Motivation Daily by Motiversity - Astronaut Terry Virts Life Advice Will Leave You SPEECHLESS

Episode Date: May 23, 2022

Col. Terry Virts, NASA Astronaut and Commander of the International Space Station, gives one of the most eye opening interviews you will ever hear.Inspired? Get Virts books: View From Above: Astronaut Photographs the World: https://amzn.to/39FuJzTHow to Astronaut: An Insider's Guide to Leaving Planet Earth: https://amzn.to/37wNDZeSpecial thanks to Brian Rose and London Real for partnering with us!Speaker:Terry VirtsMusic:Epidemic SoundDisclaimer: Some of the links above are affiliate links. If you use our link to make a purchase, we make a small commission. Thank you for your continued support! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Exploration involves risk, and that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. Flying across the Pacific Ocean in space happens pretty quick, but man, that is a gigantic ocean. And you look down, and there's from space, and there's nothing but water in all directions. And I would often think about what was it like to be on a ship where you do, didn't know, you're just going on a parallel and you know, you run into Australia, Captain Cook or those guys. So I would think about them from the, you know, 22 degree comfort of my space station and think, man, that was, those are some pretty brave guys to do that. It's so easy to get bogged down and daily stress and I got emails and there's traffic and blah, blah, blah,

and I can just like close my eyes and realize that there's the most unbelievable sunset that you can't even imagine happening right now, just, you know, right on the other side of the the earth and this amazing Milky Way is out there. So that kind of puts the mundane in perspective. Not to say that, you know, things are meaningless here, we're just a speck in the giant universe, but to say that there really is a bigger picture, you know, more meaningful things and not to get too stressed out about the daily life. Life in the 50s and 60s is different than, you know, life in the 90s and 2000s. And we weren't developing a new fighter jet every year or two. Nowadays, the airplanes take decades and billions of dollars.

But the whole concept of you're going to go do something that hasn't been done or we're still doing that. I mean, even today with new airplanes or new bombs or missiles or whatever you're testing on a fighter is still there. It is better to not be idle. That's when people go to Antarctica or on a sub or something. That's when you kind of go crazy if you don't have any work to do. But that's not a problem on the Space Station, at least. And on that segment on the modules that we have, There's more than enough work for those three people, you know, every day to keep them busy.

But the psychological aspect is super important. In fact, and I had been in space for a couple months in this nice, comfortable, sterile, like I said, 22 degree, 15% humidity environment. So we said, let's make it rain. Station's full of laptops. We put this rain MP3 file, but the sounds of Earth were something that I missed. When we were in space, I remember with my crew, there were six of us. We're having dinner together one night. I said, guys, there's over six billion people on Earth.

And there are six of us here. We're like one and a billion lucky. Not that we're good or whatever. We just are pretty lucky to be up here. But my personal story, I tell people don't tell themselves no. So I always knew I wanted to be an astronaut. As a teenager, my room was full of airplane pictures and space pictures. But I didn't think it was possible because no one actually gets to be an astronaut.

That's a crazy dream. But I figured out what you need. needed to do. There's something that I've heard called the overview effect. People like yourselves that have spent so much time watching the earth rotate, do you feel like it's changed you as a person? So it has. You know there's a couple of great effects from that, the overview effect.

My crewmate Samantha put it this way that you get to see Earth as a spaceship flying through the universe. It's like when you're here born and raised on Earth, you just, this is home, this, and everything else is out there. But when you're out there, you can look back and see that the Earth is a spaceship. And the words that she used are, we need to be crewmates, not just passengers, which I think is a great description of it. When I landed for my first space flight, I landed, got reunited with my family, did medical tests, and I went back to my room, and I was like alone. And so just like any business traveler, you go to your room, you turn on TV. So I turned on the TV, and I just landed on the

space shuttle a couple hours ago. CNN was on and I watched it for like 30 seconds and I was like you got to be kidding me. This is news. It was complete meaningless, blah, blah, blah. And that was my one moment where I went, all this stuff is really meaningless. Very few, some things are meaningful, but most stuff isn't that we worry about on earth. Because I'm like, I was just flying through the atmosphere and, you know, the perspective really is, I think, a great thing, a great change for me anyway. There was one day I was floating down from the Russian segment and the US segment and the main modules node one where everything connects. And as I was floating through node one and I had been in space for a couple months in this nice

comfortable sterile like I said 22 degree 15% humidity environment metal and plastic it was night. It was like a Hollywood space spaceship and I heard these birds chirping and I like stopped And I went, that was a bird I just heard. And I looked in the node 3, and Misha Kornienko was in there exercising on our weightlifting machine, basically. And there was birds that I started talking to him in Russian. I said, Misha, I hear a bird.

And he said, yeah, listen to this. And so the Russian psychologist had sent him an MP3 of bird noises, like noises from space. And it was the coolest thing I had ever heard in my life. And so I said, well, tell him to send me some. So they emailed me some MP3 files, and at nighttime, probably for about a month, I would put my headsets on and fall asleep in my sleeping bag listening to rain, just the sound of rain from Earth. And it was so awesome. So everybody all of a sudden got all excited about birds and crickets or like at nighttime when you can hear crickets or a crowded restaurant they sent up.

You could just hear glasses clanging and crowd noise. So we said, let's make it rain. So one weekend we put rain on all the laptops, stations full of laptops. We put this rain MP3 file. And it was kind of cool for a while. And then by Sunday night, we were ready to, you know, jump off the building. So we were turned to rain off. We were like, that's enough rain.

But the sounds of Earth were something that I missed. Everybody up there too seemed to enjoy that. Do you really think we understand that psychological change that happens when you're up there and separated from Earth for so long? You know, there's a guy named Jack Stewart. He's the PhD who does the psychology investigation. And most astronauts keep journals. I did.

And you can be completely honest with them because they never get released. And he analyzes how people do. And he's got a great... In fact, he studied a lot of the Antarctic expeditions and submarines as kind of a precursor to long-duration spaceflight. And we do understand a lot of the things that make people happy. a lot of things that make them unhappy, and it's really important. I mean, when you are working together and there's no escape, you know, it's super important.

That can really make a mission go wrong or right. In fact, when I was commander, one of my goals was to like each other when we were done. You know, when I was commander of Exhibition 43, and I think our Expedition 43 crewmates are all good friends. We email each other every week, the Russians and Europeans and Americans, and so. But that's an important part of it. of spaceflight. I think when you're leading any organization, you need to understand who you're leading. If you're an Army platoon sergeant and you've got a group of 18-year-olds out of high school, you tell them what time to wake up, you tell them to put their right shoe boot on first and then

put your left boot on and hold your gun and do this. You know, you're very directive about every aspect of everything. That's on one scale. And on the other side of the scale, if you're leading astronauts who are all new, you know, it's very collaborative and it's, all right, guys, what's a better way to do this or here's our problem? How are we going to solve? It's very collaborative. Until there's an emergency, we had a couple of emergency cases. When that happens, do this, do that, you become directive, but 98% of the time, it's very collaborative. And a lot of, we made some good changes, I think, to the station just by saying, hey, what do you think, what ideas? And it's more like, hey, how, you know, you work together.

But you kind of have to know your situation. Are you going to be directive? going to be collaborative. And that's true on earth. It's true for, you know, every, um, every, every, every, every facet. And I think if you come across as you know it all, people can see through you in like two seconds and know that, that, you know, that's not true. So that, that's how that's kind of was my philosophy about leadership.