This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - Confidence Isn’t Born, It’s Built — Lessons from the Cockpit to Real Life with Michelle “MACE” Curran | 343

Episode Date: September 10, 2025

Confidence. Courage. Boldness. We love to talk about them, post about them, hashtag them, and slap them on coffee mugs. But let’s be real—most of us aren’t sure how to actually build them in our own lives. Which is why we brought in Michelle “MACE” Curran, former fighter pilot and only the second woman in history to fly lead solo for the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds, to the show. Yep, she’s the real deal—flying combat missions, performing death-defying maneuvers in front of millions, and now, author of The Flip Side: How to Invert Your Perspective and Turn Fear into Your Superpower. Mace knows better than anyone that courage and confidence don’t just magically appear. They’re built, brick by brick, in moments that test your nerve—whether that’s hitting nine G’s at supersonic speed or simply raising your hand in a room full of skeptics. In this episode, she drops a masterclass on how to flip fear on its head, use it as fuel, and create unshakable boldness in your everyday life. Connect with Michelle: Website: www.macecurran.com Book: www.macecurran.com/flipside IG: https://www.instagram.com/mace_curran/?hl=en LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/macecurran Related Podcast Episodes Chasing Rejection: The Wild Strategy That Works with Alice Draper | 316 Unlocking Your Hidden Genius: How to Harness Your Innate Talents with Betsy Wills & Alex Ellison | Ep. 289 How To Build Courage with Dr. Margie Warrell | 273 Share the Love: If you found this episode insightful, please share it with a friend, tag us on social media, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform! 🔗 Subscribe & Review:Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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is a great trip. Life's the trip. Make the most of it at Best Western. Book direct and save at bestwestern.com. Confidence, courage, boldness. We love to talk about these things on the This is Woman's Work podcast. And as your host, I value them at the highest level, which is exactly why it drives me nuts when those words get muddled together, tossed around and treated like they're interchangeable. They're not the same, but they are connected.

kind of like the chicken and the egg, one creates the other, and it's sort of hard to say which one comes first. Confidence, courage, boldness, they're linked, and one often creates the other. But what we tend to forget is words that we like to avoid, like fear and doubt, are also linked with these aspirational words. You need one for the other to exist. If you don't first feel fear, then you don't need courage. If there's no doubt, then there's nothing bold about whatever it is that you're doing. You're just living your life, walking the dog, answering emails, no courageous or bold action required. Listen, if you've ever done something that scared the shit out of you, something that stretched your limits, tested your nerve,

made you question whether or not you were ready, that's when you know what courage, confidence, and boldness feel like. And let's be clear, none of us came out of the womb with an extra dose of confidence or courage. As today's guest says, it's not born, it's built. Michelle Mace Karen knows what it means to build boldness when it's hard, when it's scary, and when it matters most. A former fighter pilot and only the second woman in history to fly lead solo for the Air Force Thunderbirds, Mace has performed in front of hundreds of millions and flown missions that demanded split-second decision-making, unwavering trust, and some serious guts. Now she's the best-selling author, a sought-after speaker, and someone who helps people rethink

fear, not as something to avoid, but something that can actually be turned into fuel. Her newly released book, The Flip Side, How to Invert Your Perspective and Turn Fear into Your Superpower, is all about that exact shift. So, Mace, thank you for being a guest on our show. And I need to start by asking about, I mean, we talk about confidence and courage and boldness a lot. But I have to imagine there is a different level of that when you're a fighter pilot. So if you could share maybe some personal stories or challenging situations that you found yourself in where you faced fear and then also chose boldness or courage in those moments,

I would love to start there if you're good with that. Absolutely. And thank you for having me. And that was a beautiful introduction. I feel like that's the gold standard for podcast intros. I wish I had it recorded. I guess I will. You will.

And I'll send it to you. And thank you. So thank you for doing all your research. and really just honing in my message right off the bat. And I think that's a common thing that people assume, right? They saw me fly combat missions. They saw me fly inherently dangerous maneuvers with the Thunderbirds. And they're like, she must be very brave.

