Brave Hearts: The Power of Vulnerability, Resilience and Courage from the first U.S. Woman to Fly in Combat with Martha McSally - Genius Network Episode #205

Don't we all want to say I lived the life that was aligned with who I really am and why I came here. So it's not just your why, which Damon talked about, but it's your who. Who am I really?

If you'd like to join world renowned entrepreneurs at the next Genius Network event or want to learn more about Genius network, go to www.gienstruitnetwork.com. Flying an airplane is a challenging activity even in clear skies and perfect weather. Now imagine you're flying a plane in combat. The enemy on the ground is trying to kill you by shooting down your plane, all while you're trying to save the lives of your team on the ground also under attack. That's exactly what Martha McSally did as an A10 fighter pilot in the Air Force. Martha's life has been spent overcoming things like fear, self doubt, trauma, adversity and obstacles. After arriving at the US Air Force Academy for basic training at the tender age of 18, she was told that it was against the law for women to become fighter pilots. I want to bet. What did she do? She decided that's exactly what she was going to do and became the first woman woman in U.S. history to fly a fighter jet in combat. And then to one up that she later became the first woman in US History to command a fighter squadron. Yes, which meant in combat, first one in and last one out. And the A10 that I mentioned she flew. Not some cushy jet with two pilots and fancy electronics. It was essentially a giant gun with an airplane built around it. One pilot, limited technology, one of the toughest jets in our arsenal to master. She deployed six times to the Middle east and Afghanistan, flew 325 combat hours, earned the Bronze Star and six Air Medals. I've known Martha for over a decade. She is not one to walk by a problem. After serving our country for 26 years in the Air Force, she retired as a full Colonel and was elected to Congress, served two terms in the House of Representatives and was appointed to the U.S. senate when John McCain passed. As you can imagine, she has had a front row seat and been an active participant in shaping the world that we live in today. But always in service to others. Today, Martha continues to serve by sharing hard learned life lessons through keynote speaking, online courses and beyond. Joe Polish calls Martha America's most courageous woman and I agree. And you think being an entrepreneur is stressful and risky and high stakes. Ladies and gentlemen, buckle your seatbelts, get ready to fly. Please welcome my good friend and one of my Absolute Heroes, retired Colonel Martha.

McSally, September 24, 2005. I'm a squadron commander over in Afghanistan and we are responsible for providing air cover 247 for our troops on the ground. We always have a two ship at least of a 10s airborne. And when the troops are under fire, they call for our help. We may be on a routine combat mission, but we get diverted, they either could have people injured or killed already. On this particular day, my call sign was BOR05 and I was getting ready to launch with a wingman who was highly experienced, but it was his first combat mission ever and first mission in Afghanistan. And right before we launched, they said, there's a Navy special operations team in the southern part of Afghanistan doing a routine combat mission, reconnaissance through a winding canyon. And they were ambushed by insurgents. They were surrounded, they were under fire, they were scattered and they needed help. We sent a two ship of A10s who were airborne over to help them, but they were running out of gas. So we scrambled and launched with my wingman to show up and help them out, provide that air cover. Now, the A10 is powerful, but it's not fast. They often would just tell us a call sign, a radio frequency and a grid coordinate and tell us, go help those guys. So I showed up to relieve the other two ship and they needed to leave. So he just trained my eyes onto the canyon and a particular bend and a particular tree and said, I gotta go. And now I'm talking to the ground controller who's under fire. Jaguar 14 is his call sign and he's trying to explain to me as I'm in the air and he's on the ground where the good guys are, where the bad guys are. Because in situations like this, the risk is also I could make a mistake and I hurt the good guys. They're on the move and they're very close. And we have amazing technology that helps us with precision. Sometimes the simplest tools work. He pulled out a pocket mirror from his pocket, shined the sun into my eyes, and said, here's where I am, don't hit me. And as he proceeded to tell me where everybody else was and where the target was, they were so close. So I picked the 30 millimeter as a weapon because I knew it could destroy while keeping the friendlies safe. And this is the size of one of the bullets. I want to be on the receiving end of this. And because they were so close, I rolled in for a rocket pass first. Some white smoke comes up and I shot that just to make sure is that really where you want me to hit? It's so close to you. My wingman is covering me as I'm potentially being shot at. And I pull up from that rocket pass and he says, no, come closer to me, closer. It was nauseating feeling. And as I pulled up and I