Start With A Win - Developing Habits to Achieve Your Dreams with Colonel Chris Hadfield

Episode Date: March 2, 2022

Referred to as “the most famous astronaut since Neil Armstrong,” Colonel Chris Hadfield became a household name as the first Canadian commander of the International Space Station. A heavily decorated astronaut, engineer, and pilot, Hadfield’s many awards include the Order of Canada, the Meritorious Service Cross, and the NASA Exceptional Service Medal. Hadfield is also a bestselling author of four books, an acclaimed musician, and the host of two internationally acclaimed television series, including National Geographic’s “One Strange Rock.”  The conversation kicks off with stories of Col. Hadfield’s out-of-this-world music career and viral performances, including his cover of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” performed on the International Space Station.Col. Hadfield also talks about the moment he was inspired to become an astronaut as he watched the first steps being taken on the moon back in 1969 as a young boy. As a fan of science fiction and all things space, it was like watching fantasy come to life. It was that moment when he made the conscious decision at 9 years old to become an astronaut—and he’s been working toward (and achieving) that goal ever since.When it comes to developing habits to achieve your dreams, Col. Hadfield believes it begins with having a few “right on the edge of crazy” goals you want to accomplish in life. You always have to have dreams or something you’re trying to accomplish. If you don’t know what your goal is, how do you decide what you’re going to do next? Then do personal inventory of what you don’t have or can’t do yet in order to achieve the goals you’ve set. Ask yourself, “What could I do now to learn a skill that will inch me forward toward achieving my goal?”“It is a joyful thing if every single day you are shifting your life a little bit away from where you were toward [what] you really value,” said Col. Hadfield.Adam and the Colonel also discuss how to stay motivated when pursuing your dreams. He reminds us to have the maturity and pause as we enter into a new situation and to always have our long-term dreams in mind. As you’re working toward your goal, find a way to make a daily living that is somewhere within that field or involving those things you find interesting. “Don’t let life randomly choose for you what you’re going to do. Be active in choosing your own life.” Episode Links:“Space Oddity” Cover: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaOC9danxNohttps://chrishadfield.ca/books/Order your copy of Start With A Win: Tools and Lessons to Create Personal and Business Success:https://www.startwithawin.com/bookConnect with Adam:https://www.startwithawin.com/https://www.facebook.com/REMAXAdamContoshttps://twitter.com/REMAXAdamContoshttps://www.instagram.com/REMAXadamcontos/ Leave us a voicemail:888-581-4430

Welcome to Start With A Win, where we give you the tools and lessons you need to create business and personal success. Are you ready? Let's do this. And coming to you from Denver, Colorado, home of Remax World Headquarters, it's Adam Conto, CEO of Remax. We'll start with a win. Looking across the studio, I got producer Mark here. How you doing, buddy? I'm doing so good. Awesome. Hey, we've got a really cool guest on today. You look for interesting guests that have done some amazing things in their lives and contributed to society, things of that nature. And we have somebody who's like done some incredible stuff. Amazing. Yeah. We have the pleasure of having Colonel Chris Hadfield on the podcast. Welcome. Hey, glad to be joining you too. Thanks.

Hey, so if people don't know, you were one of the first Canadian commanders of the International Space Station. You have been referred to as the most famous astronaut since Neil Armstrong. Hashtag winning. You're a heavily decorated astronaut, engineer and pilot. Your many awards include the Order of Canada and NASA Exceptional Service Medal. You've written many bestselling books. Acclaimed musician, which I'm curious to know about, has hosted internationally acclaimed television series,

including National Geographic's One Strange Rock. So we are so stoked to have you on the show. Welcome to Start With a Wind. Thank you very much. Good to be with you both. What's this musician thing going on? I'm a fan of musicians. I like music. If you can see my background, I have a couple of guitars. Yeah, if you look at my background, I got a guitar as well.

All right. I've been a musician my whole life. I've played with a lot of different bands. I did a cover of David Bowie's Space Oddity that hundreds of millions of people have seen. And Bowie really liked it. He called it the most poignant version of the song ever done. And so I tour with Bowie's band some. and I co-write with a lot of other bands. And yeah, it's a tough way to make a living, but it is a great way to have a life.

