Erica: Hey, girl. By now, you know I have HER Collective, my online community for ambitious women who are done doing it alone. HER Collective is for the women who are smart, capable, and driven, but find themselves stuck on the sticky floors like self doubt, burnout, and waiting for permission that never comes. Inside HER, you get more than motivation. You get real support, real strategies, and real momentum.

We work on things like clarifying what you want now and what's coming next, building confidence without burning yourself out, navigating hard conversations, career moves, and leadership moments with clarity, and surrounding yourself with women who actually get it. This isn't about hustling harder. It's about moving intentionally with the right tools and the right people in your corner. If you're ready to stop spinning, start choosing yourself, and build a career and life that actually feels aligned, I'd love to welcome you inside HER Collective. You can learn more and join us at www.joinhercollective.com.

Because honestly, girl, you were never meant to do this alone. Welcome to the Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors podcast, where we get real about the challenges women face in work, life, and leadership. I'm your host, Erica Rooney, HR executive, keynote speaker, and executive coach, and I'm on a mission to get more women into positions of power and keep them there. This is the space where we call it paradoxes.

Being told to lean in but not too far, to speak up but not too loudly, be ambitious but not too ambitious. Does that sound familiar? Here, we break down the sticky floors that keep us stuck, from imposter syndrome and perfectionism to burnout and fear, and give you real strategies to shatter those glass ceilings once and for all.

So if you're ready to rewrite the rules, own your power, and take your career and life to the next level, you're in the right place. Now today's guest has proven that you can fly an F-16 Fighting Falcon at 500 miles per hour, fly inverted inches from your wingman, and still struggle with imposter syndrome. Riddle me that, y'all. What I love is she's not just talking about courage. She's teaching us to invert our perspective and use the very thing that holds us back as our greatest fuel.

Michelle Mace Curran is a former F-16 fighter pilot, a decorated combat veteran, and served as the lead solo pilot for the US Air Force Thunderbirds, which is only one of two women in history, y'all, to hold that title. So that's a pretty big deal. She now leads Upside Down Dreams and is the author of the upcoming book, The Flipside: How to Invert Your Perspective and Turn Fear Into Your Superpower. She understands this truth, that courage isn't the absence of doubt, it's action in the presence of it. Her mission is to help you stop letting your inner critic drive and start chasing down your biggest dreams.

So get ready, because today we are diving into the cockpit lessons on vulnerability, facing down fear, and how to turn your biggest mistakes into your leadership badge of honor. So, Michelle, welcome to the podcast. Girl, we are here for it today. How are you?

Michelle: I am good. And just based on that intro you just gave, I know I'm in the right spot. This is my jam. We're gonna talk about all the things I love to talk about.

Erica: Oh, my gosh. I would also, just for a minute, like to talk about how flying upside down at 500 miles an hour inches next to your wingman gives me mad anxiety and I'm not even in that plane.

Michelle: Yeah. That's a normal response. I'd say it's uncomfortable. It's scary even for someone who's done it again and again. It's just not a place that most humans operate in, but you can get incentivized to it.

Erica: Yeah. But riddle me this. What is the thought process you have when you're in that mode to override the survival instinct, which for me would be to get the hell out of there? And then how do we, as women, apply that mental discipline to a high stakes meeting or negotiation in our career?

Michelle: So people see the finished product if they go to an air show, which is 500 miles an hour up to as close as 18 inches from another jet. It looks insane to the crowd, but we definitely didn't start there. We come in as experienced fighter pilots, but not having flown in the airshow world, which is such a different type of flying. It is very much repetition, like you're a professional athlete.

You're out there shooting free throw after free throw until you can't miss. That is what we're doing, flight after flight, for about four months leading up to the time we actually go out in front of the public. I always like to preface it with, just like any other learned skill, it really is building that competence over time with a lot of hard work, practice, and preparation. And that builds the skill set. I'll often get the question from other women of, what would you tell a woman who's just starting her career in a really male dominated space?