She must be very courageous. And honestly, for me, more than getting in a jet and flying those maneuvers, the moments where I really felt fear and doubt and I felt like I had to force myself to find courage, were in the airplane. They were actually in the squadrons, in the units I was part of, those moments where I knew I needed to speak up and it felt like I probably shouldn't.

I should just go with the flow. Or those moments where there was an opportunity that I should take advantage of and that involved putting myself out there and I was surrounded by that fear of failure. And those are so relatable because we've all experienced those. And I think people are out shocked

when they're like, what's something really scary that's happened? and I start talking about raising my hand in a briefing room and speaking up rather than flying at 500 miles an hour, 100 feet off the ground. And I have so many stories from that where things did go wrong in the aircraft and where I got that adrenaline rush and had that natural fear reaction. But when I look back at my 13 years flying high-performance aircraft, those are not actually what stands out as the scariest moments.

Okay, so that's fascinating. and I wonder, and you correct me if I'm off base here, I find that we can face bigger challenges when we practice our way into them. And I just have to imagine there is a ton of practice that got you to be able to fly at that level in those situations. You didn't start there, basically. No.

And sometimes those things like raising our hands or going against the status quo or putting ourselves out there feel really scary and really risky because we just don't have as much practice in those. We're not doing that day in, day out. Any reaction to that? Is that ring true for you? Or is that a face?

100%. I think there is something to be said for almost exposure therapy, right? When people are really afraid of flying, for example, or public speaking, or spiders, common fears, things that I've experienced got over the first two, still don't like spiders. It's exposure, right? It feels super uncomfortable. The more you do it and you realize that you survive it and the worst case scenario doesn't happen, the more you prove to yourself that you're capable. Your skills also start to build obviously with repetition, just like a professional

athlete going and practicing free throws day after day in the jet. Practicing these maneuvers over and over and over is truly the secret sauce to how we flew at the level we did. People want some sexy answer like, oh, there's this magic switch that you flip and all of a sun you fly like a Thunderbird pilot. It is boring, unsexy day after day repeating the same thing again and again until you hone those skills. And I think the same thing, you know, now as a speaker, I am an introvert. Keynote speaking is scary. Something I never thought I would pursue as a primary career and I still get nervous before I go on stage. But I really focus on the things that are in my control. the preparation that I do and part of that is that visualization you know really thinking through

what it's going to be like when I'm on that stage and the audience is with me when they laugh at my jokes when they tear up at the emotional parts when I can see the transformation happening on their face and in the aircraft we have something similar called chair flying where before a flight we would sit there literally in a desk chair and visualize every little thing and when you're new and you are really a beginner, that might be as basic as visualizing, looking around the cockpit and flipping switches, figuring out how to start the airplane with all the switches set in the correct order. As you get to something like the Thunderbirds, now that's thinking about going at 500 miles an hour and where are my eyeballs looking when, what we call

the cross check, you know, what the timing should be, what the distance should be, what the airspeed should be. It's much more complex. But the tools of its visualization, this imagining success are the same, whether you're a beginner, whether you're performing at the highest level, whether you're in an F-16, whether you're going to speak on a stage. And I think even, I talk to a lot of sales audiences, sales professionals,

and even for them, chair flying through a sales call and what the objections might be. Like what disinterest might sound like on the other side of the phone. And thinking through how they can respond, to that in a productive way in advance that can take you from that beginner level and feel like you're getting that repetition, you're getting that experience with really no consequences, right? You sit there and you're imagining it and you mess up. No harm, no foul.

You just do it again. And that is something that's really in your control. And it's a tool that I've used in every stage of my career to really just make myself feel prepared, which I think when you feel prepared, that is a massive piece to building that confidence. Okay, you're speaking to my soul on so many different levels. First, I'm also an introvert who shows up in extroverted ways. And I often find myself before speaking engagements, like hoping I break a leg or like some reasonable reason to bow out. And yet, every time I do it, I'm so filled up and energized. I'm like, why don't I do this more, right? And so that, reminder that, you know, our brain often does go to the worst case scenario when we're

thinking about doing something big or bold or that feels scary or new. I love this concept of chair flying. And I also work with a lot of people in sales. And that I think is really important. But something you said in there is anticipating that things will and can go wrong as part of it, right? Like you're going to get an objection. You're going to flub along. or whatever it might be. And so practicing your way through that and not making it such a big deal I think is really important, yes?

