December 23, 2025 • 59 mins
After making history as the Navy’s first Black female helicopter pilot, Dr. Kamin Samuel went from thriving to surviving when she transitioned out of the military.
Plagued by financial troubles after her business went bankrupt, Samuel put her faith and military discipline into action to overcome the suicidal thoughts that crept in.
Now she helps others identify their character strengths, is a best-selling author and documentary filmmaker.
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(00:00):
We're back alphas. We're coming in hot with
inspiring guests, witty banter and colorful commentary for
today's veterans and military community.
This is the Tal Podcast. Hi there, Alphas.
During the holiday season, the Tal Podcast team is taking a
break. Need a break?
(00:21):
But while we're gone, we do havea little bonus content for you.
So we've looked back at all the things we've done during Season
6 and we've come up with a list of our our top six most
impactful guests from 2025. And that was not easy.
It really was difficult there. Were so many great guests, but
we'll be releasing those interviews this week.
So if you haven't already subscribed to Tango Philima on
(00:43):
Spotify, Apple Podcast, YouTube,or you know, wherever you get
your podcast, don't miss our countdown.
We've got we've got you covered.Back in February, we talked to
Doctor Kameen Samuel, who was the Navy's first African
American female helicopter pilot.
Total badass. We talked to her about our
historic military career, the challenges she faced during her
(01:04):
transition from military to civilian life, the the
documentary she took part in Courage to Thrive, and her
mentorship with other veterans. Do you guys remember your
strengths that we did with your viacharacter.org survey?
Mine was all physical. I'm just pretty, I think it was.
Yeah, you're just a pretty face.I'm just pretty that's it.
(01:28):
Empty. Thanks for podcasting.
No, honestly, though, I do. And, you know, it's funny
because I've thought about aboutthat, I've thought about that.
We did an, another group exercise with, with, you know,
America's Vet Dogs development team.
(01:48):
And it's funny, 'cause we went into it and I felt like I
already knew a lot of these things.
We'd already sort of explored that.
And, you know, so we really sortof dove into sincerity and why
that seems to work for me that Itend to build off of at least
being able to stop everything I'm doing and pull myself out of
a situation and be vulnerable in, in a moment when it calls
for it. And, and, and you know, it's
(02:09):
interesting to know that about yourself because a lot of times
we just sort of feel our way through life.
But to sit down and label it is I think it's a really cool thing
to do every once in a while. Yeah, Adam, is there a word that
best describes your character? That's a loaded you.
Know what Apache pilot. No, I mean, honestly, I've said
(02:31):
this before, but I think I thinkmy greatest, you know, strength
is, is love being able to both, you know, give and and receive
it from a place of yeah, you know, compassion, which, you
know, as an attack helicopter pilot can be a corny thing to
say that, you know, you're superpowerless.
Love, we're supposed to fire missiles, not love rockets.
But you know. Just call me Cupid.
(02:53):
You know, Adam, I've been on thereceiving end of your Love
Rocket texts. And.
They hit, they hit my heart in the right place and I I
appreciate that about you. It's it's a cherished character,
like for you, my friend. Maybe we need more loving,
loving leaders and the world will be a little bit better
place like like this interview. And I think one of the things
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that I always, you know, love iswhen there's somebody that comes
into the fold that has that unique thread that ties into
your experiences as well. And so just getting the chance
to talk about some of those kindof early flight experiences and
then how she parlayed that kind of mindset into the work that
(03:36):
she does, which is, you know, kind of the path.
You know, I'm always that 20 year old kid learning to fly the
helicopter. And I always take those
processes and try and, you know,apply them to the rest of the
world. So it's really cool to see a
fellow aviator and all the incredible things that she's
done as a first and a leader anda pioneer in, in so many
respects. Yeah, and, and somebody that
(03:57):
shows up and and talks about us too, you know, they're not just
there to drop their own knowledge.
They want to leave us with something.
And I think that's really incredible.
That's a special interview. Yeah, Alpha.
Stick around after the break when we'll be back with our
interview with Doctor Kameen Samuel from Episode 249,
Selfless Service. The American Legion celebrates
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all who contribute to something larger than themselves.
And inspires others to serve andstrengthen America.
We are veterans strengthening America.
We are the American Legion. All right.
(04:42):
Today we're joined by Doctor Kameen.
Samuel Kameen, welcome to the Tango Off Alima podcast.
Well, thank you so much for having me.
It's such an honor to be here with the three of you.
Oh man, wait. Wait until we get into the show.
I don't think everybody's sayingthat too long.
She said with regret. Kameen, Oh my gosh.
Welcome to the show. And first and foremost, thank
(05:03):
you for your service. I really like to start out with
the guests to get the back story, the origin story, if you
will. So do me a favor, tell me a
little bit about where you're from.
What brought you to the Navy of all branches?
Why helicopters, the decision totransition out of the service,
some of the challenges during your transition?
(05:25):
What led you to this very momentto be on this podcast?
Why now? OK, that's a that's.
A It's a life long story tellingyour life.
Story. Right now, everything but like,
in fact. From the beginning of time and
thank you all. Thank you all for your service
and everything that you've done and everything that you are
(05:45):
doing really for service memberstoday.
I kind of wish that you had beenaround.
I'm I'm, I'm a bit older than you all are.
So I kind of wish you had been around when I came out because I
really struggled when I came outof the service.
So kind of backing it up. I grew up mostly on the East
Coast in Maryland. And my older brother was NROTC.
(06:08):
And, and so he came home with his gear and he's seven years
older than I am. So I would sneak into his room
and put his cover on and, and salute and, and, you know, put
his, his sword on. And so it was just kind of got
in me at, you know, as a young tween and to teen.
(06:29):
And when I was in college, I actually went to college to be a
doctor and had some challenges focusing in college.
And so I had to switch majors and, and it was second, it was
first semester senior year when my mom was like, Hey, you know,
what are you going to do with your life?
Because she's very driven. And, and I said, well, I'm
(06:51):
thinking about going into the Navy.
And so my mom was a prominent high school principal.
And so her thing is like, you know, let's get him into action.
So she got me an an opportunity to meet with a Navy captain and
she took me to lunch and talked to me about the Navy.
(07:12):
And she's like, so do you want to take this test we have when
we go back? And so I took the test and
failed miserably. And so she was going to put me
through boot camp and, and I waslike, I don't know about that.
Fast forward a couple of months,the recruiters were on campus.
They were like, you know, did you study for the test?
(07:34):
And I'm like, you could study. I'm like, so got the ASVAB
course and studied and must havedone well enough that they came
in and said, Hey, what about aviation?
And it's like, I don't know. Do I have to study?
I took the test. I must have done well enough.
They offered it to me. I'm like, what does that entail?
(07:55):
And they're like, you have to run a mile half a day and then
you have to swim a mile a day. And I was not an athlete by any
stretch of the imagination. So I tried it for a couple weeks
and said, no, let me go supply corps because I really wanted to
be in business. And then there was a moment a
few months later on my senior trip where I was walking down
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the beach in Myrtle Beach, SC, and formation of Marine
helicopters flew overhead. And I was like really good.
And I called my recruiter. They said, well, you know, I
just what are the chances of switching my package?
They called me back 20 minutes later.
You said your package is switched, your flight physical
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is this date, your report date is this date and you're going to
Pensacola. And I was like, no, no, no, no,
no, wait. I'm talking to my parents about
this like, and so that was really my entrance into it, into
getting into the Navy and and going down to to be in aviation
officer candidate school. So it went from What would it be
(09:00):
to switch it to I wanna switch accidentally.
Yes. Well, that was a happy accident,
I guess. It was a happy, painful
accident. It wasn't something that I ever
thought of. And and Adam, I don't know if
you had always wanted to be a pilot, but I hadn't.
And so I'm getting my Commissionagain, not an athlete.
(09:22):
And everything is running, right?
So everything is running like I was.
Yeah. Like, why do I have to run to
the gym? It doesn't make sense that I
have to run to the gym, to the course.
And so I struggled in in that realm.
And it was just this opportunityfor me to kind of really just be
led and be willing. The one decision I always say
(09:44):
that I made that was a good decision was I wouldn't quit.
And so they could, they could send me home.
I was hoping they'd send me home, but as long as I didn't
quit, I was I was fine. And so that really was the
beginning of my career. Yeah, that's kind of like a
chosen skill, though. And I tell people that there's
(10:06):
something to be said for for being teachable but stubborn,
you know? And, and I think that, you know,
you being who you are, you're obviously a, a doer.
You may not have felt that way naturally, but there's a certain
level of discipline that may have been instilled from your
mom that may have been somethingthat just sort of woke up in
you. The military did a little bit of
(10:26):
that for me, But your story is an inspiration to everybody.
And, and I'm curious if you, I mean, obviously you didn't set
out to make history. You didn't set out to do that,
but man, what a beautiful accident, you know?
And, and so was there a point when you realized that there are
people out there that that watchthe trajectory of your life and
your career and go, wow, I can do this.
(10:47):
I, I as a young, as a young ladyor as a young, you know, black
lady or, or whatever to, to lookup and say, wow, there's
somebody really incredible that,that has shown me a path
forward. It's such a good question
because I think, you know, I've when, when I went through my
career, I had a great career. I was really blessed to be the
(11:10):
first right? I think one of the, the reasons
I say that is because nobody hadany prejudices.
Like they had no preconceived notions about whether I would be
good or bad because I didn't fita particular category.
And so, you know, I had some challenges, of course, but the
(11:32):
ability for me to just kind of just, I like to say I just kept
my head down. Like I just kind of, one of the
things that they started to do was kind of put me out in the
public and have me, you know, speak and show up at a lot of
public things. I did not want that at all
because it was giving me too much attention.
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And what if I failed? What if I crashed?
What if I made a mistake? And so I just kind of went to a
kind of a different, like I wasn't one of those.
I wish I could say that I was one of those who was all about
lifting everybody up. I was really just trying to
like, please don't get in trouble.
That was all. Like I would just kind of
blinders on, like just do great because I knew that how I went
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through my career would dictate everybody behind me.
Are you more worried about how that was going to reflect for
other women or women of color oreverything women in the Navy,
everybody like was that? Women, women of color, black,
everything. And so everybody, you know, it's
like you don't realize how much pressure there is.
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I mean, there's enough pressure learning how to fly, but then to
do it well and then to be in thepublic and to do speaking
engagements. So I really kind of just, I did
a few speaking engagements when I first got winged, but then I
really just went to like, let mebe excellent.
Let me be the best I can so thatfrom this point forward, any
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female behind me, especially black female behind me had this
up into that. And they would expect that, you
know, because one of the, one ofthe greatest accomplishments, I
will say of my career was I alsograduated #1 in flight school
and primarily so I could go to San Diego.
Let's just be clear. I wanted I wanted a tour in San
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Diego. Whatever it takes you.
Got to have goals. I wanted that was my number one
reason and and they said if you are #1 you get the command of
your choice. I got Norfolk all right.
So that's the games that. Classic military.
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But that also, I knew that any female behind me, they would
have to sit into that accomplishment.
And they're looking for an excuse to say women can't do
this, or some idiot somewhere tobe like somebody who's black
can't do this. Can't.
