Guest User

November 10, 2022

Goal Setting

Episode 226: Colonel Chris Hadfield: An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth

Guest User

November 10, 2022

Goal Setting

Referred to as “the most famous astronaut since Neil Armstrong,” Colonel Chris Hadfield is a worldwide sensation whose video of David Bowie's "Space Oddity” — seen by over 75 million people online — was called “possibly the most poignant version of the song ever created", by Bowie himself.

In 1992, Colonel Hadfield was selected as a NASA mission specialist, and three years later he was aboard the Shuttle Atlantis, where he helped build the Mir space station. In 2001, on Shuttle Endeavour, Colonel Hadfield performed two spacewalks and in 2013, he became commander of the International Space Station for six months off planet.

NASA’s former director of operations, Colonel Hadfield is a heavily decorated astronaut, engineer, and test pilot whose many awards include the Order of Canada, the Meritorious Service Cross, and the NASA Exceptional Service Medal.

He is also an adjunct professor at the University of Waterloo, a three-time bestselling author, an acclaimed musician, and chair of the Board of the Open Lunar Foundation. He also leads the space stream at Creative Destruction Lab, one of the world’s top tech incubators.

In addition, Colonel Hadfield is the host of two internationally acclaimed TV series, BBC’s Astronauts: Do You Have What It Takes? and National Geographic’s One Strange Rock.

In this episode, we speak to renowned Canadian figure Colonel Chris Hadfield. For those who don't know, Chris is a heavily decorated astronaut, engineer, and pilot, and has received many awards, such as the Order of Canada, the Meritorious Service Cross and the NASA Exceptional Service Medal. Colonel Hadfield became a worldwide sensation with his video of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" which was viewed by over 75 million people. He aims to make space more accessible and continues to share the wonders of outer space and science with as many people as possible. Besides his phenomenal professional background, he is also known for his music which he writes and plays on earth and in space! He is also the author of several books, namely An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth, You Are Here, and a children's book, The Darkest Dark. Although Colonel Hadfield has a very different background from previous guests, his 35-year career has afforded him many lessons that apply to life, which he shares in our conversation with him. We learn the importance of goals and why reaching your goals should not define your happiness. Hear ways to overcome fear when facing uncertainty, the value of competence, and why enjoying the road to success is more important than success itself. Find out why sweating the small is essential to success, whether Colonel Hadfield suffers from imposter syndrome, and where true happiness comes from. Tune in and discover the secret to success and happiness in this one-of-a-kind conversation with special guest, Colonel Chris Hadfield!

Key Points From This Episode:

What motivated Commander Hadfield to take pictures onboard the International Space Station. (0:04:10)
He briefly explains the amount of effort that went into taking pictures for his book You Are Here. (0:05:14)
What lessons Commander Hadfield learned as an astronaut that he applies to life. (0:06:34)
How to keep motivated to achieve your goals with the knowledge that you probably won’t achieve them. (0:08:41)
Why his goal was becoming an astronaut and not to be an astronaut. (0:11:05)
Whether there is a time to reconsider or quit a goal that you have set for yourself. (0:12:46)
The best way to prepare for situations with uncertain outcomes. (0:14:51)
How to prepare for situations that you cannot prepare or practice for. (0:18:18)
Ways to mitigate fear when dealing with risk and uncertainty. (0:20:55)
Learn if building competence is different for different people. (0:23:48)
Hear the benefits of negative thinking and sweating the small stuff. (0:25:33)
Commander Hadfield explains how to prepare for novel situations. (0:29:07)
He shares where he thinks life satisfaction comes from. (0:31:49)
Find out if Commander Hadfield ever suffers from imposter syndrome. (0:34:14)
What life lessons he hopes to impart to his grandchildren. (0:36:09)
How Commander Hadfield defines success in his life. (0:38:04)
We highlight the main takeaways from our conversation with Commander Hadfield. (0:41:14)

Read the Transcript:

Ben Felix: This is the Rational Reminder Podcast, a weekly reality check on sensible investing and financial decision-making from two Canadians. We are hosted by me, Benjamin Felix and Cameron Passmore, Portfolio Managers at PWL Capital.

Cameron Passmore: Welcome to Episode 226, and this week we truly welcome a Canadian icon to the podcast. We have Commander Chris Hadfield join us this week, which Ben, it was super cool conversation, super interesting to meet with him and he's full of all kinds of lessons.

Ben Felix: I can't say that I would have predicted that this is the kind of person that we would have ended up talking to on the podcast.

