The Liz Moody Podcast - Everything You Need To Overcome Fear of Flying: From Demystifying Turbulence To Rewiring Your Neural Pathways

Episode Date: November 24, 2021

Today’s episode is all about overcoming fear of flying, which has been one of my personal biggest fears FOREVER. I have two guests today—Melissa Tiers, a multi-award winning author, lecturer and international hypnosis trainer specializing in practical neuroscience for clinicians, and Patrick Smith, the best-selling author of Ask the Pilot books and a practicing pilot for a major US airline. My hope is that between the two of them, we’re really attacking a fear of flying from all angles, and that this an episode you can share with any friends or family members who are afraid of flying and that you can come back to again and again until you feel safe, calm, and even excited to be in the air. This episode includes: how to trust that your pilot isn’t sleep deprived or intoxicated the exact level and type of training pilots receive if budget or international carriers are still safe enough to fly the 3 reasons flying has gotten SO MUCH safer since the 1980s turbulence: what it is, why we’re afraid of it, and why it’s not dangerous tips and tricks to avoid feeling turbulence (where to sit, what time of day to fly) what happens when there’s a real emergency on the plane (and exactly when and how you’ll know) why you shouldn’t be afraid of bad weather, dings and pings, the plane slowing down after takeoff, and aborted landings how to harness your neurology break habituated patterns of anxiety 3 science-backed techniques to instantly eliminate anxiety while booking, boarding, and while you’re actually in the air a 5-min guided meditation to help get rid of fear of flying PS: My very first product is live!!! Go to htdeck.com to snag your Healthier Together Deck, which has 150 conversation starters in 6 categories! It’s the perfect holiday gift for friends, family members, romantic partners, co-workers…or, of course, yourself. Find out more at htdeck.com—this is a self-funded limited run and these will sell out!! PS: My Patreon is live! You can join Green Smoothie Society and get access to ALL of my green smoothie recipes and advice! Get all the deets at patreon.com/lizmoody. This episode is sponsored by Athletic Greens, one of my favorite supplements. Visit athleticgreens.com/healthiertogether and get your FREE year supply of Vitamin D and 5 free travel packs today. This episode is sponsored by GoMacro, and you MUST try their Oatmeal Chocolate Chip bars. You can get a whopping 30% off your order of $50 or more PLUS free shipping by going to gomacro.com and using the code healthiertogether. This episode is sponsored by Seed, the makers of one of my all-time favorite supplements. Their Seed Daily Synbiotic is a game changer—it contains both pre- and probiotics, survives INTACT all the way into your gut, AND contains the most studied and powerful strains of probiotics out there. You can get 15% off of your first month’s supply of Seed’s Daily Synbiotic by going to seed.com and using the code LIZMOODY. This episode is sponsored by Airocide, the makers of the air purifier that single handedly eliminated my allergies. You can get $600 off any of the air purifiers on their website by using my code LIZ600 on Airocide.com. I personally have the APS-200 PM 2.5, but they just released the Aria, which is even cuter and has an even lower price point, so that’s probably what I’d go for! Healthier Together cover art by Zack. Healthier Together music by Alex Ruimy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, friends, and welcome back to the Healthier Together podcast. I'm your host, Liz Moody, and I'm a cookbook author and long-time journalist. Today's episode is all about overcoming fear of flying, which has been one of my personal biggest fears literally forever. I have two guests today, Melissa Tears, a multi-award-winning author, lecture, and international hypnosis trainer specializing in practical neuroscience for clinicians, and Patrick Smith, the best-selling author of the Ask the Pilot Books and a practicing pilot for a major U.S. airline.

Melissa's work is really around rewiring your neural circuits to eliminate the fear of flying at a root level. And she has genius, really actionable techniques to genuinely change the way that our brain processes the fear. She also shares a five-minute guided hypnosis that you can use again and again to help change the way that your brain actually thinks about flying and a number of specific tactics to use in-flight

to disrupt that fear at a base level. Then Patrick answers all of our logical questions on flying. what causes turbulence, what makes planes crash, what training do pilots get? It's funny, I've interviewed a ton of pilots over the course of my career because this fear has been a forever issue of mine and I'm always trying to get all of the information about it that I can. And it's always been a little bit hard to talk to pilots about fears. They find flying so safe and so routine that they almost can't even tap into all of my questions like they find them a little bit silly. And Patrick was no exception to that. That said, that disconnect is almost reassuring in its own way because you really

just get how procedural and how incredibly safe all of this is for them. My hope is that between the two of them, we're really attacking a fear of flying from all angles, and that this is an episode that you can share with any friends or family members who are afraid of flying and that you can come back to again and again and again until you feel safe and calm and even excited to be in the air. Before we get started, I wanted to share two things that have been the most helpful to be in my personal fear of flying journey. Okay, so the first one is it's a little anecdote. I heard it from a pilot years ago, but the idea is that at the speed that you are traveling in a plane in the air, the air no longer feels thin, like when you're running your hands through it right now, if you're sitting still.

When you're running through your hands through the air, it feels kind of thin and your hand passes through it really quickly. But at the speed that the plane is flying in the air, the air, the air actually feels thick like jello. Jello is the analogy they use. So the best way to get an idea of this is if you stick your hand out of a car window when the car is going really fast. So because the car is going really fast, your hand isn't going to feel like how it feels when you're sitting still right now. There's a lot of resistance in the air and the air feels thicker. So when you're in a plane, the plane is going so fast that the air feels thick like jello. So picture the jello and then picture a little plain toy, like the size of your thumb, a really tiny little plain toy. And if you took that little

plane toy and you stuck it in the jello and then you shook that jello all around. So that's the turbulence. You're mimicking the turbulence. You're shaking the jello all around. That plane toy is going to move with the jello, but it's not going to fall through the jello. It's suspended in the jello. The jello is thick. The jello is holding it there. So even if the air is shaking, the plane isn't going to come out of the jello. So when I'm in a lot of turbulence in a plane, I literally sit there and I picture this little tiny toy plane that's suspended in a vat of jello. And I picture the jello shaking and the plane shaking, but the plane never falling through. And I find that really, really comforting. And then the second thing that has been most helpful to me personally on my fear of flying journey has been changing the way that I approach planes.

So I used to think of planes as something that I could control a little bit more. I'd try to exert the control that I could control. So as a person with anxiety, anxiety, I believe, is a very control-based way of thinking. So I would be like, well, I can't control the pilot, but I can a little bit. I'll look in the cockpit right when I get on and I'll listen to all of the noises on the plane and I'll analyze the flight attendants and their faces. And if I feel like they look competent, and I'll check. the weather and I'll do all of these little things that will make me feel like I'm in

control of a situation, even if I'm utterly not control of that situation at all. And recently I had a really terrible flight. If you follow me on Instagram, you saw it. It was I had a complete, just huge panic attack. I was crying. I was shaking. I almost didn't get on the plane. It was awful. But something about how bad it was allowed me to really flip my thinking around flying. And I realized that instead of trying to cling to this control that I was never going to really have, I could use it as an opportunity to practice relinquishing control. I could use it as an opportunity to practice being comfortable with uncertainty, which is such an important thing for us to practice in our lives to get used to and a really hard thing for at least me personally with my

anxiety to get good at. So I was like, what if instead of trying to focus on all of the different little situations going on, reading the pilot, reading the flight attendants, all of that. If I just instead repeated the mantra, I trust the pilot. I'm practicing uncertainty. I trust the pilot. I'm practicing uncertainty. So I sat there on the plane and when it was shaking, I didn't look out the window to see if we were going over a mountain or going over a cloud. I just said, I trust the pilot. This is the pilot's job. The pilot is an expert in this situation. I am not an expert in this situation. I trust the pilot.

I lean into my uncertainty. I practice relinquishing control. And that mantra brought me a lot of peace. I think it evidenced how little I could actually do about the situation, but made me feel, instead of that feeling really scary, it almost felt comforting. So if that is helpful to you, I really hope that it is. Those two things have been transformative in my own fear of flying journey. as well as all of the different things that I learn from both Melissa and Patrick that you'll hear

on this episode, especially the guided meditation that Melissa shares, I think is incredibly useful. And you'll hear the stuff that resonates with me as we're speaking. But she said a few things that was like, oh my gosh. Like I had never thought about it like that before. And Patrick is just so interesting. Just hearing like how procedural everything really is for him. And I'm kind of like, is this scary? Is this scary?

and he's like, this is a procedure, this is a procedure, this is a procedure, this is all just kind of like a different, it would be in a manual, it would be something that's just a normal day at work for me. And I found that really comforting too. So I hope you find this episode really comforting, really helpful on your own fear of flying journey. Know that I am rooting for you. I have been dealing with this by myself for years. And I do think that it is entirely possible to live a big, exciting, and beautiful life, even if you are dealing with overcoming this type of fear. One more fun note, before we get into it, the first run of the healthier together card deck actually sold out in less than a week, which is absolutely bananas to say. We are working hard to get round two

available. So if you are interested, go pre-order at htdeck.com to make sure you snag one in the second round before those sell out. We are hoping to start shipping again the first week of December so that everyone can get their Hanukkah and Christmas presents sorted. This is such a good stocking stuffer. It's $25 so you can give it to basically anybody in your life. Again, that is hcdeck.com. You'll get 150 incredibly carefully curated conversation starters so you can get healthier together with everyone in your own life. All right, that is it from me. I really hope that you love this episode and it helps you as much as it has helped me. All right, Melissa, thank you so much for taking the time to join me today. Sure, my pleasure. Can you tell me a little bit about

how you deal with fear of flying when people come to see you to deal with it? One of the things that really works like a charm and it's a little fringe and a little weird. And I have to say that up front because I was very resistant to this one particular technique because I thought it was a little California-e and a bit wonky. But it has helped so many people, specifically with fears and phobias, that it's worth sharing, you know, even if it makes me look a little uncool. Oh my gosh, I'm so excited to hear what it is. I know. The things I do for people. This comes from the field of energy psychology, and that right away is a little weird, but it's a tapping technique. And one major variation that your clients can look up is called EFT.

And it stands for emotional freedom technique. Now, one of the things I just realized as I'm speaking is that if you go to YouTube, even I have a clip on there called neuroplasticity. And this is a way to basically interrupt any unwanted pattern and change your brain. And typically this anxiety is a habituated pattern. By the time people come to me anyway, they've been doing this fear for a while. It didn't just happen. And so if they watch that, they'll see not only EFT, but they'll see bilateral stimulation. They'll see the peripheral vision.

There's a bunch of techniques contained in that one free video on YouTube. It's just under my name and neuroplasticity. Or they can go real deep down the rabbit hole of EFT and look at EFTuniverse.com is, I think, one of the official sites. Or if you go to YouTube and EFT, you're going to see it all over the place. You could probably Google EFT for fear of flying and come up with. some videos that'll walk you through it. And why do you think EFT, basically, you're basically just to describe it to people who haven't seen it before you Google it, you're kind of like tapping on different, their acupressure

points, right? Right. So they're actually acupuncture points. Acupuncture points. And there's a sequence. There's a sequence of these tapping points while you're thinking of the thing you're afraid of. and it tends to neutralize the fear. It's kind of weird and kind of seemingly miraculous.

