#90 - Michelle 'MACE' Curran - How to Turn Fear into Fuel

Meet Michelle "Mace" Curran, former Air Force Thunderbird pilot, keynote speaker, and author. 

The conversation kicks off with Michelle sharing her excitement about the upcoming release of her first nonfiction book, The Flip Side: How to Invert Your Perspective and Turn Fear into Your Superpower.

She explains how the book, infused with lessons and stories from her 13 years flying fighter jets, aims to help readers transform fear into a tool for growth and resilience.

-

Resources:

Website: https://macecurran.com/ 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mace_curran/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/macecurran/ 

Order The Flipside: https://macecurran.com/flipside/ 

-

Mentioned:

Nicole Malachowski

Kim ‘KC’ Campbell

Kevin LaRosa II

Ryan Hawk

Justin Schenck

General John P. Jumper

Mother Hubbard

Scott MacGregor The Outlier Project 

-

Key takeaways include: 

Flip Your Fear: Michelle’s new book, The Flip Side, is rooted in the idea of reframing fear. Instead of trying to “turn off” fear, she encourages leaning into it—because growth often happens at the edges of our comfort zones. Small, bold choices add up over time!

Normalize Doubt: Even at the top, imposter syndrome is real. Michelle emphasizes separating our inner critic from our true abilities, reframing negative self-talk, and recognizing that even the highest performers have doubts—they just don’t let it keep them from showing up.

Relatability Drives Impact: Whether inspiring kids through her children’s books or adults with leadership lessons, Michelle’s authenticity and willingness to share both the triumphs and the fears makes her story relatable—and that’s where true impact lies.

-

Quotes:

Quote to open the episode - “It’s taking action that creates confident people.” 

Flipping Fear and Dealing with Adversity: "But then the bulk of each chapter are just lessons and frameworks and takeaways that I learned from those situations that anyone can use in their life about flipping fear, dealing with adversity, responding under stress, creating their own luck, kind of stacking the odds in their favor to get the things that they want."

Women in the Cockpit: "But there was something about seeing, as a lieutenant, seeing the assistant director of operations who was a major in the other squadron and was also a woman,  there was just kind of this natural, I would look up to her and I also found other female fighter pilots to just be really, really willing to spend time and energy to help mentor me and answer questions that sometimes any other pilot could have answered, but sometimes not."

Embracing Fear for Growth: "Anytime you're going and doing something that is a big leap in your skill level or your confidence level, or it's just exposure to new stuff, you're probably going to feel a little bit afraid, whether that's afraid of physical harm, flying really close to other jets, or that's afraid of judgment, or it's a fear of failure or whatever it is."

Overcoming the Inner Critic:"When we're in the thick of it, we hear those thoughts of doubt and we just take them for fact and we just accept them as part of who we are."

Finding the Sweet Spot Between Stress and Complacency "It's kind of pressure instead of stress. But it's that positive pressure that makes you motivated. It makes you super focused. It's where you are learning and growing and performing. But you're not maxed out to the point where you freeze or you fail."

The Impact of Constant Connectivity: "A lot of our life is distractions right now and we can get stuck in our screens and we can miss out on those experiences."

"The key to progress is having the courage to start something, even when you don't feel ready, but believing in yourself enough to know you will figure it out along the way."

The Human Side of Success: "I think normalizing the human side of success and the human side of the highlight reel that we see from people we admire, normalizing that we all have self doubt, we all have fear, we all have anxiety. Most of us will suffer from imposter syndrome at some point. And that when you recognize that and you realize that you're not unique and flawed because you feel those things, it kind of just makes humans humans."

-

Conversation:

Why life is great right now

00:51 Michelle ‘MACE’ Curran So I am on the precipice when this episode airs. Will be about to release my first nonfiction book that you can see over my shoulder. So we're recording this though, a little bit before that. So I'm about a little over two months away from this book that I've been working on for three years, coming out and going out into the world. Last week I was in studio for three days recording the audiobook. And so I'm in the calm before the storm where I've just been building for so long. And I'm still continuing to do that as we're in the pre-sale mode, which is super important for bestseller lists and all that stuff. 

But I feel like I am clickety clacking up the giant drop on a roller coaster and we're about to get to the top and get launched off the other side. So it's just a fun. There's a lot of anticipation, there's a lot of stress, but it's just a fun, exciting time. 