looked at my heads up display, you saw we see altitude, airspeed, dive angle. The bullets are not smart. But we do get precision computed weapons and when we open fire, this is exactly where they're going to hit. Corrected for winds, but we still need to be precise in setting ourselves up for success in order to ensure that we achieve the mission. My entire heads up display had failed. There's four levels of degradation and all four had failed. I had to decide in the moment, what am I going to do? Should I have my wingman come in and shoot? But his job has been to cover me. He wasn't paying attention and plotting everything. He's supposed to follow me in. Do I just hold and ask for other A10s to come and relieve us? Because I could be responsible for killing Americans if I don't get this right. I decided to do what I had been trained to do and what I trained my squadron to do over and over and over again, which was basically employing with World War II technology. It's a fixed gun sight and you basically set yourself up on a base position, distance, altitude and airspeed from the target. And then you roll in, you got three to five seconds on final to be as precise as possible. Because if you're a little bit fast, it's going to go long and if you're slow, it's going to go short. If you're high, it's going to go short. If you're low, it's going to go long. If you're steep, it's going to go long, if you're shallow, it's going to go short. It could be a combination of those. You got to do some math in public. I teach school, you know, I go to school kids all the time. Now's not the time to pull out your iPhone. You've got to understand pattern recognition. But now I'm looking outside, I'm looking inside, I'm looking inside, looking outside, looking inside. That's the kind of pattern I needed to fly. I didn't have time to be afraid. I felt afraid, but I didn't have time to be afraid. Talk about just getting into a focus flow in the present. I knew I had what it took. I felt some doubt, what if I kill them? But they needed Me. So I set myself up on a base position. I looked at all the calculations on my knee board. I didn't even tell my wingman. But I'm going to be employing in what we call standby. Pipper. I made some corrections. I said a little fighter pilot's prayer. Dear Lord, let me not fuck this up. And then I rolled in a final inside, outside airspeed, altitude three to five seconds. I opened fire and I pulled off from the target and I waited to hear from Jaguar 14. And I waited and I waited and I waited. Then a radio call came out. 405 Shaq from Jaguar one four. Come in with your wingman re attack. It's the best words I'd ever heard said on the radio in my life. We did three more rounds of that. Built my confidence, I can do this. I can do it again and again and again. Take out that target and protect those Americans. And we covered them with two ship of eight tens throughout the rest of the afternoon and the evening. And we were able to extract every single one of them out alive that night. Every single one. Now, you know, I could give a speech to you guys. How to be a badass in five easy step, four easy steps. I mean, I could do that. Don, thanks for your introduction. I've done some hard things, you know, I could. That was just one combat mission. We could spend our time together telling you about leading men and women in combat, overcoming fear, doing really complex stuff, and how you build teams of agility with a culture of trust. I could do that. I could give a speech about how once I finally became a fighter pilot, I actually took on the Pentagon in an eight year battle. It's a long story, but the way they were treating our service women in Saudi Arabia pissed me off. And I'm not one to walk by a problem. I fought for eight years. I sued the Secretary of Defense and I got a law passed. I give a speech about that. Doing really hard things, David versus Goliath, or how I do other crazy stuff in my free time. I run the Ironman or, you know, climb mountains or paraglide or things like that. Or you may have heard, just a few weeks ago I was speaking in Nebraska. I was out running along the Missouri river in Iowa. Little did I know at the time that man was following me. Put on a stalking cap, stalked me for close to a mile. Ironically, I was listening to the book Untethered Soul by Michael Singer at the time. And I got fucking jumped by him. Jumped me from behind. Took me by surprise, molested my Body everywhere. I fought him off and I chased him down. Now he's in jail while I'm here talking to you. I could give that speech. But the truth is, I'm not always a badass. I'm not always courageous. I've not always been this way either. And there have been times in the last few weeks. I'm just warning you, I'm in the messy middle right now as I've been processing through what I just experienced. You may think, like, oh, I don't fly fighter jets. What does she have to offer? But the truth is, you're just like me. You're fucking driven. Sorry. That's three F bombs already. I promised I wasn't going to do it. You're extremely successful. You've done nearly impossible things, like me. You're feisty. You don't want anybody telling you what to do. Maybe you're a little adhd. Anybody, man, when we focus, we change the world. When we're not focused, we're a disaster. Right? And maybe you've been through some hard things