Because when I came into the Air Force, about 2% of fighter pilots were women. Now it's up to about 4%. We're moving. Look at that wild growth. Fifteen years later, we're doing it. It's moving in the right direction, just very slowly. I always say that ability to work your butt off and really focus on learning your job and getting as good as you possibly can at executing the thing you're there to do, that is the foundation everything else sits on. Your own confidence, your own belief in yourself, the credibility and respect of those around you.

All of that is built off that skill set, of not even proving you deserve to be there, because I felt like I had to do that for most of my career and I really hate that. But executing at the highest level you're capable of, that I did focus on with the Thunderbirds. But there was still the survival instinct of fear, of primal fear, of survival really. I think you have two cases. You have situations where you actually are in danger, which was the case in the jet at different times.

Mistakes have real life catastrophic consequences. But that same fear gets carried over into our life, into situations where we're not actually in danger. A lot of times we don't differentiate between those two things. We let this primal brain that's been trained over thousands of years to take the worst case scenario as the most likely, because that's what kept us alive for so long.

We take that into opportunities that come up. We take it into conversations, into raising our hand or speaking up or going after something other people might raise an eyebrow at. So for me, a big thing I talk about is zooming out and getting it out of your head, getting out of that spiral, either writing it down on paper: what's the worst case scenario if I go after this thing and it goes bad? If I fail, what will that look like?

Or telling it to someone if you have someone you can confide in. Often just that step of getting it out of your head will make you realize, A, that worst case scenario is pretty unlikely. B, the one you're really hanging onto that's keeping you from taking action might not even be realistic. It might be conflated. And C, it gives you the chance to say, okay, if that did happen, what can I do to be prepared to deal with it?

I can't guarantee stuff is going to go my way, but I can focus on what's in my control, to prepare myself to weather that storm. That perspective gives you a really empowering mindset where you're okay taking calculated risks that ultimately lead to growth.

Erica: I love that. I'd like to rewind a little bit too. Did you always know you wanted to be a fighter pilot, or did that evolve over time?

Michelle: It evolved over time. I was a thrill seeker and adventurous child. I loved roller coasters my whole life, carnival rides spinning in circles, while other people were throwing up and I was like, let's go again.

Adventure and travel and all the things. But I actually went to college as a criminal justice major because I wanted to be an FBI agent. As a teenager in high school, I was like, I'm gonna be an FBI agent, that sounds cool. So I did that, but I needed a way to pay for it.

So I applied for an Air Force ROTC scholarship, got one. When I graduated college, I had to go into the Air Force on active duty to pay back that scholarship. My plan was to do four years in the Air Force, get out, apply to the FBI. About halfway through, I visited a base down in Florida, Tyndall Air Force Base. I saw two fighter jets take off, full afterburner, up close for the first time ever, and I was just awestruck. Goosebumps.

Erica: Adrenaline junkie just couldn't resist.

Michelle: I was like, holy shit, forget the FBI, I have to try to go do that. I know that was a pivotal moment for me, that spark of inspiration. But I'm still kind of shocked, because I was a high achiever, but I was also very shy, very introverted.

I struggled with a lot of self doubt, especially at that age. I'm a little bit shocked even now, twenty years later, that I had the courage to not only pay attention to that spark, but to execute on it. So much has to happen between deciding you want to be a fighter pilot and actually becoming one.

Erica: Hey there, listeners. If you've ever felt like you're stuck in a place, held back by self doubt, perfectionism, or that pesky inner critic, you're not alone. We all face those sticky floors that keep us from reaching the heights we dream of. But it's time to shatter those limiting beliefs and toxic behaviors to uncover infinite possibilities.