Discussing The Flipside

01:48 Michelle ‘MACE’ Curran Yeah, I love that we're just diving into it right away. But that question is just such a focus of mine currently that I couldn't answer your first question without talking about the book. So yeah, this has been in the works for three years. It's called the Flip Side. How to invert your perspective and turn fear into your superpower. And each chapter takes a story from the cockpit. Mostly, a few outside the jet, but many from the cockpit. 

Some of the scariest most stressful moments that I've ever experienced in my 13 years flying a fighter jet. Some that led to kind of life changing lessons on the backside for me. So I think there are things that people will just find kind of compelling and page turning by the nature of the content. But then the bulk of each chapter are just lessons and frameworks and takeaways that I learned from those situations that anyone can use in their life about flipping fear, dealing with adversity, responding under stress, creating their own luck, kind of stacking the odds in their favor to get the things that they want. And it's just super useful stuff and I cannot wait for it to go out into the world. I feel I'm been growing a child for three years that I finally get to be , look how cute it is. Look, post the picture of the baby on Instagram. And I can't wait to just hear how it impacts people. 

How she hopes writing impacts readers

03:20 Michelle ‘MACE’ Curran The first two books that I released over the last two years were children's picture books. So Upside Down Dreams and What's Your Call Sign, they're kind of from a series, so same character, Lilly Padilly an 8—year-old who wants to be a fighter pilot. And the reason I had the idea to write those in the first place is I just didn't see a ton of representation for young girls in, in just pop culture and media for high performance aviation. Right. Like you go to the bookstore at their Air and Space Museum, the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. There's all these books for kids. There just aren't a lot with female characters especially geared towards a relatable character. 

There's a lot about Amelia Earhart. But I think kids have a hard time relating with a historical figure when they're seven, eight years old. So when I went to the Air and Space Museum, which is where kind of this idea started when I was with the Thunderbirds and I saw that, I was , wait a minute, I'm seeing how these kids respond to me when they meet me in person at an air show and I'm seeing the impact that that has. How can I do that on a broader scale? And it was kind of my first year with the Thunderbirds where I'm , I want to eventually write a children's picture book about a little girl that wants to be a fighter pilot. So it took four years for the first one to actually get released. I had to leave active duty. I had to find a publisher, all the things. But then this book, the flip side is nonfiction.

It's for an adult audience. It's 70,000 words. It's full length. It's all about learning and personal development and growth and leadership lessons. So it's just so, so different than the children's books. So I think it will make such a different impact. 

Getting mistaken for other female pilots

05:58 Michelle ‘MACE’ Curran Well, so Fifi Malachowski, the first female Thunderbird pilot, you know, she had a really interesting career in the Air Force. She was a squadron commander. She's been on the speaking circuit doing keynote speaking for almost a decade now. So she's really established. So all the time, people will be , oh, I saw you speak at this conference in 2020 for this. And I was still in the Air Force at that point. It wasn't me. So they confused the two of us as speakers all the time. You know there's not that many of us, so people are , oh, you must be the person I'm thinking of. 

Early role models

07:44 Michelle ‘MACE’ Curran as a kid I never went to a single air show. I grew up in a rural part of Wisconsin. Not military family, not an aviation family. So I just really didn't have any exposure to that world at all. But I was adventurous and a thrill seeker and I needed a way to pay for college and I wanted to see the world. And so that's kind of how I found my way to Air Force ROTC and eventually to pursuing a pilot slot. And then I was kind of the mentality of , if I'm going to be an Air Force pilot, I want to be a fighter pilot. Obviously that worked out, ended up with the Thunderbirds eventually, but that was never the goal going in. 