in your life, as I have, and maybe they propel you and fuel you. Maybe you're running away from demons. Maybe you're chasing them. Maybe you've unpacked your shit, maybe you haven't. But you're here like I am, as a member of Genius Network or at this event because you want something more. You want to be connected to people who are not narcissists. You want to 10x your life and your business. Maybe you know deep down inside, there's something holding you back or some fears that are stopping you. But you are drawn to this place that Joe creates with his authenticity and transparency because you knew you were meant for more and you truly want to fly. And I'm not talking about fighter jets. I'm talking about in life. And that's why I'm here, too. You're open and you're growing. And so today, I just want to share from my heart, in the messy middle, some tools that I've used along the way that are allowing me right now to be processing the trauma I just went through, determined that it's not going to get stuck in me. And I'm doing it publicly, in part for that reason. I can't contract if everybody's waiting to hear how I'm doing. And so part of the process I want to share with you and the framework that I've learned that I just decided when I was young I wasn't going to let anybody stop me from the life I Came here to live. I wasn't going to let the culture define how I was supposed to behave. I wasn't going to let a law or an attitude stop me from being who I was destined to be and live the life that I wanted to create. And the first step of that process starts with the simple words, I am. Now, many of you maybe have used Iambs in your life, where you think about how you're gonna manifest, you know, whatever it is you want to come true. When I was a cadet of the Air Force Academy, they told me I couldn't be a fighter pilot. I said, I am a fighter pilot. I didn't wish, I didn't hope. I decided I'm a fighter pilot. And I willed it into existence. I spoke it into the universe. And my actions, my thoughts, my decisions, they all made that happen. Same thing, you know, when I was, like, yelling at the tv, like, I need to go. I'm going to go to Congress. I just willed it into existence. So we can use these words in a very tactical way because it impacts kind of where we're going and what we're thinking about. But I want to talk a little bit deeper about the divine essence of who you are. Well, you know, you're going to meet people this week, and they're going to say, who are you? Or what do you do? And you're going to say, oh, this is what my business is. Or, you know, I'm a father or I'm a mother, or, you know, I'm an entrepreneur, for sure. I'm a cancer survivor, whatever it is that you label yourself with. But, you know, you say you're a husband. What happens when your wife passes away or you get the divorce papers? Is that the true essence of all of who you really are? You say you're a business owner, to answer that, but then you exit or your business fails. Is that the true essence of who you are? No, Those are things that you do. Those are roles that you are in, but it's not who you are. You know, for me, we're going to go through these four things today, but we're going to focus mostly on who are you? It's kind of like a flight mission. Where are you? Where are you going? And where have you been? And so for me to answer the question, who are you? You know, you could put any of these up there. Colonel, fighter pilot. All these things I've done, all these things I like to do, all these things that describe us. Oh, yeah. All these roles I'm in. Not currently A girlfriend, a lover. But I'm accepting applications. Sorta. But seriously, this is often how we define ourselves, by these external things that we do. And I'm not gonna make you write them down. I got a worksheet here, but I'm not even gonna start with that. Cause I don't want you stuck on those external things. Cause they're not who you really are. That's not who I really am. See, I believe we're spirits who are having a physical existence that are going to transcend and be spirits again. You can believe that or not. That's my view. My dad passed away very suddenly when I was 12 years old. He didn't know that day he was going to take his last breath. And if you take your last breath today or 50 years from now, or you get cryogenically, you know, preserved, that's a separate topic. You want. Don't we all want to say I lived the life that was aligned with who I really am and why I came here. So it's not just your why, which Damon talked about, but it's your who. Who am I really? And it's not all this for me. And you know what? I'm just going to take it off because I think it's distracting. I'm stripping on stage. Joe, how we doing here? All right, so when we take off, those external things. Don't trip. Not actually naked, but we can feel a little naked, if that makes sense. You're the veteran who leaves service now. Now what? Now what am I? Now who am I? You're a mom whose kids spent Thanksgiving with your ex husband. Now who am I? Feels a little exposed. And so we can often then when we're standing here in our loss of footing, a health diagnosis, a business failure, and exit, whatever it is that might be happening in your life, when the external things are not defining us anymore, we can be like, oh, now who am I? And then we often attach who we are to how we