego even in that kind of imposter syndrome or that sort of wallflowerness where you just think people are thinking about you way more than they are and that these things say more about you than they do. And so, yeah, because you don't want to look stupid, you'll stay stupid or because you don't want to ask for help, you don't get help, or you don't want to look like you want it too badly so you don't get it. It's this weird thing where, yeah, the person who needs to be the center of attention,

they make everything about them, that's a very obvious and harmful form of ego. But then we have this other form of ego that maybe we convince ourselves is humility or self-awareness or something, but it's actually just a similar self-absorption. I just ran with my buddy on town. Lake Trail here in Austin, did 10 miles in roughly 70 minutes. And then I ran with his brother, his twin brother. This is my best friends from middle school. I ran with his twin brother when I was in Greece. He was there with his wife's family. We ran outside Olympia. And then in between these two runs, I ran the original marathon. I ran from Marathon to Athens. And you know what shoes I used?

I used today's sponsor, Hoka. They actually have a new shoe. the Rocket X3, which is a race day shoe that's engineered for speed when every second counts. The Rocket X3 is built to meet the demands of race day. It's lightweight. It's responsive. It's tuned for speed. And it's got this carbon plate in there that enhances stability. And it's got the high rebound Piba foam that cushions you against the road.

It's grippy rubber outsole helps ensure a secure connection to the road. And it helps runners stay fast. and focused from start to finish. I think you'll really like these shoes. The carbon fiber plate, seriously, it's something you kind of got to feel to believe, like you go, how could a shoe really make that big of a difference, especially if you've been running a long time,

and then you feel the sort of spring of that carbon fiber, and it is crazy. Try the Rocket X3 for yourself at hoaget.com, and you can check out this cool video I did about the marathon run, which Hokit is sponsored. I'll link to that in description, or you can just go to daily stilic.com slash marathon. We were just out of town for the weekend,

and I was worried when we got back that I wouldn't have the stuff I needed to make my kids' lunches or their snacks for school. But when I got back to the house, you know what was sitting in the driveway? Our box from Thrive Market, which we've been getting groceries and stocking our pantry from,

I think, going on six or seven years now. I love Thrive Market. I invested in Thrive Market. They've been sponsoring the show for a really long time. because it's awesome. Thrive's got everything from high-protein meals, lunchbox staples, low-sugar snacks, everything to simplify breakfast, lunch, or dinner. They've got all the stuff our kids like, including chompsticks and Annie's cheddar bunnies. They've got cookies our kids like. It's where we get the gluten-free pasta that my wife likes to make. It's where we get the bread from

the sandwiches I make myself when I am sitting down to weed and eat. eat on the weekend. To make school lunches or any meals a breeze, head over to Thrivemarket.com slash Daily Stoak to get 30% off your first order and a free $60 gift. My whole world revolved around me in that I felt like everyone was watching every little thing that I did. And so I was hyper vigilant about how I reacted to people's comment. And part of this, I don't think you cannot talk about gender being layered in there, right? I'm like one of two women in a squadron of 50 pilots. And there's a lot of nuances of, oh, they said it an inappropriate joke.

Everyone looks at me and waits for my reaction. Yeah. And I felt the responsibility of that. And also, if I'm bad at something, now there's a stereotype that female fighter pilots are bad at this thing. I'm a data point of one. And so I felt that extra pressure. And so I think it took, you know, a normal level of self-doubt when you go into a career field that just takes years to get good at, it's hard. Everyone sucks at first. Sure. And I know, like, objectively,

that the other new wingmen were bad as well. Yeah, it's not like they grew up as fire pilots. Right. Right. Like, no one, everyone is starting from scratch. A hundred percent. And I think I could accept that, but then that added pressure made me go from normal level of doubt to just, like, almost crippling imposter syndrome. Yeah. And I would think about it constantly. It was like a low level of anxiety. You're like, oh, I should have said I liked fantasy football. Like, they're never going to accept me. You're just spending too much time thinking about what other people are thinking. And you don't realize that the cost of that is thinking about things that you actually have some semblance of control over or would make a difference. You're just like, what are the