And I think once I got into the Air Force, I felt I was so consumed by the operations tempo and the demands of learning a super difficult job that I didn't really have these celebrity type role models that I looked up to. I didn't see the Thunderbirds fly until I was graduated from pilot training, already knew I was going to fly F16s and I was waiting to go to my next base to learn to fly the F16. So it was a little bit later, but there were always other female fighter pilots who were maybe an assignment ahead of me timing wise, but ended up at the same base as I was at. So Misawa, Japan, my first combat squadron. There were four women on that base that were fighter pilots of the two squadrons of 40 something pilots each. So not a lot of us. And there were all these amazing guys that I got mentorship from as well. But there was something about seeing, as a lieutenant, seeing the assistant director of operations who was a major in the other squadron and was also a woman, there was just kind of this natural, I would look up to her and I also found other female fighter pilots to just be really, really willing to spend time and energy to help mentor me and answer questions that sometimes any other pilot could have answered, but sometimes not. Like, how the heck do you go to the bathroom in an F16 when you're a woman? One of the most stressful things when you're new, because it's a big deal, obviously. It is a massive distraction and there's not a lot of people that can answer that question. I'm so desensitized to that kind of stuff because it was such an obstacle at first that you've just become so used to talking about it. And people often ask me about it, especially kids. If I go to a school and speak, people will be , but how does that work? And so I have a very, funny way that I talk about it. It doesn't bother me at all. 

Desired takeaway from the book

10:25 Michelle ‘MACE’ Curran A ton of my personal experiences and life lessons are in there. Every chapter is kind of kicked off with that, but then transitions into kind of thought leadership or scientific research. We cite a lot of studies just to , back up these ideas. The overarching principle in the book is to flip how we view fear. I think, myself included. A lot of us just think of fear as this thing we experience and it's bad. Like, I feel afraid. What can I do to turn that feeling off? I don't it. Kind of similar to discomfort. Like, we avoid that, but much discomfort, that's where a lot of the growth happens, right? And anytime you're going and doing something that is a big leap in your skill level or your confidence level, or it's just exposure to new stuff, you're probably going to feel a little bit afraid, whether that's afraid of physical harm, you know, flying really close to other jets, or that's afraid of judgment, or it's a fear of failure or whatever it is. And so I give all these personal stories about times that I've experienced that and how I've navigated it and some just different frameworks to start to almost force yourself into a sort of exposure therapy of , I talk about SBC's small, bold choices. 

And that's making these tiny leaps that are just, just uncomfortable, just scary enough that they fall into the category of bold, but they're not so crazy and big that the odds are pretty high that you're going to fail and that they're so scary that you just never attempt them. So it's all about pushing people to do actionable things that help them grow. 

Shutting down negative internal chatter during critical moments

12:26 Michelle ‘MACE’ Curran I call that negative inner voice the inner critic. And I talk a lot about that. It's one of the very first chapters in the book. I also lead a workshop on it for corporate audiences. And it's all about separating that negative inner voice from your internal identity. When we're in the thick of it, we hear those thoughts of doubt and we just take them for fact and we just accept them as, , part of who we are. But when you can kind of zoom out and be , okay, where does that voice come from? When does it tend to get riled up? Does it sound someone from my past? Like, is it rooted in a perfectionist parent or a coach that shamed you in high school, or a boss that was just, , terrible to work for and made you question whether you deserve to be in the position you were in? I think we all have those moments in our life where we didn't feel good enough. 

And those big ones can actually stick with us for decades, and they can be informing our actions. After that person's no longer in our life, we're no longer in that same environment, but they're kind of living rent free in our head, and they can be the foundation of that negative chatter. And so I do some exercises with people to help them zoom out, recognize where it comes from. And when they can remove themselves from that, , spiral of doubt, then they can be , okay, I observed that for what it is. I can choose to ignore it. And so it's super powerful when you can gain that perspective on it. 

Advice for handling pressure when expectations continue to rise

14:40 Michelle ‘MACE’ Curran I think that pressure feels doubt when you question whether you can meet it. That's self-doubt. And maybe that comes in the form of imposter syndrome. They aren't exactly the same thing, but they overlap a lot. Right. Imposter syndrome. You feel everyone else around you, even of the same experience level, knows more than you do. Like, surely you somehow snuck into the position that you're in. 

You might have been the top of your class and whatever program got you to the position you have, but you're still just , well, pulled the wool over their eyes again. Don't know how this keeps happening. I experienced that a lot during my career, despite being kind of consistently a high performer, especially early on, I was just  I don't know how this happened, but I think pressure is a good thing. It's a motivator. I talk about in the book the Yerkes-Dodson curve, which sounds , super nerdy, I realize, but it's basically this graph with a bell chart. 