feel. Can anyone relate to that? Especially in those moments of vulnerability. Guys, I've been through a rough few weeks. I mean, I was attacked and assaulted and molested. And it wasn't the first time. My dad passed away when I was 12. My mom was not super nurturing beforehand. She's still alive, so don't tweet that out. She basically five kids hit by a two by four went back to school and back to work. She just disappeared. And all of a sudden I'm like, essentially parentless at 12 and my whole world is rocked. And as I was Driven to make my dead father proud. Because he told me that before he died, I was looking for, like, any, like, teachers, coaches, anybody, can somebody, like, help me? And I had this amazing coach who was in my track and cross country. And he moved on to another job. And I transferred that trust to an authority figure more than twice my age. And he violated that trust when I was in high school, lost my virginity to my track coach. And when I struggled with that, he laughed at me, gave me chocolate covered cherries for Christmas, manipulated me and threatened me. I know many of you have been through something the same. And off I went to the military because I was like, he's not going to stop me. And I repeated the pattern in my life of others in power over me looking, just looking for a father figure and them, them crossing the line and abusing it. Later, one of my commanders, I tried to confront him on it and he raped me. I'm just being raw, you guys. And at the time, I kept functioning like all of us do because we just suppress it. We just like, you know, don't hold me back, don't hold me down. In fact, those things propelled me on my path. Don't tell me I can't be a fighter pilot just because I'm a girl. I wasn't fully aware of the impact positively this had on my life yet, but it gave me the determination and the strength to say, don't hold me down and don't hold me back. And over the years, I did the work eventually to integrate, to heal. And I feel like, you know, I'm in a pretty good place. I feel whole mind, body, spirit. I feel alive. I'm free. And then I got attacked. I started asking, wait a minute, I thought I graduated from the lesson. The answer is yes. Like, I wasn't putting out victim energy at all. I mean, I fought off the motherfucker and chased him down. Sorry. So that actually reminded me that I graduated from the lesson. Okay, but let me just say, Had that happened to me a year ago and I was not in Genius Network, I wouldn't have had messages from Joe saying, hey, are you okay? I wouldn't have had Don Wood checking in with me, making sure my neurology was processing and I was getting into a parasympathetic state and reminding me that he touched my body, but he didn't touch me. I wouldn't have had Sam Qurashi back there. Come on. Who I've been working with now to uncover some of the emotions that were revealed in that moment and in the Moment I was just angry. I was like you. Like, I chased him down as I called 911, and you're not getting away with this. And I just spoke that into existence. But over the last few weeks, there's some other emotions that are rising that have nothing to do with the attack. See, often we go through experiences in life, and the emotions that rise from them, they're never about the thing. Can anyone relate to this? Like, somebody cuts you off in traffic and you're like, you get road rage or the fight you have with your spouse. It's never about the thing. Whenever we have negative emotions rise, it's usually about something deeper. Can I get an amen? Anybody agree? And over the last few weeks, you know, I was feeling like I am what I feel. And you know what? Now this one's going to be tricky. This is what emerged for me. I feel sad, I feel alone, I feel scared, I feel lonely. And the whole process has made me feel pretty vulnerable. But I know the truth, that I am not what I feel. And I know that processing and integrating and expressing and releasing these feelings, they don't have any power over me. I'm already in a better state. And so what I'm going to ask you to do for just a minute with the worksheets that are there, you may be feeling negative emotions right now, hopefully not towards me, but something I said may have triggered something. And if you don't feel negative emotions right now because you feel connected and jazzed and you're a genius, that's okay. Write down the pattern of negative emotions that rise in your life. If you're not willing to write them down, ask your spouse someday or people who know you. They know your pattern. You either it's. You're anxious, you're angry, you're afraid. Don't focus on who it's towards or what the circumstances are. Just write down the pattern. And you can use nouns or verbs. Anger, or angry, furious, pissed, outraged. You can describe it. I feel like I'm overwhelmed. I feel like I'm not understood. I feel like I'm drowning. Whatever it is, just take a minute and write them down. Okay, now, this is not an exhaustive process. I would encourage you throughout the next days and the weeks ahead to spend a little time with yourself and explore these a little bit more. Because just expressing them has power, and expressing them can release them. And you may need to just microprocess something. You may need to go deeper, you know, make sure you're taking the path that works for you. Work with Sam. Do