Now, I have different ideas of how it's working, but it's just theories, you know, sending counter-impulses to the brain while the fear network is activated kind of creates a certain loosening of the boundary conditions, neurologically speaking. But the way that the EFT practitioners describe it, is that, you know, this fear gets into the energy system and creates a little crimp in the system. And people that go to an acupuncturist or even acupressure, you're operating under this idea that you have this meridian system and that certain things get a little stuck and you use these needles to stimulate the meridian system to kind of flush out or flush out the,

whatever's being activated. So that's what they say. You know, they say that you think of the fear, you start tapping while repeating. Either you're repeating, I release and let this go. Or you're just repeating, you know, even though I have this fear, I completely accept myself. And this is where it gets a little woo-woo. I tend to skip all that. I work with New Yorkers.

And so I tend to, you know, activate, right? So with each person, it's different. Sometimes it's, as you imagine, being at the gate and they call for boarding. That's when it really kicks in. For some people, it doesn't really kick in until they actually are boarding. Some people, it doesn't kick in until they actually sit down. Some people, it doesn't kick in until the door closes. Some, it's takeoff.

So we have a bunch. And then some are fine unless there's turbulence. You could tell, I've been doing this for 20 years. I have seen every variation of fear of flying that you could possibly come up with. Sometimes all people have to do is think about buying a ticket. And they can literally feel the anxiety to the point where they can have a panic attack. So when I say everyone is different, I really mean it. Right.

Some people, it stems from a flight, right? A flight they had where they were terrified. What happens in that moment is the brain drops a flag. It basically says something is freaking out the system. We need to avoid this at all costs. So even the thought of getting on a plane re-triggers that flag that has been dropped so your fight or flight response kicks in whether you want it to or not. Your brain cares about survival.

It doesn't care about comfort. So it cares that something destabilize the system, and then it takes kind of a broad snapshot. And what's in the picture is the plane, you know? And so, you know, the same thing happens with elevators. You get stuck in an elevator. You freak out in that moment. Oh, my gosh. That happened to me at my job in New York.

And like we had an elevator issue where it would occasionally like plummet four or five stories. And I was in it when that happened. And then I just started walking up to the 12th floor. And I'd never been afraid of elevators before then. So because your brain felt threatened. And it doesn't, you know, I mean, it's life or death to the brain. And so if there's something that destabilizes the system, it never wants you to do that again. And so it knows that even the thought of getting into an elevator, it's going to try and make you run away or take the stairs.

So your brain is doing its job, which is to keep us, you know, alive. Sometimes that gets in the way. And our job is sort of to like decide to be like this isn't a real risk, like to train our brain and to being able to ascertain what's an actual real risk and what is not a real risk. Some people can manage to convince themselves through repetitive telling your brain it's not a real risk. But most people, once a flag is dropped, what is keeping that pattern together is your fight or flight response and that is outside of your conscious awareness. So it takes a little bit more training for a lot of people, right? We can say, okay, I'm going to get on this plane and be fine, and then our brain freaks us out. Yep, that's me.

Right. I also love when people try to be like, you know that flying is safer than riding in a car. And people told me that for years. And the only effect it had was to make me more afraid of cars, not less afraid of flights. Yes, that is what happens. Yeah. Because, you know, especially when the neural network of the fear is actually active. In that moment when you then say, oh, well, you know, it's, you know, being in cars is more dangerous.

All your brain does is include cars. Yeah, 100%. Or try to. Okay, so this tapping technique is like one way to sort of rewrite those neural pathways and to convince your brain that this is a risk-free activity. It is one of the techniques. Now, here's how I work. I am all about, you know, stacking the deck. So first, I, you know, I get a little insight, right?

How long has this been a problem? If it's been a problem for a while, then what's been created in the mind and body, the brain specifically and the nervous system is a habit. Anxiety becomes habituated. And so I teach my clients to break habits. And what that means is every time you even think of that plane and you get a little fear, you have to knock it down. So EFT is just one of the techniques.

And that's any time. Like it's like before you're flying in the air. Like any time. Okay. Your job is to be tenacious. Now let me ask you something, Liz. Is this you? Do you have a fear of flying?

Oh, yeah. I have a very serious. severe and it's like stems from childhood issues and it's affected me my entire life. I still fly, but I have panic attacks pretty much every time I fly. Wow. Now, here's an idea. I don't know if it's appropriate, but if you like, and I haven't done anything just over the phone or audio, but if you like, I can use you as an example. Yeah. And walk you through some of this. Okay. And this way you get free therapy and hopefully everybody listening can be.

Yeah. And they can kind of ride on your coattails. Exactly. The mattress that you sleep on is one of the highest exposures that you have. Like if it's off gassing, you're breathing that in for basically a third of your life. And most conventional mattresses are loaded with synthetic foams, flame retardants, microplastics, and more. Plus, if it's not comfy, you're going to be tossing in.

turning, you're going to be really hot, and sleep is the foundation of health. It is so important. Because of all of this, if I were not going to invest in any other part of my house, no other things in my house, I would invest in my mattress. And in fact, I have four years well before I had much money to spend on any of these things because it is such a big needle mover. The birch mattress is incredible. It is made with organic cotton, natural latex, and ethically sourced wool. So it has literally no off gassing. You can not smell anything right when you unbox it. It has no microplastics, no synthetic foams or flame retardants. And the wool makes it so breathable, which if you've listened to this podcast for more than five minutes, you know that I run very, very hot. Like I am a furnace.

Zach has basically accepted that sleeping next to me is like sleeping next to like a little fire. And the birch mattress has been a game changer for that. It's made me sleep so much better. like I can see my sleep score going up because I'm not hot all night long. It's also hypoallergenic, which is really worth paying attention to if you find yourself waking up stuffy or congested. Dust mites in a conventional mattress can actually impact your breathing and your sleep quality without you even realizing it. And again, we need to be able to breathe to get good sleep and getting good sleep is the

foundation of our health. And then comfort wise, Zach sleeps on his back and then I sleep on my side and my stomach. So we have two completely different sleep styles and we both wake up feeling. really good, no aches and pains. CNN actually named the Birch mattress, the best mattress for side sleepers, and Wired named it the best organic mattress period. So there you go. Burch has options for every kind of sleeper in your household. They have three firmness layers. I like the Lux Natural, which is the medium one. And then parents, they even have a Birch kid's natural mattress. Birch ships right to your door. It sets up in minutes and it comes with 120-night risk-free trial.

So if it is not for you, they will pick it up for free. You have nothing to lose here. I want all of you to enjoy a deep, restful night sleep with a new mattress from Birch. Go to birchliving.com slash Liz Moody for 20% off. That is birchliving.com slash Liz Moody. And you're going to get 20% off birchliving.com slash Liz Moody. I very rarely get genuinely excited about skincare, but this is one of the most innovative products that I have come across in years.

And I am so obsessed with it. I've been telling all of my friends to get it, so now I need to tell you guys. Here's some science first. Your skin isn't just getting older. It's being actively broken down by something called senescent cells. These are cells that have stopped functioning but refused to die. They sit there releasing inflammatory signals, breaking down your collagen, degrading your skin barrier, and accelerating every visible sign of aging.

Scientists call them zombie cells, and as they accumulate, they are one of the primary drivers of how old your skin looks and feels. The team at one skin, a group of female longevity researchers and PhDs, spent five years testing over 900 peptides to figure out how to help reduce the accumulation of senescent cells. And they finally landed on it. OSO1, the first peptide scientifically studied to reduce skin's biological age at the molecular level.

OSO1 goes in and it clears out the senescent cells so it helps skin function like healthy. your younger looking skin. It is not masking the signs of aging. It's not targeting one thing. It is actually rolling the clock back at a cellular level. I've been using the face moisturizer for almost six months now and I love it so much. It feels amazing. It goes on really smoothly. It's not tacky at all. And I actually see a difference, which I just feel like is never the case with skincare. You want to always like see a real difference and you're kind of like, do I? Do I? And this I genuinely do. Because it's clearing the senescent cells, it doesn't just target one thing. So my skin looks firmer.

It looks glowier. The texture feels dramatically smoother. And I feel like you can see that too. I also love the body moisturizer. It dries down really quickly, which is always a pet peeve of mine with moisturizers. I hate that, like, sticky feeling when you go to put your clothes on. This does not do that. But it does moisturize really, really well.

And then again, I'm reducing my skin's biological age. I am not making it just look younger. I am making it actually younger. OneSkin has four peer-reviewed clinical studies and over 10,000 five-star reviews. The data backs everything up. For a limited time, get 15% off with code Liz at oneskin.c.com slash Liz. Again, that's 15% off at oneskin.c.com with code Liz. So let me just ask you this.

When do you know it's time to feel the anxiety? I feel anxiety from when I'm, booking the ticket onward and then it kind of crescendo, crescendos the night before the flight. And then, for me, a lot of it is control related. So when I'm booking the ticket, I'm looking into the airlines, the type of plane, where I'm sitting. I'm kind of the likely weather patterns. Like I don't like to fly in the afternoons in the summer because there's more likely to be a thunderstorm. So I'm controlling every little thing I can control. So here's the thing. Since I've just gone into my, you know, change worker mode, I'm probably going to interrupt you countless times. Yeah, do it. And that's because I know what I'm looking for. And oftentimes in explaining your fear, you're literally re-grooving it into the neural network of it. So from now on, I'll get the information I need and I'll say stop.

If you were looking at me, you would see I put my hand up. And it's just a way of beginning to break down the habituated pattern in your brain right now. So for listeners, would you say that like there's kind of two schools of thought, like one voicing something takes away its power? And then what you just said, which is that like to keep reiterating it to yourself makes it more of your identity and more of a fear. So would you say that people should not try to talk about. their fear of flying or indulge that to other people or even themselves? Well, it's not so much

talking about it. If people can talk about it from a very dissociated way, like, yeah, I have a fear of flying. I've had it my whole life. It gets in my way. If they talk about it and I start to hear they're associating into it, meaning they're actually activating the fear pattern, it's just reinforcing those neurons. Okay. It's just reinforcing the pattern. It is not as useful. Okay. If you're going to talk about it, you know, I mean, there's tricks to being able to dissociate from it. Like, I used to have fear of flying. That feels better, doesn't? That's interesting. Like, even if you still actually do, you can be like, I used to. Well, it might be too big a jump for people. Okay. Let me just show you what I mean, right? So, all right. So we could, if we had,

a lot of time, we could go back to the very first time you felt this fear and do some tapping. But because that might take us a little too far from what's applicable for everybody, right? Because ultimately, this is for your audience. Yes. What we could do is take something that is quite common, which is, as you said, the crescendo moment. The crescendo, right? So we know there's anxiety around booking it. And what I would do is I would employ a couple of techniques for there. And I'll quickly go over just one that's really cool. Okay. So if you and your audience can find a spot to stare at right in front of you, find a focal point. And as you really focus in, know that you're using what's called foveal vision. What I want you to do without moving your eyes,

is begin to shift into your peripheral vision. So without moving your eyeballs, you're just going to start to become aware of like the walls on either side of you, as if you could gently widen, right, widen the aperture almost so that you could be aware of the walls on either side of you, expanding your awareness into that peripheral field,

almost as if you could be aware of all that space behind you and then bring it back into focus. What was that like for you, Liz? It was really calming. Your voice is also really calming. So maybe those in conjunction, but it felt really calming. So the reason I teach this to clients is because by shifting into peripheral vision, you not only start to access the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the relaxation response, but you also shut up inside your head. It's my own personal mantra, certainly through this pandemic, has been shift out and shut up.

