Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Dare to Dream Bigger - Defying Limits with XPRIZE CEO | Anousheh Ansari

Episode Date: August 23, 2023

Imagine being suspended in the cosmos, gazing down at Earth, experiencing a sense of freedom that transcends gravity's pull.It’s an almost impossible task to pinpoint the most interesting thing about this week’s guest… she’s a remarkable human who’s never met a dream she didn’t turn into reality.Anousheh Ansari is an extraordinary entrepreneur, engineer, and trailblazer who has etched her name in history as the first self-funded woman – as well as the first Iranian and Muslim woman – to journey to the International Space Station.Anousheh’s life story reads like an adventure novel, starting with her curiosity that led her to explore the skies and ask the questions that would eventually take her beyond our planet. Born in Iran and later immigrating to the United States, her journey was marked by the Iranian Revolution, a war with Iraq, and personal challenges that shaped her unbreakable spirit.As an engineer, Anousheh is a problem solver at heart. Her passion for tackling challenges led her to co-found and chair Prodea Systems, while also wearing the hat of CEO at the X Prize Foundation. She embodies the ethos of "action over words," emphasizing the need to not just identify problems, but to relentlessly pursue solutions towards a better future.From training for over a year to embark on a groundbreaking space mission, to her views on failure and determination, Anousheh’s insights are a treasure trove for those seeking to unlock their potential. Her perspective on entrepreneurship, the power of passion, and the importance of surrounding oneself with a dedicated team forms the blueprint for those who aspire to make a difference.I can’t wait for you to hear this conversation - as we delve into the mind of a true pioneer, a woman whose journey through space is an allegory for defying limits and shaping the future. From the beauty of curiosity to the weightlessness of freedom, Anousheh inspires us to embrace the unknown and dream beyond the stars._________________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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It's when I don't try that I'm not okay with myself. Okay, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Gervais. By trade and training a high-performance psychologist. And I am so excited to welcome Anusha Ansari to the podcast for this week's conversation. It's almost impossible to pinpoint the most interesting thing about today's guest. She's a remarkable human who's never met a dream she didn't turn into a reality.

She grew up in Tehran witnessing the Iranian revolution, then immigrated to the U.S. as a teenager, where she obtained advanced degrees in engineering and then had wild success as an entrepreneur in the telecom industry. Now she is the CEO of the XPRIZE Foundation, which offers large sums of money as incentives to find solutions for seemingly intractable global issues like ocean health and climate change, wildfires, and pandemic response. Anousheh has made history several times over. Her most notable feat, however, is being the first woman of Iranian descent and the first Muslim woman in space where she spent nine days conducting science experiments on the International Space Station. Anusha has said that her experience in space, which was both politicized and fraught with obstacles, has given her the collaborative outlook and drive to tackle some of the world's biggest challenges. I hope you'll find the same depth of inspiration as I did in this conversation, specifically

about how she's approaching life. So with that, let's get into this week's conversation with Anusha Ansari. I'm so excited to have this conversation with you. It's great to be here. Thank you for, first and foremost, what you've done in your commitment to help people explore and more concretely for being here today. So thank you. It's a pleasure. Yeah. Okay. So I want to go back. Let's start early. You're a little girl. You look up into the sky and you have a dream. Can you start with that

dream and help me understand what that was like when you were in that moment? I think you know the moment I'm talking about. Yes. Well, I have to say that it all started not with a dream first. It started with curiosity, which is what gets me into trouble all the time, even today. I'm a very curious person, love to learn. So as a young girl, just staring at the night skies and seeing those little shiny objects up there, I'm like, what are they? What are they made of? What's happening outside of our world and being part of it, being close to it, observing it, experiencing it is what started the dream of wanting to become an astronaut and actually travel to space and explore space.

It continued to expand. It's what made me interested to learn physics and math and get involved in STEM and different technologies and made me interested in aliens and praying that aliens will come and abduct me because I thought that's the fastest way to go and find out what's going on. So I think ever since I was a young girl, curiosity is what's been the driving force of my life. Where were you on the planet and how old were you? I was born in Iran, so I was in Iran. It was in Tehran, the capital city. And my grandparents had a balcony, their apartment had a balcony. And summer nights we didn't have air conditioning so we would sleep

outside to stay cool and that's where it all started and I was probably I don't know six seven years old oh so it was young I was young that's really young yeah what was it like growing up in Tehran in my earlier days it was just like any other city. I would go to school. I went to a French Catholic school, which was a little different than most schools that kids would go to. And that's where I learned French. And it was 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. school, half a day in Farsi, half a day in French. And I loved school. So life was normal

until I was about 12. And then the revolution happened. And the revolution sort of turned my life upside down because all of a sudden I was hearing gunshots and screaming and people being killed and explosions. And I didn't understand the violence that was happening in the street. And prior to that, I had never experienced violence in that way. And probably it was a year and a half into it that the war with Iraq happened. And then it went from a revolution to a war and sirens and going into shelters and not standing in line for food and fuel and just to keep yourself warm. And so it was sort of my whole life all of a sudden very rapidly

was turned upside down. And I was in Iran until I was about 16. So I was there four years into the war. And then I had the great opportunity to leave and come to us and and that's when my life began again when you recount that experience it how is it in your body like do you still feel it or this is like i don't know if this was traumatic or not. I would make an assumption that it is, but I didn't live it and I don't know. Yeah. It's interesting because the first time I recounted the experience was when I was writing my memoir. Homer Hickam was my co-author who helped me write the book because I didn't know how to write the book. But I would write it and I would send it know how to write the book. But I would

write it and I would send it to him and he would edit it and he would ask me questions, you know, probe more. It's like, you didn't talk about this period or you didn't talk about that. And it became this thing of discovering memories that I had, you know, tried to forget or didn't want to remember. So it was very therapeutic for me writing that memoir. But part of it was also I was describing it because, and I think it's part of my personality, when I'm going through a difficult time, I don't, you know, stop and think how bad it is.

