Martha McSally: No One’s Coming To Save You, Take Back Your Power & Find Purpose

 

Deep personal healing requires facing the self with as much courage as one faces the world. Former US Senator and trailblazing military leader Martha McSally, the first American female fighter pilot and the first to command a US Fighter Squadron, shares her raw, intimate story of navigating profound loss, emotional volatility, and a painful cycle of abuse that began after the death of her father and childhood dog. She discusses the critical shift from seeking external saviors to taking radical responsibility for her own recovery, a journey that involved disconnecting from a victim frequency and pursuing a spiritual path to “unpack her trauma.” Martha details the simple, yet vital, daily habits—including breathwork, gratitude, and “morning rubs” with her rescue dog—that she uses to regulate her nervous system, raise her energetic frequency, and live a life grounded in resilience and peace.

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Martha McSally: No One’s Coming To Save You, Take Back Your Power & Find Purpose

Welcome back to the show. Our guest is Martha McSally. She’s the first American female fighter pilot and the first to command a US fighter squadron. Beyond the headlines, Martha’s story is one of inner courage, navigating loss, trauma, emotional volatility, and transformation from a teenage spiraling after losing her father and beloved dog to discovering how to take responsibility for her own healing. Martha has become an inspiring voice for resilience, identity, and spiritual growth. We’re going to talk about how pain can become purpose, how healing starts from within, and how courage isn’t just about flying jets, it’s about facing yourself.

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Welcome.

Thanks for having me. Thanks, everybody, and boomer.

We got Boomer as well.

Boomer is twelve. He’s a rescue. I got him at ten months.

She asked me if she could bring Boomer, or if dogs are allowed. I said, “Of course, dogs are allowed.”

He was certified as a therapy dog while he used to visit the VA hospital. He’s expired in his whatever. We all understand the value of the human-animal bond, and he’s an oxytocin generator for everybody here.

The 12-Year-Old Spiral: Navigating Sudden Loss And Emotional Volatility

You’ve shared that after losing your dad and your golden retriever, you spiraled and even ended up in inpatient care as a teenager. Can you talk about that time and what was really going on outside of you?

I’m grateful that my life up until twelve was stable, middle-class family. The youngest of five kids, I grew up in Rhode Island. My dad, I didn’t know this at the time, but he came from humble circumstances. He was in his 30s. The depression, and this was where you would have siblings pass away before they reach the age of five. That was just normal in that generation. He started working at the age of eight and never stopped.

Graduated from high school, didn’t have a lot of opportunities. His dad passed away before he was born, and his mom passed away when he was a late teenager. His manager at his gas station just felt like he had some promise in him to do something more with his life. He helped him get a work-study scholarship. He went off to college and then served in the Navy. All these experiences for him, he was very driven to make a better life for us kids.

I just benefited from it. 0 to 12, I didn’t catch the point, or living in a stable middle-class life. He worked his ass off. He wasn’t around a lot. He was definitely driven to provide and provide opportunities for us. When I was twelve years old, literally between one day and the next, he was there and then he was gone. We were hanging out as a family in the summer, and he went upstairs to lie down before dinner.

He wasn’t feeling well, and my mom and my brother took him to the hospital later. This is before when kids used to go outside and play before dinner. They don’t do anything anymore. We come in like, “Where is everybody?” They took him to the hospital and came home that night, and they said, “He’s had a heart attack, but he’s stable. He’s going to have a long recovery. We’re going to need to help him.” I just thought, I didn’t know what a heart attack was.

I was twelve. I was like, “We can help dad.” I just thought, “We’ll be around him. We’ll take care of him.” I don’t remember going to bed with any fear. My dad, in the middle of the night, just in his spirit, knew he was going to die. He said, “Get my children out. I need to speak to my kids.” There was a torrential rainstorm going on. They were like, “Sir, you’re disabled. This is normal. Let’s wait until the morning.”

He’s like, “Get my children now.” I got woken up by my brother storming into the car. I didn’t really understand what was happening. It was just like, “Go see dad.” We spent time with him individually and as a family. We talked about the mundane things of life. It wasn’t like he was like, “Martha, I’m leaving you now. Here’s my wisdom for you.” At that point, I had a rescue beagle. Siblings, friends, school, swimming, sports.

Life is in the mundane. We just talked about those mundane things. Somewhere in the conversation, he told me to make him proud. It wasn’t like, “I dub you my make-me-proud person.” It just rolled off his tongue in a very natural way. It didn’t impact me like he was leaving. It just was, “You’re going to make me proud.” A few hours later, he had another heart attack and died. I’m between 6th and 7th grade, and I say this out of love. My mom is 91 years old, and she’s still alive.

I literally was on a call with my sister while she was on a doctor’s visit, FaceTiming this morning on the way up here. She wasn’t super emotionally available before that. She immediately went back to school and back to work, like immediately, within 30 days before school even started. She was getting her master’s degree. At the time, again, I say this with compassion now, I felt like I lost my mom and my dad the same summer, if that makes sense.

I can look back with compassion on her now, but at the time, I’m this volatile twelve-year-old, just all of a sudden went from everything stable to like this screaming going on in my soul like, “What just happened?” I remember getting on the school bus for junior high and like, “He has a father. She has a father, you have a father.” Everybody has a father but me. Nobody was getting help, nobody was going to counseling. My mom was like, “We literally didn’t even talk about it, just suck it up and go.”

The Survival Skill Trap: Managing Vs. Disconnecting From Emotions

I will say I learned from my mom the skill, which is a good skill to have to manage your emotions and still get out of bed in the morning and go do what the world needs you to do. That’s actually a really good skill. Take it to an extreme that can have you be really disconnected from yourself, from your emotions. You can get a little dissociative. That can have longer-term impacts if you don’t eventually reconnect with yourself and unpack your shit, but it’s a good skill to have.

It’s served me well. I learned it from her. My own survival throughout the years after that, I learned like, “It’s not happening to me right now, so it doesn’t have power over me.” That’s literally something I said after I was sexually assaulted on a Friday night and went in to fly my jet on Monday morning. I was like, “It’s not happening right now.” I learned how to survive. I got that from my mom, which, like I say about many things, they serve you these skills.

They serve you until they don’t. These tools you use in order to survive serve you for a little while until they stop. Anyway, my mom is off to work. I’m just trying to find my way now, trying to make my dead father proud, dealing with the grief, starting to act out, starting to rebel. I was a quiet kid before that, just trying to get attention for the screaming going on in my soul. I went off to high school, and I luckily chose running to manage what felt uncontrollable emotions, my volatile emotions.

I was like, “I need to go for a run.” I started running it, and I was swimming before that. There was something about just moving my body and going, “I’d have to go longer and longer to settle myself down.” That became my tool, which is a socially acceptable addiction in a lot of ways, but it became my tool, and it was useful for me in high school. I had this amazing coach in high school who was like a father figure to me.

