Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Conquer Fear, Find Fulfillment & Prepare for the Worst - Lessons from a Legendary Astronaut | Chris Hadfield

Episode Date: January 3, 2024

Imagine this... you're a NASA Astronaut. You're on a spacewalk, floating in the vastness of outer space, and suddenly... you go blind.What do you do?You might recognize today’s guest, Chris Hadfield, from his viral video on the International Space Station, where he performed David Bowie's 'Space Oddity' – a performance that garnered over 35 million views worldwide.But Chris is so much more than a musical talent in orbit. He's not only a retired NASA astronaut but also a skilled engineer, a former combat pilot, and a New York Times bestselling author of both fiction and non-fiction works.One of his standout books, 'An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth,' is a must-read for every high performer. In it, he shares an unconventional philosophy: 'Prepare for the worst—and enjoy every moment of it.' It's a mindset I find incredibly powerful, and I think you will, too.In our conversation, we dive into Chris’s rich experiences, including a harrowing story where he was struck blind while clinging to an orbiting spacecraft. I think you’ll love his practical approach to maintaining calm in what must have been one of the most high-stakes situations imaginable.We also explore how he uses competence as a tool to master fear, his strategies for problem-solving and teamwork, and his step-by-step approach to making even the most daring dreams a reality. His stories are a masterclass in thriving across diverse environments – in space, business, sports, and family life.This episode is one I'm sure I'll revisit multiple times, and I'm pretty confident you'll feel the same.I can’t wait to share with you Chris's insights, which offer a practical and inspiring roadmap to achieving peak performance, deep fulfillment, and a purpose-driven life._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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The more prepared you are, the more calm you can be, the more calm you are, the more calm you can be, the more calm you are, the more you notice the magnificence of life itself. Okay, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery Podcast. I am your host, Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade in training a high-performance psychologist. And I'm thrilled to welcome one of the most accomplished astronauts of our time,

Chris Hadfield, to the podcast for this week's conversation. You might remember Chris from his viral video on the International Space Station where he performed David Bowie's Space Oddity, a performance that garnered over 50 million views worldwide. Chris is so much more than a musical talent in orbit. He's not only a retired NASA astronaut, but he's also a skilled engineer, a former combat pilot, and a New York Times bestselling author of both fiction and nonfiction works. One of his standout books, An Astronaut's Guide to Life on

Earth, is a great read for anyone that's pursuing a high-performance life. In that book, he shares an unconventional philosophy, prepare for the worst and enjoy every moment of it. It's a mindset I find incredibly powerful, and I think you will too. In our conversation, we dive into Chris's rich experiences, including a harrowing story where he was struck blind while clinging to an orbiting spacecraft. I mean, imagine that, blind while you're clinging to a spacecraft thousands of feet up into the atmosphere. And I think that you will love his practical approach to maintaining calm

in what was one of the most high stakes situations that most of us could imagine. We also explore how he uses competence as a tool to work with anxiety and fear, his strategies for problem solving and teamwork, and his step-by-step approach to making even the most daring dreams a reality. His stories are a masterclass in thriving across diverse environments in space,

business, sports, and family life. I cannot wait to share with you Chris's insights, which offer a very practical and inspiring roadmap to achieving deep fulfillment and a purpose-driven life. So with that, let's dive right into this week's conversation with the incredible Chris Hadfield. Chris, how are you? I'm really well, Mike. Thank you for asking. You know, life goes in phases and sometimes you get all wrapped up with something you

don't really want to be doing. But this particular phase of life, I'm really enjoying it. The mix of activities, the physical health, the family activities that are going on. So I think my answer to your question is excellent. Thank you. How are you? Oh, cool. What a fun way to think about it. I'm doing great. I really like the phase of life that I'm in right now as well. I'm in that phase between exploratory and kind of getting to the frontier and bringing back the fruits, if you will, or the insights or the new berries that I find on the frontier and then being able to share them with folks. And you understand the frontier quite a bit. Yeah, I've lived off the planet for about half a year and left Earth three times,

commanded a spaceship and done a couple couple spacewalks. So yeah, right out on the very frontier of the human experience. And I just count myself so lucky to have had a chance to do those things. Okay, so all right, let's start with lucky. Because when I did my homework, and by the way, I'm thrilled to meet you. So, um, but when I was doing my homework, it doesn't look like it's luck. And so I do want to understand how you've positioned yourself to capture what from the outside, it looks like you're living a good life. You know, you're, you're, uh, bestselling published author, fiction and nonfiction. You've got, uh, TV shows and movies and you've got like, and you've walked space, and you know, you've got a great family life, and you play music from outer space. Like there's so

much that seems so good. And you say lucky. Help me understand that. Well, there are a lot of things in your life that you can't control. You know, what you're born with, the situation you're born into, the country you're raised in or the culture you're raised in. And and then how you seize the opportunities that may come along. And, you know, if you live your entire life under a rock, then you're not going to have much luck in life, probably just because you're not exposing yourself to the opportunity to seize it and to take advantage of it. I count myself very lucky to have been born into a large, loving family, to have been supported and kind of driven and taught the value of work as a kid, and then to have latched on to some dreams real early on that then helped guide all my decision-making since then. And then to have met a terrific person, just cash in high school when she was 14 and I was 16,