I think because if you do that, you sort of get crushed under the weight of what's happening at that moment. So I feel like if I just continue going and moving forward and looking forward and finding that light at the end of the tunnel and moving toward it, that will get me through. And because going through the experience, that's what I'm seeing and thinking. I think my memory of it is not traumatic. Okay. So if I get the framing right, while you're in the heaviness of the experience, that your focus is on movement, it's on next best step. So you have a bias towards action. Would you numb the feelings?

Would you work with the feeling in a way to help you move? Would you drink and drug the feeling? Like, you know, like there's lots of ways to work with emotions. Well, I can give you a specific example. And I think it depends on the situation, but this specific time in Iran, I was the oldest child in the family. Of how many?

So my siblings, I have a sister who's five years younger, but we were in an apartment building, and the rest of the households, they all had kids. They were all younger. Some maybe just a year younger, some, you know, four years. So lots of like young, vibrant. Kids. Yeah. And what would happen is every time we would take shelter, we had to go to the basement of the building. We're all together. For whatever reason, I took comfort in giving comfort to the other kids. So they would all gather around me and I would tell them stories and distract them while there were all these

things, sounds and explosions going outside. And they were all scared. How did you do that? I don't know. It just, and I was young myself. I was, you know, 13, 14 years old. Tell me about mom, just for a minute. I don't know. What do you want to know about my mom? Yeah, there's a lot to mom, yeah. So my mom is a, also she's very driven person.

She loves my sister and I to death. She would give her life for us. How do you know that for sure? It's a big statement. And when you said it, I believed it. I don't know. I just, it's a trust you develop, I guess, over time. I mean, her behavior in every situation.

I know that we're the most important things in her life. You know what I'm just, like, it's just washing over me is that you, it's these small incremental things that have taken place. So here you are like a massive influence in the world. And we'll get to that in a minute. But these small incremental steps, small actions during the ages of 12 to 16, the small storytelling arc, the small actions over time with your mom that have led to some insights, some quote unquote truths for you. Does that feel accurate? The way you say it? Yes, probably.

Probably. There's still openings. Yeah, I mean, I don i i never spend a lot of time analyzing my past to be honest with you um as i said i don't know my nature is moving forward looking forward and i rarely look in the back mirror because unless there was a problem or mistake i made because i do want to learn from it and not make that mistake. And so I do overanalyze sometimes mistakes. But most of the time I'm looking forward.

And yeah, I think from an early age, and it started maybe because my parents got divorced when I was very young. I was about five, six years old that I was. My parents got divorced and as a result. Is that rare or, so it's, I think we're at the 50% mark in the United States. Yeah, in Iran it's not as accepted as it is in the US. But it's not as taboo as it is

in some other Islamic countries. So it's somewhere in the middle. But still, it's a very difficult thing for a single mom, a young woman, to continue on and build a new life with two kids. Yeah, right. So that was hard on her, on my mom. If you had three words to describe mom. Resilient, driven driven and perfectionist oh really and so okay resilient driven and perfectionist and you're laughing did you pick up the perfectionist and no but i hope not not to

the degree she's but even to this state if i if sees me, it's like, you know, your dress is not straight. You know, your makeup is not dry. Something is not right with me that I need to fix. Okay. And I don't get a sense from meeting you now that you are overwhelmed with needing to present perfectly. No. That's not where you, so we all have trauma, right?

Yes. So I'll tell you all about my traumas, but like your traumas do not lead you to need to present perfectly. No. No, that's interesting. Okay. Yeah. All right, so.

I am hard on myself to make sure that I do my best, but I have a high bar for myself. So I'm a perfectionist against my own bar. I don't care what others think of me. So I don't want to be perfect in the eyes of others. But I want to be perfect based on my own standards. Let's open that up. Okay.

Okay. How did you... Okay. I like the laugh. You're like, oh God, where are we going? It's like, why did I say that? Okay. Quick pause here to share some of the sponsors of this conversation.

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Let's jump right back into the conversation. Okay. So let's open this up in this way is that what does perfection mean to you? And then how did you find that freedom from what other people think of you? My assumption is why I found that freedom is I lived and I grew up in Iran. And the things I liked to do and wanted to do and interested me was completely opposite of what the society believed that I should want to do or like to do and all that. Wait, I got to pause that. Yeah.

Because that makes who you were. I was a tomboy. I loved sports. i loved climbing trees i loved doing all the things that the boys were doing i had no dolls i had no interest in having tea parties i would dug holes and and you know do construction in the mud. My dress was always full of dirt. And my mom and my dad were horrified about how I always looked so dirty, like not like a girl.

