How Being Brave is our Access to Being Free with Melanie Curtis: An EOFire Classic from 2022

0:01Light that spark fire nation JLD here and welcome to entrepreneurs on fire brought to you by high level, the all-in-one sales and marketing platform. Today, we'll be breaking down how being brave is our access to being free. To drop these value bombs, I brought to Melanie Curtis and the EO Fire Studios. Melanie is a coach, speaker, author, and professional skydiver with over 11 ,000 jumps and 26 years in the sport. Melanie is a passionate entrepreneur and voice in personal development. And today, we'll talk about being brave, breaking down, cracking up, being free. Also, preparation is awesome, but it's not great when it seems like it's perfectionism and ends up keeping us from ever launching whatever it is and so much more.

0:42And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Melanie and our sponsors. Fire Nation, this is your year to get unstuck and to grow a successful business. Attend the world's highest rated business growth workshop taught personally by Clay Clark and now featuring football star Tim Tebow and President Trump's son Eric Trump at thrivetimeshow.com slash EOfire. Again, request life-changing tickets today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire. Melanie, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Yeah, what's up Fire Nation?

1:20Oh man, I'm stoked to be here. Yeah, what I'd say is do things that don't scale. and specifically as it relates to people. So as it relates to individual attention, personal care and connection, I think over time doing things that don't scale in the realm of relationship and connecting and showing up for people, in my experience, this builds into a power that we can't access any other way. I love that. It's something that I think is so overlooked when everybody's saying scale this, leverage that, it comes down to doing things that don't scale. I can remember back in 2012, 2013, I would literally call five of my listeners every single week just to ask them what they liked about the show, what they didn't like about the show, getting real feedback.

2:14People were like, what are you doing, dude? That doesn't scale. That's trading your time for money. That's not even trading your time for money because you're not getting paid for it. And I said, what I get back from this though is going to be priceless and will allow me in the future to create amazing things that potentially could scale and leverage and all these great things. So I love that phrase. Definitely. And we're talking today, Fire Nation, about how being brave is our access to being free. And if there's one thing that I know, Fire Nation, you want, it's freedom. Now, in the introduction, I did talk about your 11 ,000 jumps over 26 years.

2:48So let's talk about how skydiving has actually impacted your relationship with fear? Yeah, I mean, the short answer is it completely transformed it. My story is basically I started skydiving when I was 18 years old. I'm from an aviation family. My dad is a pilot. We literally have an airport at my house. I mean, not some giant airport, but it's a house at a dead end road with a grass strip. And my dad flew single engine aircraft my whole life. And basically, he and his best friend started a drop zone at our house. So I grew up watching skydivers being exposed to skydiving at a really young age.

3:27And I was definitely in the camp of people who thinks, quote, there's no way I could jump out of a perfectly good airplane, right? You've heard that before. Almost everyone says that. I mean, everyone, but a lot of people say that. I hear it all the time. What I can test is missing from the end of that phrase is there's no way I could jump out of a perfectly good airplane and live, you know, or like and not get really hurt, some catastrophic outcome. You know what I mean? Our brain is naturally designed to be finding threats, to be negatively biased. And so that's normal for people to think that I just want to acknowledge and validate that that's normal.

4:13And it's actually really healthy and good. And so to really shorten the story, I could say a lot about the physiological experience of fear and how we get masterful at that. But the mindset thing, when I, so when I landed from my first jump and I lived, you know, when I was not dead, it was like my brain was fundamentally altered. I joke and I say it's sort of like the fembots in Austin Powers, how it's like your brain goes and it just kind of blows up. But I didn't even know at the time that this was happening because I was, you know, a young person. I had very little sort of self-awareness. So only over time and reflection did I really come to get what the what the impact actually was.

5:02Now, I'm not suggesting this is hashtag life coach. Oh, you can do anything. I'm really not a fan of platitudes in general at all. But what it was is when I feel fear, I like when fear is trying to stop me from doing something, I have to at least question whether it's right or not. You know, I have to at least question what fear is telling me I can't do. And so that's like such a huge thing over the iterative process or the iterative experience over time and experience through my skydiving, my entrepreneurship, my creativity, writing all the things that I've done. It's super, super clear. The the if I had to put it into a sentence, it would be we are so much more capable than we ever currently think we are.

5:55You know what I mean? So you might be thinking, oh, I can't jump out of an airplane or I can't write a book or I can't start a business or I can't be in this relationship or whatever. But we're so, so, so often just wrong. As a eight-year officer in the U.S. Army, there's a lot of things that I learned over that time frame. And one thing that I didn't really understand when we first started was they would have us do all these different exercises. Like one would be, you know, rappelling from a tower, doing a zip line. And these things were kind of scary and they were scary for a lot of people and they were terrifying for some.