whatever you need to do to find freedom from these emotions. But how you feel is not who you are. So when you think about the divine essence of who you are, when you think about if your funeral is next week and you took your last breath tonight, how people are going to describe you, if they really know you and they're the attributes, that language that doesn't even perfectly capture of the unique and wonderfully made human that you are distinct from everybody else. I reached out to some of my closest friends because I coach on this and I was like, hey, you give me these I ams. And they gave me a lot. It was more than five. Because there's, you know, we're complex people and it's not. When you think of. I'm going to have go through an I am drill with you here in a second. So when you're thinking about your I ams that describe me, it's your identity. It's going to impact your habits and your decision making. It's going to impact the direction you go in. It's going to impact what you say yes to and what you say no to if you stay grounded in it. So as you write them down, nouns or verbs, it doesn't matter. Don't overthink it. Like what comes to your mind. If it's your funeral and somebody is giving you the top five things that describe you, what are they going to say if they really captured you may not be how you're behaving right now, and that's okay. And you may feel embarrassed to write it down because you're like, I don't always act that way. Well, I'm not always courageous, but that's one of mine. So take some time now and write down at least five of your true I ams of who you really are. Okay, everybody got five? At least five. All right, so for the big reveal here, I am not my feelings. I am not my flight suit. I am not a colonel or a senator. What I am is courageous, integrity, generous, growing and relentless. So what I want you to do now because speaking them out really matters. And I got this idea from Keith Mercurio, who spoke at Tommy Mellow's event and he's letting me use it. I want you to pair off. Stand up. Stand up and find somebody at your table. And this can be uncomfortable. I want you to look them in the eye and I want you to say your I ams. Okay. Look them in the eye. This is fascinating. We don't want to look someone in the Eye. When we do it, say them. And then the other person. Wait, listen up. The other person is going to say, yes, you are, and high five you. All right, all right. Everybody was bringing home. Bring it home. How did that feel? How did that feel? That feel good? You're embodying yourself, right? You're embodying the true essence. So now that we've embodied who we are, I want you to go through the next step, which is where am I? Now that I'm grounded in who I am, the next step on the worksheet may feel a little uncomfortable. Just be brutally honest. This gets into what Joe was talking about this morning. What I say I care about and what I'm committed to. What I'm committed to is actually reflecting what is in my life right now. So I want you on the next part of the worksheet to just answer the question. On a scale of 1 to 10, how are these different areas of my life aligned with who I really am? My marriage, my bank account, my calendar. You can see the list there. Okay? So don't overthink it. Just run through it really quick. Give yourself a 1 to 10. Be compassionate on yourself. Be honest with yourself. Okay, so as we think about where we are, I have a couple of the nuggets to share with you. The first is called a jackass and a hailstorm. 1997 was one of the most difficult years of my adult life. I had lost two friends back to back in a 10 crashes one month after the other. I had a marriage that was failing. I was unpacking my trauma from the past, and I was in the messy middle, and I hadn't found my footing yet. And I went into a chaplain to get a pity party from him. And what he told me was, martha, sometimes we're like a jackass in a hailstorm. You just got to sit there and take it until the weather changes. From the chaplain. And I was like, well, thank you. That was, like, very compassionate of you. But I obviously remembered it because it's true. The weather always changes. Hail storms don't last forever, nor do sunny circumstances with everybody here in the room. Some of you are in a hailstorm right now. Some of you are like, everything's great. Just wait. Many of us are in the middle. The point is, everything is impermanent. Hold it with an open hand. Be unattached to any outcome. Stay true to who you are. And when it's down, reach. When you're down, reach out to those resources, like I've done in the last few Weeks. And when you're up, look who else you can help and help pull them up, but just keep that mindset of like, well, I'm in a hailstorm right now, but it's gonna stop. The other thing. When we're thinking about where we are and what holds us back from living things freely and flying in the divine essence of who we are, there's one main obstacle. Fear. Right? I mean, that may be one of your negative emotions, but oftentimes it just rises like, I don't know. I don't know. I might lose everything. Or sometimes we risk a lot of things externally, but really we don't want to address those things that we're really afraid of subconsciously. And I'm around for the next few days, and we can talk more about overcoming fear. It's not the focus of my speech today, but