So you had practice of feeling independent from social norms. Yes. And that was because everyone was so busy. My parents got divorced. My mom was working full time. My dad was at work. And I was left to do whatever and just entertain myself.

I like mud. I did. I did. I would keep myself busy doing things that I enjoyed. So this is the makings of somebody that eventually looks up into the sky, into the night sky and says, I want to go there. How does that work? And so when I hear perfectionist, I go, oh man, how does that work?

Because it's such an exacting standard that is not achievable that most people that are perfectionists have a really hard time with the relationship with themselves. And I don't know if that's the case for you. But I also want to understand perfectionism before we make any assumptions. Yeah. Yeah, I have an interesting relationship with myself because I am hard on myself and I drive myself to a point that sometimes I'm like, can't you just take a break? I mean, I'm constantly talking to myself.

If someone was listening to my internal dialogue, they would think I'm crazy. And so is it sharp in tone? Like, let me give you some examples. Okay. Like I'll use me for an example. I'm thinking of right now, I'm thinking of a sport event that I was at playing and I was, I made like three or four mistakes in a row. So the narrative right in that moment is like, the fuck is wrong with you? Get your shit together. Like, like, so it's like a negative bite. And this is me in my early twenties and the world does not need me, a 20

year old Mike. Okay. Like this like this is this is not a great version of myself but i needed to go through that phase for sure is it that type of edge bite cutting or is it just busy with solving something so do you do you cut yourself down do you build yourself up or is it more tactical about trying to solve things? I would say, depending again on the situation, a lot of time is more tactical. Okay. But I don't think I'm sharp with myself. I'm actually more trying to inspire myself. So you back yourself up more.

Yeah, you're like, you can do this, especially if it's a physical challenge, like you can get through. And, you know, in life, one thing that I've learned is I can do better and do more than I believe I can if I take it one step at a time. I never try to think of a thousand steps. I know that, you know, roughly that's where I'm going. So I look at the destination destination then i put my head down and take one step at a time so that's how i know i move forward i know the value of that and from a research standpoint as well as like being able to deploy that now in my life but i

didn't have that young somehow you had that young yeah and so would you say a best practice for anyone that wants to live, quote unquote, their good life, the good life? It'd be fun to open up that with what that means, right? Would you say have a compelling future, have an idea of a vision of what you want to do? Or is it more about who you want to be doing whatever it is you're doing? Very interesting question. For me, it was knowing what I want to do and who I became was in the pursuit of that. There you go.

Because space has been a passion, a driving force in my life. It's funny, when I talk about a lot of things, and I'm interested in a lot of things, but I've heard people talk when they I talk about space is like, Oh, my God, every time you talk about space, your face opens up. It's like like you physically change when you talk about space and you're interesting when you talk about other things, but somehow things completely physically change with you. And it has been part of my life. So in pursuit of that, I've changed. I've took advantage of opportunities and I've learned and grown in that path. So to me, it was more about the destination,

finding that passion and then becoming who I am in that journey. Yeah, I don't think I had like a specific, I want to be like that person in mind. Right. Except I wanted to, you know, a few people that fascinated me, one that fascinated me at a younger age is the moment I learned about Albert Einstein. And I was like, oh, my God. I mean, the fact that he came up with a theory so incredible at a time that the knowledge about space and time and all this was so classical

and that he sat in a room and imagined something so big and then proved that it's correct and it's right against all the belief system that existed. That's the part that inspires me about Albert Einstein is that he pushed against the fray. Exactly. And he was willing to risk it all. Exactly. And he did actually, because it wasn't right for a while. Yeah. And this quote gets attributed to him, but I don't know if he actually said it. Something that makes me hazy. Is it I or are they crazy? Something along those lines. And so that to me speaks to this idea that he was wrestling with his idea, his vision, and the rest of the world was saying,

no, no, no, time and space, like they're independent construct that, and he's like, wait, hold on, it's different. And he figured out how to present that in a way where the community was like, yeah, we'll see. Yeah, and if it go one level deeper, the fact that you dare to question something that was believed to be absolute.

So that's what you did. Yeah. Is this specific about your upbringing, meaning Iran, or is this about being a female? Was it about, because you did that, or you're doing that. It's definitely not about being a female? Was it about, yeah, because you did that, or you were doing that.

It definitely not about being a female, because I, this is something interesting. First of all, in Farsi, in my native tongue, you don't have gender, like you don't have he or she. Oh, I didn't know this. It's just, yeah, it's genderless. So I have a hard time here when I, I mix my he and she's all the time.

But so I never thought about myself in doing anything as a woman or a man, I need to do this. I was a person and I think of myself as a person. So that has nothing to do with it. But I think it was more of, I felt that I'm different than people around me or my friends or other girls around me. And the things that interest me, the thing I want to know, a lot of things about me is different. So I think that is what sort of I felt like, oh, you know, Einstein is different because he questioned everything. And I loved questioning and I would drive my teachers and my mom crazy because everything's like, why? Like, why this? Why is this?

Because I said so. No, but why? Yeah, right. Yeah. And she hates that. Your mom does. Yeah. It's like, just because, just stop.