But it's something that we all experience, and I think, especially as a pilot. But anyone will find this relatable. There's , the low end of the scale or something super easy where, it's not stressful at all because you've got it. And they talk about it in form, in the form of arousal level, which I realize for most people has a different meaning. But as the stress goes up, you can get to the far side of the curve where you're so stressed that you're just , task overwhelmed, can't focus. You're dropping you're not hearing things in the cockpit. I would miss radio calls when I got to that point. We call it a helmet fire. 

Your helmet's obviously not literally on fire, but it feels your brain is on fire because it's just so overloaded. So that's the side of the curve where performance goes down because stress is so high. And on that far other side where it's super low and it's super easy and you can become complacent, and then your performance can actually be lower as well, but the peak of this curve in the middle, where performance goes up the highest, is a midpoint of pressure. It's kind of pressure instead of stress. But it's that positive pressure that makes you motivated. It makes you super focused. It's where you are learning and growing and performing. But you're not maxed out to the point where you freeze or you fail. 

Nostalgia from watching Netflix Thunderbirds Documentary

18:43 Michelle ‘MACE’ Curran The camera work in that movie is just so good. Kevin LaRosa worked on it. He worked on Top Gun. It's such high quality filming, some from a helicopter or in cockpit cameras, that it, transplanted me back into my maneuvers. So when I would see footage, especially from the solos, which, by the way, there wasn't very much of. It was very diamond heavy, which is numbers one through four. There's a lot of trash talking between the diamond and the solos. It's a friendly rivalry. So the fact that the documentary was 90% about the diamond, it's been a hot topic lately. But for the solo maneuvers, I was , I could immediately be back in the cockpit and remember what I would be looking at and what radio calls I would be hearing and what parameters I'd be looking for. And I hadn't really experienced that since I left, so it was cool to watch. 

Why nostalgia is so real for some generations

19:43 Michelle ‘MACE’ Curran I think that we're in the generation where we have a lot of decision fatigue happening and we have a lot of distractions and task switching with social media and being on call 24 hours a day and feeling if someone texts you or calls you, you better be reachable 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. And even if thinking back to the Thunderbirds, that was still kind of that time, it's only three years ago. Still not we didn't have cell phones or social media. But that's not what I rember , that's not what the memory is about when I have that nostalgic feeling. It's about the experiences. And a lot of our life is distractions right now and we can get stuck in our screens and we can miss out on those experiences. So I feel nostalgia brings us back to that focus of , wow, that was a really cool thing I got to experience in my life. It's almost paired with gratitude.

Tips to not only survive criticism, but grow from it

20:45 Michelle ‘MACE’ Curran You just have to reframe how you view it. I think it's natural as humans to get defensive. We don't to be wrong. We want to be accepted as part of the tribe, so we want to fit in. We don't want judgment and getting feedback, especially if it's focused on something that you need to improve. Feedback can be positive, too, of course, but I think we always assume negative feedback. But one of the things I talk to people about when they're asking about the debrief and how they can use it in their company or with their team is I'm , you have to make it a habit. It can't be this thing that only comes up when stuff went really bad. 

Otherwise it's a punishment. It's not feedback. So you have to do it all the time. So for us, we would always do it after every single flight. And I realize that's going to look different depending what industry people are in. But even in your personal life, you can do a weekly debrief every Friday, check in, how did I spend my time this week? Did I make it to the gym? Did I spend the time with my family that I wanted? What do I want to adjust for next week? You could also be , what did I absolutely crush this week that I want to perform at that level all the time. I want to make that my new norm. And so just making it routine, making it not just a negative. 

And I was remembering that the goal is not to shame you, embarrass you, it is to make you better. 

What she is still trying to prove to herself

22:44 Michelle ‘MACE’ Curran I've been out for three years and so much of my content focuses on my time in the cockpit. So much of it is branded around my time with the Thunderbirds. And of course, that is such a unique environment. It's so high stakes, it's so high performance. There's so much to learn from it. And it's a recognizable team and brand that people can , immediately associate with those things. But for me, I don't want that to be my entire identity. I don't want to be a decade out of the Thunderbirds and still speaking I was just on the team.

So with the book, despite the cover having me in a helmet upside down, it just went really well with the flip side. 