critics going to say? How's this going to go? Do they like me? Did that come off weird? And yeah, what you're not thinking about is like flight semantics or whatever. It's a massive distraction. Yeah. It's a bad use of your limited resources. Yes. The problem is like fearlessness and then you would say ego, both of them are somewhat adaptive at the beginning of things because ego makes you go out for things that you have no business going out for. It's like alcohol and that alcohol can get rid of self-consciousness or, you know, things that other people are thinking about. And then fearlessness, same thing.

Like you don't, you're not afraid of things that you should be afraid of. And so in the beginning, it's an advantage, or at least it's not as costly as it becomes later, but it's a real bad habit to pick up in both cases, I feel like. Yeah, I mean, not being afraid of things you should be afraid of. Yeah, right. Like, you will not be an old fighter pilot with that mentality. Right, right. Yeah, or not listening, thinking that the rules don't apply to you, thinking that your God's gift is humanity. again, especially when you're having to stand out in a field, you know, or you're having to get

past a lot of reservations or resistance, all that can kind of work to your advantage. And then you get there and now you're an asshole. Or, you know, now you think you're exempt or you've made a bunch of enemies. Or again, yeah, you've picked up really bad habits and you don't have the kind of sound fundamentals which should be like self-awareness, empathy, etc. a sense of caution and prudence, and now, even though it got you where you wanted, whether it's a fighter pilot or a record deal or a successful business, the irony is it gets you what you want, and now the stakes are much higher. So you're going to be learning these

painful lessons, like the cost of fearlessness or ego. And now you're doing it in the air instead of in a simulator, or you're doing it with something to lose, like all that you've built. And that's why they say pride go with before the fall. At what level do you want that fall to happen? Do you want to, like, at what height do you want to fall from? I think our safety net for that because the what got you there, if you are very overly confident, if you are hangman from Top Gun Maverick, that can get you places initially. but that debrief at the end of the flight and the way that's structured and the humility

required in there, like every little thing you did wrong in the air is picked apart. And not in like this ridicule shame you way, but in like, okay, you relate to that. Why were you late? What were you thinking about? Did you have the wrong information? Or did you have the right information to make a wrong decision? Like we just peel back the things until we're like, oh, here's the root cause of why we failed at our mission.

Yeah. And no one is spared from being criticized. And the other thing you don't realize is, like, the people who have been around and done it a long time, they've seen you before. They've seen this kid before. And, like, at some level, they want to help you and they want to warn you and they want to go. But on the other hand, like, they're willing to use you and those traits for the time being, right? And they don't, like, they know it's going to end badly for you. But it's not their job to fix you as a human being necessarily, right?

And so I think a lot of young people have like sort of promising, you know, like up-and-comers in all different fields, they don't understand the way in which like it's going to work for them as long as it works for someone else for the system. And then as soon as that stops, they will chew you up and spit you out or that you'll burn out. And like it's they've seen this before. You're not as special as you think you are, and it's a, yeah, it's a tale as old as time. And we actually have language in our grade sheets. Like when you're an instructor and you're teaching someone new and they're just pushing back, you're like, hey, you didn't do this like you were supposed to, what happened? And they will come up with excuses, not reasons, but excuses, right?

They won't take ownership of it. They won't walk away with, okay, next time I'm going to do this better. Yeah. It's just failure to take instruction. Yeah. And people can get kicked out of programs or even out of the jet and move to a different career field if they just continue to, because it's dangerous. Yeah. Where you kind of see like, okay, this person's extremely talented, but there's a ceiling.