Oh, my God. Okay. okay all right so i love this i thought when you're describing that you went to a half french there's a half french school or like a french school half the day yeah i thought when you said that that i was going to ask and i didn't do it yet was oh you from an early age you you felt different. I did. I mean, the school was not the reason I felt different. But I felt different because I looked around and what my friends and other girls. It was an all-girls school, so everyone around me, all these young girls. With one with a very dirty dress. Me and a few others. But we had our version of what we call rugby and me and a few of my friends, we would play this rugby game. And every time our uniform, because we had to wear uniforms, most afternoons I would come and part of my uniform would be torn up because it was physical. We were bruised and all that.

So it was, but outside of those few friends I had very close to me, everyone else were just, their behavior was different, their interests were different. So that's how I felt different than everyone else. But I didn't feel different in a bad way. It wasn't like they were better than me or I was better than them. I was just different.

And I didn't feel that I have to change and comply to a norm. And I actually liked that I'm different. And, and, um, a lot of people ask me, you know, it's a standard question. People ask you, would you change anything in your past? If you now, with everything you know, if you could go back and change something, what would you change? And I've taught about that a lot. And I like who I am today. So I'm like, I don't know if I can change anything.

Because if I change one thing, then it won't be me anymore. And I like who I am today thing then I it won't be me anymore and I like who I am today so I wouldn't change even though there's a lot of you know really difficult and bad things that happen in my life but I think I probably it's why I am who I am today there's a kindness and a sweetness in the tone of your voice when you say, I like who I am. It feels believable. And did you feel a kindness and a sweetness, like a softness about yourself when you said it?

I do. I have, as I mentioned, I'm hard on myself, so I drive myself. There's the nexus for you. That's the rub, isn't it? So this is the nexus for most people that are ambitious, is am I okay as I am? Question mark. Do I need to do the extraordinary to be okay?

So that's like the nexus. That's the rub. Am I okay without pushing into the frontier so the way i would answer that is and and as you're asking this question i'm really thinking about it because i never thought about in this in these terms i the sweetness the softness about myself and why i like myself is that i answer my own call when there is a new thing that I want to do. So I do a debate with myself, especially now I'm 56 years old. So I'm like, do you really want to push yourself again? Didn't you have enough? Like, no, I need to do this. I can do this. And then, you know, I answer my own challenge. And that's why I'm like, okay, you know, let's do this. I can do this. And then, you know, I answer my own challenge. And that's why I'm like,

okay, you know, let's do this. Let's do this. Let's move forward. And I always, especially now, I give myself room for failure. I was accepting that failure is part of life was, I think, where this sweetness comes from. As long as I try something, even if I fail at it, I'm okay with myself. It's when I don't try that I'm not okay with myself. 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 Momentus. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits,

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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 now back to the conversation. You wouldn't know this, but so I ask that question about failure often to people, especially people that are on paper, incredibly successful. And the way that I've been conceptualizing failure is the inability or the unwillingness to go for it. Yeah. And you're like, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah.

And so the inability and unwillingness can come from a whole set of resources, both internal and external resources. But ultimately for me, it's like, if I've done the right work and I'm at the cliff's edge and the task is to jump and I've done all the right work to jump and hold my own parachute, whatever, and I don't go for it, it's because I haven't truly built the right psychological process to trust myself, to trust my team, to trust the ability that the next step is going to work out as well. And so it's refreshing for me to hear that for you. I felt a little alone in the idea. Okay. So going back to like you for just one more moment,

and then I want to talk about XPRIZE. If you could hydrate a seed, and it's the seed of growth inside of the next generation of girls or boys, would you hydrate the same seed in the way that you speak to yourself in them? Would that be different or would you want to upgrade it or would you say it works? This hardness, not hardness, this pointed self-critical conversations I sometimes have with myself with this ambition and this acceptance of who I am. I would say yes, but I want to put it in a caveat. There are times when I think to myself it's like why can't you just be like others and just enjoy and relax well that's funny because i don't think that others the majority of others know how to do that i don't know i watch people just relaxing or walking on the beach and their head is not thinking about there is pollution

in the water and look at that homeless person, I see all the problems. There are people who walk and they see only the beauty and the greatness and they enjoy. When I'm in any place, and this is the perfectionist or whatever you want to call it in me, when I'm in a place, I see the problems and my nature is such that I can just ignore them, walk away without it impacting me. I wanna do something about it. It occupies my mind a lot of times is my curiosity kicking in and wanting to learn like, so what's happening? Why are people having this problem? Or why is this problem happening in the oceans? So I cannot just sit someplace on a beach, read a book and relax.

Maybe I can do it for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, I start looking around and the first thing I see is like the haziness in the weather or it's hotter than it's supposed, all the problems that somehow I know it starts, you know, bubbling up to me. Do you see problems or do you see opportunities? I see problems that needs fixing. So I don't see problem as like complaining about it or like being overwhelmed by the problem. But there's this thing when they ask me to introduce myself, I always first say I'm an engineer because I feel that's what I identify more than anything else I've done in my life is this thing about problem solving. And my family members tell me, don't tell Anousheh anything because as soon as you say

a problem, she's like, okay, let's do this, let's do that. I'm like, ready with solutions. And that's, you know, I see a problem, but not all of them are opportunities. But I look at them with a curious mind of trying to solve them. Optimist or pessimist? 100% optimist. Okay. So you'll identify the problem.