who, and then we've spent the rest of our lives since then together. So the luck of, of, of having someone like that in your life, which is so key and important. Um, and I just, I shake my head every day at the, at the sequence of events of events that have happened and the opportunities that have come along. And yeah, you work hard. But most people work hard. So yeah, I sure don't deny the important factor of luck. And I'll take all the luck I can get. Oh, very cool. Okay. So when you think, when I think about astronauts, I think about, oh, a little rigid, you know,

kind of buttoned up scientist, if you will. I don't think that that's been an accurate depiction because I've gotten to know Dr. Woody Hoberg. Like he's awesome. He's awesome. He is awesome. He's like the best of us. And then as I'm learning about you, I'm like, oh, he's off access too. He's a little punk rock here. He's got like an edge to him. He's like funny and in all the right ways, like corny and just doesn't take himself seriously. And, but then he's like a radical pilot with a, you know, an obviously discerning mind.

So I want to know, how did you bring yourself forward into an environment that is very serious? How did you bring that fun part of you forward? And I'll just pause there. Everyone goes about life differently, Mike, and each of us has our own reasons for how we're conducting life. And something I realized quite a while ago was the main thing that you have control over is what you're going to do next. In fact, when you look at it, that's really the only thing you actually have any control over. What am I going to decide to do in the next 10 seconds?

That's kind of all you got. And everything else is the child of those decisions that you're making. You know, the strung together sequence of all the little stuff you chose to do, that writes the story of your life. And so early on, I was being raised on a farm. And farms are great because there's a regular pattern to life. You get the annual cycle of what you're creating. There's a necessity to work and then a physical nature to it. So it's a good life and it's a good way to grow up. But I was dreaming way beyond the edges of the property of the farm that I was on.

And I watched all of the science fiction and the TV, and then I watched the reality of people flying to space, and I realized that's the horizon that really intrigues and excites me deep in my heart, beyond the edges of the reality of the farm that I'm growing up on. And every kind of decision since then has been, how can I transform this kid who grew up growing weed and corn and now beans? How can I turn this kid into someone who could maybe someday be trusted to fly a spaceship? And it provides almost a script for every day. Definitely provides an impetus and a drive every morning.

Like, holy cow, the sun's already up and I haven't done anything yet. And, and how can I start doing the things that beyond the regular stuff on a farm, their stuff needs to be done every day. But how can I start doing the things that are going to get me closer to my dreams? What can I be reading? What can I be doing? Where can I be going? And how can I make the little decisions that are going to hopefully herd my life in that direction? And to me, that is, I figured that out really early. And that has led to pretty much everything that has ever happened in my life. Going from that basis to the reality of all the things that have followed.

I'm going to make this really personal for just a moment, is that my 15-year-old son is a good kid, smart. He's got a lot going for him and good moral character. He's like, got a lot going for him. And he's so far ahead of where I was. And I keep asking him, like, what's the purpose? Like what, what's the reason you're working hard? What's the reason that you are like, and he doesn't, he doesn't have a grand purpose. He doesn't have a way that he can articulate that. Did you have, did you have that at a young age? And if not, do you have any insights on how to help others, whether it's a 15 year old

son or, you know, a 15 year old son or you know a 35 year old that's trying to figure out what to do in life sure well i'd be interested to talk to your son and find out because i bet if he's finding a way to make good decisions every day and he's finding a way to make himself feel proud and to make himself do things that both entertain and satisfy him, then he probably does have something going on. He just hasn't verbalized it to himself. Here's maybe what I'd suggest, Mike, and that is walk into a bookstore or a library and notice that when you walk into a bookstore, you know, I got all those racks and all those advertisements and all the rest of it, but there are parts of a bookstore or a library that you

will naturally go to the parts that are interesting to you, the stuff you're curious about, the stuff that you're excited about. And so when you go into that bookstore, have a look, you know, almost, almost sit on your own shoulder and see what you're doing and go, you know what? Every time I go to a bookstore, I always go to these three sections. And maybe that's like a clue to myself that this is what is in my heart. This is what is interesting to me. And something that your 15-year-old probably already realizes, but some folks don't, is no one else has to care. And why would they? It just has to be important to you.

And it doesn't have to be earth shattering. It doesn't have to change the world for the better. It just has to be the stuff that you find exciting and challenging and interesting. And then once you've got those, you've identified them, you know, you can do it scrolling through the internet, although it's more distracting. But once you've got sort of those ideas in your head, hey, these are the three sections of the book star I always go to. Then say, well, what could I do in those areas? You know, if I'm interested in, I don't know, let's say I'm interested in horses. It doesn't matter.