Cameron Passmore:Yeah, it's crazy. So, for those who don't know, Chris has lived an unbelievable 35-year career. He was selected by the Canadian Space Agency to be an astronaut in 1992, and he's flown in two space shuttle missions. He had a third trip to space and served for five months up until May of 2013 as commander of the International Space Station. He was the chief Cap Com, which is capsule communications. That's the astronaut on Earth, who communicates with the crew members in the space shuttles and he did that for 25 shuttle launches. It's just unreal. He served as Director of Operations in Star City, Russia for a few years. He was a Chief of Robotics for the NASA Astronaut Office in Houston. And before he was an astronaut, he was in the Canadian Armed Forces for 25 years as an engineer and also as a fighter pilot.

He's probably best known for his time in the International Space Station, because he really was able to capture pictures from space at a time when Twitter was becoming popular. I remember those Twitter feeds are just wildly popular. And the pictures, his book which I'm holding up here are for you viewers called You Are Here has an unbelievable collection of some of his favourite pictures. He orbited the Earth on that trip 2,597 times and took 45,000 pictures, which is just crazy. Probably he's best known, though, for his YouTube video A Space Oddity, which is a revised version of the classic David Bowie song. And that song on YouTube has been viewed almost 52 million times. It's an incredible video if you have not seen it yet.

He’s unreal. He's an accomplished guitarist, author of four books. We both read his book, An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth: What Going to Space Taught Me About Ingenuity, Determination, and Being Prepared for Anything.

Ben Felix: Yup. We both read the book and why are we talking to an astronaut on this podcast about financial decision-making? We read that book and it ties together so many of the things we've discussed on the podcast over the last couple of years related to life satisfaction, decision-making under conditions of uncertainty, goal setting and how to work toward goals, without being discouraged by the goal being unachievable. We just thought we had to have him on if we could, which wasn't obvious, and we were able to talk to him. So, that was pretty exciting for us.

Cameron Passmore: So, after our conversation, which is about 45 minutes or so, we will quickly go through his lessons on how to think like an astronaut, which is, of course, a quick summary of his terrific book. So, we'll do that after a conversation with Chris.

Ben Felix: You hear bits and pieces of that through the conversation with Chris because we were trying to focus on that, like what we took away from the book, how can we bring that out in a conversation. But I think going through explicitly, as I guess, kind of like a mini-book review type discussion, but walking through your notes, Cameron on, what those lessons are from the book, I think will add value to the overall conversation.

Cameron Passmore: All right, so with that, let's go to our conversation with Commander Chris Hadfield.

Commander Chris Hadfield, it is a great pleasure to welcome you to the Rational Reminder Podcast.

My pleasure, glad to be joining you both.

So, I know we're going to be talking about your book, An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth. But I was just really enjoying your book, You Are Here, which I keep on my coffee table and it's phenomenal. So, congratulations. A beautiful book of pictures that you took while on the International Space Station.

Thank you. Yeah, I took – when you're floating next to a spaceship window, and going around the world every 90 minutes, you just can't see fast enough. And I would resolve to myself, “Okay, today, I'm not going to take pictures. I'm just going to look.” But within seconds, my hand would grab for the camera, because there's just – you don't have time to see everything that's there. And so, I was hoping that the pictures then I would have a chance to go back and look at later, and I did. And when I started going through them, I was just thinking what is the most effective way to try and share this very rare resource. And so, I thought, if I could have grabbed you, Cameron or Benjamin, and had you by the window for an hour or 90 minutes, actually, to go around the world. What would I want to show you? What parts of the world did I get to know in my orbits that are really remarkable or noteworthy, and that's what that book is, You Are Here. It's really my guided tour to the coolness of the world.

It's a very cool book and the amount of effort that you talk about in the book that you had to put into capturing the right pictures at the right time, given where you were in the orbit was fascinating.

Yeah, you tend to get used to one time zone on Earth. But when you go around the world every 92 minutes, of course, time zones are arbitrary, and day and night become arbitrary. So, you have to think about, if I want to get a great thunderstorm over Indonesia, or I want to see Uluru, Ayers Rock at dawn with the big shadow or at one point, the Canadian Aerobatic Team, The Snowbirds were practicing in formation, and I wanted to see if it was possible to see their smoke trail over the edge of Vancouver Island there, then it takes a lot more choreography of timing, especially in amongst the hundreds of experiments running on a spaceship. And nowhere on the schedule does NASA say, “Please take time out and go take pictures.” That doesn't happen.