Yeah, absolutely. And I think we do that at an extreme level in aviation, right? Because things will go wrong. Mechanical malfunctions will happen. You will hit a giant bird, which I have a story about that. Stuff will be going great until it's not.

And you have to respond in a very quick and controlled and appropriate manner. environment or you can make things way worse. And so I talk a lot about in the flip side, reacting versus responding. And I think a big portion of responding, some of it is emotional control. It's kind of like the stoicism ideas where we like, we set aside our desire to panic. And we're like, okay, we're going to deal with that. We're going to feel all the negative emotions when we have time to. And sometimes in the heat of the moment, it's not the right time to let yourself

get bogged down in those. And so reacting versus responding, I think a key tool in being able to do that is being prepared, is having your brain already have rehearsed those worst case scenarios so that, you know, extreme example as a fighter pilot,

you fall back on your training, right? You have gone in a simulator and you have run the worst case scenarios of emergencies. You lose your engine. You hit a bird. You lose your hydraulics, all these things. So it's not just like, oh shit, what do I do? It's, okay, here's the check.

I maintain aircraft control. I analyze the situation. I take appropriate action. It's kind of this mantra that's drilled into our brains when we're really beginner baby pilots. And we don't have a ton of experience so that we can fall back on that. And I think we all can create our own version of that. Like, say the worst case scenario does happen. For us in the aircraft, our first thing that we have to do is maintain aircraft control. Because pilots have flown themselves into the ground trying to react to an emergency, kind of panicking and flipping switches before they really had the full picture of what was happening. And they flow in an airplane that was very recoverable into a mountain or into the ground with catastrophic results, right? And so they focus

on teaching you stuff's going to happen, maintain aircraft control, because now you're taking back control of the situation. Now you're giving yourself a second to be like, okay, this is not ideal, but how do I respond to this in a productive manner? And I think that applies, I'm assuming most of your audience is not flying fighter jets. So I think that applies well beyond a cockpit. And it's something that I use now. If I'm on a call trying to sell myself as a speaker, if I'm on stage. And I think for most speakers, the worst case scenario is that deer in the headlights moment. Yeah, where you're transitioning. Yeah, you're transitioning to the next paragraph and you're just like, what is my name? Where am I?

What did I eat for breakfast this morning? You're like, I have no idea. Like I think we've all had that happen, whether it's rehearsal or actually on a stage and just being like, okay, if that happens, I will pause intentionally. I will collect my thoughts. I will carry on. Yes, it's going to feel uncomfortable. But what's the worst thing that could happen?

The audience feels it for a second. And honestly, by the end of the speech, they've forgotten it even happened. And if for the few that do remember it, maybe because they want to be a speaker, so they're hyper, critical, they're just like, I'm so glad that wasn't me up there. And so a lot of it, worst case scenario on a jet could be bad. Worst case scenario for most of us, me included what I'm doing now, usually the consequences are not as serious as we make them out to be. And sometimes just saying the worst case out loud kind of can take away its power. And you're like, oh, the rewards

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A thousand percent. I love the example applicable for, you know, whatever it is that we're doing, but our worst case scenario for most of us in all of our situation, is not death, right? Nobody's going to die. And you said this before, and I just think it's worth reiterating, very rarely what we think is the worst case scenario ever happened, right? Some mistake will happen, something, but it's usually never the worst thing you've thought of or have prepared for. Okay, I'm just curious about the moment you earned your call sign Mace and how it has anything to do with failure and growth. So tell us about that.

Yes, this is a common question because I think the vast majority of people have seen one of the top gun movies, if not both, because it's pop culture, phenom. And all of the actors in that movie, the characters have call signs. The movie doesn't do a good job of explaining how you get call signs. They just don't mention it, which I'm very curious if there's some backstory that the writers have secretly. The name sounds cool, but you get them based on a mistake that you made. and they are not picked by you, they are given to you by other people in the unit that you're part of.