Okay, horses. I always go to the section where there's horses. Well, I could be a jockey. I could be a veterinarian. I could be a farrier, you know, a shoemaker. I could be a person who breeds horses. I could be a person who studies the history and genealogy of how we went from Eohippus to the horses we have now. I could be a person who paints horses, who bets on horses, who builds racetracks. There's a million jobs out there. And if this is something

that is close to your heart and you're, you're fundamentally interested in it. Then you can start making decisions. Hey, if that's who I am and these are some of the jobs and things that I might do, then what should I do this weekend? Well, maybe I should go to a vet and help a vet, or maybe I should go to a racetrack or maybe I should go to a stable or maybe

I should read a book about it and just start giving yourself the chance to deepen and improve in the area that you are naturally fascinated in. whole idea of exploration and space flight. And it helped me then make all those little decisions to become an engineer and a fighter pilot and a test pilot and to learn other languages and to scuba dive and to do all the other things that I did that eventually allowed me to command a spaceship. I'm going to pause the conversation here for just a few minutes to talk about our sponsors. Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Sales Solutions. In any high-performing environment that I've been part of, from elite teams to executive boardrooms, one thing holds true. Meaningful relationships are at the center of sustained success. And building those relationships, it takes more than effort.

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whole foods. And when I'm traveling or in between meals on a demanding day, certainly I need something quick that will support the way that I feel and think and perform. And that's why I've been leaning on David protein bars. And so has the team here at Finding Mastery. In fact, our GM Stuart, he loves them so much. I just want to kind of quickly put them on the spot. Stuart, I know you're listening. I think you might be the reason that we're running out of these bars so quickly. They're incredible, Mike. I love them. One a day, one a day. What do you mean one a day? There's way more than that happening here. Don't tell. Okay. All right. Look, they're incredibly simple. They're effective.

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slash finding mastery. And now back to the conversation. When people say early, like I knew what I wanted to do from an early age, I always think like, okay, that wasn't my route. That wasn't how it went for me. Were you lucky? I'll go back to that word. Did you have an influential person that kind of pointed your nose in a certain direction? Like, how did it uniquely happen for you? Well, you know, we're the product of our of our upbringings, all of us to some degree. A funny thing happened, we went to like the big sort of fair that it's like a provincial fair, like a state fair kind of thing when I was a kid. And I don't know if you remember back in the 60s and 70s before the internet, if you went to the state fair or the provincial fair, there was an encyclopedia salesman there.

And they would be pitching you hard to sell you the full 24 volumes of whatever, Encyclopedia Britannica. And for whatever reason, they convinced my dad, you know, when I was like eight, they convinced my dad to buy Encyclopedia Britannica and you got it delivered home and all those beautiful leather bound volumes sitting on a two level shelf. But the reason I mention it is that became the internet for us at the time. That was the home resource. And when we were sitting at the dinner table, if anybody ever had a question,

then we didn't sit there and go, hmm, I don't know. Someone, one of the kids would be assigned to go over to the rack, get that volume out, look it up, bring it out, and everyone would learn what the answer to that question was. So a big part of shaping for me

was don't just allow yourself to say what or why, but make understand, learn and understand the answer and make the answer then part of who you are. And like building a platform underneath yourself that allows you to see even further. piece was super important in curiosity answered and how you through your own actions can then change and improve who you are the second piece was watching you know i read jules verne he wrote a book called mysterious island which it was it was like nature and humanity and struggles and sort of how how a person relying on their own wits and teamwork could accomplish something that seemed impossible. So I was reading science fiction and then I was watching Star Trek, which was, you know, just great integrated sort of a Western, but with really inspirational themes going on. And so I was subjected to all of this limitless fantasy of science fiction and television in 2001, A Space Odyssey.

But then at the same time, people were actually flying in space. And when I was nine, just about to turn 10, the first two guys, Neil and Buzz, walked on the moon. And it was like a little perfect storm. Here I am trying to improve and learn and develop who I am. I'm inspired by the endless possibilities of fiction and science fiction. But now I am given the permission of the reality of what people could actually do. And it kind of rolled out a potential path for me. Hey, if these people can do it, then there's really no fundamental reason that you can't do it.

And you just need to have a look at how they did it and what other options there are and start making decisions, just like looking up stuff in the encyclopedia, as to how you might gain the knowledge and the abilities to then go do something that seems like Star Trek or science fiction. So, yeah, I have a lot of people that I could thank, all the people that taught me along the way. But the science fiction authors, the television shows, and then the enablement of actual people who are willing to go take risks and explore, they all were super important in the formation of who I am. It really is like a unique collision that took place for you. I want to go back to the question about, did you first, like how did you bring yourself forward

into high pressure and high stress, you know, environments of consequence with speed and accuracy being required to do well? How did you bring yourself? Because you've got this way about you that's unique. And it doesn't seem to me that you hold it back to do the job right, but you bring yourself forward. And I'll tell you where this is coming from. I was with the Seattle Seahawks for nine seasons and a rookie, we're on the road and a rookie asked to address the team. And we were kind of skidding.

We weren't doing, we weren't doing very well, but we had a great talent on the team. And so we're on an away game. I think it was in green Bay. And the, the rookie says, Hey coach, this is in the middle of the coach speaking, by the way, to addressing the team. He says, do you mind if I say a couple of words to, you know, to the team? And the coach was like, oh, this is cool. Cause rookies don't interrupt the team really. He says, you know, and you could see coach Carol kind of going through like, yeah. And then one of the old salty vets in the back that is like the hardened leader, the real deep, you know, like you, you kind of, if you want to check

something and make sure it's cool, like he's, his presence is always around. And he says, not at the top of his voice, but like, he says it in a way he says, I know it's kind of awkward. This is what the kid says, right? The rookie says, I know it's kind of awkward, but coach, do you mind if I share a couple of words with the team? And then coach says, yes. And then the hardened athlete, the leader, if you will, says, hell yeah, kind of awkward. And so, okay. So now you got this bright eyed, you know, rookie and he kind of walks to the front of the room, feeling that tension from the back of the room.

