Jen Singer

I can fly an F-16 combat fighter jet upside down, but I’m afraid of spiders. Put me in a cockpit one hundred-fifty feet above ground and tell me to fly straight up toward the clouds while giving the jet a few spins, and I’m your girl. Point at something no bigger than my thumb, its eight legs making their creepy way toward me, and I’m out.

Yet I’ve had to face down plenty of fear to eventually end up as Lead Solo for the Air Force Thunderbirds. Turns out, so much of it didn’t even have to do with the aerobatic maneuvers I had to learn. Throughout my career as a fighter pilot, I endured claustrophobia, do-or-die situations, and the effects of nine times the force of gravity on my body, but my biggest adversary became my own voice of doubt and the imposter syndrome it created. Speaking up in front of my peers and commanders was more difficult than any physical challenge. Things like being vulnerable enough to accept help when I needed it or bold enough to ask for what I wanted were lessons I had to repeat over and over before I finally got them right.

Whether I was in the air or securely on the ground, I learned that my choices between discomfort or security came with a price. On my way to fulfill my dream to fly fighter jets, I could choose to tough it out or hang it up, and either choice would cost me. How I looked at fear would become the solution for so many decisions in my life.

After a potentially deadly mistake in the cockpit early in my training, I began to question whether I was good enough for the career I was working so hard to achieve. My inner critic stepped in to talk nonsense in my head, and I believed it. It’s easy to do considering we’re all wired with a negativity bias, always looking for danger that so often isn’t really there.

Flying fighter jets surely was dangerous, but most of the time, that’s not what scared me. I had to learn to force myself to speak up and be heard in a type A culture that values bold decision-making and fearlessness. While most people assume fighter pilots are cocky risk-takers like Tom Cruise’s Maverick in the Top Gun movies, I was the introvert uncomfortably signing autographs for excited fans after an airshow. Though I enjoyed inspiring people, it was easier for me to do that while flying my jet belly-to-belly with another at four hundred miles per hour as I shot by overhead.

Fear tends to force us back into our comfort zones and onto autopilot. Yet the choice to avoid the negative instead of working toward the positive actually costs us more in the long run. I know now that the price of avoiding discomfort came at a higher cost than facing it head on.

In time, I learned how to better control the aircraft and my own fear, accepting what’s out of my control, building a perspective on facts instead of emotions, and seeing opportunities where there are obstacles. It’s not that I suddenly became fearless; we still need fear to keep us safe. It’s that I changed my relationship with fear. Ultimately, I learned how to make the uncomfortable choice by flipping my perspective, like my jet, upside down.

One of the most famous scenes in the original Top Gun movie is when one of the instructors, played by Kelly McGillis, asks how Maverick could see the enemy jet if he was flying directly above him.

“Because I was inverted.”

This has become such an iconic line that people around the world recognize the pop culture reference, even turning it into a meme a generation later. There’s a fascination with the idea of flying a jet inverted at insane speeds. It feels uncomfortable and challenges our perspective.

This is how I hope you’ll begin to see things--from the flipside. I’m on a mission to teach people all I know about facing fears and making hard choices so you, too, can see things in a new way for a richer, more fulfilling life. I’ll share each of the lessons I’ve learned through a series of fighter pilot experiences and personal principles, so that you can begin to apply them to your own life.

Whether you’ve set your sights on an audacious goal or you’re just trying to get through this week, looking at things from the flipside can smooth the ride or send you on a completely unexpected and incredible trajectory. I’ll show you how. Let’s go!

The Road to Diagnosis: Horses vs. Zebras

There are many ways to get a diagnosis. Some are routine, textbook experiences, some are hard-fought and lengthy battles for truth and understanding, and others are harrowing, near-death experiences.

It all depends on whether you’re a horse or a zebra. See, in healthcare, there’s a saying that goes something like this: “When you hear hoofbeats, look for horses, not zebras.” In other words, look for the most common diagnosis, not the rare one.

That’s great unless you’re the damn zebra.

Horses get diagnosed more quickly. They tend to get more respect and understanding, less medical gaslighting, quicker treatments, easier insurance coverage*, and better outcomes. In short, if loads of people have had what you have, it’s easier for doctors to know how to treat you.

Zebras often have to fight to be taken seriously, frequently bouncing from doctor to doctor, and hospital to hospital. They’re more likely to get a dismissive diagnosis of “stress” or “anxiety,” when those are just the results of the very real symptoms they feel. They have fewer options for medical care because fewer doctors know how to treat their condition. They’re more likely to require uncommon or off-label treatments (prescribing a drug for a different condition than it’s approved for), so they have to fight for insurance coverage. And they have to explain to family, friends, and coworkers what their illness is and what is does to them, which can sometimes feel like defending a thesis.

I have been a horse and I have been a zebra.

As a horse, I got the full “Cardiac Express” workup in the ER, where I was raced past everyone in the waiting room—during peak Covid in 2020—and hooked up to a heart monitor that three (count ‘em, three!) medical professionals watched with great interest. Within a few hours, which is like minutes in hospital time, I had a diagnosis: complete heart block. I’d need a pacemaker and medications for heart failure, a disease so common, that more than a half-million people in the United States are diagnosed with it annually.

As a zebra, on the other hand, I had to seek out gynecological experts near and far while in chronic pelvic pain that some insinuated was “in my head.” Eventually, I flew across the country on my 40th birthday to get the rare diagnosis: ovarian vein syndrome, when dilated veins block the ureters. It’s so uncommon, doctors still question that it’s a “true pathophysiological entity.” In other words, they don’t even believe it’s real. To this day, I don’t know if it was an accurate diagnosis, but after I fought for insurance coverage and found a surgeon closer to home to remove my ovaries, I finally got relief.

Your road to diagnosis might be a speedy highway with no one in your way or it may be more like Mario Kart, full of obstacles that threaten to knock you off the road. So, how do you get diagnosed? And what do you do once you have a name for what ails you?

*I am writing this with the U.S. medical insurance industry in mind. If you’re in a country with universal healthcare, this doesn’t apply to you. Also, would you adopt me?