And I do this all the time. Now, I was actually recently on a plane for the first time since before the pandemic. And there was turbulence. So I looked at the screen and then I shifted out and shut up because the truth is, Liz, nobody but a three-year-old likes turbulence. Right? I was next to a three-year-old once who was like, wee! I know I would love to tap into that part of myself who's like, oh, this is like a fun adventure.

Right, because, I mean, you've all heard that, like, if you think about the plane as a boat, you know, it's just riding these waves. Right. And the fact that you're feeling the turbulence means it's actually bouncing on the wave. which is good. Yeah. You know, it's working. But anyway, so the truth is, everyone, I'm on the, you know, I've been able to switch my state of consciousness for 20 years.

And this is my go-to one initially. Yeah, I love that. And shut up. So you find a focal point. If I'm walking down the street and I start ruminating, the back of the person's head in front of me becomes the focal point and I shift out into peripheral and I shut up. So that would be the first one. And that's the one I would do if I were you and I was booking a flight. But before we even do that, I want to show you something. Okay. So if you imagine,

because there are quite a lot of people that the fear starts when they're booking a flight, if you were to imagine a moment where you're booking that flight, right, where you're sitting at your computer typically? Are you on your phone? Where are you? I'm on my computer, usually. Right. Now let's take a moment, Liz, and let's prepare your brain. How do you want to feel? Like, is there a flight that you have to book coming up? I would love to feel excited. Like, I'd love to be like what, I mean, that's the reason I continue to choose to fly, even though it scares me so much, is because I want to have access to the life that flying gives me. I want to Yes. See the people.

See the places. Well, where are you going to go next? Let's focus there. New York, actually. Well, how cool is that? Where are you from? I live everywhere right now. My husband and I move every month, but we lived in New York for...

Oh, my God. That's right. You told me that. I love that nomadic life. But we lived in New York before we were nomadic. We lived in New York until June of 2020. Got it. So you're going to come back to New York. You're going to see friends.

Yeah. Right. So when you think... Think about how cool it is to go to New York and see friends. And you try this on for a moment. I want you to imagine you've already taken four or five different flights where you were relaxed. Imagine that you had a conversation with a hypnotist. And she might have taught you a few things.

And the next thing you knew, you were on a plane and you were calm and you were excited and you watched some movies. it landed, you got off, and you thought, holy shit, that was easy. Let's just try this on for a moment. Imagine you've already done it a few times so that you know what it's like to watch movies and be totally engaged while you're flying, and then you land and you get off the plane and you're feeling good and excited to be where you are. So imagine that feeling. If you were imagining it, where would you feel?

that feeling of just being excited and calm at the same time. Probably like in my chest mixed with my, it's for me, excited is like in my head and it's also an absence of tightness. It's like a looseness in my body. So feel that excitement and that looseness. And you've already, you know, gone to a few different places. And each time it was relaxing. It was like being a whole knew you when it comes to flying. And if you imagine that and you feel what it feels like to be kind of relaxed and loose, now imagine being at your computer and, you know, pressing the buy now, whatever you know, whatever you click that books the flight. What are you noticing when you imagine it now? That it feels lighter. Right. And as you're feeling lighter, that was our first pass. So

let me explain what's happening. You have a neural network in your brain for flying, right? And then you have this neural network for being relaxed and excited. And those two don't know each other. They're two very different neural networks. What we've just done is we've just made them nod to each other from across the room. It's called synaptic sensitivity. And it means they're now aware of each other. So now we loop it again and we make them shake hands. So imagine you've just landed in New York and you were totally calm for the flight. Like you can't even believe it. But you know what it's like to have changed things. You've changed certain things before in your life. So feel what it feels like to kind of land and just be like, wow, that was easy. And if you imagine that, just pretend. And as you imagine that,

that you've already flown a few times, and that fear of flying is in the past, and you got to share it with all of your audience, and it feels really good. Now imagine pressing book now on that flight in front of your computer. What are you noticing now? It feels exciting. Yeah. So as you're feeling exciting and you're getting a little glimpse into what's going on under the hood, and it feels really good.

You've already come to New York and saw your friends, right? And now you're flying somewhere really cool. Like, I don't know, I'm desperate for the beach. You're flying somewhere really cool. I don't know where that is. But imagine going to the next place you want to go. And you've already flown to New York

and it was awesome. The flight was easy. Feel how good that feels. And now imagine being a lot of, at the gate and they're calling your name. They're calling you to board. Now we're starting to smear it around a little bit. What I want you to do is take a moment and shift into that peripheral vision. And as you're shifting, being aware of the walls on either side of you, all that space you have around you, as if you could even reach for the space behind you. And now imagine clicking by now

for that ticket. What are you noticing now? A sense of calm, I would say. So as you're feeling that sense of calm, imagine you're sitting at the gate with this sense of calm. And how do you want to feel when they call for boarding? Excited and calm. Yeah, because you're one step closer to being there, right? So feel what it feels like when you're kind of excited and calm. And you imagine, Imagine getting on the plane sitting in your seat and you kind of have a smile because you're like, wow, this is weird. I feel calm. What the hell did that hypnotist do to me?

And you take off, you fly, you watch a movie, you land, and you're in New York. What does it feel like when you imagine getting off the plane and you're in New York? I'm like euphoric. Yeah, feel that feeling of euphoria. And as you're feeling that feeling of euphoria, imagine that feeling of euphoria, imagine that. stepping on the plane. You sit down in your seat, you buckle up, plane takes off, you watch a movie, you'll land, you get out, you're in JFK or wherever you're going. How does it feel? Like peaceful and happy? So feel what it feels like when you're peaceful and happy,

and now imagine stepping onto the plane. What are you noticing? Like a lightness. Good. As you feel that lightness. Imagine sitting down in the seat. How do you feel? Just excited. Good. As you're feeling the excitement, you take off, maybe you watch a movie, maybe you read a book, right? They're calling the descent. You descend. They land. You get off. How do you feel? Happy? Proud. Now, as you're feeling happy, right? Imagine being at the airport and they're calling you to board. How do you feel now? Excited. Yeah.

So here's what we're doing. Okay? We're going to take a break and let this settle into your neurology. Often, when people have fear of flying or really any fear, they freeze time. And unfortunately, they freeze time at the most messed up crescendo moment. So what I've just done is pushed you through the typical crescendoes. I've pushed you through because, you know, what happens is we run movies in our mind. And unfortunately, you're freezing the movie at the fear.

But the truth is, in every flight you've been on, you have landed and gotten off the plane. But you never play that part of the movie, do you? No, I don't. No. Just like the people never play. You know what I mean? like that's part of our problems is that we freeze time at the wrong moment. If every time you thought about fear, you're flying, you would freeze time as you get off

the plane, you'd have a very different experience. Completely. Yeah, that's really interesting. So I rust you through that just to break up. It's almost like just to break up the stuckness a little bit. If you have headaches, allergies, brain fog, skin irritation, or you've been dealing with hormone issues, you are especially going to want to listen to this ad. Every single thing that I just listed has been linked to chemicals and household cleaners. One study found that regular use of cleaning sprays was associated with a lung function decline comparable to smoking 10 to 20 cigarettes per day.

Synthetic fragrances are a well-documented migraine trigger and a number of studies have linked ingredients in common household cleaners to fertility issues, thyroid dysfunction, mood changes, and more because of their impact on our endocrine systems. Luckily, you can just make one simple swap and you can eliminate all of those risk factors that you get from common household cleaners. Branch Basics makes cleaning products that are plant and mineral based, completely fragrance-free, and made safe certified, meaning they are screened against thousands of known and suspected harmful chemicals.

And best of all, you literally use one product, but you mix it with different amounts of water to make your kitchen spray, your bathroom cleaner, your laundry detergent, your produce wash, your glass cleaner, literally everything. It does not smell. It does not give me headaches. It does not give me rashes or itchiness from clothes because you are. Remember, we're using this for laundry. We're using this for literally everything.

And it works so well. Everything gets so clean. And I know that I'm protecting myself from all of those long-term issues, too. And I'm protecting my kittens who are much tinier than me. So anything they're exposed to has a much greater impact on their little tiny systems. And they're running around on their little paws and then they're licking them. So I'm protecting them too. Branch Basics is now available at Target.com, Amazon and branchbasics.com.

So it's easier than ever to make the switch. And if you want to grab their premium starter kit, you can use code Liz Moody for 15% off at branchbasics.com. That's code Liz Moody for 15% off the premium starter. starter kit at branchbasics.com. And when they ask you where you heard about us, please make sure to mention the show. That is branch basics.com and use code Liz Moody. When you think about strength and resilience, like your ability to feel energized, to recover well, to stay strong as you get older, what do you think that actually comes from? Most people say working out are good nutrition,

and yes, of course that matters. But there is a biological foundation underneath all of that that most people are completely overlooking. I have been diving deep into this lately with the team at timeline and what I've learned has genuinely shifted how I think about my own health. Every single movement that your body makes, every step, every workout, every muscle contraction depends on energy produced at the cellular level. And at the center of that is your mitochondria. Here is the thing that nobody tells you, certainly nobody told me. Starting around age 30, our mitochondria naturally become less efficient. More get damaged, more become slow. and over time that impacts your energy, your strength, your recovery, and your resilience.

Most of us respond by pushing more. We're like noticing these things and we're adding in more protein. We're trying to fix it with more supplements. We're trying to do harder workouts. And those things do help. But timelines research suggests that we also need to be supporting the cellular machinery underneath. And that is exactly what their supplement mitopure does. It contains Eurolithin A, which helps your body clear out damage mitochondria and support healthier ones so that your cells can produce energy more efficiently. Because this is happening to your cells, it's going to impact your entire body, your immune system, your muscles. One study found that taking mitochondure increased muscle strength by 12% in four months with no change in exercise routine,

it's going to impact your energy, your sleep, your skin, your cell health impacts all of this, and urolithin A keeps your cells healthy. Timeline has done over 15 years of research and testing on this one product, urolithin A, which by the way, most of us lack the gut bacteria to synthesize naturally. That's why many of us need to supplement it to get the benefits. This has become a staple supplement for me. It is my top way to support how I want to look and feel as I age. Support your cells and how you age with mitopure gummies from Timeline.