And he brought all of himself forward. And he spoke poetically. He just did this amazing job of speaking the truth into what was happening. And he challenged everyone in the room to be a better teammate. And the way he did it was nobody else could ever do it like him. And this was, you know, I don't share locker room stuff, but this is to celebrate. This is Tyler Lockett for folks that like the Seattle Seahawks. And so no one gave him permission.

Matter of fact, it was the opposite of that. But, and no one gave, well, Coach Carroll gave him some permission, but no one, but he took, he took like the initiative to bring himself into that environment with his full personality and taking a role that wasn't really handed to any rookie for sure. So that's a long way of me getting to, did you bring your way or did you have success? And then you felt comfortable enough to bring your way into the environments that you're working in. A natural state is to be fearful and to let your fears curtail you from doing stuff that you think is important. And that young rookie in that

locker room with Pete Carroll there could have easily just said, yeah, I've got a good idea here, but man, I'm the new guy. And gosh, this coach has been everywhere. And these guys in the back, they've seen it all. But if you have a, in my case, if I have a clear vision of what it is I'm hoping is going to happen and how I think that this is a worthwhile venture to be involved in, you know, this is why we're all here. This is the thing that we're trying to do. Then the first thing that I've got to do, like always, is change myself. You got to do that quietly. You need to do it on your own. You need to recognize that if I'm going to get to this next level,

whether it's playing in the NFL or whether it's flying jets or whatever, playing guitar, writing books, if I'm going to get to this next level, then I've got to put in the work. The greatest antidote for fear is competence. And if I don't have a hope of confidence, of competence, then I'm just going to have to live with the fears and never be able to actually speak from a position of confidence. But if you have put in the work, and even though that guy's a rookie, he wasn't born into that locker room. He's done a tremendous amount of self-change in order to be in a position to make that statement.

And that level of competence, which is hard-earned and almost always unrecognized, and most of it's solo. But that, I think, is then what allows you to put yourself forward because you've then put together the pieces that you see things maybe at least differently, if not even more clearly than some of the people around you. And so when I'm laying out my own life, okay, goal, fly in space, walk on the moon. Okay. Let's just start backing that up. I don't know anything about anything yet, but if I just keep backing it up, then who are my role models? What choices did they make? What do they, you know, what did they do with their bodies? What did they do with their minds? And then what actions and choices did they make

in life? And do any of those appeal to me? And then let's start incrementally working my way through that. You fly in space. Okay, flying, that's a verb. But if I'm going to fly a spaceship, then I need to fly a lot of complicated things. First, I'm going to have to actually be a test pilot. To become a test pilot, one of the most dangerous and technical jobs in the world, first I'm going to have to be a fighter pilot and hopefully a combat fighter pilot. To be that, then I'm going

to have to be a normal pilot. To be that, I'm going to have to be a private pilot. And maybe the best place to start, what's the earliest thing I can do to fly? Well, I could be a glider pilot at 15 years old. Okay, that's the stage of life I'm at right now. And I'm going to start building my competencies. So I don't just have to be afraid and just roll the dice in my own life. Let's just start actually making decisions. And then if I can be good as a glider pilot, then that is just one more step towards being able to speak up in the locker room later on. And that's the way that I've always put myself forward. Do the work, bring yourself to the next level, and then don't be arrogant about it, but be competent and use the confidence that comes with competence to then give you the

perspective of the initiative to then challenge yourself to move up to the next level. And it doesn't just apply to football and flying spaceships. It applies to everything in life. And so let's pull on competence for just a moment. Competent in, how do you finish that thought stem? Competent in the skills that are needed in order for you to be successful in your chosen activity. Okay. So more craft based or task relevant competence? Yeah, well, let's say, let's say, like I did, you gave yourself the task, I want to write internationally best selling fiction. Well, shoot, what's step one of that? I mean, where do you begin when you haven't even written anything? But okay, well, let's have a look. There are best

selling books sold every year. So this is possible. I know the language so you know okay i don't have to learn another language but how do you learn to write that way and and what are your examples and and what schools are there out there that can teach you some of the fundamentals like you have to do the work you have to dig in you gotta gotta do all the background work. You got to reread every, you know, thriller fiction you've ever read, but read it in a whole different way. It's like watching film, you know? Okay. So how did they do all these things? How did they make this book? If you read Eye of the Needle or whatever, the Reacher series by Lee Child, how does Lee Child get you so that you just got to read the next chapter?

What techniques is he using? And then, you know, read Stephen King's book on writing and then start writing and, you know, do all of the background work, gain the competence so that then you have a chance of competing and turning out something that starts to match what you dreamed you'd be able to do and it's how i've approached everything that i've dreamed of in my life and some of the stuff i just i don't have the skill for or i don't have the patience for and that's okay you don't have to do everything and you don't really have to answer to anyone but yourself okay but but i think that process is is where the competence to overcome your fears so that then you have the confidence to complete that phase and move on to the next level.