6:29And I was wondering what exactly was the reason they're having us do this. And of course, over time, it came out that, you know, this was us make that this was helping us understand that number one, that yes, fear is going to happen. And yes, this is an emotion that we have, but a, we can control it. B, it can be easier to be controlled over time with exposure and see, you know, once we realize that we can accomplish something that we were prior to too fearful of the confidence that I imbues and the individual. And then of course, in the team around, cause a lot of these things that we're doing in the army were team building exercises.

7:06It was magnificent. Like it was absolutely spectacular. And you're a long time skydiving coach. You're also a long time life coach. So let's talk about some of the lessons that you learned to finding success and how you pass them along to your clients, to your students, to your audience? Oh, gosh, there's a million, there's a million things I could say to that. But let me give Fire Nation a few. First, I would say, be on a growth path, you know, like having a growth mindset and one of valuing learning and growth over specific exacting outcomes is super critical. In my experience, I like to think I mean, I really don't think failure even exists.

7:51I really don't. I think everything is for me. That's one of my core tenants in my life is that I believe the universe has my back and that everything is for me. And as a result, sort of how that translates into boots on the ground action entrepreneurship is fail. It's not a failure. It's just learning and growth opportunities. So that's the first thing that I would say. Secondly, I would say this. Gosh, I love this one. But fun and excellence are not mutually exclusive. And not only are they not mutually exclusive, I can test that fun, lightness, levity, hilarity, comedy, whatever, however you want to describe it, actually helps to magnify our progress and results.

8:36So like this is something I've seen so many times in skydiving coaching, but also in life coaching work, where our commitment to our biggest, like most serious goal. So like that commitment to our mission, that's a given, you know, that's a constant that is not changing, we are committed to that goal, that end that direction, that mission. And so when we allow for just having some laughs and just being a little bit lighter, not taking ourselves so seriously, it makes the rigorous part of the long-term goal work and the long road of entrepreneurship actually sustainable. And that's the last thing I would talk about is the rigor of the path.

9:21And how I like to describe it is we really have to be brave enough to look into our own darkest corners. So like we have to be brave enough to look directly at and lean into the things that we fear the most. So the things that we most want to avoid, right? The things that we say, oh no, that's not for me. You're certain that's not for you. So God, I know it sounds cliche to like hashtag do the things that you fear, but literally, seriously, these areas, the places that we want to avoid, the things that we really are afraid of, the things that we really don't think we can do, almost always those are the areas where people's biggest breakthroughs are found.

10:08So I really invite people to figure out how they can do that. And before I go on to how someone could do that, I just want to also acknowledge if we're talking about doing the things that we're afraid of and doing the things that we really want to avoid, that is scary. Like, I mean, duh, but it is a really scary thing to do that. And so how we can get into that work, and this is why professionals exist, you know, to help us feel supported in those times when we need that help to be brave. And this is why I champion so much for people to build a support team. So whether it's they hire a therapist, or whether they hire a coach or, you know, whether they do different kinds of healing modalities, whether they join a mastermind, whether they listen to Entrepreneurs on Fire and feel a part of this community, it could be any number of things.

11:03But it's really important to have that support while we're trying to do this. And it's not even that we'll end up doing everything that we're afraid of or we'll change our minds about everything or even that it's going to work. You know, a lot of stuff's not going to work and it's going to be really messy. But if we don't go there to really open our minds, it is virtually guaranteed that we will stay at our current levels of impact, influence, income, depth of relationship, like whatever result you're looking for. It's almost virtually guaranteed to stay there if we don't do this work. Do the thing you fear.

11:43I love that quote. In fact, it reminds me of a quote that's attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson. maybe it's somebody else. I think maybe Mark Twain got attributed to this as well. But the full quote is, do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain. And I just like how that kind of buttons it up really nicely. And it's just kind of came to my mind when you said those words. And Fire Nation, we're gonna be talking about a lot of things, staying the course. We're gonna talk about, you know, how to be brave in this world and so much more when we get back from thanking our sponsors. You've got AI helping you write emails and name your dog.

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14:04Find out how much at airbnb.com slash host. So Melanie, we're back and it was our mutual friend, Dori Clark, who's been on Entrepreneurs on Fire many times. She connected us and she wrote a book, The Long Game. It's a concept that I believe super strongly and I actually had her on this podcast to talk about that. and I know you believe it as well. And we even talked about it a little bit at the beginning, which is do things that don't scale. That's in a way playing the long game because when you're doing those things that don't scale, you're building this foundation playing the long game. So what motivates you to stay the course?