Do this. They're looking for an excuse
and I can't imagine that pressure.
(14:05):
Good on you for stepping up and like you said, never folding.
And there's something to be saidfor keeping your head down and
muscling through you. You played to your strengths.
You're not somebody that was comfortable and wanted to get in
front of people and travel. The entire US being like, hello,
you know, you wanted to do your job.
You were doing it for the right reasons and hey.
Yeah, I wonder how much too, Doc.
(14:27):
How much of the inner monologue was more pressure than the
actual external pressures you were feeling too?
Like how much of that was you killing yourself over it as
well? I would, I would say a lot of
that, right? And I also grew up in a family,
like I said, where my mom was a principal and one of the top, if
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not the top county in the US, right?
And so we were taught to stay ina box.
Like, you know, one of the things we would hear when we
leave, like don't embarrass us. Like there was like a very
clear, like we had to be excellent at everything we did.
And so that was a part of that, making sure that I stayed within
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those parameters and and and that was on me.
So it was, it definitely was there, Stacey.
Well, Camille and I just say, I have so much respect for you and
just listening to your journey and the way that you had to
approach flight school as opposed to the way that in my
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mindset and, and how you know, my experiences to that point and
also being, you know who I am. And also, you know, years later,
off the, off the backs of peoplelike you that blazed the, the,
you know, the, the pathway in the sky for us, so to speak.
It's, it's remarkable because, you know, I, it's, it couldn't
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be more true that flight school in and of itself is one of the
greatest things that you'll evertake on in your life.
To be able to understand everything.
It goes in to fly that aircraft,to understand the airspace, the
aerodynamics, the systems limitations, emergency
procedures that could kill you. You know, the, the pressure is
the never ending test, the neverending setting, the aerodynamics
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of flight, the weather, aircraftavoidance.
Oh yeah, and you also have a tactical mission, you know, for
the military to deploy as well, or in my case, you know, the
Apache. Then you have to learn the
Ballistics and the weapons and the missiles and then, Oh yeah,
accurately and safely deploy them for the effects.
And so it's, it's quite significant to add the layer of
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public display, the 1st. And yeah, of course, you know,
it's going to be a battle insideyour mind for those things, but
also those external pressures exist.
And I have so much respect for you for being the first to be
able to go through that and to really just say, you know what?
I know that if I take care and Ibring my best and I do my best,
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that the results will permeate through that as represented by
your, you know, first in class. So just really inspired by that.
And I also relate to no, I didn't always want to be a pilot
either. Mine was kind of the trajectory
of September 11th senior year high school into take action
ROTC, find a scholarship into what am I going to do in this,
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you know, big Army and be fortunate enough to get aviation
and go in there. And mindset is so important
because my mindset was like, look, people have been doing
this for years. Army's pretty good at training
people. I'm a relatively smart ish guy.
If I just show up and do what I need to do, I'm confident that
I'll be able to go forward. But again, I didn't have to be a
representation for my whole raceand in doing that, so I'm going
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to get to a question. Sorry.
It just that was very meaningfulto me.
And I, well, and I thank you because I, I also, I wanted to
fly the Apache, right, because we were with the Marines at one
point in Sigonella and we were going to try to land, they were
going to try to land some of their helicopters with our
helicopters and let us fly. But that didn't work.
So I honor and acknowledge you as well.
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The first time, again, I have tosay it is absolutely
overwhelming and intimidating. But you know, bite by bite, you
take it on. So mine's kind of a helicopter
ask a question. So I know the first hand the
challenge and and demands of flying as I know that that you
do both technically and mentally.
But when you transition out of the Navy and face the struggles
(18:32):
that you began to take on in thecivilian life, how did you
essentially bring your parallelsfrom flying?
Because it doesn't want, I mean,you're flying a helicopter,
you're not flying a helicopter. People think, what are the
parallels, right? There's actually a lot in the
processes in the learning that takes place for you to become
proficient in that. So how did you apply some of
those fundamentals of flight principles, so to speak, into
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how you transition and how you succeed today?
Well, I didn't to begin with. So I decided I wanted to, as I
mentioned, I wanted to go into business, I wanted to learn
business skills. And so I had a business for
myself. And when I left the military, I
was expecting a big check. And so that didn't come through.
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So when I went to dispersing to get that check that wasn't there
and I was already over leveragedon the business I had, I was in
and, and it wasn't the business itself's fault.
It was just that I, I had kind of over invested and that safety
net that I thought was going to be there wasn't there.
And I just remember saying out loud like, if I don't have this
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check, I'm going to have to filebankruptcy.
And I don't remember thinking that before that moment, but
Fast forward 14 months of rehearsing that in my mind, I'm
going to have to file bankruptcy.
If I don't do this, I'm going tohave to file bankruptcy.
If I don't, if I don't sell, if I don't move my business, I
don't do something, I'm going tohave to file bankruptcy.
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And 14 months later, I had to file within about six months,
five months, I had, you know, the foreclosure of two homes.
And in a three day period, I gotthat notice for the the
foreclosures of bankruptcy and an IRS audit.
And I literally thought I was going to die, Like I thought my,
(20:27):
my breath left my body. And then I remember that weekend
I was like wandering the house and I found myself in the
kitchen looking at the knives and thinking I could just end it
like I, I like I could just end it right now.
And the only thing there are a couple of things that stopped
me. One my faith.
The other thing that stopped me was not leaving my parents with
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my mess. So I think that's also from the
military, like you take care of your own mess, like, you know.
And so I had to in that moment have to choose a, the
discipline, I think from my military background of OK, I'm
going to have to put again, blinders on.
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I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to survive this.
I'm going to have to choose to survive this, but I'm also have
going to have to choose to not contemplate suicide.
Again, doesn't mean that it's not going to come in or the
thoughts not going to come in. But I can't ruminate about it
because I could see that my rumination over the the
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bankruptcy and the fear of it kept me paralyzed.
And so that paralyzing just meant that I wasn't able to take
the actions that I needed to take.
And so I just would not entertain the thought of not
being here. And so from that point forward
began that journey of, OK, where's the, I guess the best
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word, the grit right from flyingthe, the, you know, I was able
to accomplish a lot in my military career and use the
discipline to accomplish those things to then say, OK, well,
what is it that you want to create?
What do you love to do RE? You know, like I would go and
spend back in the day, there wasbookstores.
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So I'd go to the bookstores and I'd sit and I'd pull all the
books off because I couldn't afford anything.
And I would take notes and, and anybody asked me, like, what do
you want for a gift? I'm like a, a gift card to a
bookstore, like, and I'd go get more books.
And because I knew that it was in my mind, I knew I had created
the mess. And then the shame and the
embarrassment on top of that waskept me even locked in more to
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not speaking up, not telling anybody, not getting help,
right. And so it was the ability, I
think to study, to learn, to grow, to process and then go
into the things that I loved. I loved computers.
I loved helping people and so I,I kind of got a couple of jobs
(23:01):
that allowed me to learn HTML, became a web developer at a
company and and then just the leadership, I think from having
been, I was also a flight instructor.
So mentoring people and and guiding them was all kind of in
my bones and come from a long line of teachers.
So that helped me, I think, rethink my life and then use
(23:25):
those leadership skills from themilitary for myself to kind of
say, OK, like, you know how to do this.
You can you can move yourself forward and then incrementally
grow my career from there. That actually is ties in
perfectly to my question, which is the IRS.
Should we abolish it? I'm joking.
(23:46):
I'm joking. No.
Stacey's got something. For you.
Lord, well, she does, she does, but I want to just kind of
reflect on a few key things thatI, I really heard there.
And thank you so much for, you know, sharing your, your journey
and the authenticity behind it. And I think what I pulled from
that is throughout your militarycareer, throughout your aviation
career, there were all these things that you had learned how
(24:08):
to do and do it a high level over time.
And when you're in your civilianjourney, you may not have, you
know, like a pre mission planning pulled those things in
from the onset to put into your op order.
But as the need arose, you had something that you were able to
pull from, you know, for the environment or the setting that
you're in. You know, the other thing is
(24:31):
sometimes it's like only throughthe fire that we become our
purest version of ourselves. And I think anybody who's been a
struggle and raise your hand, ifyou're a human that, you know,
when you really go through the worst of the worst or the
hardest one that you have, you realize that you couldn't be
purified or transformed into where you needed to go next.
And the other thing that really stands out to me is that really
(24:53):
made you reflect of, you know, kind of the big questions in
life. Who am I?
Where did I come from? You know, what am what am I
going to be about? Where am I going?
And to be able to really take the time to arrive at those
answers and then start redesigning your life around
that. I think that's of what we all
need to do in life. So really incredible insights
(25:14):
and and some things to highlightfor our listeners.
Thank you, thank you. And it, it really is, it is that
journey that we all have to take.
Like we get to I reinvented myself many times And and it's
that if, if we could look at it,I think one of the things that
I, I took too seriously was failure, right?
(25:38):
I had failed. Therefore I am a failure and not
realizing that what I had tried didn't work.
Right, That's all. And let's try again.
Let's keep moving. And and so that learning that
over time has been one of the saving.
Graces a few words that I didn'texpect to hear out of your Your
(26:01):
mouth was failure, embarrassmentand things like that.
But I think that's something that we all express or we
internally express to ourselves.I don't know if we'll ever
externally verbalize that insecurities and things like
that. I know that I have suicide is
definitely something that I had considered during my transition.
(26:24):
It was a difficult time and we have, we, I mean, I think we've
all had our journeys, maybe not some with suicidal ideation, but
difficult journeys. But during my preparation for
this show, I actually took the survey you had suggested.
(26:49):
And for all you alphas out therelistening, visit
viacharacter.org for a free survey to learn your character
strengths. I learned a a few things about
myself I wasn't aware of. Like apparently my #1 character
asset is honesty. So honestly honesty, which was
kind of funny. Then followed up with curiosity,
(27:11):
humility, bravery, and perspective.
You'll find this very strange, Joe.
My middle strength is humor, which I thought would be my #1
because obviously I of the threeof us hosts, I'm the funniest
arguably. And since I'm the honest one,
this has to be true. And it doesn't mean that you
(27:35):
you're not funny. All everybody who who looks at
their humor, if it's not in the top and they think they're
funny, they're like, hey, I'm funny.
No, I'm not. I'm, I'm, I'm not funny.
I, I just, I appreciate a good sense of humor.
No, but in all seriousness, Joe,did you take the survey?
I did, I did. I thought it was humor and then
(27:58):
social intelligence and and honesty was third.
Making fun of Adam was fifth. I thought that was, I thought
that was going to be #1. My middle started hitting, you
know, hope, love of learning, creativity, love, judgement, you
know, bravery, perspective, you know, and it's as it gets
further down, you know, leadership is one of the things
(28:21):
like I'm a strong second. But if you've got a business and
you have a very clear idea of what you need from me, I'm the
guy. I'm good at leading my home
because it's not an organizational thing.
It's a it's a spirit of leadership, but you get into,
you know, prudence and I'll admit that humility was not in
my top, but it's but it's honestly not because I don't
think highly of myself. I just.