He moved on to another job. Right before this is all going on now, I’m sixteen years old, right after my dad died, or right around the time my dad died, our dog passed away. Now I lose my dad, I lose my dog. We got a golden retriever for the first time in my life. I got this golden retriever, Casey. Casey was also my lifeline. I cannot explain it. You guys had dogs in your lives, the human animal bond. That very difficult time for me, that dog saved my life in a lot of ways.

He just kept me safe and whole and connected. He would come home from work, and he would go get my running shoes out of the closet. Even though I’d be on the couch, like I don’t want to do, he’s like, “Get going, we’re going running.” He would make me get out and run. I love that dog. That dog was my lifeline. Four or five years later, whatever it was, I was a junior in high school, and he went into a seizure that he never came out of.

I was carrying him as he was being taken into the car. He had some seizures before that, but this one became just uncontrollable. I’m just going to get emotional because like, I love that dog. That dog went to the vet and never came back. Every time they took him out of whatever medicine they were giving him, he was seizing, and we had to let him go. It wasn’t just about the dog. The dog was important to me, but it ripped open the wounds of the grief of losing my dad.

It was like, whenever you feel the grief of something, but you’ve got a deeper grief you haven’t dealt with, it’s going to touch that. Here I am on track to be valedictorian, varsity, track and cross country, and swimming, and doing all this stuff. I am just in a very difficult state., I wasn’t trying to kill myself, but I took a bunch of pills just to try to like a crying out. I need someone to help me. I just cannot manage this.

They pumped my stomach and sent the emergency room against my will, just because I was a minor was like putting me in this place for inpatient treatment. I discovered in that experience, I was trying to get these people on the outside to fix me on the inside. I didn’t want to be there, but I still was like, “Somebody please help me.” I wouldn’t have used these words because I mean, I was sixteen in this situation, but something clicked in me eventually where I realized they are amazing, compassionate tools, just like everybody has here.

We need support. We need wingmen when we fly into combat. We don’t fly by ourselves. I need to be the pilot of my life. I wouldn’t have used that term. They’re not going to fix my volatile emotions. They can give me tools, but I’m in charge. I’m the one who has to find the tools, find the habits, find the peace. I had to go on the journey. I had to be in charge of that.

 

I didn’t use those words, but there was just something that just like, “This is my problem to solve with support, but I got to figure out how to get to a place where I can function in the world and not feel overwhelmed when these emotions come up.” Now, what I will tell you is I didn’t right away solve that problem. I definitely used running, used disconnecting.

It wasn’t like I all of a sudden learned breath work and meditation or whatever else. There are many tools out there. I did have a shift in like, “I’m in charge, like I have to chart my path, and I cannot outsource this completely. Nobody’s going to give me a pill or a magic solution or something to stop the pain going on inside me.” It’s my spiritual journey. It’s my emotional journey. I got it. It’s mine.

The Wound Ripped Open: Realizing Unprocessed Grief And Trauma

When did you realize that you hadn’t processed the trauma, or that you grieved your father’s loss? How did you figure that out?

I realized it obviously in this incident when Casey died, but I didn’t fully grieve it in that season either, I don’t think. I get out of this impatient. I tried to run away. This is so funny. Nobody knows this is fun. This is like new guys are breaking news here. I had to go through all this to get into the Air Force Academy. We had to fill out all the stuff that I had experienced this, and basically, the people there were like, she’s a teenager who’s grieving from losing her dad.

Let her go serve in the military and tell her that way. The timing of all this was my junior year in high school. I get back to school, back to running, back to doing all my stuff. We have a new coach because the other one moved on. Now, this one I didn’t understand at the time, was a predator. Now I go from those experiences, and these are a lot more grown-up at that age now. I was still a very naive fatherless kid at the time, but I’m looking for father figures. I’m like, “I’m putting out to the world, I now understand this.”

Like, “I’m vulnerable.” The predators, I will tell you, they got some radar where they know who the right prey is going to be. He would go after the fatherless kids, the fatherless girls. This is my coach, now in authority, who trusted me as a father figure, does the classic things of like making you feel special, like all the things that I’m guessing in a group this side, somebody else has been through some abusive experience.

It’s usually someone we know, it’s usually somebody who then grooms us, they try to meet some need that we have, where you feel that connection, and then they go in and manipulate and violate it repeatedly. There’s the confusion of it all, too, of like, “This is my coach and I thought he cared about me. I guess this is just the price I need to pay thing.” It’s very confusing. Can I get an amen? Anybody?

It’s very confusing because it’s not as simple as, “I’m being attacked,” because it’s a relationship that is then abusive. It feels very confusing. If it happened when even younger, you have fewer of the tools that I had. I did things like, “I’m just a scrapper. I’m a survivor.” I lost my virginity to my coach. I just eventually gave in to him, and I felt awful about it, because I grew up in a religious family, and that was all bad.

Again, he could be my father, you know? It’s very confusing, but I just didn’t want to tell anyone. I literally started running and running more and more, and I was eating less, and I just shut my cycle down because I was like, “Last thing I need to do is get pregnant from this.” Sorry if I’m being too raw here, but I’m just being honest. There was something inside me that was just like, “ I got to survive this.”

Somewhere in there, I was like, “I’ve got to get the hell out of here.” This is happening throughout my junior year and into my senior year. As I was looking for opportunities after I left high school, I’m the walking wounded, lost my dad, haven’t really grieved it, now I’ve got the abuse. I just wanted to get an opportunity, hadn’t really unpacked my shit yet, I hadn’t really healed. I felt like I could go either way. Like, I literally could go either way.

I was either going to do something amazing with my life or I was just going to become a train wreck. I needed a path that was going to give me some guardrails so that I would go this way. I ended up going into the military, and ended up going to the Air Force Academy. I had no idea what I was doing. You’re seventeen. I just was clueless, but part of the reason was, I didn’t want to pay for school, I didn’t want my mom to pay for school.

Part of the reason was to get away from my coach, like physically get away from him. Part of the reason was to just give me guardrails so that I could do something productive with my life after, as in parallel, I would somehow deal with the volcano that was inside me that I still had in debt with. Off I go to the Academy, you guys may relate to this, but environment matters. You can be in an environment that either lifts you up or is really bad.

The people around you are really bad. The environment really matters, but wherever you go, there you are. You cannot expect changing geography to change the inner problem you have. It can help, the environment does matter, but still, I’m the walking wounded here. I had more experiences in the military at the same time, like those of us who have been abused, usually it happens repeatedly. Usually, we get into that cycle and put out the radar.

Now you’re in a military superior or subordinate, it’s the same thing, a power structure. I don’t want to get graphic, but I just had more experiences. I was just in this cycle of like, “This is what my lot in life is as a woman.” While I’m also trying to achieve and make my dead father proud, it was a very complex, a bit of an experience for me. Because I could disconnect, I just kept working hard, kept being productive, kept contributing.