But I think over my three space flights, I took somewhere in the order of 45,000 pictures and I didn't want them just to sit in a digital file somewhere. So, it was a lot of fun going through them to choose sort of the Earth's representative best, maybe 150 pictures or so. But it was also a lot of fun. Now, seeing other people having a chance to some degree, to see the world a little bit through my eyes.

Ben and I both loved your book, An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth. What is the most important lesson that you learned as an astronaut that you continue to apply today to everyday life?

Goals are super important. Having a clear vision of things that you want in your life, things that you want to happen, events, places, people, opportunities, whatever. I think having barely possible or impossible goals, that's a really important thing. But the odds of doing those things are very small. And even if you do them, they're going to be different than you thought. So, I think maybe the most important part of the book, An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth, but also, my own takeaways from the decades of experience in spaceflight is that what you've done already, you can't change. And the things that you're aspiring to are just theoretical.

What matters the absolute most is what are you going to do next. That's what matters. And when I say that, what are you going to do in the next 10 seconds? One of my fellow astronauts, Tracy Caldwell, she grabbed a grease pencil and wrote on the wall of the space station, “There is nothing more important than what you are doing right now.” And it's the truth. When you think about it, your life is not what you set out to do. Your life is just knitted together, series of all of your little decisions of what to do next. And we often forgive ourselves, our little decisions. That doesn't matter. That’s just a little decision. But that's all you got.

So, I think the deliberateness of how you make each of your small decisions every day, that is going to be your life. That's going to determine the path of who you are tomorrow. And so, think about them, take them seriously, and be deliberate in your own choices every day. And that is something I learned throughout the pattern of training and development that I went through. But also, it's something wherever I could, I tried to be mindful of and I'm still, even more so now at this particular phase of life. I think about that a lot.

How do you balance the motivation to strive for the big ambitious goals that you mentioned, with the extremely low probability of actually achieving them that you also mentioned?

Well, if you don't have lofty, audacious goals, if you don't have some sort of idea of what perfection might look like, how do you know what to do next? I mean, is it just random? Do you just do whatever titillates your taste buds and stimulates your nerve endings? I mean, that's okay for a little while, but how do you actually choose what to do next. So, I think you need to have big, hairy, audacious goals and ideas, but you can't count on them to be happy. If you say, I'm going to win the lottery, then you spend your entire miserable life buying lottery tickets, and then agonizing week after week, you don't win, you're going to have a miserable life. And odds are, you're not going to win the lottery. And you're going to see other people win the lottery, and it's random.

So instead, if you can say, the most joyful time of my day, every single day, this is when I go and I choose my lucky numbers or whatever the process is. I go to my favourite pharmacy or whatever and then turn the actual lottery announcement into the winning event, where it's fun. You have a little ceremony, a little celebration, a little something so that you look forward to the reality of your day-to-day life and you take joy and pleasure in that. Not in some distant, probably unattainable goal. Use that goal to shape your current-day decisions. But notice life as it's happening. There's always bad stuff that happens. But there is always good stuff happens every day.

And so, I don't measure myself by the things that haven't happened. In my heart of hearts, I'm still striving towards them, because I think they'd be fun if they did. But beware the bucket list, where if you're dragging around a bucket like Marley's Ghost, and Scrooge, and you look into it, and it's got the 10 things that you want to climb Mount Everest, and you want to stand on Kilimanjaro, and you want to marry a prince and whatever, it doesn't matter, whatever is in your bucket list. If you're just dragging that around, and you keep looking and going, “I haven't done anything I'm dreaming of.” It's going to be a millstone, rather than sort of a source of inspiration. So, I think you need to balance those within yourself and be absolutely deliberate in enjoying the process of every day and not waiting for some uncontrollable future event in order to feel good about yourself.

I think in your book, you describe that your goal is becoming an astronaut, not to be an astronaut, is that correct?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, that's true in all phases of life. If you're an Olympic athlete, I mean, if you say the only time in my life I'm going to be happy, is when I run across the finish line, and the tape breaks on my chest and nobody else's. You are going to have a dismal life if that's the only thing that is going to give you joy. But the years of preparation, where you've made your body stronger and more capable, and your mind to go along with it, and the people that you've met and the opportunities it's given you, and the travel that comes from the layers of success, that is your life. The moment that you cross the finish line is at best going to be a moment.