14:41Oh yeah, and hey, I love it. Dori, heck yes. Love the shout out, perfect. She's so awesome. Yeah, what motivates me to stay the course? Undeniably, my core values, period, the end. It's super, super easy to say that. It shows up lots of different ways in my experience, but I believe deeply in connection and contribution. I believe deeply in connection as contribution, courage as contribution. One of the people that I think of is Elizabeth Gilbert. For people who don't know her, she's a writer. She's amazing. She's one of my key mentors as a writer. But basically, I read her book, Eat, Pray, Love in 2007.

15:29And God, I just felt I felt so seen and so supported and not alone in the emotional challenges that I was having at the time. And I was like profoundly supported by her being willing to be a voice in the way that she was by her being bravely self-expressed. And so that she was the model for me to then take this on and go, whoa, I was so benefited by her courageous self-expression that I took that on and was like, okay, I believe this. courageous self-expression is an avenue to our highest contribution to others, ourselves, and the world. So it's not even about the outcome per se, but it's about being in action, being in the proverbial arena, right?

16:23That's the actual victory. So it's not about the outcome, that the being in action at all is how I lead, is how I influence, is how I impact. Now, as for evidence, gosh, there's a lot of it. It's my entire career. You mentioned it about, you know, I mentioned it in doing things that don't scale for sure. So skydiving, for example, the way that I engaged skydiving years ago looks really different than the way that I engage it now. So, for example, my high level competition year. So I competed in skydiving for a long time. And that part of my career sort of gave way into this, now I'm a known name in skydiving and I'm being invited around the world to coach and connect with people and show up at events as a headlining professional skydiver and help them, again, through fear, learn how to fly, learn how to jump out of certain aircraft, manage the social scene of skydiving.

17:22and that then gave way to what I'm doing now which is basically I mean gosh it's a really unbelievable opportunity but I'm the executive director newly of a non-profit called the Women's Skydiving Network that is funding a team that I co-founded called Highlight Pro Skydiving Team which is using skydiving as a vehicle to amplify messages in the media that are promoting equality and women's empowerment. Now, how that relates to the long game is that the only reason that current elevated opportunity came my way is because I persisted in the sport to learn and connect and do so much over time. I mean, I can give you more examples if you want.

18:08But yeah, my book, gosh, my book, let me tell you about my book, I guess, How to Fly Life Lessons from a Professional's Guide Ever, now in print and on Audible.

18:20um but that's a really good short story where back in the day there was a new skydiving magazine that started and I I recognized it as an aligned fit with my voice as a place where I could most likely write and not be edited but actually be encouraged into my authentic voice because I used to write for other skydiving publications but they was they would always edit my voice and it was a problem. Even back then, I knew this is not going to work. It needs to be me. It needs to be my voice. Anyway, I pitched this magazine before I had even completed my life coaching training. I'm like clickety-clack on my computer.

19:04Hey, what do you think about a skydiving life coaching column? Just totally nervous, afraid to send the email, afraid they would say no, and also afraid that they would say yes. You know, like if they said yes, I'd have to then deliver on actually writing this column. You know, like, oh God. But of course it turned into, actually it turned into one of the things I'm most proud of in my whole career, which is I never missed a single issue in 11 years writing for that magazine. And that became my book, How to Fly. This is pretty fascinating stuff, Fire Nation, when you really walk through and unpack everything that Melanie just shared.

19:46And I kind of want to go all the way back to the beginning because I was actually jotting down some notes there when you were talking about Eat, Pray, Love because that hit me at a pretty crazy time in my life back in 2007. Even though back then I was actually in my mid-20s, obviously male, I picked up that book, I read it. I was dealing with some PTSD and some depression during law school, and literally that book is what I point to that made me or that gave me is a better way of putting it, the courage and the bravery to drop out of law school. And I kid you not, went online and found two other individuals that had already planned an India trip.

20:26And I jumped on that trip. I had never met them before. And for four months, we backpacked the entire country of India. And it was all inspired by that book, number one, again, to drop out of law school, which I was miserable in. but number two the whole indie experience which was so formative for me in so many different ways so I love that you brought that up and that happened to me I literally remember walking down the street in Bristol Rhode Island which is where my law school was and in a bookstore it was in the window and I just I don't know why I was drawn to it and I literally walked in grabbed the book out of the out of the window like read the back and was like I'm gonna read this so just wanted to share that it's pretty crazy I love that I'm like over here just yeah it's so much.

21:10Yeah. So jumping out of an airplane, I mean, that's one thing. But what are some other ways to be brave that you could share with our audience? Yeah, yeah. I think this question is really important, at least when talking to me, because, you know, I at least I think skydiving is really unrelatable directly, because not that many people do it, but feeling afraid and needing to be brave and how, you know, however, we might need to do that. That's something that we all experience. So I would encourage people to do their best to interrupt their autopilot. You know, like we all get into our routines, into our grooves, and I don't know, we feel like we don't have time or we just never even think about it.