I wanted to expand the content beyond a social media post with a jet video. And the book was one way to do that, to tell deeper stories. And a ton of the stories are from that. But I think people will see there's just so much more there. And trying to really hone in kind of the thought leadership side of it. I mean, how can we dive deeper into some of these topics that really resonate with people, things that I did learn from that environment in the cockpit with the Thunderbirds, but that we can expand a lot more on. And I don't know what that looks exactly. I am figuring that out as I'm going. 

It's a growth process for me, but I think it's starting to change a little bit with the book, with the speaking. So, yeah, we'll see where it's at in a couple years. 

Daytona Beach Flyover

28:32 Michelle ‘MACE’ Curran Yeah, so the Daytona 500, the massive NASCAR race, it's every February. The Thunderbirds always do the National Anthem flyover for that. It's also early in the year, air show season doesn't start till late March usually. So this is pre-show season. And every winter, half of the pilots are brand new to the Thunderbirds. So starting in November, when the old team wraps up that show season, the new people show up. It's about Four months of super intense training to get all the newbies spun up. 

So that means that flyover with a lot of eyeballs on it is one of the first things you do, if not the first thing for the public. And we got to do it every year. So the people there all know you , all the staff. You'll see the same security guard every year. And it's just. It's a super welcoming environment. NASCAR is a very patriotic crowd. Go figure. 

They love the Thunderbirds. And the Thunderbirds have come, become kind of a visual part of that race. If you see the previews leading up to the race on tv, they'll always have the Thunderbirds doing a flyover as part of the preview. So it's just become kind of this iconic thing that we get to do every year. 

Rite of passage over past 18 months

38:37 Michelle ‘MACE’ Curran So many in the military, kind of found my footing as a speaker. I think it's a little bit of a rite of passage in the keynote speaking industry to have just a season of panic in the summer when all the companies are on vacation, kids are out of school, no one's hosting events and hiring speakers. So you go from a normal income to just a desert for two to three months. And it's always super stressful. Every season speaker is, yep, that's just normal. That's how it is. It's seasonal. I'm in that period right now. 

We're filming this the beginning of July or recording this beginning of July, literally July 1st. We're in the thick of the dead season. So I feel that's a little bit of a rite of passage. But with the book, it's just one write a message after another. Going through the editing process, first being, okay, I have to have 70,000 words written by this date. All right, made that happen. I have arrived. I have written a book. 

And then you spend six months going back and forth with an editor at the publisher and you go through one round of edits, you get the first one back and you're , oh, it's kind of fun to get feedback from someone else for the first time. Or you spend a month incorporating all these edits. Imagine getting a paper back in college or even in high school with red lines and it's a six page paper. Okay, this is a 250 page book. It's a thesis. And then going through it, fixing everything, awesome, it's good to go. You hand it back in and that happens four more times. You know how they have the Febreze commercials where they're like, have you gone nose blind? You've just gone blind. Like you could completely have written a word wrong and your eyeballs just can't see it anymore because you've read the same words, they've lost meaning. It's a weird experience. Rite of passage for sure. Because that stuff just has to happen to write a book. 

Billboard message for world to see

44:52 Michelle ‘MACE’ Curran Oh, man. Last fall I got to have a digital billboard in Times Square with my book up there, which was very cool. But I think, it's hard to get a lot of context in a billboard. I think I'd have to have some sort of cool photo I have on my book cover to get people's attention. But then the thing I say in my keynote, I talk about it in my book and it's every time I say it, people are writing it down and they're nodding their heads. Is that the key to progress is having the courage to start something, even when you don't feel ready, but believing in yourself enough to know you will figure it out along the way. Put that on a billboard. I feel so many people would read that and be, hell, yeah. 

One piece of wisdom for next generation to light their own torch

46:28 Michelle ‘MACE’ Curran I think normalizing the human side of success and the human side of the highlight reel that we see from people we admire, normalizing that we all have self-doubt, we all have fear, we all have anxiety. Most of us will suffer from imposter syndrome at some point. And that when you recognize that and you realize that you're not unique and flawed because you feel those things, it kind of just makes humans. And even the humans that have done exceptional things, you're just , oh, they're just a person that worked really hard at a specific thing for a long time. And so it just opens the doors of possibility.