That is so awesome. And you did that cover of Bowie's song, From Space, right? Yeah, there's a guitar up on the space station, a little Canadian parlor guitar made made by larry vay made on vancouver i i didn't put it up there the nasa psychiatrist put it up there because just like mark they recognize music's important for you know to be a healthy human being and um so that guitar has been up there for 21 years and there's almost always some musician that plays guitar and and i've i've fronted bands for decades so i played it every day i wrote and recorded a whole album of music when i was supposed to be asleep up on the

space station and yeah and i i did a cover of of space oddity as well and made a uh a video to go with it so yeah and loads of people have have seen that all around the world everywhere i go so yeah kind of a fun thing to be able to do. So we encourage everybody to go to YouTube and check out Chris's video. It's really good. I mean, I was listening to it going, wow, this guy has got some chops. He can sing. So I'm one of the viewers on it. So just a great video and a really cool concept to do that from space. So I want to dig into this

astronaut thing because you're kind of one of those mystery people to all of us in society. We're like, whoa, this guy's an astronaut. How did you decide to become an astronaut? I mean, where did this whole thing start? When I was a kid, I liked Star Trek and science fiction books. And 2001, the movie Space Oddity or Space Odyssey. And that was all fantasy. But then at the same time, for the very first time in history, people were actually flying in space, Soviets and Americans. And then when I was nine years old, Neil and Buzz walked on the moon. And I just thought, man, I'm going to grow up to be something. Why don't I grow up to be that? If that's a choice, that's the coolest thing ever. It's like my fantasy. It's like

Star Trek science fiction, but it's real. You can actually do that. And so I consciously decided to turn myself into an astronaut on July 20th, 1969, the day that the first two people walked on the moon. And then I just worked on it ever since. Well, so, and you have a children's book out that talks about Chris, you, I'm assuming, in this, watching on television, those guys walking on the moon. Is that that pivotal moment? Yeah, that children's book has done great. And I wrote it, it's called The Darkest Dark. I wrote it because it's really important in life to know the difference between fear and danger. We tend to sort of treat them like the same thing, but they're not a synonym. Fear and danger are

different things. And things aren't fearful, just sometimes people are. And so I wrote that book, The Darkest Dark, because it's really important when you're a kid to learn that it's normal to be afraid, but what you do with your fear is really going to dictate your whole life. So that's why I wrote that book. And I thought I would write it semi-autobiographical because at the end of it, almost as a reveal, the kid is presented with the fact that this is a real person. This isn't, you know, Beepky goes to the moon. This is a real person. This is a thing a real person can do.

And the last part of the book has sort of ideas as the child gets a little bit older so they can think just beyond the pictures and the words. I mean, it was really interesting to go through that book while preparing for this interview. And it was fascinating. Our podcast is a lot about creating success in your life and the things that you can do to the habit systems, tools, and processes that you can use to create that alignment and get in the direction that you want to go. So what were some of the habits that you developed in order to make this dream come true? I think number one is you got to have dreams. You got to have something you're trying to accomplish.

If you don't know what your goal is, then how do you decide what to do next? Like to me, that's a fundamental question. And so I think it's really critical to do yourself the favor of having a few sort of right on the edge of crazy dreams and goals that you want to try and accomplish in your life. And I don't mean just a bucket list so you can brag to other people, but stuff you actually value that is going to make you feel fulfilled and worth something and happy. And so that's step one. And have several of those. And don't just stick with the same two for your whole life, but update them and think about it.

You learn stuff through your life. Then the second thing is, once you've got some sort of goals in life, then do a little personal inventory and recognize what you don't have yet, what you can't do yet in order to get closer to doing those things. And then the third is start changing who you are.

And it could be pretty daunting if you try and change your whole self overnight. But if you are recognizing that, hey, someday I want to walk on the moon, then okay, but I'm nine. I don't know anything. But what can I do this weekend or tonight or this month to maybe give myself some skill that will inch me forward towards walking on the moon? Maybe I'll read a book about the history of the moon or rockets or, you know, or I'll maybe sign up for swimming lessons or scuba lessons because astronauts have to know how to scuba dive and train underwater. And then, you know, I joined the air cadets like the Civil Air Patrol in the States so I could get my pilot's license because astronauts fly in space. And none of those steps turned me into an astronaut. But each one of them moved my life a little closer to what I fantasized about. And that is a wonderful, joyful thing. If every single day you are shifting your life a little closer to what I fantasized about. And that is a wonderful, joyful thing. If every single day you are shifting your life

a little bit away from wherever you were and towards the stuff that you really value. And I've done that every day of my life since then. And I find it's just a good modus operandi for how to go through this life. You get one, don't waste it. That's it. I mean, you're not sitting on the couch watching it pass you by, thatus operandi for how to go through this life. You get one, you know, don't waste it. That's it. I mean, you're not sitting on the couch

watching it pass you by, that's for sure. Well, you know, at the start of the pandemic, I was like, well, you know, this is going to take a while and we're going to be locked up. What haven't I done that might be fun? You know, maybe I could write another book. I'll write a fiction book. I'm going to write an international bestseller fiction book. Yeah, right. You know, I'm going to walk in the moon. Crazy. But without

giving yourself some sort of audacious goal, then you're just going to sort of repeat the same motions and shuffle through your own life. Maybe the other piece of that that's really important, Adam, is don't judge yourself on how much you got done today. Because otherwise, you'll just be kicking yourself, you know, and disappointed with yourself. Celebrate the little changes that you've made on a daily basis. And you know, you're probably not going to be Stephen King or something or whatever it is you're dreaming of. But, you know, I'm not the best musician in the world. I'm not the worst musician in the world. I'm just a musician.

