Martha McSally

I once rolled in on a live firefight where one mistake could kill Americans. A special ops team was pinned down in a canyon in Afghanistan. Low on ammo. Low on water. Ambushed. My job in the A-10 was to deliver firepower close enough to save them without hitting them. That margin matters. When I arrived, the pilots before me were out of fuel and had to leave. Now it was just me, my wingman on his first combat mission, and a team on the ground depending on us. The ground controller had to build my situational awareness fast while under fire. We have the best technology in the world. But sometimes the simplest tool wins. How did he mark his position for me? A pocket mirror. Flashing sunlight into my cockpit. No laser designator. No high-tech marker. Just sunlight and ingenuity. Simple. Human. Effective. Leadership isn’t always about more complexity. Sometimes it’s about clarity. When you’re under pressure, you don’t need more noise. You need a signal. What’s the “pocket mirror” in your world right now? The simple tool you’re overlooking because it doesn’t look sophisticated enough? P.S. I hit the target along with my wingman on multiple passes. We were relieved by more A-10s, provided cover until dark, and they all got out alive. 🙏

This photo was taken on a day that changed my life. It just doesn’t look the way people expect change to look. The man at the podium was the Chief of Staff of the Air Force. That means he was the 4-star general in charge. He had testified to Congress, more than once, that he did not believe women should fly fighter jets. Said he’d rather pick a less qualified man for the cockpits. Not because we weren’t capable. Because he “just felt that way.”Standing next to him are three of us from the first group of women selected to transition into fighters. This press conference happened after Congress and the Secretary of Defense overruled him and changed the policy. He had two choices, resign or implement it. Until then, flying fighters as a woman wasn’t just discouraged. It was illegal. So yes, this was a historic moment. But look closely. We’re not smiling. Our arms are crossed. There’s tension in our bodies. That wasn’t an accident. It was on purpose. We had just been given an opportunity we earned, but had been denied for years. By people like him who didn’t believe in their hearts we belonged there. We got a lot of media training before the presser and were told to watch our body language. This was a live press conference, so my feisty self said “yeah, watch my body language now.” I knew I would get “debriefed” later, but it felt satisfying in the moment to not pretend this man believed what he was announcing. Progress doesn’t always feel victorious in the moment. Sometimes it feels heavy. Sometimes it feels defiant. Sometimes it looks like standing your ground in a room that never wanted you in it. I share this because leadership moments rarely look clean or celebratory while you’re in them. They often look uncomfortable. Awkward. Incomplete. But they still matter. And sometimes the most honest response to a “win” isn’t a smile. It’s resolve. What’s a moment in your life or career that didn’t look like a win at the time, but changed everything anyway?

I remember sitting there thinking, “The dream is dead.” After seven years of busting my butt, including at the Academy, Harvard, and pilot training, I somehow chose the one assignment no one wanted. It was assignment day. Everyone in my class was choosing the planes and bases that would shape their futures. When it was my turn, I stared at the list glowing on the screen. My first choice was gone. But I wanted to keep my dream of being a fighter pilot alive. In frustration, I wrote down: T-37 to Del Rio, Texas. An old, loud trainer jet. Teaching pedestrians how to be pilots. On any given day, your students are either puking on you or trying to kill you. Hot. Dusty. Middle of nowhere. When I said it out loud, the room actually gasped. Near the top of my class, and I picked that!? Even I couldn’t explain it. Driving there a few months later, rain pouring down, I pulled over on the side of the road and thought, “You’ve completely blown it.” But that “bad” assignment, the one I swore ended my dream, became the thing that made it possible. That old T-37 kept me in the game. It built my flight hours, my grit, and my reputation. Two years later, I got the call: “Are you still interested in being a fighter pilot? We are about to change the policy and identified seven women pilots who earned a fighter out of pilot training, but couldn’t pick it due to the policy prohibiting women from flying fighters.” Was I still interested? Yep. I sure was. I learned that day that sometimes the moment that feels like failure is just the first step toward the thing you were built to do. What’s your personal T-37 to Del Rio? The thing you swore was the end, but became your beginning? P.S. Del Rio ended up being a really great place to live, too.

Around mile 18 of the Hawaii Ironman Triathlon run, I remember thinking, “I don’t actually know if I can finish this.” Not dramatic. Just very matter-of-fact. My legs were shot. My knee in pain. My tank felt nearing empty. And I still had miles to go. And here’s what I didn’t do: I didn’t think about the finish line. I didn’t think about winning anything. I didn’t give myself some big motivational speech. That would’ve been overwhelming in that moment. I just picked something in front of me. A marker. A spot on the road. And thought, just get there. Then I did it again. And again. That was the whole strategy. Nothing fancy. Just… don’t quit in this moment. I’ve used that more times than I can count since then. Not in a race. In life. When something feels like too much, it usually is... if you’re looking at the whole thing. So I don’t. I shrink it. What’s right in front of me? Handle that. Then the next. That’s it. PS: This photo is from the 1993 Ironman World Championship in Hawaii. I won the women’s military division and placed 12th in my age group worldwide! But what I remember most is mile 18.

There’s a habit that kept me alive in combat… and most leaders skip it. Before every mission, I wasn’t just thinking about the plan. I was thinking about what could go wrong. What if I lose comms? What if something fails mid-flight? What if the weather or threat situation changes? You don’t wait until it happens. You walk through it ahead of time. Not to scare yourself. To remove the surprise. Because in those moments, you don’t have time to figure it out from scratch. You go back to what you’ve already thought through. And briefed up with your team. I see the same thing with leaders. The pressure doesn’t come from the situation. It comes from being caught off guard by it. A tough conversation. A decision with no clear answer. Something shifts, and now you’re reacting instead of leading. The leaders who handle those moments best? They’ve already spent time there. Not in real life. But mentally. They’ve asked: → What if this goes sideways? → What would I do? → What matters most if I have to decide quickly? That’s the habit. Not overthinking. Not worrying. Preparation. Because when things get real, you don’t rise to the moment. You fall back on what you’ve already worked through. How do you prepare for moments where the stakes are high and the answers aren’t clear?