(28:44):
Don't we all know you're pretty arrogant, Joe?
Just take a seat back. Defense mechanism.
Usually and the and the definitions of those are a
little bit different, right? So humility is low on mine and,
and but your gratitude and love and, and love of learning,
obviously, or you know that that's at the top of mine.
(29:04):
So. What do all these things mean?
Like what? What do we do with this
information? So such a great question,
Stacey, because I use this with everybody and this is one of the
things that everybody, I really want people to take the
viacharacter.org survey because and I get nothing from it.
Like I just, you know, I just love the the survey so much and
(29:27):
I learned about it in the book called Flourish.
And it was actually Martin Seligman was actually used it
with the army and and it's such a great way for people to re
regulate themselves if they are out of balance.
It's when those top five are when we are in flow.
(29:48):
And so if something is out of ofof balance with us, we can use
Joe can go to humor and, and humor is not necessarily like
out of balance. Humor can be sarcasm and all of
those things. But humor at its best really is.
He loves to lighten, lighten theroom, make everybody feel
(30:09):
welcome. And so the ability to use that
or his curiosity or Stacey, whenyou're using your honesty like
that comes from you. When my guess is when somebody,
when you sense that somebody is not being honest, that all kind
of that's like nails on a chalkboard to you.
(30:31):
And so I love it because what happens is, is most people can
tell me their weaknesses. They can't tell.
They won't tell me their strengths.
And so I've used this with my nieces and nephews to talk to
them about how do they talk about themselves when they go
for job interviews. Used it with professionals for
the same reason, like because people can say like, well, you
(30:52):
know, I just I have two of my nephews are in film.
So I'm like, well, you're creative.
So that how you talk about yourself and how what you're
what you can be counted on, right?
Are these things, and so I love using this with, I've used it
with executives at, at Pixar allthe way to military and all of
(31:17):
these things. And most of it is most people
will take it and they'll say like, well, it makes sense.
They just now have a language about what they can be counted
on for. The other thing most people will
do is they'll go right to the bottom and be like, OK, these
are my weaknesses. The great thing about this is
these are 24 strengths and theseare the ones at the tops are the
(31:41):
ones that are in action at the time you took the survey.
It doesn't mean that you don't have access to the rest of the
list. It just means that bravery for
me is very low. When I gave this, I was teaching
a transition to success program for the Army a few years ago and
(32:02):
I had them take this. Not one of them had bravery in
their top five. And the way I explain it best is
because these are all 12 to 29 year veterans coming out, I
don't, I didn't need bravery 90%of the time I was in the
(32:25):
military. Now, I was also, you know, part
of the reason I, I honor you allso much is because I was
peacetime, right? So there's a very big difference
between peacetime and war time. Now, I, we are trained to do our
job. I don't have to.
I didn't have to think about howto fly the plane after the hours
(32:46):
of and hours of practice. It was an execution moment.
My like Stacy has with those people that I have that have
bravery, they are advocates. They are fiercely advocates for
somebody, something that they believe in.
(33:07):
And so it's A and it's ability for us to just kind of settle
into like who are we and what lights us up and when am I in
flow? When will time just kind of
disappear for me? And so the ability for us to use
(33:28):
those strengths to show up into and come from them and then use
the lower ones. I use the example my, my father
passed a few years ago. And, and I was not taking action
on the things I needed to do, like call the limo service, call
the hotel. I there's just like, I just
couldn't get myself to do it. And so one day I looked at my
(33:49):
list and bravery was like 19. And gratitude was #1 love of
learning is number 2. And I was like, OK, all right,
how do I pair my bravery? Now I'm going to need this with
my gratitude for my father and the opportunity to celebrate him
with my love of learning of all the things I had to do.
And I would be able to get through it.
(34:10):
Now, I'll be honest, I needed some cookies to to some
emotional support system, but it's it's that ability for
especially for the military, because I think, you know, one
of the things I love about your mission is to help with the
suicide, right, Right. And how do we start to shift how
(34:32):
we think when people come out? When I came out of the service,
I was in a foreign land with people I did not understand,
like I understood my military, you know, people that how we
thought everything, but now withcivilians very different.
(34:52):
And so in that I also kind of lost my way of what I believed
about myself and my strengths and my abilities.
And then when I failed, I just kind of went down that rabbit
hole. When we can, when we can have
people think from their strengths of honesty, courage or
(35:14):
curiosity, humor, and they startto use them in an everyday life,
then they can start to see like,oh, even if I've even if I
failed at something, even if something happened and I was
recently coaching a young man who was like, but you don't know
what happened. What I did after I got out of
(35:36):
the military, I'm like, it doesn't matter.
We all do stuff, like we all have stuff that happens to us,
but if we can sit in that ownership, that one, we
accomplish something that most people don't ever think about.
And we've lived through things, we've seen things and we have
(35:57):
these incredible strengths that we can apply to anything that we
are doing. It begins to light us up and
give us a path that says, oh, I can use.
I have a lot of people. I have a lot of coaches who are
humility is number 1. And they're like, you know, but
I I can't do certain things. And I'm like, no, what, what
(36:19):
you're great at is champ. You are a best cheerleader in
the world for someone else. So you start to tell people like
I'm going to champion you. So Stacey, with your tie, you've
got two of those. You've got actually three of
those in your top five. The the honesty, honesty,
(36:40):
humility and bravery in that pattern.
You are an advocate and you careabout people.
You champion them and you will sometimes, you know me, I'm not
saying that you would, but somebody with that pattern might
shrink behind somebody else or not showcase themselves.
(37:00):
And So what I would work on is like, how could you pair, pair
your honesty with your humility so that you can champion and
champion yourself and sit up into your own energy and really
be able to advocate for yourself?
Yeah, that's how I would use it.It's so funny that you say that
'cause I am my worst self promoter.
I, I absolutely love promoting other people and all the things
(37:24):
that they're doing. And I'm, I'm other people's
biggest advocate. But when it comes to the work
that I'm doing, I am so behind the scenes on the, on my own
shit. Got to be honest, I am the worst
at it. But hey, you know what?
I'm going to take your advice and I'm going to, I'm going to
try and step up my game a littlebit.
I'm going to try and shift my middle strengths to be my my top
(37:45):
tiers. Just pair, pair them and and see
that they're all, they're all strikes.
The humility is a strength, all of it.
I love what you're saying right now because I think a lot of
times people get caught up in either leaning too much into
their strengths or shoring up their weaknesses.
(38:06):
And, and you don't have to do that.
There's ways to pair those things up or use one to improve
another. If honesty is your thing, then
then using that honesty for selfregulation and using that
honesty because if you're teachable, if you're, if
somebody can correct you, if you're safe to correct, you can
become a whole different type ofperson.
(38:28):
And. This is so interesting.
Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Joe.
No, you're good. You're good.
I didn't mean to cut you off. I was just going to say this is
so interesting because I, I haven't taken this, but when I
was at Accenture, we use the Clifton strengths Finder because
of it's based on organizational psychology.
The, the interesting thing and I, I'm not sure my 5.
I mean, I know it's not a one for one correlation, but learner
(38:50):
ideation, positivity, individualization and arranger.
So, but the interesting thing was you would think like, oh,
the things that you're weak. And so I need to go back and
look at those things and try andimprove them.
Maybe I like your analysis, you know, and I know it's a
different assessment, kind of more personalized, but it's a
snapshot in time. It doesn't mean you have these
(39:11):
other things. The way that they taught us at
Accenture was the things that you're weak at, don't spend any
time on them. The things that you're the best
at, like you're already the bestat, like that's what you're
really good at. So if you spend time focusing on
those and really integrating andfiguring out what that means for
you, then you can become like super great in those, whereas
(39:34):
you would might only marginally move the needle forward, you
know, in those other weaknesses.But I like, you know, what I'm
hearing to you about how you cankind of look at the things on,
on this one, on the viacharacter.org assessment to
be able to say on these weak things, those still exist.
Like you still have those, they're just maybe things that
you're not strong at. And so when you're experiencing
(39:56):
that in that moment, how do you pair that with a strength to be
able to drive an actual outcome for the result that you want?
So very interesting. Yes, and, and I'll shift the
language just a little bit because you're not they're not
weaknesses. They literally are, they are not
active at the moment you took the survey.
(40:18):
So you might take the survey in a couple of years and something
else might have happened. And, and Stacey gets great at,
you know, promoting herself or talking about who she is.
Humility might drop out of the top five.
Now, it doesn't mean that it will, but it's, it's this
ability for us, like the the strength finders, which I've
taken and and used is, is great for what, where you are at work.
(40:39):
This is like the, the, the via is the best of who you are.
And so at any given moment you can shift and grow.
And if you need one, you just pull it up and you are able to
like, oh, I just need bravery today.
I'm going to go into something Ican put that on or I need.
I, my husband and I are different, very different.
(41:04):
He's very curious. He's a very curious man.
He loves to talk to people. I love to ask questions.
I'm not that curious. I love to learn and my curiosity
is low and most people would putthose two together.
They're just very they're actually very different things.
And so I can I work on my curiosity.
I work on what I were going to air quote small talk, right,
(41:29):
because it's not natural for me to like, I'm going to get into
the meat of somebody's life, notanything else.
So I oops, I literally have 3 by5 cards that say like, where did
you grow up? Like because it won't occur, it
doesn't naturally occur to me toask those questions.
So I had to I had to do the exact same thing that how I
(41:50):
learned my flight systems was the same thing that I used to
learn how to curiosity. I put them on three by 5 cards.
I keep them nearby. If I if I need to study on
something, I'll just put it on a3 by 5 card and learn.
And so that's, and, and you know, one of the things that I'm
doing now is a, is a film calledCourage to Thrive.
And I use both. I use the Via as one of the
(42:13):
things in the film to help thesewomen really start to think
differently about themselves andhow they show up in the world
and how to use their strengths and why they're here in a way
that empowers them. Because I think, like I said,
we're so good at what our weaknesses are, if we can live
(42:36):
in our strengths, that that's the best we can do.
You know, I love that personallybecause I think that, you know,
a lot of times when, when we don't recognize the impact that
those things, that the things that are lower on the list have
on our lives. You just, I mean, if you're
drinking something, you put a drop of cough syrup in it,
(42:56):
you're going to know that there's cough syrup in it, You
know, and, and all these things sort of tie together to make you
who you are. That I think the hardest thing
that I had to deal with on my recent, very recent journey of
of sort of self improvement was,was one when, when corrected,
(43:18):
it's never a defensive thing. You give it 10 seconds no matter
what, no matter who says it, no matter where it comes from.
And, and you think both of what was said and what was meant.
Because a lot of times, especially when people are
frustrated and angry, they treatyou how they feel, not how they
feel about you. So, you know, finding out what
is said versus where that came from is very important to, you
(43:39):
know, to deal with that. But #2 and the hardest thing for
me was to stop trash talking myself is to stop saying things
like, oh, sorry, I'm dumb or, you know, sorry, you know, if I
was being obnoxious, like instead of, of framing it that
way to, to, to stop and think again, just like being
(44:00):
corrected, correct myself. Say, was I acting, you know, was
I being too aggressive? Did I interrupt someone?