And so every song I learn, I was practicing guitar a little bit this morning. Everything like that just gives me joy and moves me a little closer to the things that I value. And I celebrate them, each of them as they come along so that it kind of makes every day more fun. These are some incredibly important points. And I want to get to the, uh, the fiction book here in, uh, in the near future, because I'm, I'm pretty enthralled with that, but it,

I want to continue unpacking this becoming an astronaut thing. Um, and I hope everybody's listening very closely to how Chris is laying this out because there's so much gold in this and, you know, probably everybody on this show, or maybe not, I don't know, isn't going to end up becoming an astronaut, but they have an opportunity to make something of themselves that they want to become. And that's really the foundation, the framework that you're building here. It's really cool. But I want to talk about challenges because you mentioned the difference between fear and danger before. And astronauts face many high-risk situations through your career, obviously. I mean, a lot of people

have died doing that, not just on the rocket launches or landings, but in the preparation to become an astronaut, the scuba diving, the flying airplanes and jets and things like that. You know, and there's no guarantee of success. How do you stay motivated when you continue to come across these sometimes appearing to be insurmountable challenges to move yourself forward? Yeah, it's really easy to get way too up or way too down with your own life. You can whipsaw yourself into this nervous frenzy. And I try and remind myself at a regular basis that nothing is ever as good or as bad as it first looks. Nothing. And so have a little bit of maturity and pause as you come into new things. And some things are

just going to seem to be super easy and some things are going to seem to be insurmountable and they're probably not going to turn out to be either of those things. Really bad stuff is going to happen. You know, things go wrong. That's life. You know, I don't even know why we call it going wrong, right?

It's just going, that's life. But a lot of stuff's also going to go right. And so have the long-term dreams in mind and then uh you got to make your daily bread and you got to find some way to make a living hopefully you know if you have really looked at the stuff that you value you could also find a way to make a living that is somewhere within that field or those ideas that you reallyologist, or you could be, you know, a person who studies gems or volcanoes, or you could work for the forestry or whatever.

You know, there's all sorts of work that is in the area that you're interested in. And so you got to make your daily bread, but if at all possible, don't just let life randomly choose for you what you're going to do. You know, be active in choosing your own life. And then if there was one distinguishing characteristic, Adam, of an astronaut, and I was an astronaut for 21 years and lived in Russia for five years as NASA's director over there and worked with all the astronauts of the world,

I would say the one distinguishing trait that is common to all of professional astronauts is a perpetual dissatisfaction with their own level of competence. None of them are like resting on their laurels or coasting, like, I haven't got enough done last year, this year I can just sort of drift, you know, because the job will kill you and it'll kill the people around you. It's relentless. So that adds an urgency to it. But also we're trying to explore and understand the rest of the universe. And we're just little, you know, babies taking toddler steps. So that internal purpose of recognizing that, hey, I'm good at some things, but I hardly know how to do most things. And always trying to better yourself, to get more

competent, understand things better, to give yourself more skills. But to me, that's a great way to go through life because it's like you're building a higher and higher platform that you're standing on as time goes by. And when you get on a higher platform, you can see further, you know, you get more perspective on everything else. And so I sure didn't have any of that clear in my mind when I was a nine-year-old kid, but I sort of followed that pattern. And I realized I'm going to have to go to various universities because flying spaceships is technically really complicated. I also thought I probably won't be an astronaut, so I better have some backup plans.