It really wasn’t until I graduated from the Academy in ’88. It was in the early ‘90s. I was in a relationship, was going to get married. I cannot remember what the impetus was, but it’s like, “Man, I got to open up this dungeon because this is impacting my life that I have not healed from all this stuff.” It’s impacting how I show up. It’s impacting how I show up in relationships. It’s impacting so much. I started a healing journey, which didn’t include a lot of traditional stuff.

It was just more like a commitment. Like, “I got to unpack this shit.” There were some relationships I had that were really meaningful for me at the time of people who had experience with other people in their lives who had been through sexual abuse. I went to some conferences and some workshops. I did a lot of reading. I didn’t actually go through formal therapy. For me, it was very much a spiritual path as well.

I just was able to get myself to connect my heart and my head again, to feel the pain, to feel the wounds, to get them expressed and get them out of me and to stop the broken record of this is the lot I’m going to have in life where I’m just going to be continuously abused as a girl or as a woman by men in authority over me. I had to stop that from happening. I’m not blaming victims.

0I’m just saying I had to get off the frequency of putting out that I’m a victim to no longer attract the perpetrators into my orbit. Does that make sense? That was a long answer to your question, but that’s the journey that I started on because I was committed to making sure that these experiences, this trauma, didn’t get stuck in me and didn’t stop me from living a whole, healthy life.

 

Breaking The Pattern: Taking Ownership Of Your Healing

We typically attract the same person over and over again. When did you first realize you were attracting a different person? You also said no one’s coming to save you. Healing starts from the inside out. You made the decision somewhere along the line that you wanted to take responsibility for your healing. What did that path look like? How did you finally get to a place where it’s like, “I’m doing good.”

I’m still on the journey. We all will be for our whole lives, I believe. I don’t think there was ever a moment where, like, “I am now healed from everything.” It’s if you have a scar on your body somewhere and you bump into something, you might still feel it, and it reminds you of your experiences. I’m still on the journey.

I still certainly have not mastered romantic relationships. It’s not an area of mastery for me. I feel like I show up in a very different way now because of the inner work and the spiritual work and emotional work I’ve done. I’ve also been at Fighter Pilot and Center, and it’s like a very small percentage of men who are attracted to people who do the things they do in life.

That’s okay, I’m living my best life. I’m not outsourcing my well-being to another human being. Like, “You complete me,” or “I need you to be my whatever.” Like, “No, I’m looking for a true partner who’s on a journey of healing.” I’ve had some wonderful relationships, but not ones that I’m in forever at this point yet.

Earth School: Elevating Your Frequency And Attracting The Right Mirror

It’s not just romantic relationships. It’s people in general, as they say, you reflect what you are. I can speak about my journey. It’s like when I first got sober in 2011, I remember I was in a relationship. She was batshit crazy. The next relationship, she was a little less crazy. They say at five years, I remember I celebrated five years of sobriety, and people said, “Welcome, you’re no longer a newcomer.”

I was like, “What, five years?” I remember that was the first relationship I was in with a woman where I looked at that relationship and I was like, “I’m doing pretty good.” What’s normal is healthy and great. That was the first time I was in what I would call a healthy and loving relationship. It’s not just romantic relationships. It’s just people in general. Who I attract in my life today is much different. It’s been a journey.

I have come to believe you guys could think this is bullshit, but this has been mostly in the past four to five years, really in my spiritual growth, as I’ve just continued on this exponential growth. I now believe that it’s important that we all ask the question like, “What are we actually doing here?” You may live 49 years like my dad, you may live to a hundred, but like, what’s the point of what we’re doing here?

We’re in this physical body, we’re in this little flesh suit for a while, it’s temporal, it’s not going to last forever. Even just an encouragement to go down the road of like, “What do I believe about? What is the point of all this?” Be curious about that. Don’t just go through the motions and figure out how to like, “Stay sober, get a job, work tears, 65 or 70. Do something you don’t love, marry, and have kids. What’s the fucking point of all this?

I would just really encourage you to find, be curious yourself, like go read a bunch of the ancient wisdom out there. Find your own spiritual beliefs. Be willing to grow in those spiritual beliefs because sometimes we can be super dogmatic in what we believe, and then we’re not actually open to even growing because we figured out the answer. There’s a statement by a quote by Mark Twain and something like, “It’s what we believe that ain’t so is the problem.”

When we actually think something is true, but it’s actually not true. We’re not willing to grow. We’re not willing to test our beliefs based on new information. Be on that journey yourself because that is the most important thing. My current beliefs are that we’re all in Earth school right here, and it’s just a very temporal 3D experience that we’re having. We’re all spirits that are having a temporary physical existence. That’s the big picture.

I truly believe that each of us has something unique to contribute to this world, like a snowflake. No one is you. No one has come here with the unique divine attributes of you. You have something very specific to express to the world. That’s the first thing. We often become someone that we’re not because of the culture, because of our relationships, because of something else. We start doing things that are not aligned with who we truly are, what we came here to do. Michelangelo made this sculpture of David.

Each of us has something unique to contribute to this world. Share on X

It was this beautiful sculpture of David, and somebody asked him, “How did you make this?” He said, “It was easy. I just cut away anything that wasn’t the David.” I think a lot of what our journey here is cutting away anything that isn’t the Martha, cutting away anything that isn’t the Tim, to really get to the true divine essence of what we are and what we express to the world. What we’re here to express to the world in work and relationships and play and everything. I also believe that consider yourself the protagonist.

You’re the main character in a play. You’re the main character, and everyone else in your life, your spouse, your kid, your parents, your coworkers, the guy who cut you off in traffic, they’re all extras. They’re just playing a part in the play that is you. They’re playing a part for a reason. They are attracted into your life for you to see something inside you that needs to be let go of or for you to learn a specific lesson.

If you’re walking around and you’re on the frequency of I’m not enough or say fear of abandonment, let’s do fear of abandonment. There’s someone in my life I’m very close to who 100% because of the life circumstances and trauma in her life, is on the frequency of fear of abandonment. Guess what happens in friend situations, in boyfriend situations? She’s repeatedly getting abandoned. The very thing she’s afraid of, because she’s on that frequency, extras are showing up as painful as that is, and they’re trying to show her, “You’re on the fear of abandonment frequency.”

They’re playing a very painful part to help her to see, like, “You got to get off that into I’m enough frequency. You’ve got to elevate your consciousness and your state to be on a frequency of I’m enough, and then you will attract people who are mirroring to you that you’re enough.” While you’re on the fear of abandonment, you’re going to keep having relationships, business partners, random strangers in the supermarket who are going to bring you that feeling of abandonment.

Does that make sense? Can you relate to that? Can you think about that in your own life? We’re all doing it in various ways. We all are. The question is, what is the main frequency you’re on all the time, all day long? David Hawkins wrote a book, Power vs Force. He actually has this. If you look it up, there’s a consciousness scale. They measured energetically people, what frequency people were on based on their state.