Did I, you know, AM, did I ask aquestion that seemed insensitive
because, Oh my gosh, like you, instead of asking somebody where
they're from, I want to see somebody in really nice shoes
try and get over a mud puddle. I want to see what happens when,
(44:21):
when, you know, when, when a fistfight, do they do they film
vertically or horizontally? I just, I want to see you doing
something because that's how I figure people out.
You know, when somebody, when somebody at the table is hungry.
Did you notice that when they said no, I'm good, was it
because they didn't have money? I want to know these things
(44:43):
because I want I, I'm curious about people's lives and their
hearts. So it was very hard for me.
It's like if I can do that for myself, I can really work on, on
making myself better. So when you started getting
involved, when you started doingthese things and using these,
you know, in your own life and started developing ways to help
people breakthrough that stuff, Is that is that what started
(45:05):
your coaching practice? And, and I do want to circle
back around and let you talk about courage to thrive.
In fact, I think Adam's got something great.
He must ask you about it. But but before that, I did want
to touch on your coaching practice and ask is, you know,
is this something this, this howto cope through these things,
the good and the challenges of of these trades?
I like to say I was coaching since I was 7.
(45:27):
Like I've been bossing my dad around that long and telling him
what he should be doing with hislife.
So I think coaching and teachingcame very naturally for me, but
it was when I was in in corporate and, and, you know,
there's only so much we can control versus what the
organization is controlling. And so when people would come to
(45:49):
me with a problem and they're like, hey, can I talk with you?
And I'd say, yeah, let's go in aconference room and I'd shut the
door and they'd start, you know,crying male or female, I'm like,
this is awesome. Like I can do something with
this. How can I help you today?
Because I love to help people shift their mindset, especially
about what they believe about themselves and what they believe
(46:11):
about their possibilities. Because I have no limiting
beliefs about what somebody can create.
Like literally, I am a yes for like people creating and growing
and, and achieving whatever it is that they want in their life.
And I'm, and I can figure it out, help them figure out how
to, how to get there. When I came out of, into a
(46:31):
corporate and went into coaching, it was really this
idea first really is like from, from the wealth side of things
of, of money, because I had to get myself out of it.
Like I had, I had to figure out from, from the bankruptcy and
foreclosure how to how to do that.
And I just wanted help to help as many people who were
(46:51):
suffering because I on the otherside of that all I, what I
learned was it's just money. Money is just is money is just
energy. Money can be created money.
Money is like abundance is everywhere.
We can get locked into it. It has to come through this
venue. And what I want people to see is
(47:13):
like, we want to open up and, and get into like, I'd love like
aligned, making sure that peopleare aligned with how they're
creating wealth and money and wealth for me is in all areas of
their life. And, and this ability for people
to kind of see that no matter what it is.
I was, I was the, the man who takes care of our yard.
(47:36):
I had texted him the other day because I'm in Pensacola now and
we had eight inches of snow yesterday.
And so my husband and I were prepping the plants.
So I was out, you know, putting the the cover on this big giant
plant we have, which ultimately surrendered last night and died
(47:57):
under the snow. But I texted him like, did you
know, because he stops his business from November to March.
And I texted him, like, did you know that you could create
another business that instead ofme being out there doing this,
you could have, I would have paid you to do that.
Like, I think in terms of money,I see money, I see how people
(48:19):
can make money. And so that to me was such a fun
thing to go into to help people like see where are the other
avenues of how, how could they thrive in their life in
alignment with what what they'realready doing.
I love it. I love that.
I appreciate you. You're a rock star.
(48:41):
Thank you. So are you.
I love. Being here.
Oh, go on. I meant stop what you got, Mr.
Adam. Yeah.
Hey, guys. Sorry, I think my connection's
struggling a little bit, but what I wanted to.
(49:02):
I wasn't lying. Well, I think what we can, what
we can do is I'm going to pick up with Adam's question and if
he can make it back, then he cancome back into the conversation.
But what we'll do is we'll just pick up.
So we'll give it 2 seconds so that our editor can cut.
(49:23):
OK. So Doc, your documentary Courage
to Thrive, highlight stories of resilience and redefinition.
So as a veteran and someone who faces transitional challenges,
and of course, Adam and and Joe,as you've already ascertained
from our chats, for our listeners especially, what does
(49:44):
it mean to have courage to thrive and, and how, how can
they start rewriting their own definitions of, well, success
and fulfilment? I, I love that question because
I think if, if we really understood like I had to move
into what I now call it like an experimentation orientation to
life, right. So for me from moving from
(50:06):
survival, like I felt like I lived in survival a long time.
And what, especially after the financial challenges, how to
move into thriving for me, beingable to thrive in all areas,
whether it's relationships, health, money, alignment, doing
the things that I love to do, that thriving, that ability to
(50:29):
feel fulfilled in any moment, satisfied with the work I'm
doing and continue to grow. That is really what kind of I
start to look for that it's not just one area, but to have all
areas fall, you know, firing on all cylinders that so that
people can move and, and be at their best.
(50:49):
Because I, I think there's so much creativity in the world.
There's so much innovation in the world.
If we weren't taking it again, especially as veterans, whatever
we are holding against ourselvesthat leads down that path of, of
depression and destruction, whatever.
It's like if we, if we believed in ourselves as much as others
(51:11):
believed in US and saw us, what could we create?
And so that was part of the impetus.
You know, I, I just want to add also that you, you know, you,
you talked about being able to sort of forgive yourself a
little bit in a weird sort of way.
And, and I think that, that I, Ihate the word forgiveness.
(51:32):
We should have two words becauseI think that there's an element
of peace that people don't realize that forgiveness is not
for the forgived. It's, it's just rarely is it for
the forgive, unless you're talking about our judicial
system or, or in debt forgiveness is for the person
who's been wronged and, and it lets us move past.
(51:54):
And so for instance, I'll give you a, a personal quick example.
Looking back, it's very easy forme to look at my military career
in my time in Iraq and go, I should have done this.
I could have done that, I and all these things, but it's so
unfair of me as a much wiser, much more intelligent, much more
(52:18):
accomplished world. You know, I've grown so much to
expect who I am now out of that 23 year old kid.
It's not fair. It's just not fair.
I should never do that. It's set myself up for so much
failure. Yes.
And there's an opportunity to really look at like, like, how
(52:39):
can we be kind to ourselves about that 23 year old?
Yeah. Like our 23 year olds did the
best they could just to survive in a very challenging situation.
Stacey, I think you started at like 17, right?
Like, I couldn't imagine like starting that young, you know,
and having for, for all of us, all the pressures that were on
(53:03):
us to perform and to learn something new quickly, right?
So we can actually trust in our,our reinvention skills because
every base we moved to, we kind of had to reinvent ourselves and
kind of like rethink what we were going to do too.
And so forgiveness is, is for our self.
(53:24):
And, and through my, I have a, amaster's in spiritual
psychology. One of the things that we
learned was it's really, can I forgive myself for judging
myself as having done something wrong, being bad, whatever.
If I can forgive myself for thatjudgement, that's, it's called
(53:45):
compassionate self forgiveness. Like if I can forgive myself and
others, because we never know what it's about in our lives.
And so that ability for us to pull ourselves into a place of,
of, of peace, as you said, of caring and loving for ourselves,
that's so important. Yeah, man, that's a lot to.
(54:08):
That's a lot to chew on. I have a lot to.
I mean, I had a lot to process, especially after several
deployments and TD wise and you know, a lot of things to forgive
myself for. You know, there shoulda woulda
coulda is really eat away at youand and it's not the things that
you judge other people for, but for yourself and and, you know,
(54:31):
giving yourself the the grace and as Joe said, gosh, you're a
kid. Complexities of the mind, my
God. Giving yourself, they now say
that the brain isn't fully developed until 27.
So like anything before then, it's kind of in a, a compromise
situation. And, and, and what you're
saying, Stacy, it's like we holdon to that, like we hold on to
(54:55):
the grievances against ourselves.
And like it's really, it's an opportunity for us to, to
release that, to release our hand, to love ourselves, that
ability to love ourselves forward, to love ourselves, even
though we've made mistakes, eventhough something has happened,
even though, like I, I would notgiven the opportunity, I would
(55:15):
not go down that path again. It's, it's have we grown?
Who are we now? And, and can we, can we apply
that grace, that peace, that love to that 23 year old, that
25 year old, that 17 year old, and apply loving like lotion or
salve to the skin like so that they feel seen and heard.
(55:36):
Like, I get that, you know, you wish that you had done something
different. Well, I will definitely be
taking that to heart, Doc, and Ithink we all will.
So you're the absolute best. I think Adam, Joe and I can all
agree with that. And Adam may not agree that that
(55:58):
you're that he's not the best pilot, that you're the best
pilot, but. We will all argue about this.
I was mean like some of the evolution I had to do is cuz I
was a mean instructor. So just so you know, but.
I've known for my honesty. So for all time best pilots, but
we all default to Chuck Yeager on that one.
That's true. You know, in our units and
(56:21):
things like that. And no, but I would.
I would bow down to Kameen for sure.
We'll, we'll all bow down to heralphas.
Be sure to visit Kameen Samuel. That's KAMIN samuel.com, where
you'll find all the information we talked about today, her
documentary, her social media handles.
We'll have those in our show notes as well, so be sure to
(56:42):
check her out. I don't want to say stalk her,
but you should stalk her becauseshe's absolutely awesome.
You don't want to miss. Her doc.
Miles, so Miles stalking won't hurt.
We really appreciate your time Doc, that you spent with us
today. And before we sign off, is there
anything that we haven't touchedon that you think our alpha
should hear? Well, I think what we were just
talking about is, is that ability to love ourselves
(57:06):
forward, to forgive ourselves, to be kind to ourselves so that
we can live into what our heartsdesires are.
Like I said, I don't have any limiting beliefs.
And for the of the veterans, it's this idea that like they
have more strengths, more courage, more bravery in their
(57:26):
pinky than than they may use when they get out of the service
and that everything is overcome able, everything they have, they
have experienced, they have done.
There is support. You all advocate for all the
support that they can get and they have the ability to, to
(57:48):
from the inside out, recover, create, innovate on their own
lives so that they thrive and they expand because we need
every one of us that has come out of the military to help this
world. And so if, if you need help, get
it, you know, and, and really see that there is just, if you
(58:11):
could just hear me say this, there is a possibility for
everyone to thrive. And it it really just begins
with just the kernel of the belief.
All right, Alphas. Well, we've been talking with
Doctor Kameen Samuel today. Kameen, thank you so much for
visiting us. Alphas, please stick around for
some scuttlebutt after the break.
(58:32):
Welcome back, Alphas. We're keeping things short and
sweet on the countdown, so there's no scuttlebutt today,
but thanks for taking the trip down memory lane with us.
We really hope you guys enjoyed the episode.
On behalf of the entire Tal Podcast team, we hope you're
enjoying time with your loved ones during the holiday season.
If you miss us during the holidays, which I know you are,
(58:52):
you can always subscribe to our podcast, our newsletter, or send
us guest and mail recommendations at legion.org,
Back slash Tango Awful Lima Salon.