My book, Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors, is your ultimate guide to smashing through barriers, overcoming limiting beliefs, and stepping into your full potential. This book has been endorsed by Mel Robbins, bestselling author and motivational powerhouse, and featured in Success Magazine. Inside, you'll find real life sticky floor stories, practical strategies to help you navigate your own sticky floor moments, and a whole lot of inspiration to keep you climbing. This isn't just a book, it's your road map to success, confidence, and freedom. Grab your copy at www.ericaandersonrooney.com. Whether you're in the boardroom, the classroom, or just starting out, this book is for you, because no one deserves to stay stuck, no one deserves to feel small, and you have glass ceilings to shatter. Let's do this.

I'm gonna go totally off script here, because what I love about this, and I talk about this in a lot of my keynotes, is when I was a chief people officer, I was just going about my day to day. I didn't realize, over time, how dull the work was making me feel, how drained. That's how I was feeling. And when I started coaching executive women, it didn't matter if I was finishing a call at 9PM on a Sunday after putting my kids to bed.

I was lit up. So when you talk about that spark of inspiration and paying attention to it, I think sometimes it's divine intervention, whatever you want to call it, that leads us to pay attention to it. I implore everybody, lean in hard. If not from hearing it happened to Mace, it's happened to me. Pay attention to those nudges from the universe, because that will direct you to something awesome.

Michelle: At least that's what I believe. I've had a few key times in my career where that has happened. That first one with jets in general, again later with applying to become a Thunderbird pilot, and then again with leaving the Air Force and walking away from what most people consider a dream job to do what I'm doing now.

Every one of those, I felt that same pull. And I was also brave enough, for just a second, to take some sort of action towards it and set the wheels in motion.

Erica: Brave enough. But if you do it the first time, then you can recognize the second time that spark hits, or the third time, that you can take that risk, that you can dip your toe in and test it out. Let's talk about the self doubt and the imposter syndrome, because we sprinkled it into the intro a little bit. You mentioned you struggled with it as a kid, then you go and decide to do the most male dominated thing and join the Air Force to fly fighter jets. So talk to me about what that self doubt looked like for you. How did it manifest? How did it hold you back? And now, how do you help other women distinguish the inner critic from what's real?

Michelle: It definitely evolved over time. When I was younger, very early on in college and ROTC, brand new to pilot training, I always felt like I could execute confidently in flying the airplane, doing those hands-on things. I had really good grades in college. I could execute in that arena.

But what I struggled with was speaking up. There was a shy part of me. I'd be in this Air Force environment where I knew being assertive, being type A, being what's classically viewed as a leader was rewarded. Stuff would come up where I knew I should raise my hand and say, I'll take charge of the formation, I'll take on that project. And the internal fear of, you might fail in front of everyone, what makes you think you're so special to do that, was so strong that for a really long time I wouldn't do it, even though I knew I should. My ultimate goal was served by taking advantage of those opportunities, but I was so afraid that I wouldn't do it.

Fast forward to actually flying the F-16, getting to my first operational unit. I had done well on paper. High GPA, great in pilot training, got one of two fighter jets for a class of 25 students, so competitive. I was defying odds and my own expectations again and again, which should build confidence, and I think it did when it came to executing a straightforward, laid-out syllabus or test.

But what got a lot harder once I got into an actual fighter squadron was this element of belonging, figuring out how to establish my footing in a world that is very male dominated, very type A, where you're rewarded for being confident, and sometimes people come across as confident when they might not even be. That felt like I had to put on this costume, play dress up, put on my flight suit and flip a switch: I'm gonna pretend I have it all together, I know what I'm doing, I don't need anyone's help, I'm a lone wolf, I have to over prove that I deserve to be here.

I did that for a long time in my first assignment, in Japan. But I felt so isolated, and I was struggling with separation. In hindsight, I was probably a very average new fighter pilot. But I was in a world where everyone around me was experienced, and it was going to take years to get good at this new job. The only way to get good at it was to go through the crucible, to get in the repetition and the experience. And I had never really failed at something or been bad at something, so it was this massive shock to my identity. If I'm not the person who gets good at it quickly, not the high achiever, not the golden child, why do I even deserve to be here? Obviously it's unrealistic that you're gonna step into a career field that difficult and demanding and be good on your first day. That's illogical. But that's what I expected of myself.