You guys understand this, as you walk in a room, somebody’s a certain energy that’s either draining you or all energy is not woo woo. It’s actually like a legit, we’re all on some frequency. The question is like, “How do you get yourself so you’re not on the fear, anger, despairing frequency all the time, or most of the time?” If you’re on that frequency most of the time, that’s your consciousness. That’s what you’re putting out to the world.

That’s what you’re going to attract to keep re-informing it until you take some steps to be like, “This isn’t working for me anymore. How do I move up that frequency? How do I get to a different state of love and peace and abundance and like those things?” It doesn’t happen. You don’t have a freight train going 100 miles an hour or 200 miles this way and turning around and going 200 miles that way. It’s all the mundane, boring stuff that you’re learning here, I’m guessing, like daily habits.

What are you doing first thing in the morning when you get up? I want to pause on that one for a second because the monkey brain stops when you’re sleeping, hopefully. Maybe sometimes it can be impacting so you’re not sleeping, but for the most part, if you’re actually getting sleep, whatever’s going on in our heads is going to stop. The amygdala and all the fear-based stuff, it’s going to stop. We’re going to get ourselves into a state of consciousness where you’re resting.

All that stuff rests. Guess what? The first thing you do when you open your eyes in the morning decides where you’re jumping on that frequency scale for the day. The very first. If you pick your phone up and you start looking at Twitter, you start looking at the news, like guess where you’re jumping on the frequency? Fear, anger, despair. That’s where you’re starting the day. What’s going to happen after that?

Again, you’re a train moving in a certain direction. Something bad happened, you get a bad phone call, like something didn’t go the way you had hoped. Now you’re like, here, you don’t have a lot of room between there and the bottom of despair. If you have some habits that have you start the day here, let’s start the day with gratitude. Let’s not look at the phone. Let’s maybe spend a minute and connect with the divine.

Let’s say a little prayer, be with me today, whatever your beliefs are. Write down three things that you’re grateful for and mean it. Sometimes we write things down that we don’t mean, and we feel guilty about it, and then we’re in dissonance. That’s a whole other problem because your foot’s on the gas and your foot’s on the brake. Look at things throughout the day that bring you delight.

You start up here now some bad things happen. You’ve got more you got more Buffer here. You may drop down into fear for a few seconds or a minute, but you bring it back up. You may drop down into anger for a short period of time, you bring it back up, but how you spend each moment of the day starts first thing in the morning, and your decisions and your habits throughout the day will decide where you are.

That impacts your state that you’re in. That impacts your personality, and that impacts the results that you track in your life. It’s like it really fucking matters what you do when you first wake up in the morning. Now, am I perfect about what I do when I first wake up? No, there are days I’m looking at the news just like everybody, or I’m looking at something stupid. I get it, but I’m like, “Oh man.” I have certain things that I do.

Hacks For High Frequency: The Full Morning Routine With Boomer The Therapy Dog

Tell me about your morning routine.

There’s an oxytocin generator right there. I know that if I am spending time rubbing on Boomer, then I’m going to start on a high frequency. I know that. About three years ago, I started part of my morning routine being which I call morning rubs. He literally will present, he’ll come over to the bed and present himself for morning rubs. I literally just, I like I rub on him and I don’t do that right away.

That’s not my first thing right away. When I first think right away, and I literally say like, “I get another day. We get another day.” Jason Campbell talks about this, too. It’s not morbid, but like practicing dying every night is like an ancient wisdom. We shut our eyes at night, and we don’t know if we’re going to get another day. Can you feel, even at the end of the day, I feel complete. It wasn’t perfect. I wasn’t perfect today, but I feel complete.

I did the best I could. Maybe debrief myself a little bit. I can shut my eyes with some level of peace that if I don’t open them, things are okay. When I open them in the morning, I literally start the day like, “I get another day.” He’s twelve. I’ve never had to go on a retreat where I live past eleven. We get another day. What I’m doing, I’ve switched it up a little bit, but what I do now is I do breath work first thing in the morning in bed.

I do some Wim Hof. It’s more what they call primal breathing. It’s the activating breathing. I just do a couple of rounds of that. I just saturate my body with oxygen. I do some breath holds at the end of it. It’s like 30 really deep breaths and then a breath hold. I’m now getting back to where I can easily hold 3 to 4 minutes, whereas when I’m out of practice, I was like a shit show when I started doing it again. It’s a physical thing, it’s a neurological thing, and I’m not going to immediately go to caffeine.

I’m going to be like, “It’s time to get up. I’m going to put some energy into my body, go to the bathroom if I need to.” I don’t do this every day, but I learned this from somebody. Even just when you get up to go to the bathroom, first thing in the morning, we’re all going to go pee at some point. When your left foot hits the ground, say the word thank to yourself. When your right foot hits the ground, say the word you. Thank you.

Just do a thank-you walk to the bathroom. Start with gratitude. It has become a habit. He’s waiting for me. We do morning rubs. Oxytocin, I pray over him, I literally speak to him. People can laugh at me. It’s not like the old Stuart Smalley on old Saturday at LiveSkip. Let me show you morning rubs. Boo-boo, come here, my love. I don’t know if the camera will be able to show this low.

Come here, you want to do morning rubs? I just pray over him. I’m like, “Thank you, God, for this beautiful gift, for this beautiful boy, this wonderful creation, this gift in my life. Thank you for the love that he brings and the connection and the laughter and the smiles and everything that he brings, everybody who he meets.” He’s turning here. I go, sometimes he puts his paws on my shoulders.

Can you do it? I go, “Boomer is loved. Boomer is at peace. Boomer is thriving. Boomer is safe. Boomer is healthy. Boomer is at peace. Boomer is love.” He literally leans into it. I’m saying it for myself too. “Martha is loved. I am loved. I am safe. I am at peace. I am healthy. I am thriving.” I’m saying boomer, but I’m also saying it about myself. It’s okay to say that about yourself, too. Even if you don’t believe it, it’s okay. You just declare it.

What we say after the words, I am, they really are powerful from an identity, from a spiritual, from an emotional. I give a whole speech on this, but I have time for it all. Be careful what you say after the words I am. I’ll show up and give a speech on how my flight suit on and be like, “I’m Martha. I’m a fighter pilot. I’m a senator. I’m a colonel. I’m whatever.” I literally end up taking it off because this is just a role I was in. This is not who I am. This is just what I did. Oftentimes, when our identity is attached to what we do or what role we’re in, and then we leave the military, we lose our job, and we get a divorce.

 

If you’re calling yourself a husband or a wife or a mom or a dad, the kids are empty nesting, or somebody passes away, we lose our footing. Our identity was attached to that, and now we’re no longer that, and now we don’t know who we are. It’s part of our society to use those words like try not to use the words I am and then say a role because it’s a powerful statement. Also, I know part of the twelve steps.