Salon.
We're back alphas. We're coming in hot with
inspiring guests, witty banter and colorful commentary for
today's veterans and military community.
This is the Tal Podcast. Hi there, Alphas.
During the holiday season, the Tal Podcast team is taking a
break. Need a break?
(00:21):
But while we're gone, we do havea little bonus content for you.
So we've looked back at all the things we've done during Season
6 and we've come up with a list of our our top six most
impactful guests from 2025. And that was not easy.
It really was difficult there. Were so many great guests, but
we'll be releasing those interviews this week.
So if you haven't already subscribed to Tango Philima on
(00:43):
Spotify, Apple Podcast, YouTube,or you know, wherever you get
your podcast, don't miss our countdown.
We've got we've got you covered.Back in February, we talked to
Doctor Kameen Samuel, who was the Navy's first African
American female helicopter pilot.
Total badass. We talked to her about our
historic military career, the challenges she faced during her
(01:04):
transition from military to civilian life, the the
documentary she took part in Courage to Thrive, and her
mentorship with other veterans. Do you guys remember your
strengths that we did with your viacharacter.org survey?
Mine was all physical. I'm just pretty, I think it was.
Yeah, you're just a pretty face.I'm just pretty that's it.
(01:28):
Empty. Thanks for podcasting.
No, honestly, though, I do. And, you know, it's funny
because I've thought about aboutthat, I've thought about that.
We did an, another group exercise with, with, you know,
America's Vet Dogs development team.
(01:48):
And it's funny, 'cause we went into it and I felt like I
already knew a lot of these things.
We'd already sort of explored that.
And, you know, so we really sortof dove into sincerity and why
that seems to work for me that Itend to build off of at least
being able to stop everything I'm doing and pull myself out of
a situation and be vulnerable in, in a moment when it calls
for it. And, and, and you know, it's
(02:09):
interesting to know that about yourself because a lot of times
we just sort of feel our way through life.
But to sit down and label it is I think it's a really cool thing
to do every once in a while. Yeah, Adam, is there a word that
best describes your character? That's a loaded you.
Know what Apache pilot. No, I mean, honestly, I've said
(02:31):
this before, but I think I thinkmy greatest, you know, strength
is, is love being able to both, you know, give and and receive
it from a place of yeah, you know, compassion, which, you
know, as an attack helicopter pilot can be a corny thing to
say that, you know, you're superpowerless.
Love, we're supposed to fire missiles, not love rockets.
But you know. Just call me Cupid.
(02:53):
You know, Adam, I've been on thereceiving end of your Love
Rocket texts. And.
They hit, they hit my heart in the right place and I I
appreciate that about you. It's it's a cherished character,
like for you, my friend. Maybe we need more loving,
loving leaders and the world will be a little bit better
place like like this interview. And I think one of the things
(03:16):
that I always, you know, love iswhen there's somebody that comes
into the fold that has that unique thread that ties into
your experiences as well. And so just getting the chance
to talk about some of those kindof early flight experiences and
then how she parlayed that kind of mindset into the work that
(03:36):
she does, which is, you know, kind of the path.
You know, I'm always that 20 year old kid learning to fly the
helicopter. And I always take those
processes and try and, you know,apply them to the rest of the
world. So it's really cool to see a
fellow aviator and all the incredible things that she's
done as a first and a leader anda pioneer in, in so many
respects. Yeah, and, and somebody that
(03:57):
shows up and and talks about us too, you know, they're not just
there to drop their own knowledge.
They want to leave us with something.
And I think that's really incredible.
That's a special interview. Yeah, Alpha.
Stick around after the break when we'll be back with our
interview with Doctor Kameen Samuel from Episode 249,
Selfless Service. The American Legion celebrates
(04:20):
all who contribute to something larger than themselves.
And inspires others to serve andstrengthen America.
We are veterans strengthening America.
We are the American Legion. All right.
(04:42):
Today we're joined by Doctor Kameen.
Samuel Kameen, welcome to the Tango Off Alima podcast.
Well, thank you so much for having me.
It's such an honor to be here with the three of you.
Oh man, wait. Wait until we get into the show.
I don't think everybody's sayingthat too long.
She said with regret. Kameen, Oh my gosh.
Welcome to the show. And first and foremost, thank
(05:03):
you for your service. I really like to start out with
the guests to get the back story, the origin story, if you
will. So do me a favor, tell me a
little bit about where you're from.
What brought you to the Navy of all branches?
Why helicopters, the decision totransition out of the service,
some of the challenges during your transition?
(05:25):
What led you to this very momentto be on this podcast?
Why now? OK, that's a that's.
A It's a life long story tellingyour life.
Story. Right now, everything but like,
in fact. From the beginning of time and
thank you all. Thank you all for your service
and everything that you've done and everything that you are
(05:45):
doing really for service memberstoday.
I kind of wish that you had beenaround.
I'm I'm, I'm a bit older than you all are.
So I kind of wish you had been around when I came out because I
really struggled when I came outof the service.
So kind of backing it up. I grew up mostly on the East
Coast in Maryland. And my older brother was NROTC.
(06:08):
And, and so he came home with his gear and he's seven years
older than I am. So I would sneak into his room
and put his cover on and, and salute and, and, you know, put
his, his sword on. And so it was just kind of got
in me at, you know, as a young tween and to teen.
(06:29):
And when I was in college, I actually went to college to be a
doctor and had some challenges focusing in college.
And so I had to switch majors and, and it was second, it was
first semester senior year when my mom was like, Hey, you know,
what are you going to do with your life?
Because she's very driven. And, and I said, well, I'm
(06:51):
thinking about going into the Navy.
And so my mom was a prominent high school principal.
And so her thing is like, you know, let's get him into action.
So she got me an an opportunity to meet with a Navy captain and
she took me to lunch and talked to me about the Navy.
(07:12):
And she's like, so do you want to take this test we have when
we go back? And so I took the test and
failed miserably. And so she was going to put me
through boot camp and, and I waslike, I don't know about that.
Fast forward a couple of months,the recruiters were on campus.
They were like, you know, did you study for the test?
(07:34):
And I'm like, you could study. I'm like, so got the ASVAB
course and studied and must havedone well enough that they came
in and said, Hey, what about aviation?
And it's like, I don't know. Do I have to study?
I took the test. I must have done well enough.
They offered it to me. I'm like, what does that entail?
(07:55):
And they're like, you have to run a mile half a day and then
you have to swim a mile a day. And I was not an athlete by any
stretch of the imagination. So I tried it for a couple weeks
and said, no, let me go supply corps because I really wanted to
be in business. And then there was a moment a
few months later on my senior trip where I was walking down
(08:16):
the beach in Myrtle Beach, SC, and formation of Marine
helicopters flew overhead. And I was like really good.
And I called my recruiter. They said, well, you know, I
just what are the chances of switching my package?
They called me back 20 minutes later.
You said your package is switched, your flight physical
(08:38):
is this date, your report date is this date and you're going to
Pensacola. And I was like, no, no, no, no,
no, wait. I'm talking to my parents about
this like, and so that was really my entrance into it, into
getting into the Navy and and going down to to be in aviation
officer candidate school. So it went from What would it be
(09:00):
to switch it to I wanna switch accidentally.
Yes. Well, that was a happy accident,
I guess. It was a happy, painful
accident. It wasn't something that I ever
thought of. And and Adam, I don't know if
you had always wanted to be a pilot, but I hadn't.
And so I'm getting my Commissionagain, not an athlete.
(09:22):
And everything is running, right?
So everything is running like I was.
Yeah. Like, why do I have to run to
the gym? It doesn't make sense that I
have to run to the gym, to the course.
And so I struggled in in that realm.
And it was just this opportunityfor me to kind of really just be
led and be willing. The one decision I always say
(09:44):
that I made that was a good decision was I wouldn't quit.
And so they could, they could send me home.
I was hoping they'd send me home, but as long as I didn't
quit, I was I was fine. And so that really was the
beginning of my career. Yeah, that's kind of like a
chosen skill, though. And I tell people that there's
(10:06):
something to be said for for being teachable but stubborn,
you know? And, and I think that, you know,
you being who you are, you're obviously a, a doer.
You may not have felt that way naturally, but there's a certain
level of discipline that may have been instilled from your
mom that may have been somethingthat just sort of woke up in
you. The military did a little bit of
(10:26):
that for me, But your story is an inspiration to everybody.
And, and I'm curious if you, I mean, obviously you didn't set
out to make history. You didn't set out to do that,
but man, what a beautiful accident, you know?
And, and so was there a point when you realized that there are
people out there that that watchthe trajectory of your life and
your career and go, wow, I can do this.
(10:47):
I, I as a young, as a young ladyor as a young, you know, black
lady or, or whatever to, to lookup and say, wow, there's
somebody really incredible that,that has shown me a path
forward. It's such a good question
because I think, you know, I've when, when I went through my
career, I had a great career. I was really blessed to be the
(11:10):
first right? I think one of the, the reasons
I say that is because nobody hadany prejudices.
Like they had no preconceived notions about whether I would be
good or bad because I didn't fita particular category.
And so, you know, I had some challenges, of course, but the
(11:32):
ability for me to just kind of just, I like to say I just kept
my head down. Like I just kind of, one of the
things that they started to do was kind of put me out in the
public and have me, you know, speak and show up at a lot of
public things. I did not want that at all
because it was giving me too much attention.
(11:54):
And what if I failed? What if I crashed?
What if I made a mistake? And so I just kind of went to a
kind of a different, like I wasn't one of those.
I wish I could say that I was one of those who was all about
lifting everybody up. I was really just trying to
like, please don't get in trouble.
That was all. Like I would just kind of
blinders on, like just do great because I knew that how I went
(12:20):
through my career would dictate everybody behind me.
Are you more worried about how that was going to reflect for
other women or women of color oreverything women in the Navy,
everybody like was that? Women, women of color, black,
everything. And so everybody, you know, it's
like you don't realize how much pressure there is.
(12:41):
I mean, there's enough pressure learning how to fly, but then to
do it well and then to be in thepublic and to do speaking
engagements. So I really kind of just, I did
a few speaking engagements when I first got winged, but then I
really just went to like, let mebe excellent.
Let me be the best I can so thatfrom this point forward, any
(13:04):
female behind me, especially black female behind me had this
up into that. And they would expect that, you
know, because one of the, one ofthe greatest accomplishments, I
will say of my career was I alsograduated #1 in flight school
and primarily so I could go to San Diego.
Let's just be clear. I wanted I wanted a tour in San
(13:25):
Diego. Whatever it takes you.
Got to have goals. I wanted that was my number one
reason and and they said if you are #1 you get the command of
your choice. I got Norfolk all right.
So that's the games that. Classic military.
(13:45):
But that also, I knew that any female behind me, they would
have to sit into that accomplishment.
And they're looking for an excuse to say women can't do
this, or some idiot somewhere tobe like somebody who's black
can't do this. Can't.
Do this. They're looking for an excuse
and I can't imagine that pressure.
(14:05):
Good on you for stepping up and like you said, never folding.
And there's something to be saidfor keeping your head down and
muscling through you. You played to your strengths.