This is a good engineer. You see where the thing is breaking. And then you have high agency, which is a very technical word for you believe that you have the ability to influence something. Right. And so see a problem, high agency to solve that thing, and you believe that the future is going to work out. Pretty cool psychological framework. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Let's go to where I first understood your work was your TED Talk. And one of our teammates here, Brett, was like, you've got to meet. So he's got a picture of you, and he was at a conference. And what was the name of the conference? Empowering Billion Women. Okay.

So he's been going on and on and on. And so when I watched your TED Talk, I was like, I get it. I totally get it. So how do you capture what you did in outer space? You don't like the word visitor or... Yeah, people use space tourist and I don't like space tourist. How do you capture it? Because I feel like as a tourist, you just buy a ticket and take your camera and get on a plane and go.

I had to train a whole year. So that's why I don't like the word tourist. And I always say, it's like people who climb Mount Everest, do you call them Everest tourists? You don't. And they have like a ton of Sherpa to carry their stuff and all that. So space is not tourism. It is exploration. It's an adventure trip that you take. So I trained for a whole year to go there, and it was something I had worked toward and dreamt of doing all my life. So that's why I don't like diminishing how important that was.

Okay. So space explorer, would you say that that feels right? Yeah, it feels right. But not astronaut. That's a, that's a technical. I, I mean, others call me astronaut. I, other astronauts call me astronaut and I don't mind being called an astronaut. Uh, I I'm very respectful of career astronauts, people who spend all of their life in a space agency and dedicated everything to the space program. So I put them in a higher sort of standard and that's why I use astronaut, but I think they deserve that title probably more than I do. Let's go through the checklist.

To be an explorer, space in particular, there are capabilities required to go to the frontier. Physical, mental, technical are the three main buckets, right, of skills and capabilities to build. Were you physically fit when you made the decision? I was healthy. I had to up my game a little. A hundred percent. Yeah. But you had a base in place? Yeah. I've always been very athletic and I pay attention to what I eat and my health. So, and I'm going to ask you to just put some numbers to it just for context for me in a minute. So physical fitness, we can dive into what that means, but I don't think it's that interesting. Mental fitness, if you will, were you mentally fit to be able to be an explorer in a hostile environment?

Yes, I was. And I felt I was. And then they did a lot of tests to prove that I was. Yes. Okay. So- Because it's a very important factor in a space travel. And what would you say the three big capabilities? I'm using the three again because it's easy for me to remember them. Not that it's an absolute. The most important one is the ability to stay calm under stress. That's right.

Because things can go wrong very quickly and not losing it and being able to stay calm and follow direction, follow instruction, take steps to make sure you put yourself and the rest of the crew out of danger. It's very important. So not panicking, basically. Yeah, there's a whole set of ways that we can train it, but also kind of the big rocks to being calm under pressure

is your perspective about pressure, your perspective about like what's on the other side of this moment. And those take lifetimes to understand those two with clarity. Also the reference points in your life about other things that have been quote unquote high heat or intense. And so I think you probably had sound understanding of both of those. Was there any specific way that you trained calm? So this is like building the skill of calm, not investing in the reference point in the perspective. One thing that I tried, I practiced more than anything else during this time is breathing and just calming myself down with breathing because the thing I was really afraid of was sitting on top of the rocket on the day of the launch because they monitor your heart rate and everything. And if they feel like you're not doing well, they're going to stop the launch. I'm like, you know, I don't want to get all the

way there. And then because I'm panicking or I'm, you know, scared to, you know, have the launch scrubbed because, you know, they're thinking I'm going to have a heart attack. So I didn't know if I would be scared or not. So I had been training to make sure that I can do breathing exercises, slow my heart rate down. So even if I was scared mentally in my head, scared that I could physically not demonstrate signs of, you know, fear. So I would actually continue with the mission. But what happened was total opposite. But through that time, I did a lot of breathing exercises to make sure that I physically don't demonstrate fear,

even if I'm experiencing it. Okay. So this is important. You had an idea. You had a vision. If you will, one day I'm going to be in a rocket. And then you work backwards. What are the capabilities I need? And one of the key capabilities to be calm under pressure, that could be a pressure-filled moment for me. And so what I'm going to do is backfill it with a breathing protocol. But the mechanics of what we just said is really a rinse and repeat that we could use in any part of our lives. I want to be in a happy marriage. Okay, I need to work on communication. And so what are the skills underneath of that that I can be better at communicating? Well, I'm probably going to serve well if I talk about my emotions and my experience as opposed to pointing the finger at the other person, blaming them or whatever.