There’s a moment in Apollo 13 when the math says the astronauts shouldn’t survive. They don’t have enough power to get home. Mission Control starts doing the calculations, and someone says: “You can’t run a vacuum cleaner on 12 amps.” In other words… they’re in trouble. What I love about that scene is what doesn’t happen next. Gene Kranz doesn’t panic. He doesn’t give some big inspirational speech. He basically says, “Alright… then we’re going to have to figure it out.” Find every engineer. Every switch. Every circuit. Start squeezing power out of that spacecraft however you can. That’s leadership in the real world. Not perfect conditions. Not perfect plans. Just smart people staying calm and solving the problem in front of them. Sometimes the math says it shouldn’t work. And you figure it out anyway.

I used to treat food like something I had to earn. Eat “clean” when I was disciplined. Feel bad when I wasn’t. Do more cardio to make up for it. And for a while, I thought that was working. But my energy kept dipping. I’d feel it in my focus. My patience. Even how I showed up in conversations. At some point I made a shift that felt backwards at the time. I started eating more. Cut back the endless cardio. Focused on lifting heavy weights. Actually paid attention to getting enough protein. Not only to look a certain way. To perform. And EVERYTHING changed. More steady energy. Clearer thinking. Better decisions. And building muscle. While dropping fat. (Dropped 10% body fat to be exact.) And recently hit a personal record on chest press. 3 sets of 10 at 45 lbs. Moving up to 50. It wasn’t about discipline. It was about fuel. I am now setting personal records in the gym at 60 and feeling more energy than I have in decades. If you’re leading, making decisions, carrying a lot, you can’t run on empty and expect to show up well. Be honest… are you under-fueling and calling it discipline? If so, what small change can you make today?

Some of the heaviest things you carry… no one else can see. It’s not your schedule. It’s not your workload. It’s the stuff running in the background. Old wounds. Old conversations. Old narratives you never fully let go of. You can still function with it. But it’s costing you more than you think. At some point, you have to decide… Are you going to keep carrying it? Or finally let it go?

Leaders love to tell me their pressure isn’t the same. I get it. On paper… it’s not. I’ve been in situations where the margin for error was basically zero. Where if I made the wrong call, people didn’t go home. You don’t get to pause and think it through ten different ways. You act. With what you have. In that moment. But I’ve also sat with leaders in very different rooms and watched the same thing happen. A decision they’ve been putting off. A conversation they don’t want to have. A situation where there’s no perfect answer… but they still have to choose. And you can see it. Their mind speeds up. They start jumping ahead. Trying to control every possible outcome. That feeling? It’s the same. Different environment. Same internal pressure. And that’s where leadership actually shows up. Not when things are easy. But in that moment, when you don’t have perfect clarity, and you still have to make the call. That’s what being unbreakable really is. Not the absence of pressure. Not having all the answers. It’s the ability to stay grounded and move forward anyway. Because whether it’s a cockpit or a conference room, at some point, it comes down to you. Where do you feel pressure showing up for you right now?

For most of my life, one phrase has made me successful: Push through. It got me through Air Force training. It got me through 325 combat hours. It got me through running for office and serving in Congress. When things got hard, the answer was simple. Push through. Don’t stop. Don’t complain. Don’t slow down. Just keep going. And for a long time… that worked. But eventually I noticed something. The same strength that helps you survive intense environments can quietly become armor. Armor that keeps you moving forward. But also armor that keeps you from listening. Listening to your body. Listening to your instincts. Listening to the signals that something inside you needs attention. For years, “push through” was my default. Until one day, I realized that pushing harder wasn’t solving the problem. It was disconnecting me from myself. That’s when I started learning a different skill. Lead yourself first. Not by grinding harder. But by slowing down long enough to ask better questions. What’s actually driving my reaction right now Fear? Pressure? Old patterns? Or something that genuinely needs my attention? Strength will always matter. But the longer I lead, the more I realize something else matters just as much: Self-awareness. Because pushing through everything might win battles. But learning when to pause… that’s what builds an unbreakable leader. Have you ever reached a point where pushing harder stopped being the answer?

Everyone’s got some level of trauma. Not everyone deals with it. Some of it’s obvious. Some of it… you barely think about anymore. But it shows up. In how you react. What you avoid. What sets you off faster than it should. You can be high-functioning. Successful. Leading at a high level. And still have something from way back… quietly running the show. Most people don’t unpack it. They just get better at managing around it. Until it starts costing them.

You’re not overwhelmed because there’s too much to do. You’re overwhelmed because you’re trying to handle all of it at once. I’ve been in situations where there were a hundred things that mattered. High stakes. No margin for error. A lot riding on every decision. If you try to process all of it at once… You’re done. That’s where people spiral. Your brain jumps ahead. How do I handle all of this? What if this goes wrong? What about that? Now you’re not operating. You’re reacting. What I learned flying is simple. You don’t solve everything. You focus on what’s in front of you right now. Not the entire mission. Not every possible outcome. Just the next input. Then the next. Because overwhelm doesn’t come from reality. It comes from trying to manage a future that hasn’t happened yet. The second you bring your focus back to the present, everything changes. Clarity comes back. Control comes back. Execution comes back. When things feel like too much, I ask one question: What actually needs my attention right now? And I start there. Where does your mind go when things get overwhelming… five steps ahead, or right in front of you? Be honest.