just know, usually the very thing you're afraid of is the thing you need to do. And I want you to. We're not going to do it right now. There's a spot on the sheet for you to just write down what you think the biggest fear is that's holding you back right now and then commit to sharing it with one person today. Share the fear. Because there's something about shining a light on a fear that takes its power away. Everybody gonna do that tonight? Before tonight? Please do. All right, so next thing is, where am I going? Okay. And so, you know, I'm a pilot. We go where we take off and point towards. I'm a paragliding pilot. Here's a little video I want to show you where I'm paragliding off this mountain, and I wanted to make sure that I didn't hit those trees to the left. I really, really, really wanted to make sure I didn't hit those trees. I was so focused on making sure I didn't hit those trees that I flew into the trees. You've heard the analogy, you know race car drivers. If you're looking at the wall. Yeah. Oh, crap. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So that's the point, is you go where you are looking. Earl Nightingale taught us, right? We become what we think about. What you focus on grows. What you resist persists. And so if you're grounded in who you are, but you're spending your whole day, like, worried about shit that's not aligned with that. You're gonna go where you're thinking, where you're feeling, where you're looking, what you're focusing on, what your calendar says. And you all know this, but I just Want to remind you, if I'm taking off from Phoenix, I'm either, like, going to California or I'm going to New York. I got to decide where I'm going, and then I got to put my plane there, because I'm the pilot of my plane, and I'm responsible for that. So you go where you're looking, and then the last piece I want to talk about is where you've been. Now, this goes back to some of those negative feelings, maybe, that you wrote down. When you're flying. We want to make sure that we're aerodynamically slick, that we don't have drag. They call it drag aerodynamically because you know what drag does when you're flying? It slows you down and it takes up fuel. So this is a. Oh, sorry. I had a picture up here of me in the Azores bringing my squadron over to Afghanistan with a big fuel tank on. I'm not going on a combat mission with a big fuel tank on and my gear down, because it's slowing me down and. And it's holding me back. So when you think about those negative feelings that you wrote down earlier, when you think about the negative life experiences or the traumas that you've been through in the past, are they holding you back? Are they drag on you fully flying freely in your life right now, now, I told you, I survived abuse and assault. I had to come to a place of forgiveness. Bitterness is the pill you swallow expecting the other person to die. And if we're hanging on, if you're hanging on to unforgiveness, are you still trying to prove somebody wrong or you're stuck in a place of anger for somebody who screwed you. How is that serving you? How is that serving you? Living your life fully and freely? It's not. So I want to wrap up your time on the worksheet today for you to just reflect for a minute on some of the things that might be holding you back. It may be related to those feelings. It likely is. I only had a few lines to put down. Negative traumatic life experiences. We probably all have a lot more than three. Or any drag that you need to drop that you feel moved to do, somebody you need to forgive, somebody you need to ask for forgiveness from. You know, you know, there's something deep down that's taking up fuel and slowing you down. What is it? Just spend one minute focusing on that and reflecting. You don't have to tell anybody else. I'm not going to make you high five anybody about this, all right? It's Just between you. All right, so if we could put the slide back up. We've only had a short time together today. What's been on my heart is to just share with you in the messy middle where I am tools that have helped me and that are helping me right now to just reflect on who I really am, understand where I am, where I'm going, and where I've come from and what drag I need to drop. Has this been helpful at all? Okay. While you're standing as we wrap up, close your eyes for just a minute, and I want you to imagine it's a year from now. You're back at the annual meeting. You have connected and reconnected with the divine essence of who you really are. You've identified your fears and overcome them. You've expressed and released the negative feelings that are a pattern in your life. You've dropped the drag because you're committed to 10xing everything in your life, and that includes creating and co creating the life that you came here to live in all aspects without. Excuse me. How does that feel? Amazing. All right, you can open up your eyes. And I want to finish with everybody saying out loud your I ams to me. And together we ready? All right, ready? On three. One, two, three. I am courageous. I am integrity. I am generous. I am growing. I am relentless. Yes, you are, Joe. Let's bring it home.

Don't miss another episode of Genius Network. Subscribe today@gieniusnetwork.com subscribe if you would like access to the show notes or resources mentioned, please visit geniusnetwork.com 205.