Know Yourself (Before the Air Force Tells You Who You Are)

Self-Awareness as the Starting Point

"The biggest enemy I ever faced wasn't a person. It was the story I kept telling myself."

I grew up in Texhoma, Oklahoma. If you've never heard of it, that's because there's nothing to hear. Population of about 900. The kind of place where everybody knows everybody and nobody leaves. I didn't know what I didn't know, and I definitely didn't know myself.

The Kid Who Thought He Was Stupid

When I joined the Air Force, I carried a suitcase full of beliefs about who I was. Most of them were wrong. I thought I was too stupid to go to college. I genuinely believed I had almost failed out of high school. To this day, I think my senior year English teacher fudged my grade a little just to get me across the stage. So when I raised my right hand and swore in, I wasn't thinking about a career. I was thinking about survival.

My first duty station was RAF Lakenheath, England. I was assigned to the Command Post, a job that required me to know regulations inside and out, brief senior leaders under pressure, and process emergency action messages without hesitation. For a kid who thought he was stupid, this was terrifying.

The regulations were written in a language I wasn't used to. Dense. Bureaucratic. Full of acronyms I'd never seen. I had to read slower than everyone else. I had to re-read sentences three and four times. And when I still didn't get it, I had to do the hardest thing of all: swallow my pride and ask the stupid question.

I can't overstate how hard that was. When you already believe you're the dumb one in the room, raising your hand to say "I don't understand" feels like confirming what you already fear. But I did it. Over and over. On night shifts, when the Command Post was quieter, I'd sit there with the regulations open and just grind through them. Page by page. Section by section. I'd read a paragraph, close my eyes, and try to explain it back to myself. If I couldn't, I'd read it again.

What happened next surprised me more than anything in my life up to that point.

I got good at it. Really good. My team was selected as the number one show team during the IG inspection at Lakenheath. When I PCSed to Kadena AB in Okinawa, Japan, I received Superior Performer during their IG inspection, one of only six awarded to the entire Wing.

The kid who thought he was too stupid for college was now the guy people came to with questions.

Most people don't realize this about limiting beliefs: they don't just go away. Even after Superior Performer. Even after I separated from active duty and went to college, where I pulled straight A's and only one B. Even after I got an A in my college math class (me, the guy who never considered himself a "math person"). Even now, when people tell me I'm the smart one in the organization, part of me still doesn't believe it.

That voice is still in there. I still fight it. The difference is that now I know it's a liar.

Beyond Texhoma

Self-awareness starts with a question most people never honestly answer: Where did my beliefs about myself actually come from?

I thought I was stupid because I struggled in high school. But I didn't struggle because I was stupid. I struggled because nobody ever taught me how I learned. There's a massive difference between those two things, and I didn't figure that out until I was sitting in a Command Post at 2 AM reading the same regulation for the fifth time.

What I discovered on those night shifts is that I'm not a fast learner. I need more repetitions than the average person. I need to read slower, take more notes, and do more practice problems. But once something clicks, it sticks. I don't just learn it. I own it.

In practice, that looked like this: in college, years later, I recorded the lectures and put them on my phone. I'd listen to them between classes and at home. I'd re-write my notes by hand. And I was brutally honest with myself. If I didn't actually know the material, I admitted it and put in the extra work. No faking. No hoping the test would be easy. Just honest assessment followed by honest effort.

I also discovered I wasn't a reader, or at least not a sit-down-with-a-book reader. Listening to books was how my brain worked best. I average about 15 books a year now through audiobooks. That discovery alone changed the trajectory of my life. But it only happened because I was forced to confront an honest picture of how I actually process information, not how I wished I processed it.

Self-awareness isn't some mystical thing. It's looking at yourself without the Instagram filter. It's saying, "I'm socially awkward" (which I was) and then doing something about it. I read books on non-verbal communication. I studied influence. I practiced. It's saying, "I don't understand this regulation" and then sitting with it until I do, instead of pretending I get it and hoping nobody notices.

The Air Force has a way of stripping away the stories you tell yourself. You can fake it in high school. You can fake it at a part-time job. But when you're an A1C in a Command Post and an Emergency Action Message comes in, there's nowhere to hide. You either know your stuff or you don't. And that kind of accountability, that raw, unforgiving mirror, is one of the greatest gifts the military will ever give you.

If you let it.

Honest Self-Assessment

The Lies You Tell Yourself

Every thought that passes through your mind is not the truth. Read that again.

I believed I was stupid for the better part of two decades. That belief shaped every decision I made: what I attempted, what I avoided, who I thought I could become. It wasn't until the Air Force forced me into situations where I had to perform or fail that I started to see the gap between what I believed about myself and what was actually true.

Limiting beliefs feel like facts. That's what makes them so dangerous. "I'm not smart enough." "I'm not a leader." "I'm not the kind of person who..." These don't feel like opinions. They feel like the floor beneath your feet. And because they feel true, you never test them. You just build your whole life on top of them.

I'll give you an example beyond academics. I was socially awkward. Not the quirky, endearing kind. The kind where I didn't know how to hold a conversation, didn't pick up on social cues, and felt uncomfortable in groups of people I didn't know. For years I just accepted that. "That's just who I am."

But it wasn't who I was. It was a skill I hadn't developed. Once I recognized it as a gap instead of an identity, everything changed. I read books on non-verbal communication. I studied Robert Cialdini's Influence. I practiced. And now? Now I'm known as the guy who listens and asks questions. The shift didn't happen because I became a different person. It happened because I got honest about the gap and then did the work to close it.