So there's a whole set of practices that can come that you can invest in once you have clarity of where you're going, the vision, and who you want to be in that moment or those moments. All right. So what was it like to be in space moment or those moments. All right. So what was it like to be in space? It was incredible. One of the experiences I had that I didn't anticipate was a sense of freedom that I felt, which was strange. It was a freedom I have never felt in my entire life and not since I came back. I don't know if it was because I felt free

of the force of gravity and I was just floating and I was looking at our planet through this porthole. And, you know, basically it was an out of body experience of everything, all my memories, people I cared about, my life, everything was right there in front of me. And I was out here floating free of its force of gravity. And I love that sense of freedom. It's hard for me to relate to it, right? Because I don't have a reference point but i do know what freedom feels like i do know what seeing and having a yearning um or perspective that is different than people that i you know my friends or family members like i i understand that but is

the what is the freedom i can imagine weightlessness because i've been at zero Gs or whatever it is, like when you're like at a roller coaster, but not like not really. But what kind of freedom are you talking about? It was a freedom. You know, we live our lives. We have people we care about. We have commitments. We have things that we need to do. We have jobs, work, lots of noise, noise of

life. And you're in the middle of it. And I was all of a sudden outside of it. And even though it was temporary, somehow my brain believed that that is not temporary. So for that moment, I'm like, life has stopped. It's like, imagine that someone presses a pause button on your life and the only person who's animated is you. Nothing else moves. Nothing, nothing goes. You don't have to worry about anything. It's like, I can do whatever and everything else is paused. Because everyone's down there.

It's down there. It's almost like, you know what the image I just had was? What's the Marvel character Flash? I think it's Marvel. Yeah. Right? Yeah, I think so. I know Flash, but I don't know if it's Marvel or DC.

I always mix them up. Does that kind of work? Yeah. In a way. I mean, he's going fast. To me, it's more of work? Yeah. In a way. I mean, he's going fast. To me, it's more of a slowing down. Yeah, there you go. So it's almost exactly opposite.

Yeah, it's slowing down. It's relaxing. It's like floating like a feather in space. And everything is in slow motion. And this is more psychological than it is physical. in space and everything is in slow motion. But you're normal. And this is more psychological than it is physical. But of course, so it's the physical triggers it?

I don't know if it's, which triggered which. So I don't know. But it was a feeling I had. And I'm like, oh my God, this is amazing. And I cannot do- And you did research on yourself as well while you're there. Yeah. We're talking about the ISS, the International Space Station. Yeah.

I was doing some measurements on my body to see the physical changes that happens in microgravity. A lot of my study was actually with the European Space Agency and NASA, so I published or gave all the data to them to publish. But yeah, I was trying to understand what's happening to me. It was such an amazing learning experience. I learned that as human beings, we're so adaptable. I mean, everything changed about how I would eat or move or drink water or, you know, everything changed when you're in this new environment. And it took my body about two, three days to adjust. And then, you know, everything became normal again. And then when I came back, it was like a reset button. It's like, oh my God, what does it mean to walk in gravity? This is crazy. I felt like I'm sinking in the ground and moving my hand and arm became difficult.

Yeah. And then we had to, I had to learn again how to move in gravity. So our bodies and mind can change between environment, even if everything about your world changes. Not to be dramatic, but there's some research that people that are in abusive relationship for X number of months, I think the number was four, I'll have to go back and deep dive into it. It's between four and six, that there's physical structures and electrical pattern, patterning in the brain changes. So just being in an abusive environment, not just, being in an abusive environment for not a very long amount of time creates physical changes. And you're saying being in that environment creates all of these other changes as well.

Absolutely. I think it's part of the way we're constructed. We're built to survive. So our body, brain, everything starts figuring out how to survive in whatever situation is. When something changes, your first reaction is like, I need to overcome this. I need to survive it. So your body starts reacting to it. And sometimes pleasant, sometimes unpleasant. like, I need to overcome this. I need to survive it. So your body starts reacting to it. And,

you know, sometimes pleasant, sometimes unpleasant. And sometimes, you know, you go through a period of unpleasantness until you get to a new normal. 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. It starts with how we transition and wind down. And that's why I've built intentional routines into the way that I close my day. And Cozy Earth has become a new part of that. Their bedding, it's incredibly soft, like next level soft. And what surprised me the most is how much it actually helps regulate temperature. I tend to run warm at night and these sheets have helped me sleep cooler and more consistently, which has made a meaningful difference in how

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And with that, let's jump right back into our conversation. I don't feel like you are working on surviving. I feel like you've got that down, you know, right? Every day is survival. What are you talking about? So one time, though, I believe that that was probably very primary when you were a 14-year-old sharing stories. Like there was a survival essence there. You came as an immigrant. you didn't speak the language you graduated where did you go school um high school did you come what

age did you come on i was uh 16 so i finished high school here in in virginia northern virginia lake braddock uh and then I went to George Mason University. That's right. And then George Washington for my master's. And so in all of that, the speed of that, learning a new language and having an advanced degree in engineering, okay, not lost on me.

