Michelle 'Mace' Curran

Is that accurate?

And now three years later, you know, writing the book, I think

really solidified that for me because so much time went into thinking about the experiences in my career, pulling stories from them and being like, what wisdom is here that other people can learn from?

And now I'm speaking as a thought leader, which is a whole nother ball game.

And so it was a bit of a circuitous route to get there.

I don't feel like I commissioned into the Air Force as a lieutenant.

It was just like, I'm a leader now.

I definitely stumbled around it for over a decade.

Yeah, I I struggled with this so much early in my career and then it popped up a few times later, but I think my perspective on it had changed.

So it was more more manageable.

And now that I speak about it openly, it is such a widespread experience.

It is not just for people in an environment like a fighter squadron.

And it's not just for people that are in such a minority like I was as 2% of fighter pilots when I came in were women.

I think that that can layer on to it.

But the number of like even experienced leaders who are in a C-suite at a big company who happen to be in my keynote audience and come up afterwards and are like, I'm the CFO and I feel this every single day.

Like it is such a common thing, but no one talks about it that openly.

And so I think that's one of the big things is recognizing it and then normalizing it.

And then we can do something about it.

And so even just having the self-awareness to be listening to podcasts like this one that are focused on that personal development, that EQ, that self-awareness, because without that, you're not going to admit it.

You're just going to be stuck in the struggle and just not even have the perspective to realize what's going on.