The Recognition Is the Superpower

I need you to understand something: limiting beliefs aren't going to go away magically. I still fight the "I'm not that smart" voice. I still catch myself shrinking from things I'm fully capable of doing. The difference is that I recognize the voice now. I can hear it, name it, and say, "That's a belief, not a fact."

That recognition, just the recognition, is the superpower.

Because once you see a limiting belief for what it is, you can choose whether to obey it or override it. Before that recognition? You don't even have a choice. The belief just runs your life like a script you never wrote.

Think about the beliefs you're carrying right now:

• "I'm not a math person."
• "I'm not a leader."
• "I'm too quiet to stand out."
• "I'm not good at tests."
• "I don't have what it takes."

How many of those have you actually tested? How many have you just accepted because you heard them enough times, from a teacher, a parent, a friend, yourself?

The Test: Can You Teach It?

In the last section I told you how I figured out the way I actually learn: slower than most, more repetitions, more notes. The piece I want to add here is the test I built to keep myself honest about whether I'd really learned something or just convinced myself I had.

If you can teach it, odds are you know it. That became my test. If I could explain a regulation to someone else and they understood it, then I knew the material. If I stumbled through the explanation, I went back and studied more. No lying to myself. No "I'll figure it out later." Just honest assessment: do I actually know this, yes or no?

The Air Force gave me that framework. And honestly, it's the most valuable thing I took away from my entire career. Not the security clearance. Not the travel. The ability to look at myself honestly and say, "Here's where I'm strong, here's where I'm weak, and here's what I'm going to do about it."

That's self-awareness. Not some deep philosophical concept. Just the willingness to tell yourself the truth about yourself, and then act on it.

Want to understand where your internal motivation comes from and how it drives your decisions? AF101 covers this in Identifying Your Why.

Most Assumptions Are Untested

Drop the Ego

The first step, and I mean the very first thing you should do when you get to your first duty station, is drop the ego. Nobody comes into the Air Force knowing it all. Nobody. The Airman who acts like they do is the one everybody avoids. Don't be that person.

Dropping the ego actually looks like this: You walk into your first shop, your first office, your first flight. You don't know anyone. You don't know the routines. You don't know the shortcuts or the unwritten rules. And instead of pretending you do, you say, "I don't know this yet. Teach me."

Be teachable. This isn't just first-assignment advice. This is lifelong advice. The moment you think you've got it all figured out, you've set yourself up for a fall. I've seen it happen to E-3s and I've seen it happen to E-8s. The rank doesn't matter. The ego works the same at every level.

Test Your Assumptions

You're about to enter a world that looks nothing like what you think it does. Whatever picture you've built in your head (from movies, from your recruiter, from YouTube, from your buddy who enlisted six months before you) throw it out. It's probably wrong.

I assumed I wasn't smart enough for the Air Force. Wrong. I assumed the SSgt who made me shred paper for hours was just being mean. Wrong. He was overwhelmed with work and I was actually helping him, but my pride couldn't see that at the time. I assumed my coworkers were looking down on me during one of the worst moments of my career. Wrong. They were trying to help, and I was too deep in my own head to see it.

Every one of those was an untested assumption I treated as fact. And every one of them caused me unnecessary pain.

The pattern is predictable: something happens, you interpret it through your existing beliefs, and then you act on that interpretation as if it's the objective truth. But it's not. It's your brain filling in the blanks with whatever story feels most familiar, and that story usually comes from your insecurities, not from reality.

The fix isn't complicated. Before you react, ask yourself: Is this actually what's happening, or is this what I'm afraid is happening?

What Self-Awareness Looks Like in Your First 30 Days

Let me get specific.

Acknowledge your gaps. You have them. Everyone does. Instead of hiding them, name them. "I don't understand this checklist yet." "I'm not comfortable briefing the commander." "I don't know anyone's name." Acknowledging the gap is what makes it possible to close it.

Learn how you learn. Pay attention to what works for you. Do you need to see it? Hear it? Write it down? Do it with your hands? Figure this out as fast as you can because the training pipeline doesn't slow down for anyone. I had to read regulations five times when my coworkers read them once. That's fine. I just needed to know that about myself so I could plan for it.

Ask questions. I don't care if you think they're stupid questions. I had to swallow my pride and ask my superiors things I was embarrassed to not already know. It was the hardest and most important habit I built. Now I'm known as the guy who asks questions. That reputation didn't come from being the smartest person in the room. It came from being honest about what I didn't know.

Learn, then teach. Once you understand something, try to explain it to someone else. If you can teach it, you know it. If you stumble through the explanation, go back and study more. This is the most reliable test I've ever found.

Watch yourself. Not in a paranoid way. Just notice your patterns. Notice when you shut down, when you get defensive, when you avoid something because it makes you uncomfortable. Those reactions are data. They're telling you something about a belief you're carrying that might not be true.

The lies you tell yourself will do more damage than anything the Air Force throws at you. But you don't have to believe every thought that passes through your head. Some of those thoughts are just old scripts running on autopilot from a version of you that doesn't exist anymore.

You're about to become someone new. The question is whether you'll let the old stories write the new chapter, or whether you'll pick up the pen yourself.

If you want to reality-check your expectations against what military life is actually like, you'll find the full breakdown in AF101's Managing Expectations section. And when you're ready to dig into the beliefs that make you vulnerable to bad decisions, that's Module 4: The Pitfalls.