I don’t know if you guys do it, like, “I’m an alcoholic.” I would just be very careful. I’m not trying to go against whatever the teaching is here. You happen to be using a substance in order to escape or numb your pain. That’s not your identity. That’s just me. That may be controversial. You may have painful energy running through you. You may have anger energy running through you, but you are not angry, you are not angry.

You feel angry. Maybe I feel angry, I have anger energy running through me, I feel sad, I feel depressed. It’s not that I am depressed. That’s an identity, and that’s how you feel in the moment. We don’t teach people how to feel negative emotions and allow them to be curious about what might be happening or what might be touching. That’s maybe an old emotion, that’s a wound, or again, some trauma that’s stuck, but it’s coming up, or somebody else’s energy that we took on because sometimes we feel overwhelmed because we took on someone else’s shit.

Our friend, Annie Lala, talks about this all the time. She said, it’s not scientific, “If you can try and identify what you’re feeling and then scale from 1 to 10, what is it? If it’s over five, she’s like, it’s probably someone else’s stuff.” Literally lovingly, as you’re sitting and feeling like, “Am I feeling this in my body? I’m not good at this yet. I’m getting better at it because I mostly feel negative emotions right here.”

I’m not mastering it. I don’t know about you. People were like, “My right big toe is ten.” I feel them here. Some can be really specific when their anger is here, when it’s stress is here. Just sit with your body, feel it, and be curious about it. If it’s more than five, this is Annie Lala’s technique. Lovingly send it back to whoever gave it to you or whoever you took it from. You may not know who it is, like, “Goodbye.”

Manage your own nervous system by allowing that emotion to move through you. Don’t give it power, don’t get a runaway freight train going. That was usually my default. It was either all the way down the dark abyss or cut it off. If you actually sit with it and if it’s tapping on something deeper from a trauma, you may not do this alone because you may go down the runaway freight train. If you allow it, it may be it feel more comfortable to just like shut it. Allow yourself to feel it, allow it to be expressed.

If tears need to flow, if you need to say, “I feel angry,” then just do it. There’s some physicality where you just like literally like on your bed with your feet with your face in the pillow, just like something to get something out of you. It doesn’t mean you have to break the wall or anything. You don’t have to actually do anything destructive, but you can do something to physically express that safe and then let it pass. If we taught people this in school, I wish I had learned it when I was young. I’m like, I’m literally learning it in my 50s. It’s crazy.

Shifting Your Energy: From Subconscious Identity To Co-Regulating Conflict

You said a lot there that resonated with me, and you’re talking to Boomer, and you have your morning routine with Boomer. I think about Michael Bernoff talks about whatever we’re saying, if I’m talking to somebody else or talking about somebody else, my subconscious is listening. When I’m talking to my dogs, I’m like, “You guys are so smart. You’re so funny. You guys are so entertaining. I love you guys.”

I’m talking to my dogs. When I’m talking to my dogs, I’m talking to my subconscious mind, 100%. The other thing I think about is the people who are around. Be careful who you spend time with. Think about it, when you guys go into a group in the morning, is there an energy when you walk into a group? Sometimes it might be a little off, sometimes it’s a little more upbeat, sometimes it’s more positive, sometimes it’s negative. We pick up on that frequency. We contribute to it, and how can we change it?

You’re co-regulating as a group when you’re in a group. One person in a group can shift the whole energy, one person. If everyone’s tense, say something funny. You can be in a situation where it’s like two people, and there’s a fight going on. One person dares to laugh at themselves, and then it just breaks the whole thing, and the energy changes of the whole dynamic.

 

I was thinking about, we went on a bike ride a couple of weeks ago, and my girlfriend and I got into a little argument. When we were driving home and it was her fault.

Of course, it was her fault. You have really grown a lot.

We’re in the car and I’m even though I think it’s her fault, I still said, “I’m really sorry that we got into an argument.” That just completely broke the ice. It opened up a conversation. We laughed about it. She actually said, “Man, that was going to be a really uncomfortable car ride home.” I was prepared not to talk to you the whole time.

Somebody has to have the courage to change the state of what’s happening.

You’ve got to somehow snap out of it.

Even if it’s like, I got to go for a walk because two dysregulated people cannot get themselves out of a trap. If one person is like, “It’s not like I’m abandoning you, but like I literally need to go for a ten-minute walk and I’m going to be back. I got to regulate myself.” You do some breath work. There’s something about moving your body, being around nature, and ideally focusing on your breathing.

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Settle yourself down, and then you can come back into this situation with more clarity, even if they’re dysregulating more, so you can do the best you can. They may not want to change, but it’s never about the thing. It’s never about whatever you argue about. It’s always about somebody touched on a five-year-old, not like five years ago, wound or a seven-year-old or a ten-year-old wound.

Somebody touched on a, “You never respect me. I never get seen or heard.” There’s a primal wound likely that when these arguments happen, like somebody’s poking one of those, and so you get the scared child answering in a dysregulated way when it’s, “All I was asking is where do you want to go to dinner?” It’s never about that.

The other thing is I’ve done this where it’s like, “I’m going to walk out. We’re going to do a do-over. I’m going to walk out and I’m going to come back in.”

Do it all again. We’re going to start the whole thing over.

The First Step: Taking Ownership In Recovery And Healing

That actually totally works. How can people in recovery or deep emotional pain start taking ownership of their own healing?”

You’ve already done it because you’re here. There are a lot of people still limping around out there on all parts of the spectrum. We’re all using some way to numb ourselves. We’re all using some way to disconnect from our pain. Gabor Mate talks about how we’ve all had big T trauma or little T trauma.

Everybody has. Whether somebody is checking out by scrolling on Instagram or Netflix, or some other drug of choice, or porn, or whatever it is. Most people in society, to some degree, are numbing themselves out and disconnecting from what they don’t want to feel. You’ve taken maybe it was because you hit rock bottom, but you’ve taken a step to say, “This isn’t working for me anymore.”

Gabor Mate says, “Don’t ask why the addiction, ask why the pain.” You’ve made the decision, but I would just encourage you. I don’t know what your relapse rate is, but I’ve been around a lot of people with addiction issues. A lot of people are dry drunks for a while. I was in a relationship with one, and he advised not to be in a relationship in his first year of sobriety, and we were like, “That’s for everybody else.”

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I learned from that for sure. It took him literally three more relapses before he finally went into a program, which really helped to change his life. You’re here already. Don’t just be going through the motions. Realize that you’ve got an opportunity here, you’ve got tools here, you’ve got people to help you, you don’t have to do it by yourself. Take full advantage of it, but the healing needs to come from inside you, like I started with.

It just has to, you’ve got to take the tools, take what lands on you, discard stuff that doesn’t, and be like, “What’s going to work for me? What do I need to do? What does my morning routine look like?” Don’t just duplicate mine. What works for me to get on the right step in the morning? What works for me for my evening routine? What environment do I need to be in? What career or profession is maybe better suited?