Like they can make it to hear because those traits that they have are, although not super desirable, they don't matter until this level. And you don't realize that you're kind of bumping up against some kind of ceiling. Like they've spotted you. They've seen this story before. they know that until you deal with this thing, whether it's a sort of, yeah, overaggressiveness or it's ego or competitiveness or whatever, they're just like, yeah, this person's good enough to get here. And then it's actually this sort of, you know, it's like a tortoise in the hair situation.

Now, this person actually isn't as flashy or special, but like they have the real potential to go the full distance because they don't have these sort of limitations. For sure. And I think for me, I got in my own way the opposite direction. It was like lack of belief in myself where I had some amazing mentors that were like, no, you're doing great. And I would always be shocked when I got that feedback back. My first assignment in a combat squadron was in northern Japan, Masawa, Japan.

So your squadron is your whole life. Don't speak Japanese. I can't like make friends in the local community. It is just work hard, play hard, 12 to 15 hour days, high operations tempo. And I'm going through all this stuff I already talked about like self-doubt, imposter syndrome, trying to establish my footing in this career. And I just remember constantly thinking that I was always a little bit behind. Like everyone was a little bit better than me.

And there was an instructor that I really respected, who was, I think, a full assignment older than I was. And he was about to move to his next base. And I was starting my upgrade to become a flight lead where I can lead four jets into a combat situation. On his way out, he's like, hey, Mace, I'm super bummed. I'm not going to be around to be an instructor for this because you'd be fun to teach because you're really good.

Yeah. And I was like, what are you talking? Like, I didn't even, I respected him so much, but in that moment, I was like, you're full of shit. Yeah. Interesting. Sometimes, again, you think it's humility, but that inability to take a compliment, which isn't so much a compliment, it's just a fact. And so you're in this, again, in the way that ego distorts and denies reality, you know,

sometimes that sort of egotistical humility is also denying a reality. It's like the people have spoken, the facts are in. you are good at this. You would not be here. We would not have chosen you. You know, all that. And then you can't hear it because you have, yeah, it's the same, it's the same thing that's preventing that that egotistical person from hearing like, no, it sucks. It's not good. You're like, you have to fix it. The person who's going, it sucks, it's not good. And people are you talking about? People love this. It just sold a million copies. What are you talking about? It's the same kind of denial of reality. It's like a, you know, horseshoe theory, like at the extreme ends.

Yeah, you don't have to be there. It's the same thing. It's the same thing. And I think a huge leap forward in that was just gaining that perspective. Yeah. Like, I didn't have the solution to fix it, but when I was able to, like, just zoom out and be like, okay, wait a minute, my thoughts don't actually always equal reality. Yes. And I shouldn't just take them at face value despite contradictory evidence from all of these people I respect or just like objective evidence. I think so low. I think so, of myself, but I believe myself just no matter what comes in to confront it when it comes to this thing. That just doesn't logically make sense. Well, that's the problem I think with belief,

right? Like belief is, we might say, sort of faith without evidence, right? And like, believing in yourself is a, that's a tricky currency. Like I've said before, like, I don't believe myself. I have evidence, right? Like, if you believed in yourself from the beginning, there's something fundamentally irrational about that because, like, what evidence did you have to believe in yourself? Right. Right. Like, how did you know you could do this impossible thing? And the answer is you didn't know. But you had evidence at these smaller junctures that you could do these, like, component tasks.

That's actually what it is. And, yeah, the ability to sit down and go, hey, like, this is, these are my strengths, these are my weaknesses, which to me is a better definition of confidence. Like, confidence is knowing what you're good at and knowing what you're not so good at. and then knowing what you're trying to do and where those things all fit together, as opposed to ego, which is just like, I'm amazing. You know, confidence is based on the evidence of what you've done, the traits that you bring to the table,

and an understanding of what is required in the task that you're trying to accomplish. Exactly. I think it's into the self-efficacy of being able to actually make the thing happen. Yes. And confidence is very similar. Yeah. but actually having done it and proved to yourself that you are capable, even if it's at a smaller level, it's like stepping stones, right?