Okay. Quick pause here to share some of the sponsors of this conversation. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentus. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday, what you put in your body matters. And that's why I trust Momentous. From the moment I sat down with Jeff Byers, their co-founder and CEO, I could tell this was not your average supplement company. And I was immediately drawn to their mission,

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Mastery listeners 20% off. Just head to FelixGray.com and use the code FINDINGMASTERY20 at checkout. Again, that's Felix Gray. You spell it F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y.com and use the code FindingMastery20 at FelixGray.com for 20% off. And with that, let's jump right back into this conversation. All right, let's make this super applied. Let's say, I don't know, that you happen to go blind when you're in outer space. How do you develop a competency for that? Walk us through that story. Yeah, walk us through that story. So I've done two spacewalks, and there is no more rare activity, I don't think, in the human experience than to have done a spacewalk. I don't know of

anything that less human beings have done in the last, you know, 300,000 years of our development. It's brand new, it's technologically almost impossible, and the numbers are still extremely small. So to be chosen to do a spacewalk is just so cool. And it's the manifestation of being an astronaut. You're going to put on the big white suit and go outside and build stuff on the outside of the space station or go do some experiments, something out there. So years and years of training.

But the actual experience is so great. You're in the airlock and they're depressurizing and it gets getting quieter and quieter until your only companion is the sound of your own voice or of your own breathing and your own voice when you talk to the other astronaut and then you open up this hatch and you grab on to this hatch and Pull yourself from the confines of the airlock out into the infinity of the universe with the the gigantic Bulging curve of the world beside you and the and you're in the three, you're not of the world anymore. You're in outer space,

surrounded by the infinity of the blackness of space itself. And while I was out there during my first spacewalk, something happened inside my suit and contaminated one of my eyes. And basically, it was so painful that it's it sense I couldn't use it struck it blind and then because without gravity your tears don't fall that whatever was contaminating or hurting my eye yeah I just got a bigger and bigger ball of that on my eye and there was no way to wipe it inside my helmet till eventually that ball of contaminated tear flowed over across the bridge of my nose and contaminated my other eye. And now both my eyes were unusable.

They were struck blind by something. I don't know if it was really bad or transient or what. And so the big question then is, what do you do next? What do you do next? What do you do now? And when I had one eye blinded, I was like, I could tell everybody, but what are they going to do? You know, I could tell Houston, hey, one of my eyes is messed up, but all they could do is ask me what I wanted to do next because they can't really do anything about it. But when both eyes were blinded, now I was stopped. And so I had to fess up and tell Houston. And I think it would have been understandable if I panicked at that point.

I'm outside on my very first spacewalk, holding onto the outside of a spaceship, and I can't see. But if you look at it, every time you blink, you're blind and you don't die. I mean, it's only for a portion of a second, but you don't die. You just can't see for a second. So what? You can still think. You've got four other senses. You can breathe and, you know, life's going on.

So, okay. So the reality is I'm not about to die. I just have something wrong with my eyes. So what do you do next? And so talk to the experts, go through everything that I've learned to see if I can troubleshoot the problem. Talk to the other astronaut that's out in space, spacewalking with me. He's ready to come help me if needed. But anticipating failure is a huge important factor in succeeding. It's the reason sports teams practice so much. It's the reason surgeons go to university and practice on cadavers

and then patients for so long. You have to have built up a lot of backup plans for when things go wrong. And in our case, we didn't know for sure that I was going to be blinded, but we knew lots of stuff can go wrong during a spacewalk. And so we even practiced. We had a name for it, incapacitated crew rescue. And so Scott asked, hey, do you need me to come help you? And I'm like, no, not yet. And and now it's just a matter of working the problem and not blowing it out of proportion. And so it's training, it's preparation, it's a lifetime. They didn't just grab me off the street and send me out on a spacewalk.

I used to be a downhill ski racer. I used to be a combat fighter pilot intercepting Soviet bombers with a fully armed F-18. I used to be a test pilot putting F-18s out of control to try and help develop new techniques so that they wouldn't be crashing them out in the fleet. So I had spent decades developing the habit patterns and the ability to deal with problems that when I was suddenly struck blind during a spacewalk, it was like, okay, it's not what I wanted to happen, but life isn't over. This is a problem we can work on. Even if I can't get my vision back, I'm going to be able to get back into the airlock.

There's ways to do it. I'll be okay. But let's try and solve this vision problem first. And what we did was ended up pop open the valve on the side of my suit, let the fresh oxygen flow across my head, try and dilute and evaporate the stuff in my eyes. And, you know, it's kind of weird listening to as your little oxygen tank is flowing and trying to repressurize the entire universe. But it worked. And in a matter of, I don't know, 20 minutes, my eyes had cleared up enough that I could sort of see, close up the valve and get back to work. And it turned out to be something pretty benign. It was just the oil and soap that was on our visors, the anti-fog that had just gotten oil and soap in my eye, but with pretty potentially bad

circumstances and consequences. But you hear the adage, it's not what happens, it's how you react to it. That's sort of the ultimate example of that. And you learn from it. And you work your way through it. We change. We don't use oil and soap now. You put something that's easier on the eyes. And then you finish the whole spacewalk and get everything in there that you were supposed to. But it never would have happened if we didn't have a clear goal in mind and then had put in the years and years of not just training for that specific thing, but actually changing who we are so that we can deal with those problems when they come up and not let them overwhelm us. Okay.