You're not somebody that was comfortable and wanted to get in
front of people and travel. The entire US being like, hello,
you know, you wanted to do your job.
You were doing it for the right reasons and hey.
Yeah, I wonder how much too, Doc.
(14:27):
How much of the inner monologue was more pressure than the
actual external pressures you were feeling too?
Like how much of that was you killing yourself over it as
well? I would, I would say a lot of
that, right? And I also grew up in a family,
like I said, where my mom was a principal and one of the top, if
(14:48):
not the top county in the US, right?
And so we were taught to stay ina box.
Like, you know, one of the things we would hear when we
leave, like don't embarrass us. Like there was like a very
clear, like we had to be excellent at everything we did.
And so that was a part of that, making sure that I stayed within
(15:10):
those parameters and and and that was on me.
So it was, it definitely was there, Stacey.
Well, Camille and I just say, I have so much respect for you and
just listening to your journey and the way that you had to
approach flight school as opposed to the way that in my
(15:32):
mindset and, and how you know, my experiences to that point and
also being, you know who I am. And also, you know, years later,
off the, off the backs of peoplelike you that blazed the, the,
you know, the, the pathway in the sky for us, so to speak.
It's, it's remarkable because, you know, I, it's, it couldn't
(15:56):
be more true that flight school in and of itself is one of the
greatest things that you'll evertake on in your life.
To be able to understand everything.
It goes in to fly that aircraft,to understand the airspace, the
aerodynamics, the systems limitations, emergency
procedures that could kill you. You know, the, the pressure is
the never ending test, the neverending setting, the aerodynamics
(16:18):
of flight, the weather, aircraftavoidance.
Oh yeah, and you also have a tactical mission, you know, for
the military to deploy as well, or in my case, you know, the
Apache. Then you have to learn the
Ballistics and the weapons and the missiles and then, Oh yeah,
accurately and safely deploy them for the effects.
And so it's, it's quite significant to add the layer of
(16:40):
public display, the 1st. And yeah, of course, you know,
it's going to be a battle insideyour mind for those things, but
also those external pressures exist.
And I have so much respect for you for being the first to be
able to go through that and to really just say, you know what?
I know that if I take care and Ibring my best and I do my best,
(17:04):
that the results will permeate through that as represented by
your, you know, first in class. So just really inspired by that.
And I also relate to no, I didn't always want to be a pilot
either. Mine was kind of the trajectory
of September 11th senior year high school into take action
ROTC, find a scholarship into what am I going to do in this,
(17:26):
you know, big Army and be fortunate enough to get aviation
and go in there. And mindset is so important
because my mindset was like, look, people have been doing
this for years. Army's pretty good at training
people. I'm a relatively smart ish guy.
If I just show up and do what I need to do, I'm confident that
I'll be able to go forward. But again, I didn't have to be a
representation for my whole raceand in doing that, so I'm going
(17:50):
to get to a question. Sorry.
It just that was very meaningfulto me.
And I, well, and I thank you because I, I also, I wanted to
fly the Apache, right, because we were with the Marines at one
point in Sigonella and we were going to try to land, they were
going to try to land some of their helicopters with our
helicopters and let us fly. But that didn't work.
So I honor and acknowledge you as well.
(18:11):
The first time, again, I have tosay it is absolutely
overwhelming and intimidating. But you know, bite by bite, you
take it on. So mine's kind of a helicopter
ask a question. So I know the first hand the
challenge and and demands of flying as I know that that you
do both technically and mentally.
But when you transition out of the Navy and face the struggles
(18:32):
that you began to take on in thecivilian life, how did you
essentially bring your parallelsfrom flying?
Because it doesn't want, I mean,you're flying a helicopter,
you're not flying a helicopter. People think, what are the
parallels, right? There's actually a lot in the
processes in the learning that takes place for you to become
proficient in that. So how did you apply some of
those fundamentals of flight principles, so to speak, into
(18:55):
how you transition and how you succeed today?
Well, I didn't to begin with. So I decided I wanted to, as I
mentioned, I wanted to go into business, I wanted to learn
business skills. And so I had a business for
myself. And when I left the military, I
was expecting a big check. And so that didn't come through.
(19:20):
So when I went to dispersing to get that check that wasn't there
and I was already over leveragedon the business I had, I was in
and, and it wasn't the business itself's fault.
It was just that I, I had kind of over invested and that safety
net that I thought was going to be there wasn't there.
And I just remember saying out loud like, if I don't have this
(19:44):
check, I'm going to have to filebankruptcy.
And I don't remember thinking that before that moment, but
Fast forward 14 months of rehearsing that in my mind, I'm
going to have to file bankruptcy.
If I don't do this, I'm going tohave to file bankruptcy.
If I don't, if I don't sell, if I don't move my business, I
don't do something, I'm going tohave to file bankruptcy.
(20:04):
And 14 months later, I had to file within about six months,
five months, I had, you know, the foreclosure of two homes.
And in a three day period, I gotthat notice for the the
foreclosures of bankruptcy and an IRS audit.
And I literally thought I was going to die, Like I thought my,
(20:27):
my breath left my body. And then I remember that weekend
I was like wandering the house and I found myself in the
kitchen looking at the knives and thinking I could just end it
like I, I like I could just end it right now.
And the only thing there are a couple of things that stopped
me. One my faith.
The other thing that stopped me was not leaving my parents with
(20:49):
my mess. So I think that's also from the
military, like you take care of your own mess, like, you know.
And so I had to in that moment have to choose a, the
discipline, I think from my military background of OK, I'm
going to have to put again, blinders on.
(21:09):
I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to survive this.
I'm going to have to choose to survive this, but I'm also have
going to have to choose to not contemplate suicide.
Again, doesn't mean that it's not going to come in or the
thoughts not going to come in. But I can't ruminate about it
because I could see that my rumination over the the
(21:30):
bankruptcy and the fear of it kept me paralyzed.
And so that paralyzing just meant that I wasn't able to take
the actions that I needed to take.
And so I just would not entertain the thought of not
being here. And so from that point forward
began that journey of, OK, where's the, I guess the best
(21:53):
word, the grit right from flyingthe, the, you know, I was able
to accomplish a lot in my military career and use the
discipline to accomplish those things to then say, OK, well,
what is it that you want to create?
What do you love to do RE? You know, like I would go and
spend back in the day, there wasbookstores.
(22:15):
So I'd go to the bookstores and I'd sit and I'd pull all the
books off because I couldn't afford anything.
And I would take notes and, and anybody asked me, like, what do
you want for a gift? I'm like a, a gift card to a
bookstore, like, and I'd go get more books.
And because I knew that it was in my mind, I knew I had created
the mess. And then the shame and the
embarrassment on top of that waskept me even locked in more to
(22:41):
not speaking up, not telling anybody, not getting help,
right. And so it was the ability, I
think to study, to learn, to grow, to process and then go
into the things that I loved. I loved computers.
I loved helping people and so I,I kind of got a couple of jobs
(23:01):
that allowed me to learn HTML, became a web developer at a
company and and then just the leadership, I think from having
been, I was also a flight instructor.
So mentoring people and and guiding them was all kind of in
my bones and come from a long line of teachers.
So that helped me, I think, rethink my life and then use
(23:25):
those leadership skills from themilitary for myself to kind of
say, OK, like, you know how to do this.
You can you can move yourself forward and then incrementally
grow my career from there. That actually is ties in
perfectly to my question, which is the IRS.
Should we abolish it? I'm joking.
(23:46):
I'm joking. No.
Stacey's got something. For you.
Lord, well, she does, she does, but I want to just kind of
reflect on a few key things thatI, I really heard there.
And thank you so much for, you know, sharing your, your journey
and the authenticity behind it. And I think what I pulled from
that is throughout your militarycareer, throughout your aviation
career, there were all these things that you had learned how
(24:08):
to do and do it a high level over time.
And when you're in your civilianjourney, you may not have, you
know, like a pre mission planning pulled those things in
from the onset to put into your op order.
But as the need arose, you had something that you were able to
pull from, you know, for the environment or the setting that
you're in. You know, the other thing is
(24:31):
sometimes it's like only throughthe fire that we become our
purest version of ourselves. And I think anybody who's been a
struggle and raise your hand, ifyou're a human that, you know,
when you really go through the worst of the worst or the
hardest one that you have, you realize that you couldn't be
purified or transformed into where you needed to go next.
And the other thing that really stands out to me is that really
(24:53):
made you reflect of, you know, kind of the big questions in
life. Who am I?
Where did I come from? You know, what am what am I
going to be about? Where am I going?
And to be able to really take the time to arrive at those
answers and then start redesigning your life around
that. I think that's of what we all
need to do in life. So really incredible insights
(25:14):
and and some things to highlightfor our listeners.
Thank you, thank you. And it, it really is, it is that
journey that we all have to take.
Like we get to I reinvented myself many times And and it's
that if, if we could look at it,I think one of the things that
I, I took too seriously was failure, right?
(25:38):
I had failed. Therefore I am a failure and not
realizing that what I had tried didn't work.
Right, That's all. And let's try again.
Let's keep moving. And and so that learning that
over time has been one of the saving.
Graces a few words that I didn'texpect to hear out of your Your
(26:01):
mouth was failure, embarrassmentand things like that.
But I think that's something that we all express or we
internally express to ourselves.I don't know if we'll ever
externally verbalize that insecurities and things like
that. I know that I have suicide is
definitely something that I had considered during my transition.
(26:24):
It was a difficult time and we have, we, I mean, I think we've
all had our journeys, maybe not some with suicidal ideation, but
difficult journeys. But during my preparation for
this show, I actually took the survey you had suggested.
(26:49):
And for all you alphas out therelistening, visit
viacharacter.org for a free survey to learn your character
strengths. I learned a a few things about
myself I wasn't aware of. Like apparently my #1 character
asset is honesty. So honestly honesty, which was
kind of funny. Then followed up with curiosity,
(27:11):
humility, bravery, and perspective.
You'll find this very strange, Joe.
My middle strength is humor, which I thought would be my #1
because obviously I of the threeof us hosts, I'm the funniest
arguably. And since I'm the honest one,
this has to be true. And it doesn't mean that you
(27:35):
you're not funny. All everybody who who looks at
their humor, if it's not in the top and they think they're
funny, they're like, hey, I'm funny.
No, I'm not. I'm, I'm, I'm not funny.
I, I just, I appreciate a good sense of humor.
No, but in all seriousness, Joe,did you take the survey?
I did, I did. I thought it was humor and then
(27:58):
social intelligence and and honesty was third.
Making fun of Adam was fifth. I thought that was, I thought
that was going to be #1. My middle started hitting, you
know, hope, love of learning, creativity, love, judgement, you
know, bravery, perspective, you know, and it's as it gets
further down, you know, leadership is one of the things
(28:21):
like I'm a strong second. But if you've got a business and
you have a very clear idea of what you need from me, I'm the
guy. I'm good at leading my home
because it's not an organizational thing.
It's a it's a spirit of leadership, but you get into,
you know, prudence and I'll admit that humility was not in
my top, but it's but it's honestly not because I don't
think highly of myself. I just.