Like that's the most powerful. But there's another piece of that that's at seeing someone else you identify with do it successfully that can give you a lot of self-efficacy and improve your chances of the same result, which goes back to what we talked about earlier. Just like seeing someone succeed at the thing that seems impossible. Yes. Gives you, I don't know if we want to call it belief, gives you confidence that you can do it as well. Well, do you know what Aristotle's concept of the golden mean?

Yeah. So the golden mean is that all virtues sit between two vices. So like courage is not the opposite of cowardice. It's in the middle between recklessness and cowardice. And so I think there's something about confidence that sits between that sort of ego that we all recognize is the obvious ego, the sort of narcissistic, better than everyone ego. and then the sort of the quiet, well, I don't want to ask because I'll look stupid or, you know, the game is rigged against me. Imposter syndrome ego, which we don't typically think of as ego, but I think those are the two vices and then confidence is somewhere in the middle of those two extremes.

100%. And I have a little story from in the jet that actually is how I got my call sign. Oh. Which call signs come from a mistake you made. Yeah. Everyone thinks you get to pick them like Mavericks. Like, that sounds cool. Let me be Maverick. It's like soup because you ate a lot of soup one night.

Yeah, sometimes there is as benign as that. Mine is like a kind of a cool flying story, but essentially second flight in Japan, mock dog fighting. So dog fighting, training, obviously safe guns. We're not actually shooting bullets at our instructors. So my instructor and I going up and I'm supposed to point at him, shoot him with the gun, call the kill, celebrate all the things, right? And I really want to do well because I'm so worried about what everyone thinks of me.

So I light the afterburner, wait a few things. seconds roll pull back on the stick the f-16 pulls nine gs no problem so nine times the force of gravity yeah so i am experiencing that which very easy to go unconscious from that g-induced loss of consciousness blood gets forced out of your head so i am doing that i'm pulling i'm just pulling and pulling and not able to point at him and my experience self later or logically would be like oh so i need to change what i'm doing to adjust something's not right yeah i've done this like twice before in training i'm just super young. But my ego is like, you must win, you must gun him. And I just keep pulling. And I'm not giving up. And I don't touch my throttle. So just max A-B. And I get to full light loss. So I am

just blacked out as far as seeing nothing. Yeah. But I am not quite G-locked. I'm not quite unconscious because I can still hear. And my instructor ends up making a radio call to knock the fight off because he's like, something's not right. And so I was pushing that so far where I was like, the closest I've ever been to G-locking in my whole life. Yeah. If you G-lock in a single-seat aircraft, people have hit the ground and died. Right. Like, it is the highest repercussion. Yes.

This is a training flight. My second one ever in my new squadron, there was zero reason for me to push it that far. Yes. But I was so worried about failing that that was more important to me than my physical safety. Yes. Like, so illogical. Yeah, it's insane. But that's the appearances mattering more than reality.

Yep. Yeah. And then the irony, of course, is that you did look really stupid, right? Yes. Like everyone is, you're afraid of being judged and you end up doing this thing that causes you to be judged so much more. Yes. And that, yeah, your call sign, even that your call sign comes from it.

Yeah. And so people ask otherwise, I accidentally went supersonic when I first let the after everyone before I rolled and pulled, which is why I could pull so many Gs for so long. and why I could never shoot my instructor because I couldn't turn tight enough. Yeah. Imagine you're driving 60 miles an hour and you need to be driving 30 to make the turn.

Yeah. That was essentially me. And so they named me mock at circle entry, which is just the turn circle entry for dogfighting. It gets into pilot jargon. But people are always like, how'd you get your call sign? Did you pepper spray a guy in a bar?

Yeah. Like, not yet. But yeah, like this thing is this thing where you were like, well, I don't want to look bad in this one single encounter. Yeah. Now follows you literally your entire career.

And that's, That's what we can't really think about in the moment. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it, and I'll see you next episode. Thank you.