Visit timeline.com slash Liz and save up to 39% on your mitopure gummies. Timeline.com slash Liz. Would a good thing to do be every time you're thinking of flying and you're picturing the bad part of the movie, would it be to skip and force your brain to kind of picture the good part of the movie, the landing, the excited, the arrival, etc. Exactly. And a trick is to go right to the end. So notice how I said to you, imagine you've already flown.

You've already flown three or four times. each time it's been easy. How would it feel? And now book the flight. You see what I mean? So I am stealing the emotions from your future in order to wear them now so that this is the emotional state I want to be in when I get on the plane. And what if my brain is like terrible and it's like what if it's a bad flight? Like what if it's a really bumpy flight?

What if you have an emergency landing? What if this is the one time something really does go wrong? Sure. So here's the thing. I'm going to give you a few more techniques for when it's bumpy or if it's like that. Because regardless of how the flight is going, you want full use of your prefrontal cortex. If you need to get on a raft or, you know, the oxygen comes down, or, you know, the oxygen comes down, or anything like that, you want to be calm.

So regardless, you're more prepared if you use these techniques. Now, I can tell you that I fly all the time before COVID. I mean, a big part of my work is traveling to other places to train therapists and doctors all over the world. Never have I ever had any, like, oxygen thing. down or forced landing or anything. Because it's just statistically, like, very, actually, that's another question I have about this,

is this only work, like, is this predicated by the fact that flying is statistically incredibly safe, or would these same techniques work? Same techniques work, no matter what it is, the anxiety is. So, you know, I have a little anti-anxiety toolkit book, and it works basically for any anxiety at all, even just stress. even just worry. So I was going to teach you another quickie. This is called bilateral stimulation. And if you have something in your hand that you can pass back and forth, then I'm going to walk you through it. And I'm going to ask your audience to pick up something, could be a water bottle, a pen,

it doesn't matter. I picked up a coaster. Right. So as you are imagining, you know, something that's pretty easy to get anxiety about is imagine you're in a plane and there's a little turbulence. Let me know when you can feel a little of that anxiety. Oh yeah, instant. Instant. Now, pass the coaster or whatever back and forth from one hand to the other, right, crossing the middle of your body. So if you could see me, it's like I'm passing a ball back and forth. I'm swinging my arms to the side as I do. I know it's hard to not see this, but I'm basically stimulating both hemispheres of the brain. So by passing this thing back and forth, you're stimulating right brain and left brain and right brain and left brain. And by doing that, activating the whole brain, that area of the brain

that had been activated for anxiety gets kind of washed over. So as you're doing this kind of rhythmically, finding a good rhythm, passing this thing back and forth as if it were a baseball, but you're not throwing it, you're just passing it from one hand to the other. You'll even out your brain because anxiety is an overactivation of one hemisphere. So keep doing this. Typically about 30 seconds. I just talked to someone today who had worked with me and said that they were on a flight and they did this and it worked like a charm. So take a moment. You can stop doing it now and notice how you're feeling.

I'm feeling like I would say just like less, like more out of my thoughts. Yeah. And how does your body feel? Definitely calmer. That's right. So each time you interrupt that fear, right? I want you to think of it like you're going down a road, right? Your brain is going down a very habituated road.

It's the path in the woods where no grass grows because you've gone down it so many times. So as you're going down it, we've just put it roadblock. And it forces the brain to detour and fire somewhere else. It forces the brain to make new neural connections. Each and every time you interrupt your anxiety. you are changing your brain. So if you're feeling any anxiety on a plane, you now have bilateral stimulation, right? Shift out and shut up.

You've got bilateral. That was peripheral vision. Shift out and shut up. And now you have bilateral stimulation, just passing something back and forth, right, to even out your brain. Here's another good one. okay, if you're on the flight? Because that was your question, right? What if I'm on the flight? Even though I was relaxed booking it, relax sitting down, even relaxed during takeoff, there's turbulence. So here's another one, right? Take a moment and relax the back of your tongue. I know it's a little weird.

And then slowly breathe into your belly and breathe out twice as long. then you're going to breathe into your belly slowly and slowly breathe out twice as long and as soon as you reach the very end of the exhale you breathe in again deep into your belly and breathe out twice as long and at the very end of that exhale just notice that still point and then breathe it back in and exhale twice as long noticing the still point If you do three of those, take a moment and notice how your body feels. What are you noticing? My heart rate is slower. I just, yeah, I feel just much more grounded. Yeah. So this process downregulates your vagus nerve.

And your vagus nerve is the information highway from your brain to your heart, your lungs, your gut and back up again. It goes through your jaw, your facial muscles. It is truly what is in charge of fight or flight response as well as rest and digest. It is the key to downregulating your nervous system. So by exhaling twice as long, you start to downregulate your vagus nerve. And that leads the brain into a different state. It leads the heart into a different state. and you're relaxed. And as you're relaxed, Liz, take a moment and imagine stepping on the plane. Sitting down in your seat, plane takes off, you watch a movie, plane lands, you unbuckle, get your

luggage, and walk off the flight. How do you feel? Calm and happy. That's right. And when you're calm and happy, imagine being at the gate and they're calling for boarding. How do you feel? Excited. And when you're excited and you imagine getting on the plane, really imagine sitting down and, you know, plane starts to take off.

Imagine it now. How do you feel? That actually brings up a twinge of anxiety. That's what I'm looking for. No, this is why I'm now searching. Okay. So take a moment as you feel that twinge. I want you to tap on the very top.

of your head. And as you tap, just say, I release and let this go. And am I supposed to be picturing that? Nope, just tap with me and say, I release and let it go. Release and let it go. Now tap in between your eyebrows. I use three fingers so that I can actually reach both eyebrows and say release and let it go. I release and let it go. And then the side of your eye where you can feel kind of the occipital bone, the orbital bone, around the eye. As you tap, say, I release and let it go. And then under your eye, is it for the orbital? Is it both sides at the same time? No, you can just do one. Underneath your eye, say, I release and let it go. I release and let it go. And then tap or just use your open hand and hit your like your collarbone point. I release and let

it go. I release and let it go. Now grab your wrist, take a deep breath in, and exhale twice as long. What are you noticing? My heart rate slower. Yeah. I feel calmer. Yeah. And while we were tapping, the plane has already taken off. Like, do you think it's ever worth indulging, like, I don't know, trying to like read statistics, check on whether doing all these sort of like false sense of control, like talking, I guess using the logical brain part of your brain to talk yourself out of your fear of flying? Or do you think that it's such an emotional fear that the logical approach will be? You know, I think that there is something to doing what makes you feel comfortable. If it gets you on the plane as it has, because you've been flying, even though you're very uncomfortable,

then okay. It's not, you know, to me, you know, you're battling Goliath, which is your unconscious mind, which is over 95% of your mental processing. And that is where the emotional processing comes in. You're trying to fight your own fight-or-flight response with rational, logical thought. And my question to you is, you know, when people, say, as you noted in the beginning, well, it's safer than cars. All you do is get afraid of cars. Logic doesn't work here. If it did, I would be out of a job. If you could rationalize away any

anxiety, any habit, if you could just say tomorrow, I am no longer going to, I don't care, whatever, overeat or smoke or do any other part of. of the habituated pattern that is me and it worked, people wouldn't need people like me. But because the unconscious mind is a powerful force and anything that can get automated will get automated because your brain is always conserving energy. And it is always trying to help you to survive. Somewhere along the line, Liz, your brain got the message that flying was a dangerous thing for you. So it's been doing its job beautifully up until now. Now we're training it differently.

That's why I keep taking you through the flight and landing. I'm showing your brain it's safe. What we are doing is we are systematically removing the flags that your brain had dropped as it relates to flying. Got it. So every time you think a calm, you can think about flying and put yourself in a calm state of mind, whether it's via the tapping or the peripheral vision or anything like that, are you removing those flags for yourself? So like theoretically, you're not only making yourself calm in the moment, but you're making the fear less present and the future. Yes. And the key here is, you know, people who have fear of flying can be very calm when they meditate or do any other thing that's calming. The key here,

is to attach it to the stimulus. That's why I keep getting you into this place. And I say, now imagine stepping on the plane. And you were fine. I said, now imagine the plane is about to take off. And that's where you said, oh, I felt a twinge. So now with my work with clients, I systematically go rooting around for any flags that might still be there.

And we push through them, whether it's. It's the tapping, whether it's some other techniques that I use. I use a lot of different techniques. Then I use a deep trance so that when your unconscious mind is wide open, then we put in the suggestions that you're safe. Can we do that to ourselves? Or is that something you need? Yes.

Yeah, absolutely. You can. Can I ask? I want one more question. And then maybe we can end with like a meditation or like a five minutes sort of training. A little trans. Yeah. Like in my heart of hearts, I want to change.

But there's also this little part of me that's like you will keep yourself safer by just never flying. Like this is a safety defense mechanism for you. Don't believe the statistics. You don't really want to enjoy flying because then you're no longer protecting yourself in this way that you've been protecting yourself. Is there anything that you would say to get me through that thought process? Yeah. I would say maybe you're just not someone who's meant. or destined to travel.

Well, but I recoil at that. Maybe you just need to take trains. Maybe you can get used to sailing. That just feels so limiting to me. It feels like... Of course it does. So I'm looking for you to push back and convince me that you want to change, Liz, because that's the way this shit works.

That's so interesting. And so that's the way I work. I was going to be mad at you for a second, but that makes way more, yeah. So it's like. Well, as I tell my students, I don't care if my clients like me as long as they get the change. That's so interesting. I was like, yeah, okay. So if somebody's listening and having that thought, it's like, okay, well, then what does the alternative look like?

And then how do you feel about that alternative? Yeah, the alternative is, you know, don't fly. You know, take road trips across wherever you are and learn to get used to taking a very long time to get anywhere cool. That's actually a really powerful. It's like I always have the thought process of like you could just not do this, but then to actually picture and have somebody say, okay, you have permission. Don't do it. I'm immediately, I recoil and I want to rebel and I want to be like, no, that's not the life I want to live. The number one rule of habits is to make the things that you want easier and the things that you don't want harder.

Yet so many of us want to eat healthier, but so few of us actually take the steps to make eating healthier easier. That's where Marley Spoon comes in. What I love about this company and what's different than all of the other companies out there that are doing like stuff in the same arena is that you can customize your choices based on the effort that you want to put in. So if you want them to send you ingredients, so you can make your own 20-minute meal and like, get into your chef energy, they'll send it to you to all be in perfect portions so you'll eliminate waste. Great, that's sorted. But they also have meals that you can just heat up.