The genius inside of this very practical approach you have, it might save a lot of suffering for people. And so I wonder if you get the gravity, pun intended, I guess, of what you're saying that you didn't go to catastrophic thinking. You didn't go to black and white thinking. You didn't go to being flooded by emotions when you had something that could be catastrophic, that could be you just niched it down. You zoomed right into the challenge that you needed to solve. You made it small and digestible and just kept niching, niching, niching to get to a solution.

As opposed to, like I said, catastrophic black and white, get me out of here, emotionally flooded, that you've constricted your access to be able to think clearly from the overabundance of emotion that are coursing through your system. So just that very little simple, oh, got something here, wasn't planned for. I planned a lot. We've done lots of training for failure. And this is a new puzzle to solve. This is a new equation that I'm going to keep niching down to get to the basic, most basic thing that I could. Mike, you would love working in mission control. I worked, you know, Houston mission control for

25 shuttle flights in a row. I was the Capcom, the person working and talking with the crew. I was NASA's chief Capcom for a lot of years. And it is nothing but that. It's like this constant detective story. And we spend years in simulation and then on a regular basis have people up in space. And what you're trying to do is work the actual problem. Don't work the perception of the problem. Don't work all the ancillary things that might, you know, waterfall from it later. Work the actual problem dig in what is not don't respond to the fear don't respond to the you know the the

reverberations of it dig in and find out what is the actual danger here what is the actual cause actual what is the material risk yeah what's the real danger because there are a lot of people ask me, they say, boy, rockets are scary. And I go, rockets are just rockets. And you can choose to be scared or not. But things aren't scary. Just sometimes people are scared. And those aren't synonyms.

That's not this, you know, fear and danger are not the same word. And if you can actually dig into the real danger, like, okay, so you're blinded out on a spacewalk. All right, but what is the real cause of what's happening? And what is the actual danger? Okay, I can't see, but so what? You know, that is not catastrophic yet. If my suit had blown out, and I'm going to die in the next 10 seconds, then okay, panic, do something desperate, make some wild moves. But if you've got some time, and if you understand the real dangers involved,

then you have a much greater chance of actually solving the problem and reaching success. And it doesn't just apply to being blinded during a spacewalk. I love this conversation. And I'm also like, I've got this other thing that it's like, I put you guys up on a pedestal, you guys, you people on a pedestal, meaning, you know, any astronaut. Did you have zits? Like when you're in high school, like, like it sounds so perfect. Everything sounds so good. Like did you, Mike, I still have zits, you know, at this stage of life, it drives me crazy. I'm like, how come I don't have, how come I'm not Tom Cruise with perfect skin? What's going on?

I bet you even Heidi Klum gets zits sometimes. I'm sure she has problems that she's not telling everybody about. You know, something else. Nobody's perfect. And everybody's family is a mess. And every one of us is going to die. So get over those things. Stop looking for some sort of sitcom television perfection.

Recognize that life is messy and people are messy and nothing ever goes the way you planned. And what you actually need is to have backup plans. You actually have to have purpose. And then you have to be constantly gaining skills. And you got to recognize that nothing's going to go the way that you want. And then move forwards and stop having false expectations about how some sort of zitless life, life is nothing but things going wrong. And what's going to define your joy and satisfaction is your acceptance of the reality and then how prepared you are for those things that are inevitably or high

probability going to go wrong. That's actually going to dictate your life. And if all you're doing is like crossing your fingers and whistling past the graveyard and hoping, you're going to live a life of stress and nervousness and an unsettled stomach. And you're going to miss almost everything because you're so worried about stuff that you don't notice the beautiful subtlety of the gorgeousness of the stuff that's actually happening in your life. The more prepared you are, the more calm you can be, the more calm you are, the more you notice the magnificence of life itself. And to me, that equation is super important

in loving where we started this phase of life. Did you study the Zen traditions? Where did you come to those deep insights? I work with a lot of folks who are interested in how to succeed in what they call longevity, but really it's how to have as good a life for as long as possible, not just prolong life, but how to have a really good lifespan or healthspan or whatever the right phrase is. Healthspan.

A lot of folks, they need some way to calm the noise and and there are some terrific tools out there uh you know zen the whole idea of some sort of deliberate meditation deliberate separation from the distractions and the noise and giving yourself the permission to concentrate and calm. And for whatever reason, maybe the way I'm plumbed and wired or just the way I was raised, I noticed when I was talking to all these other people and comparing notes on how we deal with life, I think I do that like in between sentences,

definitely on a regular basis. I seek that one step back, take a big cleansing breath and allow myself 15 seconds of calm. And you can recenter yourself either through a deliberate action, going to yoga, meditating, whatever it is that works for you, or in my case, sort of a deliberate, continuous necessity to center and calm. And I realized a long time ago, nothing is ever as good or as bad as it first looks. And if you react to the goodness and badness of stuff, you will whipsaw yourself into this dissatisfying tumult of a life. But if you can not allow yourself to be whipsawed

by the distraction of immediacy, if you can find a way to temper it, that works really well when you're in combat. It works really well when you're a test pilot flying an airplane. It works when you're blinded during a spacewalk. But I think more importantly, it works on a daily basis throughout life so that you find grace. And I seek grace whenever I can get it, that feeling of comfort and calm

and sort of a serenity of a little island of that in amongst the typical noise of a day. I think it's really important, and I seek it as often as I can get it. If there was some sort of recognition for gems per second, and you just had like, I don't know, 90 gems in 90 seconds.