Then there's this big gap in my mind. I understand the psychology, your makeup better now. But then to go build a huge business that was beyond financially successful, you know, outsized that most people would ever imagine, and to have this commitment to space your entire life, it feels like things are pretty good. Not when you're going through it, but you're now looking back. Yeah. Okay. So is there a couple unlocks that you might be able to share about building the business as well? You know, there's plenty of folks that are burnt out right now that are in the corporate world. They're grinding, they're exhausted. They have lost their way of the purpose,

their life purpose is consumed by the life purpose or the purpose of the company, and they just are swallowed up by it. And there's a human energy crisis, to quote my colleague, Kathleen Hogan. Could you give a couple unlocks about folks that are wanting to take a step out and maybe start their own thing. Like how would you suggest they begin? Anyone who wants to start a new company or have an idea, the first thing I tell them, I want them to be realistic about what it takes to build a company. Because if you enter something with the wrong expectations, then you're not going to survive. It's going to be more difficult and it's just not going to be what you are hoping it would

be. So if you enter this with not through the rosy glass lens of Silicon Valley and what you hear about it, but that's going to be hard work, lots of sleepless hour, lots of stress, requires lots of energy and sacrifice. And you're going to dedicate yourself and life to it for a period of time. If you go into it with that expectation, then the next most important question comes to you is, is it worth it? So are you passionate truly about what you want to start and build? Because that's what it takes. If you're not passionate, all this pressure and sacrifice and stress will make you say, ah, it's not worth it. I don't want to do this anymore. But if the end goal is so important to you that none of this thing matters or actually you don't feel the pressure, you don't feel stress because you're just excited about what

you're building, that's the type of entrepreneur who will be successful. So I think being realistic about it's going to be hard. It's going to be hard. It's going to be very difficult. It requires a lot of sacrifice and energy and positivity, hopefulness, you know, all of that. And not letting yourself get down when things don't work out and having the right passion or, you know, purpose for building it, then that's what you really need. Then comes building a team. The third thing is having the right people around you. It doesn't have to be a large group of people,

but people who will share this passion with you, who will be on this journey with you to hold your hand, to help you get up when you're down and you will be there for them. So this sort of sense of camaraderie, friendship, you know, trust with small group of people that will help you through this very difficult and long journey. I think those are some of the most important ingredients. I love, I feel so honest. It just feels so. Yeah. So this is, I think, an eloquent way into XPRIZE. So this is something you've been passionate about. There's clear purpose involved. Of course, I don't know about the teammate piece here, but I believe that you're a good teammate and a good leader. And so give a flyover for what XPRIZE is and how people can be involved in it and how you hope people can be connected to it. XPRIZE has been part of my life for over 20 some odd years. I got involved because that's how I thought I will find a way to, you know, making my dream come true of going

to space. And Peter Diamandis, who's the founder of XPRIZE, had announced this competition without successfully securing the funding for the competition and happened to- Like a good entrepreneur, right? Like a good entrepreneur. He's a great entrepreneur. And I had at the same time sold my company. In my interviews, I always talked about my passion. I believe that if you're passionate about something, even if it's a crazy idea, you need to talk about it because you never know who's going to read or listen to it and be in the room and help you. So I always talked about it. So he read this, decided to come meet me and told me about this concept.

And as an entrepreneur, it made sense to me. And this is at the core of XPRIZE, where you have a big problem. In this case, it was opening up space to commercial activities and access to space. So you set this target, and you tell the world to go solve it, to build a solution for it, and then demonstrate the solution successfully with very measurable objectives. And then once they do, they win the prize. In this case, they had to build a spaceship. This is in, you know, late 1990s, early 2000s.

There was no SpaceX around. Nobody talked about space. Nobody imagined that anyone other than, you know, governments should go to space. So we're asking people to go build spaceship in their garages, fly it to space, edge of space, 100 kilometer. Not once, but twice. Without government money, they had to build one ship so they couldn't build two, you know, prototypes and destroy it afterwards. So it had to be reusable. This is why we have reusable risk their life. So just one pilot and two, you know, big sandbags and do it within, you know, twice within two weeks. So as an entrepreneur, I'm like, this is amazing. I should have done this building my company instead

of one team working on the solution. I could have asked, you know, hundreds of teams working on building what I wanted them to build and just pay them when they finished instead of, you know, stressing over it for, you know, 10 years. So it was a great way of building difficult, complex things that are risky to me. So I said yes. My family and I became sponsors and I served on the board until four years ago when I became the CEO. And through these years, after the success of the first competition, the Ansari XPRIZE, we saw that this model really works when you have big problems to solve. So we, instead of just focusing on space, we now have applied it to seven domains. So space and exploration always is one, but we work in climate and energy, biodiversity, learning and society, health, deep tech, quantum, food, waste, water.

And in each of these areas, we have targets on how to create an equitable world of abundance in health, in food and nutrition, in energy and sustainable climate. So we have these targets and we are launching these series of competitions on a roadmap to get us to that future. So instead of being victims of the future, we want to become architects of the future. And we are inviting the world to join us, to participate with us, to be a, you know, brain trust or an advisor or a visionary who will help us, you know, set these targets, find ways, what breakthroughs we need, what behavior changes we need. You know, how can we create awareness about the problems and bring more people to join us in this movement? So everyone, somehow they can participate on this journey as long as they see the world through this hopeful lens that, yes, we can build a better future and we can't wait for others to do it. We can't just complain about the problems. We are the place people go to when they want to take action. As we discussed, I'm a very action-oriented person. I hear all these