Erica: Use that word, because everything you're saying is landing. I'm like, yep, been there, that feeling, check, check, check. And then you use the word illogical, and I'm like, well, damn.

Michelle: Right, because we can see that when we're outside of it, since we don't have those emotions clouding our judgment. But when you're in it, it's really hard to keep that perspective. It took me years to gain it. And that's one of the things I like to help other people do now, identify that inner critic.

Because for the longest time, even flying with the Thunderbirds and then leaving to do what I'm doing now, I realized a lot of my decisions were being run through the filter of this other voice: what makes you so special that you could get on a stage and tell your story? Who's gonna read a book if you write it? You shouldn't share that on social media, that's only for our community of fighter pilots, how dare you put it out into the world?

When I was actually able to zoom out and identify that voice and separate it from myself, it gave me the ability to recognize it for what it was. I always like to say it's just an inner voice. It's not a verdict. It's not something you have to take as fact or listen to. It's a combination of your own insecurities with pressures that have been put on you at different points. Now I'll run people through a workshop: what does your inner critic sound like? If you had to draw it or describe its physical features, what would it look like? Does it come from a specific person or a specific time in your life? I realized mine was society's expectation of what an ideal fighter pilot was, this older, male, super tactical fighter pilot I would never be, and I was never living up to that standard, for many reasons.

I've had other people share, they're like, oh, I'm in my fifties, and I realized it's my mom who I was never good enough for growing up, or it's a coach who embarrassed me on the football team, or my first boss who was verbally abusive, or the mean girls at the office. Most of the time, the people who created that inner dialogue holding someone back aren't even actively in their life anymore, but it's left an imprint for years, sometimes decades. Being able to recognize and identify it gives you the opportunity to have a choice in what you do with it.

Erica: Yeah, I'm a big fan of stop, name, ask and answer, and pivot. The first piece is really about stopping and recognizing what those thoughts and feelings even are, because without that first step of awareness, you just run through those uncomfortable feelings, since you don't want to feel them. But if you sit in that discomfort for a bit and start to peel back the onion, you can start to see the patterns in your life where you show up that way, and then you can start to break those patterns. But if you don't stop, if you don't separate the voice, pull it apart, recognize it, and bring awareness to it, then you can't move forward and actually do something about the situation.

Michelle: Right. And I think after that step, if you have someone to talk to about it, say hey, I'm really struggling with these feelings of doubting if I deserve to be here, or struggling with how I'm supposed to belong in this world, or whatever your version is. That's what I talk about, identifying it, recognizing it, and normalizing it, because I almost guarantee that other person has experienced that exact same thing. It might look slightly different, but they've felt not being good enough, being an imposter, self doubt.

When you get it out of your brain and say it out loud, they're gonna say that's totally normal, you're in a very demanding environment and you're brand new, you have to be okay with sucking for a little while, and that can be really hard. But once someone acknowledges that, it makes it okay for you to feel that way and still move forward.

Erica: And not only that, you quit ruminating on it. I think it was last week, I was in total anxiety mode, stressing out to my husband, because I had this big New York trip, two panels and a new keynote I was doing. I was like, I've got this new keynote, and that's what I'm freaking out about. It doesn't matter if you have a month to prepare, you're like, there's not enough time. I said this to two different people, and the two things they said were, number one, Erica, you're a pro, you've done this, yes it's your first time doing this keynote, but you've done first keynotes before. And the second was, you still have time. When you get yourself up in those anxiety spirals, passing a little bit of that concern to a friend or an accountability person or a partner who can mirror back the true reality of what's going on might give you that breath to reset, and I think that's so key. But Michelle, you talked about a call sign.