Maybe I’m numbing myself out because I’m just like, “I’m so in dissonance with the essence of who I am and how I’m living my life that I need to make some big changes, but they’re really scary. I’m just going to keep feeling numb and dissatisfied if I don’t make these changes, whether it’s job, whether it’s relationships, or geographic location, or whatever that is.” The whispers have probably already come.

Don’t wait for the two-by-four. The billboards have maybe come as well. Don’t wait for the two-by-four. If you need to retire someone from your life, if you are in a relationship that is not healthy, and this person is dragging you down, you can retire them. I would just encourage you, as painful as that may be and as scary as that may be, make sure you graduate from the lesson so you don’t attract the next person with a different name and the same dynamic.

That will happen. You’re not firing them, you’re retiring them. You can fire them like, “I got to get away from you. This isn’t working for me.” You’ve got to figure out a way to be like, “I have graduated from the lesson. I’m crossing the stage. I’m putting the little cap and gown on, and I no longer need to play in that dynamic anymore.” That’s the real work. What’s the program here?

This is PHP and IOP. IOP is 30 to 45 days, or PHP is 30 to 45 days, IOP is 30 to 45 days.

That’s a great investment of time that you are making. You can get yourself in a better physical place, an emotional place, but the real work is going to continue when you’re back into the environment and the life that whatever was going on there that had you choosing to disconnect, like those circumstances, and you guys work with all that as they do integration and stuff. You could go right back into the merry-go-round as soon as you leave.

Speaking of our program or other tools or mentors, these can all be tools and they’re open doors. How do you balance seeking support with not outsourcing your healing?

I was scrolling around your website in the last few days just to see what you guys are offering with the TMS and ketamine therapy and all that. These are all tools that are available. They’re great tools that can help you on your journey. There are a lot of tools in the gym, too, but you have to go do the reps. If you actually want to be healthy, you’ve got to get into the gym. When nobody’s paying attention, early in the morning or after work or whatever, you have to go lift the heavy weights.

No one can bench press for you. It’s the mundane consistency of daily habits and decisions, and the tools will create the space for some new neural pathways to be developed. For some new tools to be used, like, “I’m feeling the same way, and I normally reach for a drink.” The first time you’re doing something different is going to be so new to you. Like, “I’m going to pick up the phone and call someone instead of like doing what I used to do.”

You’ve never done that before. You didn’t even know where that takes you. It’s like the first time you go lift weights, you’re probably going to be sore the next day. It feels very unfamiliar. It’s very clunky. Depending on when you started using whatever substance, your emotional development potentially halted at that time. If you’ve been using, since you were a teenager, you’re going to maybe have some teenager response to things when you don’t have the substance that has you check out from that. Just be easy on yourself.

You may be acting like a teenager a little bit, but you’ve got to grow up. You cannot grow from a teenager to 40. You’ve got to do the work. You’ve got to read the books. You’ve got to have the morning routines, the evening routines. Physicality really matters. Move your body. Go for walks. The rest of my morning routine is Andrew Huberman. He’s got a big podcast. He’s a scientist, talks about a lot of health stuff.

He says delay your caffeine at least 90 minutes in the morning, get outside, get sunlight into your eyes, and move your body. That’s the next thing we do. We go for a walk, we get sun into our eyes without sunglasses, we move our bodies, we delay our caffeine because I know those things are good for me, and they’re going to set me up for a good start to my day. We even did it this morning. We got up like super early, we’re out walking, it’s still dark out, but this is what we do because this is what is going to set me up for success.

Also, what you’re consuming both nutritionally and with your eyes really, really matters. There’s been some really cool new research. I cannot remember the name of the doctor who is putting people who are drug-resistant mental health issues on a keto diet, and they’re coming back to themselves. I’m not saying keto is the answer.

I’m just saying, like what we ingest is impacting not just our body, but our minds and our nervous systems. You’ve got to be mindful about that. If you’re eating shit food, you’re eating sugar, you’re eating highly processed foods, and you’re hoping that you’re going to start on a different path for your life, where you’re going to be sober and strong. You’re not giving your body what it needs, which is also impacting your nervous system.

Give your body whole, fresh food. Give your body enough protein. Get off the sugar. Take care of your body. Move your body. We’re all connected. The mind is not separate from the body. What you consume in your food, stay hydrated, electrolytes, elements in there, and there’s microplastics too, but you’ve got to pick your poison here. Also, what you’re consuming with your eyes. What are you watching? What are you taking in? Are you taking things in that are putting you into a lesser state?

The Big Picture: Why Identity And Purpose Are Critical To Healing

You said that people need to ask, “What the fuck am I doing here?” Why are those identity and purpose questions so critical to healing? How has that played a part in your life and your career?

For all of us at the core, if we were honest with ourselves, even in our best states, we still feel like there’s something more. We’re always looking for something more. We feel just dissatisfied even in our best states. Something is just not what I’d hoped it would be. Maybe if I make more money, if I get a different house, if I get into a relationship, we tend to look externally.

Even when we’re in the most peaceful possible state we could be in, we’re always looking for more. Again, I don’t want to tell you what the answer is. I’m just encouraging you to be curious about, like, where is that coming from? Can that be satisfied with something other than alcohol or whatever you’re using? What is my genius? What is my purpose on this planet?

How can I express this in this season of my life? You may express it a little bit differently in the next season, but for right now, how do you express it in this season? If you’re on a growth path, you’re always going to be growing. I wrote a book published five years ago, and I have learned so much more since I published that book. There’s a quote, “If you’re not embarrassed by who you were a year ago, you’re not growing enough.”

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I feel like I’ve learned so much more since that book. I was like, “Maybe I need to publish another book. I don’t know, do an addendum.” A lot of what was in my book. It’s a good book, but it’s still like a lot of brute force resilience of just like, just try harder than the next guy and just keep trying and trying. It’s a very 3D matter on matter way of living and I was successful in it, but it cost me a lot of energy to do.

I would just encourage all of you, don’t just be like, “I’m going to leave here. I’m going to be in my job, and I’m just going to keep rearranging deck chairs here on this ship of life.” What are you here for? What are any of us here for? Do you have any spiritual beliefs? If so, what are they? Have you questioned them any time recently? Are they your parents’ beliefs? What other people who you admire? What do they believe?

What do they read? Consume and read, and learn from others who have taken this path before us, so you don’t have to learn everything by yourself. Just get on the journey. Just get on the journey of what’s your purpose here? What’s your unique genius that you express to the world? If you live one more day or 50 more years, what’s the purpose of the whole thing? In the big picture, why does it all matter?

People may think, “I may have kids, and I’m going to have a legacy through my kids or the next kids. Do you remember anyone in your family from 1,000 years ago? Unless you’re Abraham Lincoln or George Washington, no one’s going to remember your name. I don’t morbidly mean this. I mean it in a very freeing way, that it’s not about you achieving something externally.