talks at COP, at the UN General Assembly, at World Economic Forum, and all these leaders get together and talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. Not much happens. So if you want to do something about it, XPRIZE is the place. And we found the model. It works. It inspires innovators who didn't even know they're going to become an entrepreneur. And all of a sudden they were working on a project in their school. It's like, ah, maybe I can use this project to solve this problem. And we give them very specific targets. capital, up and fine teammates, you know, they compete and they build solutions that will change the world and we'll be on this journey with them. And it's an XPRIZE family that continues to grow with every competition. And the more people join this movement, I think the better, you know, future we will have for humanity. It's exciting yes like it i mean it's a beautiful vision it's got real legs and teeth to make a difference and at some level it feels overwhelming

so like yes the purpose of finding mastery is to help people live in the present moment more often that's that is our sole purpose and the reason that's so important to us is because the present moment is where the unlock happens it's where wisdom is revealed it's where high often that's that is our sole purpose and the reason that's so important to us is because the present moment is where the unlock happens it's where wisdom is revealed it's where high performance is expressed it's the entryway in the flow state even for like for me listening to you right now and i've spent a lot of time thinking about purpose and the mechanisms to help that purpose i i'm not sure how to how would i hook in you know like or somebody not it's not about me but how would somebody that's got clear purpose and they look at one of the seven pillars and they say oh so this is probably sitting what i just described is probably sitting under health yeah so like how

would somebody get involved so i say people can help us with uh time treasure or talent and it depends on the individual where they are in their life and what they are what they feel like they can contribute but um more than anything else i want them to just be curious and try to learn about our work that's cool i think once they join our community whether it's reading our newsletters or reading our posts or getting to know the teams, we do a lot of work just highlighting the entrepreneurs who are actually making the solution. We don't make anything at XPRIZE. We just inspire and give targets to the rest of the world to go build. And we put them on a pedestal. So learn about what they're doing. Maybe you're not even doing something, you know, directly with XPRIZE, but there's a team in your hometown

who's working on something that you have some talent in that will help them. Then connect with them through us and go help them build something, help them put a pitch deck together, help them, you know, screw a bolt that they don't know how to screw. I don't know, but it's, it's whatever you can, there's always a need for what you're, you know, what you can offer. There's someone, one of our teams or XPRIZE itself, or something that we need that you can bring your time, treasure, talent to us and put it to great use. So inspiring. It's big. It's got real momentum that you've been able to generate over decades. Where's the best place that you want to drive people? So I think the best place is to go to

our website and then sign up to get the information and tell us what's your interest. And we're building more engines to really specifically connect you with exactly what you want to be connected with. That's great. So right now it's a little manual, but very soon it's going to be a lot more automated so we can quickly make connections

between what you're interested in and want to offer with a need that us as a foundation or our community has and connect you directly with the right person and right place. And then what about social for you? My social life? Social media. Social media. Like social has so many meanings these days right yeah yes we're very active on both instagram um and x now twitter our logo has been taken away from us affiliate or not affiliated not affiliate at. I think we inspire Elon. So when we launched XPRIZE, our logo was this launch profile. So the part of the X was this launch profile. So when Elon launched SpaceX, somehow that logo became very familiar to our XPRIZE logo.

And then recently, because everyone thought we're affiliated, we changed our logo. We just made it a very simple X, black and white. And then the next thing I know, Twitter changes to X. I'm like, maybe he doesn't have a very creative team. So he gets inspired by us. I don't know.

I love Elon. He's been the biggest supporter of our work, and I don't mind it, but yes, it is. We are active on Twitter, X, whatever you call it these days. So fun. However, I'm excited to introduce you to our community, and I know that there's folks right now that are going, oh, I'm in.

And so I'm really excited to share. And thank you for your honesty, your courage in that honesty, for the clarity of how you work from the inside out so people can go, oh, I can invest in that. I can solve problems and go to work. I could read stories to other people during trauma. I could, I could. And having an optimistic view about what the three variables that I think are really important is you find a problem, you have the agency to take action, and you believe that it's going to work out. And then you start filling in gaps accordingly. That's a beautiful psychological foundation to make change, to live the happy life, the good life, however you describe it. Before we go, maybe, what's the good life? And I know that that's a difficult question.

Yeah. But as a forcing function, if you only had 20 seconds to answer it, what's the good life? A good life for me is a life without regrets. There you go. How are you doing on it? So far, so good. So far, so good. Yeah. So thank you so much um i'm i'm honored to to share uh your insights with our community so thank you thank you 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 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 or follow button wherever you're listening. Also, if you haven't already, please consider dropping us a review on Apple or Spotify. We are incredibly grateful for the support and feedback. If you're looking for even more insights, we have a newsletter we send out every Wednesday. Punch over to findingmastery.com slash newsletter to sign up. The show wouldn't be possible without our sponsors and we take our recommendations seriously. And the team is very thoughtful about making sure we love and endorse every product you hear on the show. If you want to check out any of our sponsor offers you heard about in this episode, you can find those deals at findingmastery.com slash sponsors. And remember, no one does it alone. The door here at Finding Mastery is always open to those looking to explore the edges and the

reaches of their potential so that they can help others do the same. So join our community, share your favorite episode with a friend, and let us know how we can continue to show up for you lastly as a quick reminder information in this podcast and from any material on the finding mastery website and social channels is for information purposes only if you're looking for meaningful support which we all need one of the best things you can do is to talk to a licensed professional. So seek assistance from your healthcare providers. Again, a sincere thank you for listening. Until next episode, be well, think well, keep exploring.