Michelle: Yeah.

Erica: I was reading about this and thought, I don't know what the hell that is. Is it good, is it bad? So for me, and for the listeners, tell me what a call sign is. Is it good or bad? Do I want one? And then talk about call sign culture.

Michelle: Yes, to the answer to all of your questions, it's both. I have a general idea of fighter pilot call signs from pop culture, Top Gun and Top Gun Maverick, Maverick, Goose, it's just a nickname. But most people don't know we don't get to pick them. We have no say in them at all. They're given to you at your first operational unit, mine was in Japan, and they're given by your peers after you've been there a few months, based on something dumb that you did.

Erica: I'm just living in a perpetual state of anxiety wondering what the hell my name is gonna be for three months.

Michelle: Every mistake you make, you're like, oh, am I gonna get named after this one? You're new, and you're making mistakes every single flight, so given that they wait three to four months to name you, that gives them a ton of fodder to work with.

So I was given mine about four months into my time in Japan, and it's an acronym. My call sign is MACE. I'll tell you the abbreviated version of the story, because it can get quite detailed. I was out on a training flight doing practice dogfighting, me and my jet, my instructor and his, and the whole goal is for me to get my aircraft behind his so I can gun him. We don't have live weapons loaded, obviously, but it's a very fundamental building block skill as a fighter pilot, air-to-air fighting. I'd done it before, just enough to be dangerous, since it wasn't the first time I was creating habit patterns from scratch, but I wasn't nearly experienced enough to be any good at it.

So I went out there and accidentally went above the speed of sound, and literally did not even realize it was happening while airborne. I didn't notice until after we landed and reviewed the cockpit footage. People ask how that happens. Nothing exciting happens in the cockpit when you go supersonic. The Mach number, another way to measure your air speed, just goes from point nine nine to one point oh, and you think, okay, we're supersonic. There's nothing in the cockpit that flags it, like, hey, dumb dumb, you're going faster than the speed of sound.

Because I was going so fast, I could never turn tight enough to point at my instructor. Imagine driving your car at 60 miles an hour and needing to make a turn that requires 30. You just can't do it. Same thing in the jet, but I sure tried. So when I rolled and pulled back on the stick, the F-16 can pull nine times the force of gravity, we call those g's. However much you weigh, multiply that by nine, that's the force I'm feeling. That's normal to experience for very brief periods, because it's hard on your body, and you can actually pass out from it, since it pushes the blood out of your head, from your head towards your feet.

Because I had all that airspeed, I had so much energy on the aircraft that I hit nine g's and held it for a full 360 degree turn, much longer than normal. I almost blacked out because of it. I almost went unconscious. I had full light loss, meaning I couldn't see anything, fully lost my vision, but I was still conscious, still aware of what was happening. That's about as close as you can get without actually g-locking, and if you g-lock in a jet where there's only one pilot, very bad things can happen, and they have in the past.

We landed, reviewed the tapes, and I was like, how did I get going so fast? It was a good learning experience, I took a lot away that I was going to do differently next time. But I also took away a lot of shame and embarrassment: A, I wasn't performing up to standards, I didn't do well on this flight. B, I could have killed myself, that's no joke, this is taken very seriously. Then a couple months later I got a call sign from it, and MACE stands for Mach At Circle Entry. Mach is breaking the mach, the speed of sound, and circle entry was the maneuver I was doing. Cool sounding name, not such a cool experience, but it's fun to tell now, it's a story I tell during my keynote, and people are like, what? What happened?

Erica: It took me down a whole roller coaster of emotions there. Here I am just sitting here thinking Mace is a cute little nickname.

Michelle: People always think I pepper sprayed someone. They ask, did you pepper spray a guy at a bar or something? I'm like, not yet, but there's a chance.

Erica: Okay. So we know what call signs are, we know you don't get to choose it. Can you talk to me about the call sign culture and creating psychological safety?