It’s about you being on the growth path and you being on the journey that you came here to express yourself in and to fully learn the lessons of this life, to fully learn what you came here to learn and grow in the way you intended to grow and express in the way you intended to express so that the day that you don’t open your eyes in the morning that you’ve lived a fulfilled purposeful life.

How To Discover Your True Self With “I Am” Statements

We’re going to get to questions here in a minute. First, I have another question. When someone’s just getting sober or they’re just rebuilding their life or they’re new to recovery, how can they begin discovering who they really are?

I would do a couple of things. I would first spend some time journaling, like opening up a piece of paper. If you had to answer, I am, and you wanted to fill in those words with nouns, words, or adjectives, I don’t really care. The words that you would want someone to express at your 80th birthday toast or at your eulogy. What words do you think would really capture the uniqueness of you? Words are limited. Words are not enough, but they’re all we have.

I help people go through this process. I’ve done it myself. I literally have a butcher paper with my words. There are about fifteen of them that are sitting between my kitchen and my dining room. I probably should put it on something that looks a little bit more presentable, but it’s on butcher paper, and it’s just taped to the wall. Every day I get up and I’m reminded, “I am unbreakable. I am integrity. I am growing. I am generous. I am courageous.”

I’ve got my words right there. I would encourage you just to journal and do it over a couple of days. Just start writing down words. Don’t get in this like, “I don’t really feel I’m acting that way right now.” We start judging ourselves as soon as we start writing down these. They should all be positive words. People go through this like, “I’m stubborn.” They should be positive words. If you have anyone in your life who wants the best for you, not all of us do in certain seasons, but if you have others in your life who want the best of you who’ve seen the best of you, they’ve probably also seen the worst of you.

If they have it in them, ask them. I don’t know, can they text here or not? Ask them like, “Can you give me three words that best describe me, like the uniqueness of me and my best attributes? They can be a noun, a verb, or an adjective. It doesn’t matter.” Hopefully, everybody has at least one person, but if you have more, ask a couple who will share some words. The word generous is on my list from one of my very close friends who said that about me.

I was like, “I actually am generous.” It wasn’t a word that I came up with myself. I really encourage you to do this. Again, get out of your head about how you’re not living up to it. Think about how some people may have started getting abused when they were very young, or maybe started using things when they were very young. If that’s not the case, think about when you were a kid, how people would have described you when you were a kid, when you were playful.

Again, some of you may have had bad experiences growing up. You didn’t even have those experiences. Somewhere in there, when you’re a kid, before the world screwed you up, before the world screwed us all up, before you started getting told other things and other messages about who you are. There was something that how you express yourself. What did you love? What did you love to do when you were young?

What brought you joy? What were you easily great at? I don’t mean a skill. I just mean like, “I was easily great at making friends. I was easily great at encouraging sad people, and let’s get on the jungle gym and go do something.” It’ll take some time for reflection, but I would really encourage you to come up with those I am statements because they really do matter. What I encourage people is when you have them, and new ones may be added over time because you may think of something as you are on your growth path, so add them to the list.

When you have a decision to make about anything, make sure you look at those words. I literally look at them on my wall and I’m like, “Is this aligned with who I really am?” A big decision, not like am I going to get cream on my coffee, but like a big decision. Is this aligned with who I am, or does it not? Is this what somebody else wants? Is this somebody else pressuring me? I always go to question number one.

Question number two in this decision is, does it feel expansive or contractive when I’m about to say yes or no to? Does it make me feel like, “I feel alive. I feel like expansive.” Is it like, “Is this the job I’m going to take?” This is whatever the decision is. The third question is, “Am I making this decision out of love or fear?” It’s binary, and it’s one or the other. It’s related to that second one, but it’s a little bit different way to say it.

Am I making this out of fear, then I’m down here on that consciousness ladder, or am I making it out of abundance and love and trusting? I may not know how I’m going to pay my bills next month, but I feel like this is an opportunity, or I feel like I need to step away from something. Am I making this decision out of love or fear? I’d encourage you to go through that. That would be really important for you to then stay centered in the essence of who you truly are.

I want to open it up to questions. Does anybody have any questions for Martha?

First of all, Senator McSally, thank you for your time.

Call me Martha.

Spiritual Strength: How Faith Fueled A Military & Political Career

Thank you, Martha, for your time in the armed forces and your time in the Senate. Quickly, how do you think that your spiritual connection has benefited your career and maybe provided some insights?

I’m on a spiritual growth path for sure. I would say early on in my adult life, I didn’t really have a spiritual faith. I hit a point for myself of like a surrender moment, in exhaustion from trying to make myself feel whole just by myself. It’s been a journey ever since. It has grown and it has evolved, if that makes sense. It isn’t just this particular dogmatic belief per se, but it was at one point.

I would say just having that connection with God, the divine, whatever your beliefs are, but having that connection through thick and thin, whether I’m flying combat missions, whether I’m dealing with the loss of a loved one, or whether I’m dealing with my own pains and struggles. There is something when you have a bigger picture and a bigger belief, you don’t feel so alone. You feel you’re connected to something bigger.

You were created by something bigger, by someone who has your well-being at heart, who’s always there even when no one else is there. My journey has been one of feeling alone a lot in a lot of ways. I’ve been a pioneer. That’s been a lot of my lot in life. That deeper connection with my creator, with the divine, has brought me strength, conviction, and peace that surpasses any understanding through the highs and lows of all of life.

 

Sometimes I made a really big decision about whether I was going to decide to run for Congress. There’s a whole other crazy story where I was like, “I had retired. I was serving overseas. I retired from the Air Force, and I was serving as a professor. I was paragliding at lunch in the German Alps.” I was living a nice life, but I felt this calling inside me like I needed to do something to get in the arena and serve differently.

I didn’t want to do it. I just didn’t want to do it. I was resisting. It was a calling that I was resisting. Just having that relationship, literally, where there are times when I’m yelling at God. I don’t know, depending on what people’s upbringings are, they may feel like, “You cannot yell at God.” Read the Psalms. I mean, David was yelling at God all the time. It’s a relationship. If you’re feeling something, like guess what? It’s the creator.

God knows what you’re feeling. Why not express it? There have been times when I go out on runs, and I’m like throwing rocks out in the desert, just like screaming out to God, and it’s been so helpful to just release these neurologically helpful, energetically helpful, but then just like, “I got that.” “Did you get that out of your system?” “Yeah, I got it out of my system.” “Now let’s move on to the decision you needed to make.” I would not be where I am today without that spiritual connection. I wouldn’t have made it.

Thank you. Other questions?

I have more. Growing up in the Midwest and not knowing what I wanted to do with my life during Desert Storm, you were brought to my awareness. Because of your pioneering, which I’ve always thought, you’re the reason or one of the reasons I went into the military. Thank you.