They have ready-made breakfast, which is always such a tough time of day to get a healthy meal in. They have grab and go snacks. Everything is made from farm fresh produce with high-quality proteins and you can select by dietary preferences, including Mediterranean diet, which is the top diet that doctors on this podcast recommend. Also, things like gluten-free, dairy-free, low-sodesodesodes. sodium, anything that you need. The food is so good and it's so gourmet feeling like you feel like

you're at a nice restaurant. We're talking like chicken Milanese with a crunchy cucumber arugula salad or everything bagel salmon with truffle chive potatoes. My favorite recent meal was the creamy lemon chicken tray bake. I had one of those moments where I looked at my plate and I was like, wait, I made this and so quickly, like so easily. It's just so little effort for so much reward. Marley Spoon just makes eating well feel easy instead of stressful and honestly. Honestly, that is everything. This new year, fast track your way to eating well with Marley Spoon. Head to marlyspoon.com slash offer slash Liz Moody for up to 25 free meals.

That is right, up to 25 free meals with Marley Spoon. That is marly spoon.com slash offer slash Liz Moody. So remember to get the offer in there. Marley Spoon.com slash offer slash Liz Moody for up to 25 free meals. I'm genuinely confused how Masterclass gets literally the app. absolute top people in every single field to teach every single one of their classes. I use it when I want to learn things directly like the cooking class from Thomas Keller has all of the wisdom that you would normally have to go to culinary school for. But also, I'm being honest, this is like a use case I don't

hear a lot of people talking about. I'll just watch it for entertainment when I want to do something that's far more interesting than scrolling. Christina Aguilera taught me to sing. Shan Boodrum's Art of mastering confidence and sex appeal class is 10 out of 10. There's menopause classes with leading doctors. There's script writing with Mindy Kaley. Literally, you name it, they're on masterclass, and it is such a good way to get off your phone, but have something that's like not quite as long or hard to get into as a TV show or a movie and that it just keeps you entertained and interested. And you are learning. There are over 200 classes from the world's best, all for just $10 a month when billed annually. And you get unlimited access to every class on the platform so you can learn at

your own pace whenever you want on your phone, your computer, or even in audio mode like a podcast. If you're looking to stop scrolling and start consuming entertaining content that makes you feel excited and helps you learn, Masterclass is it. And the best part, every membership comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee so you can start learning risk-free. Right now our listeners get an additional 15% off any annual membership at masterclass.com slash Liz Moody. That's 15% off at masterclass.com slash Liz Moody, masterclass.com slash Liz Moody. I spoke to someone who had never left the country. They never.

They're in their 60s because they don't like the idea of flying. So, you know, their big trip was, you know, getting in a car and going cross country. and they're in their 60s. That's their life. They're very limited. And, you know, they've never seen the most amazing things that I've seen in this world. And that's just the truth. So you have a choice.

Not everyone is meant to travel. Not everyone has it in them. Some people just like being where they are and have zero interest in the world at large. And that's fine too. But if you want to travel, flying is the way to go. Now you can ask people, or rather you can't, but you can hallucinate asking people

from a long time ago what it was like to travel, you know, abroad where it took. I don't know, people took months on a boat. And it was only really available. I mean, I do think it's a magical thing. Every time I do it, I'm like, Because it was only available to the very most elite people with a lot of money, a lot of time. Not even that long ago.

Yeah. It is. It is sometimes when I see people on planes and they're like complaining about an hour delay or something, I'm like, I want to be like, this is a miracle. Like we are performing a miracle by going from like New York to London in seven hours. It's a mind-blowing miracle. and the fact that we can do it so casually blows my mind. Or, you know, there was a comedian who, you know, was listening to someone who was complaining that the Wi-Fi on the airplane was sketchy.

Yeah. And he's like, are you fucking kidding me? I'm also, like, old enough to remember when, like, the in-flight entertainment was one screen that came down and we got one movie. Yeah. So I'm just like, the fact that there's. Most of the planes I'm on these days have, or I, yeah, like have like seatback entertainment and you get to choose your movie. It feels like a huge miracle. I'm just like, what is this luxury on this plane? It's amazing.

So let's take a moment, okay? And I just want to check in for a moment. When you imagine taking, you know, booking your flight to New York, how are you feeling? I'm feeling excited. Yeah. And empowered. I would say there's a few things you've said that have made me feel really empowered. Like I feel empowered that I have tools in my toolkit to work on it with. I feel empowered that every time I'm thinking positively and kind of like rewriting those neurons that I'm making a step towards a more positive future for myself. And honestly, I feel really empowered by the idea that this is my choice and I'm choosing this life and that that's up to me. Yep. And that this whole thing was just your brain doing its job. Somewhere along the line, your brain got the idea that flying was dangerous for you. And it's been doing its job to try and dissuade you from doing, from flying. And you have, with your little conscious perseverance and tenacity, gone on those damn planes anyway. So kudos to you for defying 95 to 97% of your being that was trying to save you by not having you fly because your brain dropped a flag.

So all we're doing is systematically removing those flags, retraining your brain, which is a very fast learner. Your brain learns faster than you think. You know, and people are like, no, it takes a long time to change the brain. I said, you know what, what if you met someone and you thought they were really, really cool? You really liked them. They were even your friend for a while. And then when they thought no one was looking, they kicked your puppy. Oh.

I know, that's a horrible thing. I'm sorry I just shared that. What the hell? I was just thinking of something I would find as a deal breaker. Yeah, Pauline, that would be a deal breaker for sure. In that moment, even though your brain might have even been in love with this person, right? Your brain changes like that. Now, there's many instances we have where our brain just changes.

So you never know, really, which is the flag that's going to be the flag that turns the whole pattern. So I've given you a few different techniques. and now I'm going to quickly give you a self-hypnosis template. Now, I will say this. If anyone is driving, pause this. Yeah. Please, please pause this. Now, this is an easy one.

So what I want you to do, Liz, is put your feet flat on the floor and anyone listening. Once again, if you're at work and you're listening, I would pause this and do this when you get home so that you can fully appreciate. it because you can only appreciate it from inside. So find a focal point and soften your gaze. It's kind of like you diffuse your focus. In a moment, I'm going to keep it simple. I'm going to count from 10 down to 1. I'll be asking you to close your eyes at different points. So defocus your eyes. Now close them. And as I count 10, imagine a wave of relaxation going from the top of your head all the way down to the tips of your toes. Imagine the number 10, fading or relaxing out of your mind. Some people

visualize the number as going dim and distant. It doesn't matter how you imagine it. Then you're going to open your eyes to quickly close your eyes. Nine. Imagine another wave of relaxation. going from the top of your head all the way down to the tips of your toes. And imagine that number nine growing dim and distant or somehow relaxing out of your mind. Then you open your eyes and close your eyes, eight and another wave. Imagine that wave of comfort sinking in to anywhere in your body that needs more comfort as the number fades. and you open your eyes and close your eyes seven another wave that wave of relaxation moving down your body as the number fades so with each and every number you'll get a little more relaxed inside and you

open your eyes and close your eyes six another wave imagine that wave of comfort sinking in the number fading and then you open your eyes and close your eyes and close you close your eyes, five and another wave. That wave of comfort sinking in. And you open your eyes, close your eyes, four, another wave. That comfort sinking in, the number slowly fading, getting more and more comfortable with each number. Then you open your eyes, close your eyes, three, and another wave.

That wave of relaxation sinking in. the number fading. And you open your eyes, close your eyes, two, relax even more. Imagining that wave as the number fades. Then you open your eyes and close your eyes one, really letting that relaxation settle in. And even in this lightly relaxed state, your mind has more power than you think. Let me show you how cool it is. Focus for a moment on your legs. Imagine those legs are so full of relaxation that they're heavy. What would it feel like if those legs were heavy? Like, I don't know, like lead or wood, heavier than when you're sleeping.

Imagine it. But more importantly, since this is self-hypnosis, think the suggestion to yourself. In your mind, think, my legs are so heavy. And because you're in a more open, receptive state, When you suggest your legs are heavy, your body believes you. So take a moment and notice the heaviness, Liz. Some people notice that heaviness even more.

When they try to lift their legs, they can really sense how much heavier they feel. I show you that so that you understand this is a powerful state where you can make changes. You suggest your legs are heavy and then they get heavy. That's personal power. So imagine a movie screen in your mind, however you choose to imagine it. I want you to see yourself, right? Sitting in that plane, smiling, maybe you're watching one of those movies or reading a book. But this is the you that has already flown countless times and it's easy.

You've already flown countless times and you've been relaxed and easy. It's about the destination. When it looks good and you look relaxed, and kind of excited. Imagine floating into the movie, trying it on and feel how good it feels to be relaxed and excited. And then the plane lands

and you stand up and you walk off the plane. Feel how good it feels. And you float out of the movie and shake off the trance. Wiggle your fingers and toes and lighten up your legs. Easy peasy. That's New York hypnosis. really fast.

That was lovely. And was it interesting that your legs got heavy? Yeah. Yeah, it definitely was. If I don't show people that, then they just feel like they're really relaxed, but they don't necessarily think they're in hypnosis because hypnosis is supposed to be this deep or mysterious state. But when I'm teaching self-hypnosis, I want it to be really accessible.

That makes sense. But you have to know that all hypnosis is is a state of heightened suggestibility. You go into that every time you're anxious. I hate to say it, but it's true. Anxiety is a hypnotic pattern. It captures attention and makes you highly suggestible to your own thoughts. Yeah, I know. That's fast.

I mean, it's actually, I think for people who might respond as of hypnosis is like a woo-woo thing, it's really interesting that like anxiety also makes you more susceptible to thoughts that are going to be sticky, you know? Well, anyone who thinks hypnosis is like woo-woo, just Google hypnosis research or hypnosis and medicine. Yeah. Hundreds because they've been doing research on it, you know, for 200 years. Yeah. Anyway. So that's the little self-hypnosis template.

And if people will do that and make movies, they want to star in, movies of themselves in the plane, laughing with a friend, and then float in and try it on, you will systematically recondition your brain. I love that. That's such a powerful thought. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for sharing all of this with us. You've mentioned your YouTube a few times. I'm obviously going to share all your information at the top of the episode, but is there anything anywhere you specifically want people to find you? Well, I have two different websites and, you know, just melissa Tears.com gives you the basic information. If you're a practitioner of sorts, if you're a coach or a therapist or a doctor and you want hypnosis training, you can find that at Center for Integrative Hypnosis.com.