Michelle: At face value, that seems like hazing, just making fun of a new person in your unit. What good could come from that? I did feel some not great emotions around it when I was first given mine. I was like, okay, great, it sounds cool, but I was still very embarrassed by that flight specifically, so it took a little time for that to go away.

But then I realized, looking around my squadron, I'm one of the youngest, least experienced people, and there are all these pilots I look up to who are great leaders, amazing tacticians, so good at their job. Every single one of them has a call sign. This kind of ceremonial naming of new people is an acknowledgment: we see the work you've done, we see how hard it is to get to this spot, and you are now one of us, welcome to the club. We live in a world where everyone makes mistakes, and that's okay. What's not okay is hiding them or not taking the time to learn from them.

That goes along with the debrief culture fighter squadrons have, where after every single flight, no matter how simple or complex, we go into a room afterward, pull up the cockpit recordings, and look at everything from the briefing before the flight to the taxi out to the execution of the mission. We look at what went well, so we can replicate it and not just get lucky. But most of the time is spent on where the errors were made, why the mission didn't go smoothly. No matter if you're the youngest, lowest ranking person, or the most well respected, highest ranking person in the room, your mistakes are all talked about the same way. When you see someone with a decade more experience than you, maybe the squadron commander or even the base commander, sit there and say, yeah, I misprioritized here, I was a little late, I'll do this differently next time, that being modeled from the top down gives everyone permission and psychological safety to openly discuss that stuff. That's how you get better faster, because none of it gets brushed under the rug. Every mistake is a learning opportunity.

Erica: There's something really comforting about how you made that pivot, from it being this name that makes fun of you, to actually being a powerful indicator of how we embrace failures and grow from them. It's not just a me thing. So often with mistakes we think, I'm the only one who did that stupid thing. But when you start to hear all of the stories, which I'm sure makes for excellent dinner conversation with a lot of your friends, figuring out what they all are for the first time, I think that's really powerful. But let's talk about your book, which every time I see it, I think, goddamn it, which way is up?

Michelle: Yes. Me too.

Erica: Turning it around, which is the whole point. It's called The Flipside: How to Invert Your Perspective and Turn Fear Into Your Superpower. Tell me all about the book. I haven't dug into it yet, but it's on my coffee table.

Michelle: Awesome. The number of people I've taken pictures with where either I've held my own book upside down or the person I'm with has held it upside down, and I'm like, it's okay, it's reversible, it's fine. My head is on the front upside down, so that's why it's confusing.

I was already giving keynotes, and you can only tell so many stories and pull out so many lessons in a 45-minute keynote on stage. I was getting amazing feedback, people saying they felt like I probably had a ton more stories, that they could have listened forever. I'm also on social media sharing bite sized stories from the cockpit, things I learned from them, the call sign story being one example. People were loving it, saying this is such a unique peek behind the curtain of a high performance world we don't usually get, but what I talk about is so relatable. I see myself in your words even though our backgrounds are so different.

So I started thinking, do I have enough for a book? Three years later, The Flipside is here. Each chapter is a story, most from the cockpit, some from just life in general, edge of your seat stuff, like I almost g-locked in the jet, or another Thunderbird pilot and I almost had a head-on collision during a practice, or I hit a vulture and put two holes through the side of my airplane. These are wild experiences very few people will have, but the point of the book isn't to shock and awe people with the stories, even though I think storytelling is the best vehicle for getting a point across. The bulk of each chapter is either what the Air Force equipped me with to deal with those situations, or what the situation itself taught me. What tools and lessons can anyone pull from this when they're struggling with self doubt, when they're afraid, when the shit hits the fan and they have to figure out how to respond.