What is your name?

Jennifer Hughes.

Jennifer, thank you for sharing that.

Thank you.

Thank you for serving.

I paved the way for a lot of us.

From Fighter Pilot To Peacemaker: Balancing Grit With Tenderness

I will confess that when I heard that you were a pioneer and ex-military, I was expecting an hour-long lecture on grit.

I thought I would have given that, like six-year-old me, my former self would have probably.

It would have bounced off of me, to be honest.

That’s just not how I was raised. That’s not how I imagine the world. Something that I’ve really appreciated about listening to you is the way that you balance grit with tenderness. How do you find that balance between toughness and resiliency and tenderness and softness?

I’ve grown into it. Let me just say that even like in my 30s and 40s, people used to joke that it was like, “There’s Martha number one or Martha number two showing up.” Martha number one was like the Colonel, the fighter pilot, like, “Let’s solve the problem.” Very much masculine energy. Not that I was I want to confuse what I’m saying there. Not that I was transing or anything. I was just like, it was just that we all have masculine and feminine energy in all of us.

I was definitely having to operate masculine dominant way, if that makes sense, like solve the problem. I’m really good at that. Someone is coming to talk to me about something, and I’m like, “Let’s solve the problem instead of being able to just sit and listen and be compassionate.” It’s like you’re bicep and tricep. I’ve overdid I had overdeveloped my bicep, and I needed to develop my tricep.

I had to come to a place where I could allow the feminine in me to, and again, feminine energy, I’m not talking about gender. Just the feminine parts of compassion and receiving to be able to fully be a part of me, because that energy got me abused when I was young. I think I shut it down because it was connected with that weakness, and weakness gets taken advantage of. It took me in my own growth to get to a space to be like I don’t have to be over-dominant.

I need to be who I am, but I need to allow the feminine, compassionate side of me to be able to grow and be present and develop. Those are also skills that you learn. It isn’t just an attitude that you have. I appreciate you pointing that out. It hasn’t been easy. I would say the last, since Martha 1.0 was 26 years in the military, left home at 18, 26 years.

Martha 2.0 was nine years of political combat, which was more frustrating than deploying to Afghanistan. I’m on Martha 3.0. Martha 3.0 is actually in the private sector, has given me even more space to be able to connect with my true essence and to grow so much more, like exponentially. The first 35 years, I felt like I was in a nonstop high cortisol, high sympathetic nervous system, you guys learning all that, like just high fight or flight all the time because literally people are trying to kill you.

There’s a reason for it. You literally had a job to do. It was very high stress. I think I found some tools to just stay as balanced as possible in those years, but I feel like my growth has really been exponential since I’ve been out of those two environments. Environments do matter. Thank you. I appreciate your observation of that.

Thanks for sharing your dog.

Everybody gets oxytocin.

Is there anything I missed?

In this room, everybody’s in a different place on their journey, too. Different ages. Some of you have tried other programs before. This may be the first time somebody’s just imagining there’s a diversity of experiences. Just prayerfully will hold space for you. You’ve already shown courage to show up here and now.

Keep showing the courage to build the habits, to make different decisions to make when you feel uncomfortable, to remove people from your life, and to graduate from the lesson. It’s what you do in the mundane that is going to allow you to thrive. When you look at other people who are thriving and they’re not struggling with any addiction, we can often be like, “It looks easy for them. It looks easy for Tim. It looks easy for me.”

It's what you do in the mundane that is going to allow you to thrive. Share on X

It’s the mundane things we do every single day, and we fuck it up often. We’re not, nobody’s perfect, but it’s about like how all of us are going to get thrown off center all the time. Nobody’s sitting in his end state all the time. It’s a matter of like, Viktor Frankl wrote the book, Man’s Search for Meaning, and he was in a Nazi concentration camp, and then he wrote this book, and he talks about creating a little bit of space between stimulus and response.

Just a little bit of space. My call sign in the military was wedge. It wasn’t for this reason, but I love that this is the wedge. Think about the wedge, just create a little bit of a wedge between outside stimulus and what we choose to say, do, or act. It’s all the tools you’re learning here that are going to give you that space. We often screw it up, and we react instead of respond. It’s a matter of how quickly you recognize it, you’re off center, what do you do to bring it back? You guys are not old enough to know weevils.

Weevils wobble, but they don’t fall out. We’re all weevils. We’re all doing this all day long. Start your morning up here to give you the best chance. As best as we can, have it be a little like that. This is what life looks like. Where it’s like, it doesn’t mean you have no effect, you don’t have any emotions, you’re not feeling things. You’re able to recognize, center, create the wedge, be like, “No, I’m bringing it back. No, I’m not going to take the bait. I’m going to choose something different.” That’s what mastery looks like as we’re doing the jujitsu of life in this crazy world that we’re living. You got this. I’m holding space for all of you.

Where can people learn more about you, connect with you?

I have a website. It’s MarthaMcSally.com. It’s geared towards keynote speaking, but you can get on my email list. There’s a transformation guide on there that you can download and get on my email list. Lately, I’m leading things in the health and wellness space, to be honest with you. I’ve just led a 21-day protein challenge. I’m leading a 21-day fitness challenge. I just realized that when people don’t feel well, they’re not making the best decisions in life.

I first tried to serve people at this higher spiritual level, these deeper issues like unpacking your shit, and not many people say they want that, but they do want to feel better. They want to lose some fat. They want to feel strong when they’re aging. I’ve been having a lot of fun lately just offering these different workshops and challenges for people so they can feel better in their bodies. If we don’t feel good in our bodies, then we don’t make great decisions for our lives.

I’m 59, I’m kicking ass, I’m thriving, and just trying to help as many people. I’m not going to be in this body for a long time. I’m not trying to make it eternal, but there are ways you can feel like you’re thriving, and it’s because of what you do with your body and what you take into your body, and I’m trying to help people with that. If you’re not interested in any of that and you’re on the email list, just ignore it. Every once in a while, I’ll send out something inspirational. I’m on social media too, but I don’t scroll on social media. It’s bad for your health.

Martha, thank you so much for being here. I appreciate you and Boomer, of course.

You want to do a final trick?

Do you guys like that?

Sit down, love. Let me take the leash off. It may be tough on the floor. It’s slippery. Ready? Touchdown. That was okay. That was a little lame, but you did it. Good job. I’ll stick around for a little while. I know what you guys are doing, but thanks for your time. Be blessed.

 

Important Links

• Martha McSally
• Martha McSally on LinkedIn
• Martha McSally on Facebook
• Martha McSally on Instagram
• Man’s Search for Meeting
• Power vs Force

 

About Martha McSally

Martha McSally is the first American woman to fly a fighter jet in combat and command a U.S. fighter squadron. After decades of military leadership, she now shares her journey of loss, trauma, and transformation — inspiring others to find courage, healing, and purpose from within.