I've been doing my trainings over Zoom these days, so that's interesting. Do you work with clients over Zoom? I do. Amazing. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for all of this. I know that my listeners really appreciate it and I really appreciate it as well. All right, Patrick, thank you so much for taking the time to join me on the podcast today. I am so excited to ask you all of these questions. Thanks for having me. Can you just start off by

giving us a little bit of background about who you are and you're obviously a pilot, but tell us a little bit about that and your book and stuff like that? Sure. My name is Patrick Smith. I'm a commercial airline pilot for a large commercial carrier, one that everybody is familiar with. I've been flying professionally one way or the other since 1990 when I was basically a little kid. My website is askthepilot.com and that's where I do most of my writing and blogging and posting. And my book, which was a New York Times bestseller for a little while when it first came out, is cockpit confidential. And you can access that through my website or go to Google directly or whatever.

How did you get interested in flying planes? Great question. And I'm not sure that I even know the answer because it goes so far back. I was into planes and into airlines when I was a little kid. When exactly it started or for what reasons I don't remember. remember, I just got into it when I was, you know, in the third grade and I started collecting like airline timetables and would study airline route maps and just everything about the industry just fascinated me. I've always been more kind of passionate about commercial aviation

and what I like to call the theater of air travel more so maybe than just the hands-on thrill of flying in and of itself, if that makes any sense. me it's about what do you mean yeah like what's the theater of air travel well for me it's it's about the airplanes it's about the airlines it's about airports it's about the places that the planes go it's kind of all of that together more so than just the thrill of flight by itself the act of flying an airplane which don't get me wrong I love and there's lots of fun but it goes back to my passion for just the whole industry and everything about it Hmm, that's interesting. Is flying an airplane? One of the questions that I got, and I'm sure you, I'm sure, I'm going to apologize because I think that's probably annoys pilots a lot. But one of the questions I got is like, how much are you still flying the plane? So like, does it still feel thrilling? Or does it feel just kind of like, oh, I'm like going up again today? And then, you know, autopilot's taking over and I'm kind of watching out for emergencies or like, what is that relationship with the management of the plane like?

Well, you're asking two questions there. The first one is, I think, does the job get mundane? And the answer is, of course, sometimes every job gets mundane. Any professional in any line of work is going to occasionally get bored and sigh and say, oh, you know, another long day. On the whole, though, I love my job and in everything about it is a thrill to me. But sure, it has its periods of, I don't know if boredom is the right word, but, you know, there are things about the job that are aggravating and teens. And interestingly, they're usually the same things that passengers find tedious and bothersome. Like delays. Long lines, delays having to deal with airport security, the noise levels at airports and on plans, that sort of thing. The act of flying the plane, getting it to the cockpit and doing our job is in a lot of ways the easy part, the fun part. It's all of the ancillary hassles that stress us out. And that's true for passengers as well. Now, the other question you were asking was about autopilot and how planes are flown.

And this is something that always drives me crazy. People have a very exaggerated sense of what cockpit automation does and is capable of doing. You know, airplanes don't fly themselves as conventional wisdom has it. Even with all of the automation up and running, a cockpit still becomes a very. very busy place to the point where both pilots can be task saturated. We're still flying the plane. We're just doing it in a different way from how it was done in, say, the 1930s. We can take our hands off the wheel or off the control stick. That doesn't mean we're not telling the plan what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. On the 767 that I fly, there are six different ways I can

set the plane up for a quote unquote automatic descent. And meanwhile, 99.9% of all landings are still performed the old-fashioned way, if we can call it that, which is hands-on manual, manually controlled in every respect by the pilot and 100% of takeoffs are also manual. The part in between, the autopilot takes care of certain tasks, allowing us to take our hands off, but we still have total control over the plane. And like I said, even with the autopilot on, it's still a very work-intensive job. And there's just a tremendous amount of input that goes into even the most routine flight. And there are periods of low workload, you know, out over the ocean in the middle of the night. We're not doing a whole lot. But

but then there are also periods of very high workload. It ebbs and flows. I think people tell themselves that, or I think the myth has been able to be perpetuated so much because it feels less scary in some ways, like instead of trusting a random human that you don't really know anything about with your life, you're trusting like a machine and you're like, oh, this is like past all these inspection.

You know, it feels like more, I guess like uniform. Instead of a human-to-human situation, and it's all the same plane and it's all doing the same stuff. You know what I mean? Yeah, I can see that. And I think part of it, too, is just our general infatuation nowadays with technology and our presumption that it can take care of everything flawlessly, which is just not at all the case.

And, of course, you know, the next step here, at least in people's minds, is automatic pilotless airplanes. I hear this all the time. It drives me crazy. You know, the idea that you can take a drone and just scale it up and put 300 people on it and off you go. I mean, the idea. That, like, terrifies me.

Well, but I hear that all the time. I mean, you read it in articles and it just makes my blood boil when I read it because it's so preposterous. You know, I say that as somebody who's biased and an advocate, but I also say it as somebody who's pretty familiar with how planes fly and commercial airline operations. And the idea of that happening is so far-fetched right now. Well, can you talk me down from that fear a little bit? like I think that people are like, is my pilot sleep deprived? Is my pilot? I got so many questions that I'd never thought about this. So this unlocked a new fear for me. But like, is my pilot intoxicated? Is anybody checking for that before a flight? How much are they renewing their training?

Like, can you give us just some sense of safety with the person flying the plane since they are indeed flying the plane? Well, you're asking a number of questions there together. Let's take one of those Thanks. Pick one. Let's do, how do I know that my pilot's not sleep deprived, especially on those overnight flights? Like, is it less safe to do an overnight than a daytime flight? Well, I don't like the expression less safe. I mean, what does that mean? Are pilots sleep deprived? I mean, fatigue is a concern on the job, but that's true in every profession. Again, people are, especially nervous flyers, are striving for some 100% absolute, you know, kind of safety concept that just doesn't exist in the real world. I mean, that doesn't mean flying is unsafe.

It just means that it's not absolutely perfect all the time and it can't be. Nothing can be. I think we're also striving for a sense of the little tiny bit of control that we possibly can have. So is that like should we book a night flight versus a day flight? Should we book this plane versus that? We're just striving for those tiny decisions we can make personally that will make us feel better. That's a great point. And, you know, I get, I hear different versions of that all the time. Should I fly during the day versus at night? Should I fly on this plane versus that plane? This airline versus that airline.

Those are academic questions. The answer is no. The answer is book what you can afford and what's convenient for you, really. The rest of it is just kind of mostly a waste of your time. Just because the difference. The differences statistically between those things are so tiny and you're dealing with so many decimal places that it's just, It's not, those are not practical decisions.

Okay, what about the intoxication thing? Is somebody checking for that? Pilots are subject to random drug and alcohol screening. How often it happens? Well, you don't know. That's what makes it random. You know, in the past, there have been cases, and everybody knows about this, where pilots were caught under the influence of alcohol. is it a serious systemic problem in commercial aviation? Absolutely not. Has it happened? Yes. Is it something that

you should be concerned with when you get onto an airplane? No. That should not be on your kind of list of concerns if you're a nervous flyer getting onto a plane. Well, and even outside of the random checks, like if you got on the, there's two of you up there, if you got on the plane and your co-pilot was intoxicated, you would be like, hey, bro, I don't want to fly with you, right? Well, right, but I, you know, I don't even like putting it that way because then that gives the impression that this is something that, you know, kind of comes up routinely, and it's not. In my, you know, 30 years of commercial flying, basically, I've never been in a scenario like that. Okay, but that's actually really comforting unto itself. What about the professional training? Like, do you guys have to re-up your training? And do

somebody at a big commercial airliner like yours, would they have more training than a regional or the budget airlines that are cheaper? Let's just say that training never really stops. All pilots are subject to what we call recurrent training. Once or more per year, the exact cycles vary airline to airline program to program, where we go down for two or three days and there's classroom training and, and simulator training. It's a refresher,

but it's also somewhere where we learn new policies and procedures and then practice different things. And then, of course, anytime you switch to a different aircraft type, you go through what we call initial training all over again. I'm moving from one airplane type to another airplane type is probably a lot more complicated than people think. I mean, it can take months,

at least several weeks, to re-qualify on a new airplane, go through the training program, go through the simulator training, the testing, and then once you are qualified, then you have your recurrent training periodically on top of that. And in addition to all of that, you know, you're always going over things when you're on the job or even at home, you're reading updates on procedures and bulletins on operational policies with the airplanes. It just never stops. Do you find that most pilots are like that sort of above and beyond employee?

Like they love it so much that they are thinking about it in their off time and trying to stay abreast of newest stuff. Like it's not like a blaze job people do. Yeah, I think that's definitely true by and large. And a lot of that goes back to what brings people into the aviation business to begin with, which like my example, it's something that goes back to when they were kids or at least goes way, way back,

and it's something they're passionate about. It's not just something they're doing to collect a paycheck. So you said the training differs airline to airline. Do you, like, would you, are there any airlines? I don't want to name names, but maybe like ones that could be conflated with a ghost or rhyme with Muntier that you would feel uncomfortable flying because the pilots are receiving different training or like where are they cutting the costs on these?

Would a high-level pilot, given the choice, choose to fly with one of those versus your carriers, say? All airline pilots are high-level pilots. And where a pilot ends up, you know, at which company, at which airline is so much a function of luck and timing and the industry trends. It's not a case of the best pilots go to this airline. and the lesser pilots end up at this airline or these airlines. Like you mentioned budget carriers as a category. Yeah. The pilots at those companies are no less experience,

are no better or worse trained than the pilots at major carriers. It's just, you know, for whatever reasons, that's where they work because, you know, that's how the timing worked out or how their luck turned out. I mean, we hear so much about the quote-unquote pilot shortage, but, you know, the fact is that airline pilot jobs are incredibly competitive. And you don't necessarily pick and choose which airlines you want to work at. It's just a lot of it is which the first airline that hires you often is where you spend your career because it's so competitive. And it's it's so hard. I like to make an analogy to baseball.

You know, you have the major leagues. You know, that's the big legacy U.S. Airlines. And then you have kind of AAA, if you will, which is the regional carriers. And most people at that level never make it to the big carriers, to the major airlines. And it's not because they weren't good enough. It's just because of the numbers. So you, you, there's, is there any, like there's no regional carrier or budget carrier, at least in the U.S. And I'm going to get into international a second that you would feel is, you'd feel any sense of discomfort or anything flying personally.

No, no. So with foreign airlines, you talked about like pilots having training and stuff like that in the U.S. And every airline, they have this sort of minimum standard of safety training. do you feel like that's true internationally? Are there any foreign airlines that you would feel less safe or more safe flying? Not really. Certain areas of the world statistically are not as exceptionally safe as, say, the U.S. or Western Europe. That doesn't mean they are unsafe.