21:55We don't even think about intentionally reflecting on what values, what ideas, or what fears are driving our choices, are driving our actions. And so not doing that, not intentionally reflecting and going, what direction really am I going in? Why am I going in this direction? Not doing that is really dangerous. It's dangerous because this autopilot just sort of going with the flow and there's lots of different ways we can talk about that because going with the flow in some ways is a really good thing. But when it comes in this form of just autopilot, we can just blindly use up years of our lives in our work, in our relationships, in our own growth or whatever.

22:42And it can have us really end up in regret and just going, what did I do with my life? And that's a really upsetting place to be when we think about, oh, man, I've I lost opportunities for love or connection or or creativity or whatever it is we might want to do. And so the question then not to leave everyone depressed. But so then the question I would I would have you guys ask is, OK, what great what do we do to interrupt this autopilot? it. So to that, I would say we need to first find the places where we each are uniquely blocked. Like what are we each uniquely afraid of? We sort of mentioned that.

23:31But then we can ask ourselves more specifically how we can be brave because I can go off and say a bunch of generic things, which they'll probably be useful, but we want it to be ideally the most relevant for you as a person. So that's why this reflection is really key. And that's how we're going to access the power for us uniquely. Like that's what essentially what we do in life coaching work. So I mean, gosh, so some general examples, if you're disconnected in your relationships, you can look for ways to be more vulnerable. I would recommend everybody read everything and listen to everything by Brene Brown.

24:07She's phenomenal. She's a shame and vulnerability researcher, and I highly, highly recommend her work. But you can experiment for yourself on how and where to be more vulnerable, certainly with it in mind as to what the relationship is that you are engaging in because you want to bring a level of appropriate vulnerability. But the idea of experimentation, that helps us stay detached from the outcome of how maybe that conversation or sharing might go. So I don't know if that makes sense, but that's one way we can be brave in a more general sense that's usually applicable to most people. The entrepreneurial example I would give is, man, I love this one.

24:54We might be in the stage of preparation, right? Where we're preparing our class or our product or we're writing our book, We're not sure it's ready. Preparation is awesome, but it's not great when preparation morphs into perfectionism that ends up keeping us from ever launching whatever thing it is. So one of my favorite quotes in entrepreneurship at all, which I swear I would bet money I actually got this from EO Fire back in the day. I swear, I swear. I don't know what, I have no idea what episode, but, and the quote is, if you're not embarrassed by your first launch, you waited too long. Yes.

25:32That is a Reid Hoffman quote that I have said on this show countless times. Oh, it's so good, man. I think back to my first branding and logos and oh my God, it's so bad. But then you just watch people literally not do anything because they think it's bad. And then they just sit there in this paralysis and nothing is done. Exactly. And if you don't do it. So yeah, okay, fine. I have some cringeworthy old logos out there. Fine. but I got critical education that you can only get from that experience. So that's the key. And there's another thing I like to share with people as well that I think is pretty important is that I'm always like, listen, I'm not trying to be mean but who do you think is listening to your podcast when you first launched it?

26:16Who do you think is reading your blog when you first launched it? I'm not trying to be mean to you and I tell this to individuals because I'm like, nobody listened to my podcast or read my blog when I launched. So stop thinking that as soon as like you flip this light switch that the master's going to be like, finally, thank goodness, this individual just did this thing. And I'm going to go and read everything that they do and listen to everything that they do and, you know, judge all of their logos and their content and this and that. I'm like, you're literally going to be speaking to a empty room and that's okay.

26:45So just relax, launch it, and then just figure it out along the way. But Melanie, back to you, girl. I love it though. I love it. So true. We have a lot of things that we could talk about when it comes to being brave, why don't you wrap this part up and then give us the one key takeaway that you really want to make sure Fire Nation walks away with from our chat today. So the tagline on my website, and it's not about my website, but it's a tagline for a reason. It reads, be brave, break down, crack up, be free. Now, why I chose that is, and it seems almost kind of long. Like I could have just been like, be brave, be free.

27:26But it for me, it didn't, it felt too platitude, too much of a platitude, where I'm like, I want people to really access what what it is, what is this path. And so the, the reason it says that is our goal is to be free. And you say this all the time, right, Fire Nation, what we we want to be free. It's a huge reason why we want to be in business for ourselves. Right? Yeah. So being brave is the way to get there. One of the most important ways we can be brave, and we sort of mentioned this, is to break down, to break down ourselves, to really challenge our thinking, to really allow our fears close enough to us so that we can actually work with them.