(28:44):
Don't we all know you're pretty arrogant, Joe?
Just take a seat back. Defense mechanism.
Usually and the and the definitions of those are a
little bit different, right? So humility is low on mine and,
and but your gratitude and love and, and love of learning,
obviously, or you know that that's at the top of mine.
(29:04):
So. What do all these things mean?
Like what? What do we do with this
information? So such a great question,
Stacey, because I use this with everybody and this is one of the
things that everybody, I really want people to take the
viacharacter.org survey because and I get nothing from it.
Like I just, you know, I just love the the survey so much and
(29:27):
I learned about it in the book called Flourish.
And it was actually Martin Seligman was actually used it
with the army and and it's such a great way for people to re
regulate themselves if they are out of balance.
It's when those top five are when we are in flow.
(29:48):
And so if something is out of ofof balance with us, we can use
Joe can go to humor and, and humor is not necessarily like
out of balance. Humor can be sarcasm and all of
those things. But humor at its best really is.
He loves to lighten, lighten theroom, make everybody feel
(30:09):
welcome. And so the ability to use that
or his curiosity or Stacey, whenyou're using your honesty like
that comes from you. When my guess is when somebody,
when you sense that somebody is not being honest, that all kind
of that's like nails on a chalkboard to you.
(30:31):
And so I love it because what happens is, is most people can
tell me their weaknesses. They can't tell.
They won't tell me their strengths.
And so I've used this with my nieces and nephews to talk to
them about how do they talk about themselves when they go
for job interviews. Used it with professionals for
the same reason, like because people can say like, well, you
(30:52):
know, I just I have two of my nephews are in film.
So I'm like, well, you're creative.
So that how you talk about yourself and how what you're
what you can be counted on, right?
Are these things, and so I love using this with, I've used it
with executives at, at Pixar allthe way to military and all of
(31:17):
these things. And most of it is most people
will take it and they'll say like, well, it makes sense.
They just now have a language about what they can be counted
on for. The other thing most people will
do is they'll go right to the bottom and be like, OK, these
are my weaknesses. The great thing about this is
these are 24 strengths and theseare the ones at the tops are the
(31:41):
ones that are in action at the time you took the survey.
It doesn't mean that you don't have access to the rest of the
list. It just means that bravery for
me is very low. When I gave this, I was teaching
a transition to success program for the Army a few years ago and
(32:02):
I had them take this. Not one of them had bravery in
their top five. And the way I explain it best is
because these are all 12 to 29 year veterans coming out, I
don't, I didn't need bravery 90%of the time I was in the
(32:25):
military. Now, I was also, you know, part
of the reason I, I honor you allso much is because I was
peacetime, right? So there's a very big difference
between peacetime and war time. Now, I, we are trained to do our
job. I don't have to.
I didn't have to think about howto fly the plane after the hours
(32:46):
of and hours of practice. It was an execution moment.
My like Stacy has with those people that I have that have
bravery, they are advocates. They are fiercely advocates for
somebody, something that they believe in.
(33:07):
And so it's A and it's ability for us to just kind of settle
into like who are we and what lights us up and when am I in
flow? When will time just kind of
disappear for me? And so the ability for us to use
(33:28):
those strengths to show up into and come from them and then use
the lower ones. I use the example my, my father
passed a few years ago. And, and I was not taking action
on the things I needed to do, like call the limo service, call
the hotel. I there's just like, I just
couldn't get myself to do it. And so one day I looked at my
(33:49):
list and bravery was like 19. And gratitude was #1 love of
learning is number 2. And I was like, OK, all right,
how do I pair my bravery? Now I'm going to need this with
my gratitude for my father and the opportunity to celebrate him
with my love of learning of all the things I had to do.
And I would be able to get through it.
(34:10):
Now, I'll be honest, I needed some cookies to to some
emotional support system, but it's it's that ability for
especially for the military, because I think, you know, one
of the things I love about your mission is to help with the
suicide, right, Right. And how do we start to shift how
(34:32):
we think when people come out? When I came out of the service,
I was in a foreign land with people I did not understand,
like I understood my military, you know, people that how we
thought everything, but now withcivilians very different.
(34:52):
And so in that I also kind of lost my way of what I believed
about myself and my strengths and my abilities.
And then when I failed, I just kind of went down that rabbit
hole. When we can, when we can have
people think from their strengths of honesty, courage or
(35:14):
curiosity, humor, and they startto use them in an everyday life,
then they can start to see like,oh, even if I've even if I
failed at something, even if something happened and I was
recently coaching a young man who was like, but you don't know
what happened. What I did after I got out of
(35:36):
the military, I'm like, it doesn't matter.
We all do stuff, like we all have stuff that happens to us,
but if we can sit in that ownership, that one, we
accomplish something that most people don't ever think about.
And we've lived through things, we've seen things and we have
(35:57):
these incredible strengths that we can apply to anything that we
are doing. It begins to light us up and
give us a path that says, oh, I can use.
I have a lot of people. I have a lot of coaches who are
humility is number 1. And they're like, you know, but
I I can't do certain things. And I'm like, no, what, what
(36:19):
you're great at is champ. You are a best cheerleader in
the world for someone else. So you start to tell people like
I'm going to champion you. So Stacey, with your tie, you've
got two of those. You've got actually three of
those in your top five. The the honesty, honesty,
(36:40):
humility and bravery in that pattern.
You are an advocate and you careabout people.
You champion them and you will sometimes, you know me, I'm not
saying that you would, but somebody with that pattern might
shrink behind somebody else or not showcase themselves.
(37:00):
And So what I would work on is like, how could you pair, pair
your honesty with your humility so that you can champion and
champion yourself and sit up into your own energy and really
be able to advocate for yourself?
Yeah, that's how I would use it.It's so funny that you say that
'cause I am my worst self promoter.
I, I absolutely love promoting other people and all the things
(37:24):
that they're doing. And I'm, I'm other people's
biggest advocate. But when it comes to the work
that I'm doing, I am so behind the scenes on the, on my own
shit. Got to be honest, I am the worst
at it. But hey, you know what?
I'm going to take your advice and I'm going to, I'm going to
try and step up my game a littlebit.
I'm going to try and shift my middle strengths to be my my top
(37:45):
tiers. Just pair, pair them and and see
that they're all, they're all strikes.
The humility is a strength, all of it.
I love what you're saying right now because I think a lot of
times people get caught up in either leaning too much into
their strengths or shoring up their weaknesses.
(38:06):
And, and you don't have to do that.
There's ways to pair those things up or use one to improve
another. If honesty is your thing, then
then using that honesty for selfregulation and using that
honesty because if you're teachable, if you're, if
somebody can correct you, if you're safe to correct, you can
become a whole different type ofperson.
(38:28):
And. This is so interesting.
Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Joe.
No, you're good. You're good.
I didn't mean to cut you off. I was just going to say this is
so interesting because I, I haven't taken this, but when I
was at Accenture, we use the Clifton strengths Finder because
of it's based on organizational psychology.
The, the interesting thing and I, I'm not sure my 5.
I mean, I know it's not a one for one correlation, but learner
(38:50):
ideation, positivity, individualization and arranger.
So, but the interesting thing was you would think like, oh,
the things that you're weak. And so I need to go back and
look at those things and try andimprove them.
Maybe I like your analysis, you know, and I know it's a
different assessment, kind of more personalized, but it's a
snapshot in time. It doesn't mean you have these
(39:11):
other things. The way that they taught us at
Accenture was the things that you're weak at, don't spend any
time on them. The things that you're the best
at, like you're already the bestat, like that's what you're
really good at. So if you spend time focusing on
those and really integrating andfiguring out what that means for
you, then you can become like super great in those, whereas
(39:34):
you would might only marginally move the needle forward, you
know, in those other weaknesses.But I like, you know, what I'm
hearing to you about how you cankind of look at the things on,
on this one, on the viacharacter.org assessment to
be able to say on these weak things, those still exist.
Like you still have those, they're just maybe things that
you're not strong at. And so when you're experiencing
(39:56):
that in that moment, how do you pair that with a strength to be
able to drive an actual outcome for the result that you want?
So very interesting. Yes, and, and I'll shift the
language just a little bit because you're not they're not
weaknesses. They literally are, they are not
active at the moment you took the survey.
(40:18):
So you might take the survey in a couple of years and something
else might have happened. And, and Stacey gets great at,
you know, promoting herself or talking about who she is.
Humility might drop out of the top five.
Now, it doesn't mean that it will, but it's, it's this
ability for us, like the the strength finders, which I've
taken and and used is, is great for what, where you are at work.
(40:39):
This is like the, the, the via is the best of who you are.
And so at any given moment you can shift and grow.
And if you need one, you just pull it up and you are able to
like, oh, I just need bravery today.
I'm going to go into something Ican put that on or I need.
I, my husband and I are different, very different.
(41:04):
He's very curious. He's a very curious man.
He loves to talk to people. I love to ask questions.
I'm not that curious. I love to learn and my curiosity
is low and most people would putthose two together.
They're just very they're actually very different things.
And so I can I work on my curiosity.
I work on what I were going to air quote small talk, right,
(41:29):
because it's not natural for me to like, I'm going to get into
the meat of somebody's life, notanything else.
So I oops, I literally have 3 by5 cards that say like, where did
you grow up? Like because it won't occur, it
doesn't naturally occur to me toask those questions.
So I had to I had to do the exact same thing that how I
(41:50):
learned my flight systems was the same thing that I used to
learn how to curiosity. I put them on three by 5 cards.
I keep them nearby. If I if I need to study on
something, I'll just put it on a3 by 5 card and learn.
And so that's, and, and you know, one of the things that I'm
doing now is a, is a film calledCourage to Thrive.
And I use both. I use the Via as one of the
(42:13):
things in the film to help thesewomen really start to think
differently about themselves andhow they show up in the world
and how to use their strengths and why they're here in a way
that empowers them. Because I think, like I said,
we're so good at what our weaknesses are, if we can live
(42:36):
in our strengths, that that's the best we can do.
You know, I love that personallybecause I think that, you know,
a lot of times when, when we don't recognize the impact that
those things, that the things that are lower on the list have
on our lives. You just, I mean, if you're
drinking something, you put a drop of cough syrup in it,
(42:56):
you're going to know that there's cough syrup in it, You
know, and, and all these things sort of tie together to make you
who you are. That I think the hardest thing
that I had to deal with on my recent, very recent journey of
of sort of self improvement was,was one when, when corrected,
(43:18):
it's never a defensive thing. You give it 10 seconds no matter
what, no matter who says it, no matter where it comes from.
And, and you think both of what was said and what was meant.
Because a lot of times, especially when people are
frustrated and angry, they treatyou how they feel, not how they
feel about you. So, you know, finding out what
is said versus where that came from is very important to, you
(43:39):
know, to deal with that. But #2 and the hardest thing for
me was to stop trash talking myself is to stop saying things
like, oh, sorry, I'm dumb or, you know, sorry, you know, if I
was being obnoxious, like instead of, of framing it that
way to, to, to stop and think again, just like being
(44:00):
corrected, correct myself. Say, was I acting, you know, was
I being too aggressive? Did I interrupt someone?