And I think people would be surprised to learn there are certain countries that you wouldn't necessarily expect. in Africa, for example, that have very long, very proud aviation cultures. And airlines from these countries tend to be exceptionally safe. If you put a list together, and I think there's one in my book, of all the airlines worldwide that haven't had a fatal crash in at least, I forget what number I use, 25 or 30 years, you know, you have airlines like Tunis Air on there, Air Malta, I mean, all these different carriers from parts of the world that people don't normally associate with buttoned down air safety. Everybody knows Qantas because they haven't had a fatality since the advent of jets in the 1960s.

But there are other airlines from all over the world with records that are almost or just as safe. And statistically, we're a lot safer in the U.S. now than we used to be decades ago. And that's true globally as well. Accident rates are way down regardless of the region. And we still have accidents from time to time, but nothing like what we had in the 50, 60, 70s into the 1990s where you had multiple major air disasters every year. We just don't see that anywhere.

Overarching this whole topic is something that I think is important. Here in the U.S., we are about to, hit the 20-year mark since the last major airline disaster in this country. That was the American 587 crash outside Kennedy Airport in November of 2001, shortly after 9-11. There has not been a major crash event involving a large U.S. carrier since then. 20 years. That's absolutely astonishing. In some ways, it's the most significant story in commercial aviation history, but nobody talks about it. Now, you go back to the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, and you'd look at air crash records.

We would have major accidents every year, sometimes multiple major accidents in a year. In 1985, there were 27 major airline catastrophes globally, okay, killing thousands of people. I mean, that was, granted, that was an unusually bad year, but it was the kind of thing we were used to. You'd have, you know, five or six serious accidents around the world every year. And in the U.S., you know, sometimes one or two, sometimes even more, we've just gone or we're about to hit 20 years, 20 years without a major airline catastrophe. We've had a few accidents involving regional carriers and smaller airlines, but none of the legacy airlines. have had a major accident with multiple fatalities. And that's just absolutely remarkable.

And globally, it's not quite as good, but the numbers are still much, much, much better than they were in decades past. And nobody talks about that. Instead, we hyper-focused when there is that one accident. And there's always going to be an accident now and then. But I wish people would take comfort in the fact that they're far fewer and further between.

than they used to be. Yeah, it's actually bananas to me to picture people. Like, I remember when I was watching Mad Men and Dodd Draper was like flying and I'm like, I don't know if I'd like casually fly between LA and New York back in that day. It just, so what do you attribute the difference to? Like what has, I mean, I'm sure a lot has changed in 1985, but what do you think made it so profoundly safer? Or do you think we're just like in a lucky stretch, which is where my brain goes? Well, that's human nature to go there. And there's, you know, luck probably is an aspect somewhere in this. But really it's, I think, the result of three things. First, improved crew training, pilot training.

We've come so far since, say, the 50s and 60s with advanced simulator training and just the procedures that pilots are taught nowadays. It's so advanced. And we've come so far with that. Secondly, are the technological improvements. Airplanes themselves, all the different safety systems and redundancies on board. That, you know, that can't be over-emphasized. And then thirdly, this one gets a little controversial maybe.

I think you have the collaborative efforts between airlines, regulators, advocacy groups, unions, all the different entities that, you know, have a self-interest of not crashing. you know, kind of working together to improve air safety. And when I say regulators, people, you know, oh, my name of the FAA is in bed with the airlines and it's all just this corrupt mess. And it's really not. It actually works pretty well. Because like you said, none of them want, like the FAA doesn't want to crash, Delta doesn't want to crash.

Like the pilots don't want to crash. None of the parties involved want anything bad to happen. It's in everybody's vested interest to be a safe. as possible. And the numbers bear out the fact that it's that it's worked. Just as one example, there is a, all airlines have self-reporting programs where if you're flying and you notice something procedurally is off or you do something incorrectly, you self-report that incident and it's collected and the data is analyzed and patterns are looked for. And that has a way of kind of rooting out problems preventively, preemptively, and preventing these unsafe, negative incidents

from occurring in the future. And I think that program, well, there are different ones, but those programs, that concept has been very successfully, keeps problems and dangers from being driven and hidden underground. It allows pilots to just put this all out in the open and and everybody can look at it and go from there. You said that airlines, number one priority is like not having crashes. And I get that like in theory. But is there,

I know that you always like read these news stories that are like, there was a snowstorm and it costs, you know, American Airlines millions and millions of dollars. And I'm like, would they ever push a pilot to like take off in an unsafe situation because it costs so much to cancel or push back a flight? Or does that never happen?

That never happens. I feel like we got it. I'm sure you knew this was coming. We're going to talk about turbulence. Yay. Are you sick of talking about turbulence? Because I just feel like it's something that from what I've heard you explain and other pilots, it's such a non-thing to you, but it's so terrifying to all the rest of us.

Yeah. I don't like talking about it, but I have to because, you know, when I started writing and blogging and running my website, I was amazed when the questions began coming in. because, you know, I learned that turbulence, rough air is far and away the number one concern of nervous flyers. And that just amazed me. I think there's two reasons for it as far as I can tell as a nervous flyer. And the second one, I only came to recently, which like, you know, I've been a nervous flyer for a very long time. So it's an interesting realization.

The first is that I think it is this very visceral reminder that you're not on the ground, that you're sort of at the mercy of whims that are larger than you and scarier than you. But then I think the second one is something I realized recently, which is like, is it turbulence? Or is there like, is that shutter like something happening to the engine or like an indicator that there's something bad happening that's actually not turbulence itself? You know what I mean? Well, I think both of those things are actually the same thing. And I think I think you pretty much nailed it. Oh, that I can't control anything in life. I think you really nailed it.

I mean, how did you say it exactly that it's kind of. this visceral manifestation of flight anxiety that you can now touch and feel. Not exactly. It's kind of touching you. But it's your fear is kind of coming to life in that moment. You can say, aha, you know, there it is. The jolt, the bump. Mm-hmm.

But for us, you know, we just don't really see it that way. I mean, you know, there's always rough air somewhere. It's just part of the sky. And, you know, in rare cases, rough air turbulence does occasionally injure passengers. And in very rare cases, it can damage airplanes. But the kind of turbulence that would cause that to happen is something that even the most frequent flyer is never going to experience. And the number of airplanes that have crashed from turbulence in and of itself in the entire jet age, I can't think of a single one.

Can you explain to me? Like, you're like, it's just part of the sky. In the most sort of layman's terms, like you're so good at, can you explain to me what's actually happening and like why it's not dangerous? Turbulance is wind. It's, you know, caused by changes in wind direction, wind speed, changes in temperature, atmospheric pressure, jet streams. I mean, there are different causes.

of it. But you're never going to get on an airplane and have a perfectly smooth flight from one city to the other, not anymore than you're going to get in your car and not hit a bump driving from New York to Florida. Turbulance can be inconvenient. It can be annoying. It can spill your coffee. Is it dangerous? Only in the absolute rarest circumstances. And are we able to avoid those with like our technology and our radars? Yeah, good question. Turbulance forecasting has become a lot more advanced in a relatively short period of time. The tablet devices that my airline uses are great at predicting when turbulence is going to be there and even to what extent. I've been surprised by how accurate

that technology is. So if somebody was just like, okay, I trust you. I believe turbulence is safe, but I don't want to feel it. Are there any tips of like where to sit on the plane? Are there types of planes that are better for it? Are night flights or day flights better, blah, blah, blah, like are there any little tips and tricks to just like avoid feeling it? A little bit. The middle section of the airplane, I mean, lengthwise, you know, being seated near or on top of the wing

tends to be the smoothest area of an airplane. the tail, the very back tends to sway and swing more. It tends to be bumpiest in the back, smoothest right over the wing, and sort of mostly smoother up front. But there's not a whole lot of difference there. Okay. I wouldn't go out of my way to sit over the wing just to avoid feeling the effects of turbulence. Well, that's because you're not afraid of flying, Patrick.

But it's not going to make that much of a difference. It's day versus night. No, I get that question a lot. Should I fly at night? Is it generally smoother at night than it is during the day? Yes, but not always. So I can't recommend doing that. Okay.

Big planes? Is the bigger the plane the less, the turbulence? A little bit. Again, a little bit. But not enough to make like a big difference. No. No, really not. Okay.

What about my second fear, which was like that the turbulence, is it in fact turbulence, but it's like something going wrong with the plane, the engine shuttering to death or something. Like if there were a real... Stop, I can't answer that because that's just completely in your mind. Okay. That's not actually happening.

No. I've never encountered a case where what seemed to be turbulence was actually something else and something worse. No. Okay, well, that makes it, that's an answer unto itself. If there were a real emergency on a plane, when would we like would you guys tell us or would you guys just try to fix it and then we would find out later? You would know. You would have to know. You know there are procedures for setting up the cabin and preparing passengers for an evacuation, for example.

Okay, so we don't need to like listen for one of the things I do sometimes is listen for little dings and pings that means something. I know you can't help yourself, but please don't do that because you'd really. drive yourself crazy. I know people do that, but try not to because you'll drive yourself crazy because, you know, airplanes are big, complicated machines and there are lots of noises and things going ding and bang, and they don't mean what you're tricking yourself into thinking they mean. Something I hear sometimes from people is, you know, should I, should I study the crew members faces for, you know, looks of anxiety so that I know if there's a, no, of course not. That's, that's, that's, that's, that's not how it works. And even in the, the remote case where a

plane needs to be evacuated, I mean, that, that, that, that still doesn't mean the plane's going to crash or you're going to die. You know, occasionally there are precautionary landings. Oh, this is something too, you know, the news just loves anything to do with an airplane. Yeah. Every precautionary landing, every turnback, every time a plane has to divert somewhere, it's a quote-unquote emergency landing. And that's not at all really what's happening. An emergency landing is actually something very specific and even then, usually not dangerous. But the vast majority of planes diverting or landing somewhere to have something checked out, those are not emergencies.

And that's like part of the thing that's keeping. us safe, right? It's like that you guys have these procedures that you're following. That's why they're precautionary. And 99% of the time, you know, it turns out there was nothing all that serious going on. Have you ever had in your, like, vast experience, have you had to do emergency landings? Like, as you define them? See, I actually have to think, no, I've never made an emergency landing unless you count the nine billion of them I've done in Simulators. No, but I've made precautionary landings a few different times. So that means that, like, what would a precautionary landing look like?

One time I was flying a cargo jet and we got a notification that there was a failure of the fire detection system in one of the engines, which when following the checklist, meant that we had to shut the engine down, which meant that we had to land. another time we had a pressurization issue where we couldn't reach our cruising altitude, and now we didn't have enough fuel to reach our destination, plus all of the fuel requirements beyond that, and so we have to land somewhere else. Were those emergencies, no. And when something like that happens, you're not like sweating and freaking out. You're just like, okay, I'll go land the plane now.

Everything's very procedural. Any kind of malfunction or non-normal situation, you're following a series of steps, checklists. And you're also, and a lot of people don't realize this, you're also conferring with specialists on the ground, maintenance staff, the airline dispatchers, air traffic control. It becomes kind of a team effort. Can we talk about air traffic control for a second?