Like that was unbelievable. Chris, like that, honestly, like, Hmm. That must be when you say grace for gems per second. I hadn't thought of it.

That was just for a second. When you say grace, do you mean the literal with God? It doesn't matter. The current events around the world demonstrate just all the different manifestations of God that people have internalized into themselves for better or for worse. And I think it is really important to have a belief system within yourself. Recognize there are things that are much greater than yourself. It's not that important what.

So I don't think grace is necessarily tied to any particular version of belief. I just think the state of grace, the state of humility and awareness of your actual self in amongst all the other selves and in amongst all the selves of history, to me, that is an important part of a successful and happy life. And now, one final word from our sponsors. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep.

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And with that, let's jump right back into our conversation. You keep going. It just gets better. I really want to pause right now and ask our community to rewind the last six minutes and listen to it again and again and again. And before, I feel flooded in the most humbled way, in the way that you've eloquently strung your words together, that you're pointing to what many of us would call the good life. And you're not doing it with like, you're doing it with like, let's just call it grace, but there's not an edge to it.

There's not a sharpness. There's no condescension. It's just really eloquent how you're doing it. Before we turn the final corner here is that you have an understanding because you have lived in high compressed, high stress environments. What does it mean to be a good teammate? And how have you translated those two parts to this?

How have you translated all that you've learned in your spacewalking and supporting other spacewalkers? How have you translated that into writing? And in particular, your new book, The Defector. So teammates and then translation of skills into your new venture of writing. Those are the two things I just want to make sure we hit. Sure. You know, I hear some people, there's a common expression out there of being a self-made man. You know, it's sort of an old meme, an anachronistic kind of term, self-made man. You know, it's sort of an old meme, an anachronistic kind of term, self-made man. If you think you're self-made, then think again. You did not give

birth to yourself. You didn't suckle yourself. You didn't teach yourself to walk. You didn't invent the language that you speak. You didn't invent the educational system. You didn't build the infrastructure of the country you're built in. You didn't build the language that you speak. You didn't invent the educational system. You didn't build the infrastructure of the country you're built in. You didn't build the financial system. You didn't build the plumbing. You didn't build the streets. You are the lucky recipient of tens of thousands of years of hard of the fact that you're not self-made, you are part of a team. There is this long, continuous team of time that you're just the current person pulling on the

oars, but also all the people around you that you're absolutely counting on. I did not sew this jacket. I didn't sew this shirt. You know, someone else cut my hair. A dentist took care of my teeth. The doctor takes care of my body health. Someone else built this house. You know, I need to be a productive, willing, and humble team member so that we collectively can accomplish something greater than ourselves. And it's really focused when you're part of a space crew, you know, the crew of a spaceship, because you can count the number of people you're with, you know, it's maybe three or maybe six, and you're trying to do something that is dangerous and extremely technically hard and is going to demand the best of everybody. And if someone makes a mistake, everybody dies. So putting purpose ahead of self is really important.

And having like that doesn't mean don't have the skills. That doesn't mean don't be prideful. It doesn't mean don't don't pursue things to the absolute limit of your own ability. Don't be you know, you need to be self-made, but you also need to recognize that you are extremely limited and you need to both lead and follow within the team that you're on in order to give the team the greatest chance of success. That applies to a sports team. It applies to society in general. It applies at the family level. And it sure as heck applies to the crew of the international

space station. And so when you're trying to accomplish something, you need to do the work. So let's, let's say, you know, I'm, I'm writing this, this new book, the defector, uh, which is doing great. Yes. Congratulations. Yes. Um, but, but I, I, I didn't write that book by myself. I mean, I'm the sole author. I sat at this desk and thought of every single word in that book and wrote it out. But I think back to Mr. Davies when I was in grade 10 English class, who instead of just I don't know what the curriculum said, he said, for the next six weeks, we're going to read a really good book. It's called No Highway by Neville Shute. And he had this cultured English voice. And every day he just sat there and read us this beautiful mystery.

And you got to almost experience the process by which Neville Shute wrote that book. And I thank my mother, who I played Scrabble with a million times and who taught me the importance of language. And I thank Stephen King, whose book on writing was just so useful in visualizing how you write. And then, of course, my editor who takes all of my words and tells me, you know, you don't really need this word here. And you might move this paragraph to the front. and my agent, and then all the other people that are involved, so that as many people as possible can share the ideas that I had. And that's kind of the purpose of a book, is to try and make my ideas as compellingly clear as I possibly can, and then put them out there so that someone this week or a thousand years from now can really

get a glimpse into what I was trying to convey. And my first book, An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth, is really germane to the conversation that we're having, Mike. It was kind of my best effort to put all of those thoughts on how to conduct life together. It truly is what the title says, An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth. And I really worked hard on that one to try and coalesce those thoughts so that other people could make them as accessible and memorable when they needed them. So that when you're faced with that thing, you can go, oh, yeah. When he talked about being a plus one or a minus one or a zero or what he talked about working the problem or or whatever, so that the thoughts become part of your own decision making in the future. To me, that whole process of teamwork to accomplish something that is important to you and get it out there, whether it's a best-selling book or whether it's just how you're talking in public

or with friends. To me, that's a big, important part of life. And each of us has our own abilities in those areas. And why wouldn't you challenge yourself and try and do those things as well as you are able? One of your colleagues, Mike Massimino, said life on Earth is harder than life in space. And do you agree? Do you disagree with Mike?