Did I, you know, AM, did I ask aquestion that seemed insensitive
because, Oh my gosh, like you, instead of asking somebody where
they're from, I want to see somebody in really nice shoes
try and get over a mud puddle. I want to see what happens when,
(44:21):
when, you know, when, when a fistfight, do they do they film
vertically or horizontally? I just, I want to see you doing
something because that's how I figure people out.
You know, when somebody, when somebody at the table is hungry.
Did you notice that when they said no, I'm good, was it
because they didn't have money? I want to know these things
(44:43):
because I want I, I'm curious about people's lives and their
hearts. So it was very hard for me.
It's like if I can do that for myself, I can really work on, on
making myself better. So when you started getting
involved, when you started doingthese things and using these,
you know, in your own life and started developing ways to help
people breakthrough that stuff, Is that is that what started
(45:05):
your coaching practice? And, and I do want to circle
back around and let you talk about courage to thrive.
In fact, I think Adam's got something great.
He must ask you about it. But but before that, I did want
to touch on your coaching practice and ask is, you know,
is this something this, this howto cope through these things,
the good and the challenges of of these trades?
I like to say I was coaching since I was 7.
(45:27):
Like I've been bossing my dad around that long and telling him
what he should be doing with hislife.
So I think coaching and teachingcame very naturally for me, but
it was when I was in in corporate and, and, you know,
there's only so much we can control versus what the
organization is controlling. And so when people would come to
(45:49):
me with a problem and they're like, hey, can I talk with you?
And I'd say, yeah, let's go in aconference room and I'd shut the
door and they'd start, you know,crying male or female, I'm like,
this is awesome. Like I can do something with
this. How can I help you today?
Because I love to help people shift their mindset, especially
about what they believe about themselves and what they believe
(46:11):
about their possibilities. Because I have no limiting
beliefs about what somebody can create.
Like literally, I am a yes for like people creating and growing
and, and achieving whatever it is that they want in their life.
And I'm, and I can figure it out, help them figure out how
to, how to get there. When I came out of, into a
(46:31):
corporate and went into coaching, it was really this
idea first really is like from, from the wealth side of things
of, of money, because I had to get myself out of it.
Like I had, I had to figure out from, from the bankruptcy and
foreclosure how to how to do that.
And I just wanted help to help as many people who were
(46:51):
suffering because I on the otherside of that all I, what I
learned was it's just money. Money is just is money is just
energy. Money can be created money.
Money is like abundance is everywhere.
We can get locked into it. It has to come through this
venue. And what I want people to see is
(47:13):
like, we want to open up and, and get into like, I'd love like
aligned, making sure that peopleare aligned with how they're
creating wealth and money and wealth for me is in all areas of
their life. And, and this ability for people
to kind of see that no matter what it is.
I was, I was the, the man who takes care of our yard.
(47:36):
I had texted him the other day because I'm in Pensacola now and
we had eight inches of snow yesterday.
And so my husband and I were prepping the plants.
So I was out, you know, putting the the cover on this big giant
plant we have, which ultimately surrendered last night and died
(47:57):
under the snow. But I texted him like, did you
know, because he stops his business from November to March.
And I texted him, like, did you know that you could create
another business that instead ofme being out there doing this,
you could have, I would have paid you to do that.
Like, I think in terms of money,I see money, I see how people
(48:19):
can make money. And so that to me was such a fun
thing to go into to help people like see where are the other
avenues of how, how could they thrive in their life in
alignment with what what they'realready doing.
I love it. I love that.
I appreciate you. You're a rock star.
(48:41):
Thank you. So are you.
I love. Being here.
Oh, go on. I meant stop what you got, Mr.
Adam. Yeah.
Hey, guys. Sorry, I think my connection's
struggling a little bit, but what I wanted to.
(49:02):
I wasn't lying. Well, I think what we can, what
we can do is I'm going to pick up with Adam's question and if
he can make it back, then he cancome back into the conversation.
But what we'll do is we'll just pick up.
So we'll give it 2 seconds so that our editor can cut.
(49:23):
OK. So Doc, your documentary Courage
to Thrive, highlight stories of resilience and redefinition.
So as a veteran and someone who faces transitional challenges,
and of course, Adam and and Joe,as you've already ascertained
from our chats, for our listeners especially, what does
(49:44):
it mean to have courage to thrive and, and how, how can
they start rewriting their own definitions of, well, success
and fulfilment? I, I love that question because
I think if, if we really understood like I had to move
into what I now call it like an experimentation orientation to
life, right. So for me from moving from
(50:06):
survival, like I felt like I lived in survival a long time.
And what, especially after the financial challenges, how to
move into thriving for me, beingable to thrive in all areas,
whether it's relationships, health, money, alignment, doing
the things that I love to do, that thriving, that ability to
(50:29):
feel fulfilled in any moment, satisfied with the work I'm
doing and continue to grow. That is really what kind of I
start to look for that it's not just one area, but to have all
areas fall, you know, firing on all cylinders that so that
people can move and, and be at their best.
(50:49):
Because I, I think there's so much creativity in the world.
There's so much innovation in the world.
If we weren't taking it again, especially as veterans, whatever
we are holding against ourselvesthat leads down that path of, of
depression and destruction, whatever.
It's like if we, if we believed in ourselves as much as others
(51:11):
believed in US and saw us, what could we create?
And so that was part of the impetus.
You know, I, I just want to add also that you, you know, you,
you talked about being able to sort of forgive yourself a
little bit in a weird sort of way.
And, and I think that, that I, Ihate the word forgiveness.
(51:32):
We should have two words becauseI think that there's an element
of peace that people don't realize that forgiveness is not
for the forgived. It's, it's just rarely is it for
the forgive, unless you're talking about our judicial
system or, or in debt forgiveness is for the person
who's been wronged and, and it lets us move past.
(51:54):
And so for instance, I'll give you a, a personal quick example.
Looking back, it's very easy forme to look at my military career
in my time in Iraq and go, I should have done this.
I could have done that, I and all these things, but it's so
unfair of me as a much wiser, much more intelligent, much more
(52:18):
accomplished world. You know, I've grown so much to
expect who I am now out of that 23 year old kid.
It's not fair. It's just not fair.
I should never do that. It's set myself up for so much
failure. Yes.
And there's an opportunity to really look at like, like, how
(52:39):
can we be kind to ourselves about that 23 year old?
Yeah. Like our 23 year olds did the
best they could just to survive in a very challenging situation.
Stacey, I think you started at like 17, right?
Like, I couldn't imagine like starting that young, you know,
and having for, for all of us, all the pressures that were on
(53:03):
us to perform and to learn something new quickly, right?
So we can actually trust in our,our reinvention skills because
every base we moved to, we kind of had to reinvent ourselves and
kind of like rethink what we were going to do too.
And so forgiveness is, is for our self.
(53:24):
And, and through my, I have a, amaster's in spiritual
psychology. One of the things that we
learned was it's really, can I forgive myself for judging
myself as having done something wrong, being bad, whatever.
If I can forgive myself for thatjudgement, that's, it's called
(53:45):
compassionate self forgiveness. Like if I can forgive myself and
others, because we never know what it's about in our lives.
And so that ability for us to pull ourselves into a place of,
of, of peace, as you said, of caring and loving for ourselves,
that's so important. Yeah, man, that's a lot to.
(54:08):
That's a lot to chew on. I have a lot to.
I mean, I had a lot to process, especially after several
deployments and TD wise and you know, a lot of things to forgive
myself for. You know, there shoulda woulda
coulda is really eat away at youand and it's not the things that
you judge other people for, but for yourself and and, you know,
(54:31):
giving yourself the the grace and as Joe said, gosh, you're a
kid. Complexities of the mind, my
God. Giving yourself, they now say
that the brain isn't fully developed until 27.
So like anything before then, it's kind of in a, a compromise
situation. And, and, and what you're
saying, Stacy, it's like we holdon to that, like we hold on to
(54:55):
the grievances against ourselves.
And like it's really, it's an opportunity for us to, to
release that, to release our hand, to love ourselves, that
ability to love ourselves forward, to love ourselves, even
though we've made mistakes, eventhough something has happened,
even though, like I, I would notgiven the opportunity, I would
(55:15):
not go down that path again. It's, it's have we grown?
Who are we now? And, and can we, can we apply
that grace, that peace, that love to that 23 year old, that
25 year old, that 17 year old, and apply loving like lotion or
salve to the skin like so that they feel seen and heard.
(55:36):
Like, I get that, you know, you wish that you had done something
different. Well, I will definitely be
taking that to heart, Doc, and Ithink we all will.
So you're the absolute best. I think Adam, Joe and I can all
agree with that. And Adam may not agree that that
(55:58):
you're that he's not the best pilot, that you're the best
pilot, but. We will all argue about this.
I was mean like some of the evolution I had to do is cuz I
was a mean instructor. So just so you know, but.
I've known for my honesty. So for all time best pilots, but
we all default to Chuck Yeager on that one.
That's true. You know, in our units and
(56:21):
things like that. And no, but I would.
I would bow down to Kameen for sure.
We'll, we'll all bow down to heralphas.
Be sure to visit Kameen Samuel. That's KAMIN samuel.com, where
you'll find all the information we talked about today, her
documentary, her social media handles.
We'll have those in our show notes as well, so be sure to
(56:42):
check her out. I don't want to say stalk her,
but you should stalk her becauseshe's absolutely awesome.
You don't want to miss. Her doc.
Miles, so Miles stalking won't hurt.
We really appreciate your time Doc, that you spent with us
today. And before we sign off, is there
anything that we haven't touchedon that you think our alpha
should hear? Well, I think what we were just
talking about is, is that ability to love ourselves
(57:06):
forward, to forgive ourselves, to be kind to ourselves so that
we can live into what our heartsdesires are.
Like I said, I don't have any limiting beliefs.
And for the of the veterans, it's this idea that like they
have more strengths, more courage, more bravery in their
(57:26):
pinky than than they may use when they get out of the service
and that everything is overcome able, everything they have, they
have experienced, they have done.
There is support. You all advocate for all the
support that they can get and they have the ability to, to
(57:48):
from the inside out, recover, create, innovate on their own
lives so that they thrive and they expand because we need
every one of us that has come out of the military to help this
world. And so if, if you need help, get
it, you know, and, and really see that there is just, if you
(58:11):
could just hear me say this, there is a possibility for
everyone to thrive. And it it really just begins
with just the kernel of the belief.
All right, Alphas. Well, we've been talking with
Doctor Kameen Samuel today. Kameen, thank you so much for
visiting us. Alphas, please stick around for
some scuttlebutt after the break.
(58:32):
Welcome back, Alphas. We're keeping things short and
sweet on the countdown, so there's no scuttlebutt today,
but thanks for taking the trip down memory lane with us.
We really hope you guys enjoyed the episode.
On behalf of the entire Tal Podcast team, we hope you're
enjoying time with your loved ones during the holiday season.
If you miss us during the holidays, which I know you are,
(58:52):
you can always subscribe to our podcast, our newsletter, or send
us guest and mail recommendations at legion.org,
Back slash Tango Awful Lima Salon.
Salon.
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