Because I read an article, and I know you're just like, gosh darn the news, but it was like air traffic control is going to be the cause of all of the, the crashes in the future because there's so many more planes in the air these days and they're like not enough air traffic control staff or something like that. Can you just like talk me through air traffic control and if that, if you foresee that being a problem? Well, what I foresee being a problem and we already had this problem, at least before coronavirus was airspace was, and ground space too, was just overcrowded. Or just, you're just, so many airplanes flying now.

Does that result in crashes? No. Does it result in delays? Yes. Unfortunately, I think for people who are nervous flyers, modern media just makes it so much worse because of its propensity to just jump on anything related to airlines and any negative story, any kind of precautionary landing or emergency landing, any little snafu, somebody gets hurt during turbulence. You know, these stories are seized on and they're spun up and they go viral to use a phrase that I hate. And, you know, that's not healthy for people who are already afraid of flying.

Yeah. And, you know, nowhere in those discussions does anybody say, you know, look at how much safer flying is now than it used to be. Yeah. I mean, it's self-perpetuating too because I was a journalist for years and you want to write about stuff that gets clicked. So, like, if you're writing stuff that's getting clicked, and then that's making people more scared than they're more apt to click the next time, you know what I mean? So it's so self-perpetuating. My favorite example of that, and this goes back 10 or more years now, there was the jet blue incident. Maybe you remember this.

Is this where it landed and they were, like, watching themselves on the TVs? Yes, yes. The plane had a crooked nose gear, nose landing gear, which in the hierarchy of horrible situations is pretty. pretty far down the list. But it became this media spectacle. And part of that spectacle involved people on the airplane watching their own emergency or their own situation on their seatback screens. It was like this weird kind of voyeuristic triangle. And it just went on and on.

And there was just saturation coverage. And then the plane came in and made its landing. And the gear was not where it should have been in the nose. So it kind of scraped. down along the pavement and there were sparks and, you know, was it going to be a catastrophe? And, you know, I was watching the whole thing and just laughing because I knew that the chances of that landing with the nose gear like that would result in anything serious were, you know, slim to none.

So that's another example where we picture the pilots like wiping sweat from their brow and blah, blah, but they were probably just like calm and following procedures? Absolutely. 100%. And, you know, that's true to back up a lot of. minute during turbulence. I think people have this idea that one Oh totally that you're like gripping the wheel and sweating and you're like are we going to get through this? Yeah, totally. Right. And really what we're concerned about is

not having our coffee spill over onto the console. Yeah. You know, even flying through very bad turbulence, it's very hands off. You're just kind of riding it out, letting the plane do its thing until it smooths out. You're not fighting against the bumps. you're not gripping the wheel with white knuckles and sweat pouring down. I'm going to ask you a few kind of quickies. So one is when the plane slows down right after takeoff and it kind of feels like you're falling out of the sky. Like what's that about? Planes generally take off with much more power than they need.

And during the initial part of climb, we reduced the thrust to what we call climb power. because we just don't need to keep the power up at the level that it is to keep climbing. And reducing the thrust saves wear and tear on the engines. It also keeps the plane from exceeding speed limits. And there are speed limits depending on which procedure you're on and what altitude you're at. And the plane is not slowing down. It's just not accelerating as quickly as it was. And you get the feeling, especially when you hear the engines kind of throttle down.

People will sometimes think that the plane is dropping and it's not accelerating as quickly as it was and not climbing at quite the rate that it was. What about aborted landings or aborted takeoffs? Actually, either one. I know that those both freak a lot of people out. Well, aborted takeoff is actually more hazardous than an aborted landing, usually, depending on your speed at the time you discontinue the takeoff. You have tire and break temperature issues at that point. In rare cases, if a heavy plan has to discontinue to take off, at a high speed, you might have, you know, fires have erupted in the landing gear, that kind of thing.

Very rare, but it has happened and it can be hazardous. Now, aborted landings are the ones that tend to scare people more than the idea of an aborted takeoff. occasionally, for whatever reason, whether it's air traffic control spacing or it would take too long to kind of outline all the things that could lead to this happening. But you sometimes have to break off the approach, climb out again, and come back around. I've done that numerous times in my career as a pilot, and I've been on planes numerous times as a passenger where that's happened. I was on a plane when it happened twice on the same flight. God. Due to, uh, due to, uh, do to, uh, do to spacing. And do you like hit the runway and then just take take on off again? That, that can happen, but that's very unusual. Usually the approach is,

is discontinued at some altitude above the runway and you climb away. Now, for a passenger, especially a nervous passenger, that transition from, you know, going down to going up is a scary one. And there's a lot of noise from the engines. And then you've got the landing gear coming down and going back up, the positions of the flaps and slats changing. So there's the hydraulic noises to go with that, not to mention the sensation of descending, descending, and now climbing, climbing. Yet for an airplane, that transition from down to up is perfectly natural.

And for a pilot, although it can be work intensive, there are a lot of steps to making that happen, but there's small steps. And it's actually very routine. Hmm. This is like, can a plane, even if a plane's like at 10,000 feet, is it just as easy to climb like when you're in the air? I think the thing I always think of is like you need that runway boost to climb. And if it's trying to climb after it's been descending, it's going to like too much work to get up there or something. No. And that goes back to what I just said, that the transition from descending to climbing is perfectly natural. So like if a plane's at 10,000 feet, it can climb to 30.

That's like a fine thing for it to do. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Okay, so just to wrap us up, I'm going to ask you one fun one, which would be my last one. But first, I just want to know if there's anything that you wish that people knew, like we've talked a lot about you wish people talked more about airline safety records. But is there anything else you wish we knew as fearful flyers listening to this about flying that we don't know? Well, the one thing when I'm asked that that always jumps into my mind is, what we already talked about with respect to cockpit automation.

I wish people understood better what it is that pilots actually do and what it is that automation doesn't do and how flying is still a very work-intensive job for the crew. And your planes are not being flown by machines. They're being flown by people. Secondly, there's any number of other things that jump into my head. A minute ago, you would ask me about that sensation of slowing down about dropping after takeoff when the power is reduced.

You know, airplanes, a lot of people don't realize, but even the biggest airplane can glide exceptionally well. And there are periods of pretty much every flight where you're gliding. And you probably don't realize it. During descent from cruise altitude, you kind of step your way down, you know, altitude to altitude depending on which procedure, which profile you're flying. but a lot of those descents are made at idle thrust, which basically means the engines are producing no power. Well, they're producing power, but they're producing no thrust, no forward push whatsoever. You're gliding, just as you would be in a glider, really.

And you don't even feel that, which should give you some sense of how stable airplanes are and how capable they are of staying in the air. The idea that you pull the power back on the plane just falls out of the sky, that's not how it works aerodynamically. So even if you like theoretically lost all engine power, which wouldn't happen again because of all the redundancies we've talked about, like that you could ostensibly glide to a landing? Absolutely. Wow. Have you ever had to glide to a landing?

No. Oh, God, no. I've practiced it in the simulator. But even in the simulator, that's one of those things that you do kind of for fun, for lack of a better term, because, you know, the idea of that happening is just so far-fetched. Interesting. It's it's really interesting to picture you guys like in the like have you gone through basically every like will they take you and put you in situations that caused crashes in the past and the simulator and then you have to like fly through that? Yep. That's so interesting. They are able to kind of replicate the conditions that caused particular accidents and then you kind of practice that. That's so interesting to picture as well as thousands of other possible. nasty scenarios and that's what simulator training is all about.

And can I ask a personal question? Like, psychologically, your job is sort of to think about everything that could go wrong and like prevent from it. How do you, like, obviously I think the personality type that becomes a pilot is significantly less neurotic than me. Like, how do you not let that, I don't know, like make you anxious that you're so much more acutely aware of everything going wrong because you're like preparing for it constantly, you know? We are acutely aware of everything that can go wrong, and we're also acutely aware of how unlikely that is,

and acutely aware of all the things that you think can go wrong, but we realize really can't go wrong. Now, having said that, sure, it's your job as a pilot to prepare for anything and everything. It's all about contingency and preparation. Okay. I would love to end on what your favorite moment has been while flying. One of my favorite, if not my favorite, flying memories is the time I got to be the pilot crew member on an inaugural flight to a country in West Africa. It was our first flight there. And it was to Liberia. And it was the first time a U.S. carrier had flown into Liberia since the days of Pan Am.

And, you know, we had CNN on the plane and we met the president of Liberia. Oh, wow. Going back to what I said earlier about what got me into planes and aviation. You know, it's not just the airplane itself. It's where you fly. It's how commercial aviation and politics and culture and geography all kind of come together. And for me, that was just, that was the ultimate being on that inaugural flight and getting to be part of that kind of celebration. That was just awesome. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to share all of your calm energy and your wisdom. We really appreciate it. And it feels good, honestly, to know that there's somebody like

you, like in front of the plane when we're on it. Yeah. Thank you. And I hope that I'm helped to some people. One of the problems is I'm up against just a hurricane of bad information that's out there on the internet and through how the media tends to overhype airplane stories. It's easy to scare people and not so easy to reassure them. Yeah, for sure. It is. But I think you did, I think you did an admirable job. If people wanted to find you, do you have like, is your website the best place to do that? Do you have social? The best way for people to reach me or to look further into any of the things we just talked about is go to my website. It's askthepilot.com. Put your topic of concern into the little search bar and see what articles come up or just click on the email link and shoot me a question. I try to answer all of my email eventually. Oh, wow.

And any questions that you have or any concerns, I'd be happy to talk about it. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us today. Thank you. I hope you love this episode with Melissa and Patrick. I hope you feel empowered and excited to go take adventures in your own life. I would love to see pictures of you on a plane, of you traveling, of you living your best life. So definitely snap a pick and tag me.

I am at Liz Moody. And if you know anybody who is struggling with fear of flying, please, please, please, please, please share this episode with them. I have been there for far too many years myself and I really want everybody to feel like they can go see the world and live the life that they want to live. And if this episode could even help with that a teeny tiny bit, I would just be so, so happy. And of course, if you're interested in the healthier together card deck, head over to htideck.com to snag the second round of those. The earlier you pre-order, basically the earlier you will get your order shipped out to you. So you'll get your sooner.

you'll get them before they run out. You'll make sure that you have them in your hands before we start with all of the holiday presents. And if you're looking for more gift guide ideas, I have my entire gift guide episode, which will be dropping next Wednesday here on the podcast. As always, I have tons of products that have changed my life over the years, carefully selected things for all of the different people in your life that you get healthier together with. Lots of experiential presents. You know that I love experiences. I love gifting them. I love sharing them. So a lot of the things aren't things that you would click on and purchase per se, but experiences and ideas for experiences that you can share with people that you love in your life. So come back next Wednesday and we will do

our wellness gift guide, our healthier together gift guide. And I hope you have a beautiful holiday week. Until then.