Well, it depends how you measure hard. Life on Earth has over 8 billion of us. Life on a spaceship has maybe six of you. And machines are complicated. The universe is complicated, but nothing's as complicated as people. You know, and,

and people are, are inconsistent and people are driven by their own urges and transient chemicals and all kinds of strange stuff. And, and so just when you get things figured out, things will change. So I don't think life in space is easier than life on Earth. I think the complexity of life with all the other human beings and all the structure that comes with that, it's not just simpler on board a spaceship, but life on Earth is so much richer and deeper and broader and more full of

individual opportunity. You know, with the messiness comes everything else. So yeah, but I think it's really nice, like Mike Massimino and I have done, to have that incredible privilege to actually step away from the planet and really focus for a while, doing some complicated technical stuff, but also seeing the world as a separate and definable entity of its own. And then deliberately flying your spaceship back and re-entering into that melee, once more unto the breach, and using all of that extra perspective to try and make the most of life back here on earth. To me, that's maybe one more great, lucky facet of life. If our audience knew what you know, if they've seen what you've seen, if they've experienced some of what you've experienced, how would they move forward in their lives? If we knew what you knew,

how would we organize our life to be just a little bit better? It's probably a pretty personal question for each person that you're speaking of, because everyone's fighting their own battles and everyone has done heroic things and everyone knows stuff that I don't know. So it's a little bit sanctimonious for me to try and give specific advice in a generic way. One of the huge joys of having flown a spaceship and gone around the world every 92 minutes for month after month after month means I've been around the world, you know, 2,650 times, somebody told me. I've been around the world many, many times. And what you start to see is the age and toughness of planet Earth, four and a half billion years. So that is a really comforting rock, literally, to stand on. The world's not going anywhere.

The world has withstood much worse than us. You can see the scars from space, the huge craters where the continents have torn apart and all the rest of it. And life has been on this planet uninterrupted for three and a half billion years. So life isn't going anywhere. Life and the earth are tough as nails and almost immutable. And to me, that is intensely optimism building.

Life's not going anywhere. The world's not going anywhere. And the other thing you see is the, even from space, the way that we build things, the way we build towns and farms and, and all the rest of it, the, the common nature of life itself, it's common to us all. The, the little, the differences that we magnify up so that we then have big flare-ups of, of conflict. The actual reality of living a life as a human being is essentially almost completely common to all of us all the way around the world. And so when you put those things together, that the planet is here for billions of years to come, life isn't going anywhere. We couldn't kill all the life on earth if we made it our number one objective. Our real need is how can we recognize the commonality of life and the things that we

all share? And how can we develop the technologies and the skills and the systems now that we're sort of leveling out at maybe nine or 10 billion people after this big, huge, recent 200-year period of population growth, how can we build systems and technologies and cooperations and a shared understanding so that we can make that sustainable? To me, that's the great challenge of our age, is how can we find a way to feed and take care of 9 billion human beings sustainably on this planet. It's within our power. You can see that from space. We already grow enough food for 10 billion people. You know, just how can we solve the problems and get past the transitions

so that we can get to a higher level of not just day-to-day bickering, but actually give as many people a chance to live a full and gracious life as possible. To me, that is what I learned by flying in space. And it's what I do my absolute best to share with everybody. Chris, what a gift. I feel um i needed to hear the way that you just shared that and i think a lot of people did and so what a gift and where do we point people to check out your new book the defector and wherever you buy books uh it's for sale all around the world it's in three languages right now english french and german but um it's if sale all around the world. It's in three languages right now, English, French, and German. But if you just go anywhere online and look Chris Hadfield, The Defector,

it'll pop up. And I think we're having sale prices on a regular basis. But, you know, it's thriller fiction. So if you like thriller fiction, if you want to be absolved from your own life for several hours and just get into

the gripping story where you can't help but turn the pages or listening to what Ray Porter reads to you next, that's the type of book. But if you want to dig into Guide to Life, then maybe once you've searched for The Defector, also look for my book, An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth. I think you may find something useful there as well. Chris, thank you. Again, I appreciate your time, your hard-fought insights that you've eloquently strung together in just absolute prose. The wisdom that you've shared with us is wonderful. I appreciate you. And I'm looking forward to a time when our paths cross. What a delight to know that you're in the world, that you're leading from the front good beverage in between us and maybe a guitar in hand and a chance to look at the stars and watch the space station go over and think about what all this means i would love that so

i'm i'm gonna hold you accountable at some level here so all right chris keep pushing i'd love to thank you for sharing your your insights us. All right. Thank you. Be well. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no-cost way to support is to hit the subscribe

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