So usually you get to your first combat squadron. You're very new, you're very young, you're very bad because you're a beginner and it's hard. And you show up there, you fly for three or four months until you get to this point where you are officially qualified where you could go to combat. It's an exciting day because you've been training for three or four years to get to that point.

So there's kind of this rite of passage that happens where they're like, congratulations, you've passed this final checkout. And now we're going to give you a call, and we're going to have a naming, is what we call it. So your whole unit gets together. They kick you out of the room. And they're like, all right,

who is flown with Lieutenant Curran over the past four months? What dumb stuff has she done? And everyone starts yelling out, oh, she said this dumb thing on the radio. Oh, she made this mistake airborne. She did this embarrassing thing. And they have a big whiteboard, and they write them all down.

and then mob rules takes over, as we call it, and they're like, okay, what cool names can we come up with from this mistake? And to kind of summarize mine, it gets very technical with fighter pilot stuff, but basically I went much faster than I should have in the airplane. I went supersonic, so faster than the speed of sound, not intentionally, so on accident. And because my aircraft was going so fast, when I rolled and pulled back on the stick, it had a ton of energy. And so I pulled nine Gs, which is nine times the force of gravity. Again, Top Gun does a good job of showing just being squished down into the sea. Your face looks like it's melting. It's, it's miserable. But that also pushes the blood out of your head. And so there's a super high risk

of a G lock, a G induced loss of consciousness. And I almost G locked in that moment because I held nine Gs for a very long time. It was a big mistake. It sounds cool to to people because they're like, Fast jets, 9G, supersonic, like, this sounds epic. It was very physically painful. I could have completely passed out, and I'm the only one in this airplane. It's a single-seat jet, so obviously that can have very bad repercussions. But there's some technical terms involved in it being an acronym. But that is the day that earned me my call sign.

This was also one of my very first flights in my first combat squadron. I am so new. I am trying to establish my reputation. in that world. Only 2% of fighter pilots were women. At that time, now it's 4%. But at that time, 2011, 2012, 2%. So you feel like you're under a microscope. You already feel like you have to prove yourself regardless of gender because it's very type A. It's very demanding. It's competitive environment. And then I make this mistake, which in my mind is a huge deal. Like this could have had a very bad, what's the worst thing that could happen?

It could have been very bad that day. So I land from that flight. My instructor literally says in our debrief, which is something we do after every flight where we look at mistakes and how we can get better, he's like, if you keep flying this like that, you're going to kill yourself. That's what he said to me.

And that was just a shock to my system because I had always been a type A high achiever despite being introverted. I was a straight A student. I got a scholarship to college. I wanted to fly fighter jet. which is super competitive. I actually got one of the fighter aircraft.

To put that in perspective, there were two available for a class of 25 people. And so I'm setting these massive goals and I'm just knocking them out one after another. And I'm in my maybe like mid-20s at this point. I get to this unit. And now I feel like I'm failing every single day because the expectations and the standards around me

have gone up so much. And it was just an identity crisis for me. I immediately felt like an imposter, right? I know imposter syndrome gets thrown around a lot, but that was exactly what I felt like. Like somehow I had snuck through all of these wickets of training. Now I'm there, and there's so much evidence telling me that I'm not good enough. And I had never, in hindsight, you know, I realize this,

but when I'm there, I don't, I had never really failed before at something big. And I think the first time you experienced that can rock your world. And I think especially being in that environment where I really felt like I had to prove myself, I was not willing to ask for help, seek out mentors, tell anyone I was struggling. And so I quickly found myself fixated on self-doubt, this idea that I was the worst person, everyone else was better than me, and really isolated feeling. And the call sign story was really a catalyst to kind of kick off going down that path. But, you know, coming full circle, obviously I ended up at the Thunderbirds six plus years later.