So I joined the Air Force and served my country, but also served with the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy, even though I'm Canadian. You know, I was a fighter pilot in the Cold War, a combat fighter pilot, intercepting Soviet bombers in North American airspace. And then I went to test pilot school. And all those things were really interesting and challenging,

but they were also sort of building my set so that someday if the space agency said, hey, we'd like to hire some astronauts, I could stick my hand way up in the air and maybe get picked. Wow. Perpetual dissatisfaction with their level of competence. I wrote that down. I mean, your hunger for growth is amazing and very admirable. So many people get to a point and coast in life. And obviously, that's not where you're satisfied. And I think that's where a lot of our listeners are in pursuit of is never

be satisfied with what you've done yesterday. Go after something new tomorrow. So I want to ask you about the book now, the fiction book. And I, I know you're, uh, you're involved in, in your next work as well, but, um, you wrote a science fiction thriller fiction book called the Apollo murders where, um, you know, it takes place. What is it? Uh, late sixties, early seventies. Yeah. Um, in the, uh, was it the U S and the Russian space programs or something like that? Give us a flyover of that. And, uh, was it the, the U S and the Russian space programs or something like that? Give us a flyover of that. And, uh, it's, it sounds like a really interesting thing, uh, that you unpacked. And I mean, is it all untrue or did you like integrate fact with fiction or how,

how does this come apart? Sure. The, the Apollo murders, it primarily it's set in 1973 um at the tail end of the apollo program um and and i have apollo 18 which was a real space mission but uh which we built the hardware for and had crews selected for but nixon canceled for various political reasons um but i had it go but i had it partially financed by the military, sort of like the space shuttle was really heavily financed by the military. And it's really alternative history fiction. And I would guess 95% of the book is real things that happened. Over half the characters are real people. So that made it really fun to write. But my characters, Apollo 18 crew, launching out of Florida, and they've got, at the time, there was a secret Soviet space station for real called Almaz, which is Russian

for diamond. And it was spying on the world, had a huge telescope inside it, a spy telescope operated by cosmonauts. So Apollo 18 goes by the Alamaz space station and some bad things happen. And then on the way to the moon, other bad things happen. And on the surface of the moon, some really bad things happen. And then the whole story comes ripping back to earth and hits its big climax splashdown in the Pacific, just north of Hawaii. And yeah, the book, it's an international bestseller and it's already in 13 languages, I think. And just recently were signed with a production house to bring it to the screen as well. So pretty big rollicking project and a lot of fun to be involved in.

That's great. I think a lot of people on this program look forward to getting their hands on that story. And it's really cool. And it's, I mean, as a child of the 70s, I'm interested in really pursuing that. So Chris, I have a question for you though that I ask everybody that's on the show and looking for an astronaut response here,

somebody who's done so much in life like you have, how do you start your day with a win? I start every day with a plan and a list of stuff I want to get done today. And I get out of bed at a certain time of day, and I try and have a pattern that gets me ready for the day. I don't just take a shower, but I always, before I ever take a shower, I do 20 pushups because it's like free exercise. Just don't allow yourself to take a shower unless you've done 20 pushups. And spend a little time in front of the mirror and just weigh yourself, have a look

in the mirror and go, yeah, I'm doing all right. Or be forgiving, but just be realistic about yourself. Do I need to change my diet? Do I need to do stuff? Just do a little assessment, get yourself cleaned up. And then you got a list of stuff to do. You've got some obligatory stuff, just like in figure skating, you've got some freestyle for the day and balance the two out. How are you going to have some fun today? Who are you going to interact with? How's today going to go? And then at the end of the day, you will have blown a lot of stuff. No, I didn't get that done. That didn't go right. So, you know, the good intentions of the day sacrificed on the altar of reality.

But at the end of the day, be forgiving and go, hey, this went great today, or I learned this. This didn't go so good. And what do I have? And before I go to bed, I review, hey, this is what I'm thinking of doing tomorrow. And then I just repeat. And maybe the most important thing for starting your day with a win is drop your personal bar of victory as low as you possibly can.

Like if you get up and there's hot water, and there's a bar of soap and a shampoo that smells sort of nice, and you got, like, if you're a guy, you got a new razor, you know, new blade in your razor, and you're like, and then you come, and there's food. You didn't have to go pick it or, you know, harvest it somewhere. There's food that you just have to sort of put together and eat. And, you know, by 7.30 in the morning, you can be like, victory.

Today is, you know, and it's totally up to you whether today's a win or a loss. So I try and make sure that I am ready to feel successful. That's the lowest possible. Nobody else cares but you. Nobody. So don't let other people determine that. Determine it for yourself, you know? And so that's how I feel successful every single morning.

And so far from, it's working in my life. Awesome. Colonel Chris Hadfield, the first Canadian commander of the International Space Station, an amazing adventurer, a great guy, and a winner, giving us his plan for the day. Chris, thank you so much for being on Start With A Win. Hey, thanks and respect to you, Adam. Nice to talk with you. Hey, and thank you for listening to Start With A Win.

And if you're ready to create personal and business success, well, make sure to subscribe to this podcast. We'll give you the tools you need for success and we'll interview amazing people that will inspire you and drive you to succeed in your day. Hey, for more great content, head over to startwithwin.com. And until next time, remember to start with a win. Bye.