Beyond fear, a big through line is reacting versus responding, and focusing on what you have control of, keeping your end goal in mind. That's something we can do whether it's someone cutting us off in traffic or losing our job, we're all going to face situations that don't go how we'd like. I didn't want the book to just be anecdotes of my personal experience, so almost every chapter cites studies, gets into human psychology and neuroscience. I wanted to give it some scientific credibility behind why our brains operate the way they do in those situations. It's a unique combo of memoir meets self help, and the feedback has been more than I could have ever imagined.

Erica: I love it. I love when we tie things to science, because it's not enough for me to just say a mantra, you'll feel better. I want to know why that actually is, and then if you tell me the why, I will go say whatever mantra I need to say all day. One of the questions I have for you, and I'm trying to figure out the right way to phrase it, because I know the high level answer but I want the details. I imagine people come up to you all the time and say, well, you can't have any self doubt anymore, or any fear, because look at all these things you've done, you've conquered it all. But I'm gonna guess you'll say you still experience a little self doubt and fear now and then.

Michelle: Oh, yeah.

Erica: So what instills that in you, and how do you move through it?

Michelle: It still happens regularly. I think it's become much less debilitating than it used to be. Now I see it for what it is, and I recognize it fast when it starts to happen. I'm like, oh no, slow your roll, that's not helpful, this is not welcome. I'll go very quickly to evidence based thinking. A new keynote is a great example, since I'm in the process of doing that now that the book has come out.

Erica: And I don't like it. It's not fun.

Michelle: No, it's not. My current keynote, I love it, I've given it a hundred times, and it's so fun now because I know I'm not gonna forget what I was about to say. I get to joke around and be so comfortable. You have to pay to play to get to that level with a new one, it just takes repetition. It's stressful at first because you worry you might have that deer-in-the-headlights feeling, like what's my next paragraph.

So now when I see that happening, I recognize it as a very normal human feeling, because I'm about to do something new. Not new as in I've never done a keynote, but we're taking a step back, we're a beginner when it comes to this speech. But then I can also look at my track record of success. What experience do I have, what do I know I can do to be as prepared as possible for this, because I've done that before. I'm able to dig around in my toolkit and pull out the things that can help me be prepared and ready to do this new, uncomfortable, scary thing. The doubt is coming from a much different place than it did when I was younger, because I just didn't have the perspective to think about it that way. I just accepted it, was like, I'm nervous, I don't feel good about this, and didn't dive any deeper. That perspective has let me move through it much quicker.

Erica: Oh my gosh, alright. Last question, best question. You could go all the way back in time to the Michelle before she got her call sign, before she even saw the Thunderbirds. What piece of advice would you give her, knowing everything you know now?

Michelle: Two things. First is to drop that shield of perfection and find someone to talk to about it. That is massively game changing, to not ruminate on it, not isolate, not feel like you have to be a lone wolf. If you're not a lone wolf, then you're clearly not strong enough to be in the world you're playing in, that was the mentality I had as a young fighter pilot.

Second, this idea that I'm gonna feel ready before I go do a big thing is a myth. I did not feel ready when I raised my hand to compete for a pilot slot. I did not feel ready when I walked in the door to be a new fighter pilot. I did not feel ready when I submitted my application for the Thunderbirds, and I didn't feel ready the first time I got on stage to do a keynote. The key is to accept that's normal in the learning phase, and not let it keep you from taking action. The action will create the confidence, not the other way around.

Erica: Yes, amazing. And if you're like me and you still really want to make sure you do the thing, do the thing that can't be undone, whether that's investing some money or telling your bestie who's gonna make sure you do it. You gotta do the thing that keeps that ball in motion. Michelle, that was amazing. Y'all, if today's conversation lit a fire under you, here's your next move. Don't keep it to yourself, share this episode with a friend, drop a review, and let's keep the conversation going. And how about you get this girl's book? You can get it on Amazon and anywhere books are sold. Remember this, your potential is limitless, and the only thing standing in your way are those sticky floors. But you have the power to break through them. So go out there, take up some space, and let's shatter some ceilings together.