So my career went well. And turns out I was probably an average new fighter pilot. I wasn't the worst person to ever walk in the door. But what I really found is that this idea of call signs and the fact that every single pilot in your squadron has one, even the commander, even the most well-respected person who you think is just exceptionally talented. the point of it is not to haze people. It really celebrates all the work you did to get to that point. But it also normalizes the fact that we all failed and we all continue to fail. And that as long as we go into that debrief and we learn from it and we continue to pursue ways to improve from our mistakes,

that we're going to wear our call signs, which represent a big mistake for almost all of us, like on our chest is a badge of honor because that is the price that you pay to pay. play at a high level. I love everything about that. I am quite certain it sucks when you're experiencing it, right? Like when you make the mistake, when you have a failure or when, you know, everything is being shown that you did wrong. Like I have no doubts, especially for a type A or like a recovering perfectionist or somebody who's checked all the boxes. Like that's really hard to expose yourself on a very regular basis. But I just love, as you said, the normalizing of and the almost highlighting of that it is not only normal, it's required that all of us fail and that we are

going to point it out and focus on it. I'm curious if it loses some of its power over time. Yes. Yes. And I think that's important. And when I talk to companies and teams, that's something I highlight regularly is that that debrief process that we did after every single flight, whether it felt like the best flight of my entire career or it was that one where I nearly G-locked. It was almost a ritual after we landed. We would all go in a room. And it didn't matter if you were the person leading the flight,

if you were brand new like I was, if you were the guy running the entire base who was a general and happened to be flying that day. So rank didn't matter. Everyone's errors were looked at the same. And that was because we all understood that if we're going to be the best that we possibly can be, we have to objectively look at our mistakes.

Like, that is how we get better. We have to learn from them. And when you do that every single time, that feedback and accountability and ownership just becomes the norm. And so it doesn't have this negative, scary connotation with it. Like, if you're leading a team and you only call people in to give them feedback

when they messed up, they're going to hate getting feedback. But if it's like, oh, we do this every Friday, we look at how your week went. And the good things, the bad things, how we can do better next week. I think people actually look forward to it at a certain point because they see it as this great tool to help them improve.

And so normalizing it over time, it takes away, I guess, that negative stigma. Okay. I define confidence as firm and bold trust and self. And, well, I don't, I, someone else defined it that. I just, that's the definition I lock into. And I'm curious, if you have any stories that, encapsulate or reinforce the importance of trust in yourself and also in your team.

Where does confidence play a part in doing something this big, this scary, this important? Yeah. So for me, I think confidence comes from having a proven track record to yourself that either you've been successful in this thing in the past or you have the ability to figure it out, right? Because you're going to go do things where you haven't done it before. There's going to be a first time. And I think that that courage

really has to step in when you don't have the reps already that you've done the thing a bunch of times. You're like, okay, I have done hard things in the past. And I think there's resilience that comes in there as well, the belief that we can figure it out and even when those bad things do happen

because there's never a guarantee that they won't, we have the belief in ourselves that we can make it through. And so I think that's a lot of the pieces that that you mentioned. And what I like to call SBCs, because the military loves acronyms, small, bold choices, like doing small things that feel slightly bold again and again and again. I think those are the building blocks to building confidence over time. Not doing like this absolutely terrifying, massive thing because the chance of failure is a lot higher.

The repercussions of failure are a lot higher. and you can scare yourself so much that you just shut down and you're like, okay, we're never doing that again. But those small, bold things we were like, you know, the world is not at stakes

when we do this. So to bring that back to kind of this transformation that I went through in my career and to put a story with it, you know, I had that time in Japan. That's where my first combat squadron is where I got my call sign.

And I really struggled. First three years. Just was not confident, filled with doubt, imposter syndrome, all this stuff. I go to my next base in Fort Worth. Texas. And I have this kind of epiphany that I'm really just not happy with where I'm at.

And this move is a massive opportunity for me to reinvent how I show up to this new group of people. And so I decided in that moment because I really was very aware of all of the opportunities I had let pass me by during those first three years because I would get in my own way. Someone would be like, we need someone to go lead this mission or we need someone to take on this project. Instead of being like, yeah, I can do that and grow and learn from that experience, I would be like, please, for the love of God, do not pick me because there was a chance to fail in front of people. So I became very aware of that. And I decided that that regret and that feeling of not living up to my potential was starting to become even more uncomfortable than pushing

myself to do the uncomfortable thing in the moment. So I get to Texas and I'm like, I'm going to start saying yes to these things, these things that get me excited, that I have that. initial like, ooh, this looks cool, but then that's quickly followed by all the reasons I shouldn't do it, right? All the doubt, the fear of failure. So I started to do that in small ways. And there was this moment, I think about a year and a half after I was there, where I saw an email that the country of Poland was looking for American F-16 instructor pilots to spend a whole summer there teaching and flying their jets, teaching their pilots. So live in town in the city in Poland, fly their F-16s, like you're fully integrated. You're not there with an American

unit. My initial reaction to that is excitement. I'm like, how cool I would get to live in Europe for the summer. I would get to fly another country's fighter jets. Like, this is badass. And then I'm quickly like, well, I'm a pretty new instructor. I don't have a lot of experience. They also have never had any female pilots fly their F-16s. What's their culture like? You know, I have all these stereotypes in my head of how they might judge women or like, will I be taken seriously? And because I had made that promise to myself and I had become hyper aware of forcing myself to make small bold choices, I recognized this internal conflict. It was like this flashing neon sign to me. I was like, oh, you're doing it. You're doing that thing that you have promised

yourself you won't do. And so I kind of zoomed out and I was like, this is the type of opportunity that you've been preparing for. And so I ended up being like, hey, is this something I can go do? Long story short, I went to Poland, flew there for a whole summer. I probably had a lot of moments where I wished I was more experienced.

I had a lot of moments where I had to navigate kind of weird cultural dynamics, especially with the older pilots there. And even now, having, you know, after that point, gone and flown for the Thunderbirds for three years,

that summer in Poland is one of the, favorite things I got to do in my entire career. I think part of it was because of just the unique experience it was. But part of it was also because it was like this victory. It was like the thing I had been fighting to get myself to find the courage to do. And it did not go perfectly. But just the fact that I went, it massively built my confidence. So I feel like that was a mini master class in confidence building and everything that I know to be true about it. And you mentioned these three different forms of confidence.

It's the first one being, I know that I can because I've done it before, like the history of successes or the resume you've built up. The second, I know that I can because I'm capable of learning, right? I can figure it out as I go, which we all need whenever we do something new or for the first time or that we've never done before or don't have experience with. And then this third version, which is I know I can recover, right? Because inevitably something is going to go wrong

or there's going to be failure or missteps or mistakes or whatever you want to call them. And I always think of the deepest level of confidence that I can access is that I know I'll be okay no matter what. I'm so glad you talked about small steps and used that example because it's similar to what I've always experienced. is even if it doesn't go perfectly,

even if there are mistakes, the sense of pride and the trust that I create with and for myself when I do those things, when I step into the unknown and choose confidence regardless, there is nothing that can replace that. There is nothing better than creating that for yourself. So my last question is, I said this in the intro,

and I love that you say this, that we're not born, bold or confident or courageous, that we build it. So what are some steps or things that our listener could do to help to build those attributes? Yeah, I think to give a little context today, I don't know if I've said this yet or not, but I was super introverted and painfully shy as a kid. Like I didn't even want to be called on in class. Despite being a straight A student and usually knowing the answer, it was mortifying to me

and stressful to me to be put on the spot in front of my peers. two weeks ago, I spoke to 4,500 people live on a keynote stage. So I think it's just, I like to tell that story because people don't expect that. They see this finished product of Thunderbird Pilot, keynote speaker, all this stuff. And they're like, you just must be one of those people that knows all the things that are just born with that. And I feel like I was the polar opposite of that. And it really goes back to, you know, those things we've kind of mentioned already, those small, bold choices and slowly increasing your tolerance for doing the things that feel hard and scary. And it's incredible how you can raise that bar for yourself

in really a short amount of time. And so I encourage people to get, you know, get clear on where they want to go, right? For me that evolved over time. But I think we can get very bogged down in the day-to-day, the busy schedule, the work, taking care of your kids, all the things. And you can lose sight of, I guess, the point of the choices that you are making day and day out. Like, what is it that we're doing here, right? Like, what is our ultimate goal? Is that trying to create a certain lifestyle? Is it trying to make a certain amount of money?

Trying to build relationships, whatever it is, getting very clear on what that objective is. You know, my background, very mission oriented. And I found that to really serve me well now as I, you know, build my business to be like, what is my goal with this and does this decision to support it? And then look at what is one small, slightly uncomfortable thing that you can do today.

Not next week, today. maybe that's sending an email with an ask or making a phone call or it's pushing yourself to go to the gym, you know, whatever it is, it's a small doable thing because when you try to make a sweeping change, you are at a high risk of scaring yourself back to inaction. And I think another big part of that is that self-doubt is normal. It's something we all experience, especially when we're trying to grow. Feelings of fear, of apprehension, those are normal when we're trying to, to grow. And that courage isn't the absence of those. It's just taking action despite those things. And I actually imagine like these two friends standing on the edge of the cliff holding hands

and one is fear and one is courage and that they're always together. You know, one's calling the shots sometimes and the other one calls them at different times. But courage is really letting that half of that relationship start to be the one that's guiding the shots. And And so if you can build perspective and recognize self-doubt, feelings of imposter syndrome, all that stuff, for what it is, normalize it. And I think a big part of normalizing is honestly just talking about it with someone. Because you say it out loud, already, sometimes you say it out loud, even if no one was there and you'd be like, that sounds silly.

That probably is not going to happen, this worst case scenario. Or a lot of times if you go to a mentor, maybe someone you admire that's a few steps ahead of you and you talk about it, they're like, yep. that's exactly what I would expect you to be feeling in this situation because I've been there and that's totally normal. And so, you know, recognizing it, normalizing it, and then starting to change that narrative by building that foundation brick by brick, which I think those, I think of those little Legos as small bold choices and you stack them up and you get higher and higher and all of a sudden you're finding the courage to go to Poland for a summer. And then that's

putting another brick and now you're finding the courage to apply to the Thunderbirds. And that's building more bricks and that whole three-year experience of being in the public spotlight and feeling uncomfortable doing on-camera interviews and being so nervous, those were bricks that I needed to do to go be a keynote speaker. And so whatever that looks like for you, just getting intentional, normalizing that doubt, and then taking small bold actions. Okay, there were a million mic drop moments in there. Thank you. I know the listener is going to want to find out more. So mace's website is mace corin.com so we'll put that and all the other ways to find and follow mace in show notes but for the love of all things holy go order this book go to bookshop dot org go to your

local bookstore amazon wherever it is you get books and order the flip side i firmly believe a part of doing woman's work is supporting other women as they do women's work and this is our opportunity to do that, friends. So let's make the flip side a New York Times bestseller call to action to each and every one of you to go do that now. Mace, thank you, thank you, for, again, a masterclass in what it takes to build confidence, courage, boldness, all the good things. No, thank you for having me. And, you know, coming from flying fast jets, my audience tends to attract a lot of male followers, like on social media. But I always think when I write, when I speak, I'm talking to other women because I see so many amazing women that I see so much potential

in. And I'm like, oh, if you just believed in yourself as much as I believe in you. And so I'm so honored to have this platform for a few minutes today to hopefully push a few people to go and start doing that bold thing. And thank you for letting me share the flip side. And this has just been a great conversation. Yeah. Thank you. And the pleasure was all ours. So okay, I'm going to close us out by saying this. Friend, boldness isn't necessarily about leaping out of a plane or a perfectly good career or a relationship with reckless abandon. It's about taking deliberate steps and the direction of who you actually want to be. It's about choosing courage over comfort, clarity, over chaos, and trust over fear, especially when it's hard, when it's scary, and when no one else

is doing it. Confidence isn't a title you earn or a quality you inherit. It's something you build. day moment by moment. And that building often happens in the small, quiet moments, not just the big ones. When you raise your hand, when you say no, when you show up and when you try again. Because courage isn't about being fearless. It's about taking action with the fear in your body. And confidence comes from doing the damn thing, even when your knees are shaking. Confidence, courage, boldness. Now that is woman's work. Hi listeners, it's Jack Bishop. I'm the ingredients guy on America's Test Kitchen's public television show

and the host of our award-winning podcast, Proof. Proof combines history, science, and culture to tell unexpected stories about food. Every episode is filled with aha moments that you want to share at your next dinner party. New episodes drop every Thursday. subscribe wherever you get your podcast and you might never look at food the same way again.