So, yeah, the process of becoming is so important to honour and recognize and celebrate, and not just sort of bear your own life. But it takes a deliberate mindset. It is easy to hate everything you're doing and some people seem to do that sort of deliberately, especially on social media. But at the same time, you can deliberately choose to love what you're doing. We've all got compulsory things you need to do every day. But there's also some freestyle every day, and take a moment to notice the cool and beautiful that's around you. I do it on Earth, I did it in space. I try and do it every chance I get because that's the stuff you remember. That's the stuff that actually shapes how you feel about yourself and how you feel about your life. And then maybe once in a while, somebody's tape breaks across your chest as well. But that's not the thing that's actually going to determine how you feel about your life.

Assuming you're you enjoy the process. Is there a point where you think it makes sense to recalibrate or quit on a goal, on a big goal?

Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's just you, right? I mean, nobody cares or understands what you're doing like you do. I mean, your mom tries for sure, and your spouse or whatever. But you need to sort of get over the fact that nobody else really cares about what you're doing and what you're dreaming of, as much as you do. And so, don't wait for other people to give you validation. You've got to find validation within yourself. If you're constantly and can only feel satisfied with external validation, then you're going to feel frustrated most of the time. So, try and take pride and pleasure in what you're doing on a regular basis. And if you say, “Well, gosh, I've always wanted to be, I don't know, a centre in the National Hockey League.” But then you noticed as a teenager, that some of the people could just naturally skate a lot better than you could, and some of the people had a body that was shaped differently than yours that gave them an advantage. And you're going, “Well, okay, I'm not going to be a centre in the NHL.” But that's not the only choice available.

But the time that you were preparing to maybe do that, you got stronger, and you're learning to skate better, and you'll learn to stick handle and you met some people and there's nothing to stop you from loving hockey for the rest of your life. I think your goals should be as fluid as the reality of your life and keep them, but at the same time, don't be afraid to modify them and reinvent them. And especially if you've achieved something like one of them. Like, one of my goals is, I don't know, I want to swim across the St. Lawrence. Fine. Okay, well, one day if you do manage to swim across the St. Lawrence. Now what? Just because you've accomplished one of your dreams, it doesn't mean you can't have 50 new ones. And you should constantly be learning and setting yourself different goals because then there's the delight of discovery and self-improvement that comes with pursuing new things. So, yeah, I’ve tried to do that since I was a child also.

What have you found is the best way to prepare for situations with uncertain outcomes, which you've had many?

Yeah, gosh. If things had certain outcomes, and we'd all be wealthy gamblers, right? Everything has an uncertain outcome. I mean, just try joining a fantasy football league and you'll see that all of the pundits in the world are wrong on a regular basis. The most learned people cannot predict the future, even Nostradamus got it wrong.

So, what astronauts do for a living is prepare for things to go wrong. We acknowledge that things might go right and that'll be fine. But what we do, is prepare for things to go wrong. Because if things go right, you don't need leadership, you don't need emergency procedures, you hardly need any, and you don't need band-aids if things always go right. But you can count on the fact that things will go wrong. And I don't even know why we call it going wrong. It's just going. That's how life is.

So, if the stakes are really low, then you probably can just sort of count on your good looks and charm and natural instincts to deal with the things going wrong. But as life progresses, as your responsibility gets higher, if all you ever do is walk, then you don't really need to worry about how speed kills. But if you're going to ride a bike, then suddenly speed can kill you. And if you're going to drive a car, or fly an aeroplane, or fly a spaceship, suddenly you have to prepare for an entirely different set of things going wrong, because the stakes are suddenly so much higher.

And so, what astronauts do is we set a definition of what it is we're trying to accomplish. What does success look like in the next 10 minutes, in the next hour, or throughout an entire six months of spaceflight? What does success look like? And then, what are the things that can go wrong? What are the risks? What are the most 10 probable things that can go wrong in the next hour, or as we say, in the cockpit, “What's the next thing that's going to kill us?” Because that's a really nice way to sharpen your mind. And as soon as you recognize, okay, these are the next things that are going to go wrong, then in the quiet time leading up to it, you can get ready or you can talk about it, you can quickly look up the facts, you can practice already. You might have time to simulate once or twice. If you sit down on an aeroplane and someone three seats over looks like their skin is kind of grey and they're breathing badly and you’re thinking, “God, that person looks like they're going to have a heart attack.” Going, “Wow, why don't I take a few minutes here and just read up about CPR and what are the symptoms of a heart attack. And what do you do when someone has one?” That CPR thing, it’s and staying alive, staying alive, how many times, how often do you breathe and all that. If you just took five minutes to simulate someone having a heart attack, if that person has one, then you've done them a big favour, and you're prepared. Even if they don't, you've given yourself another skill.

The beauty of it is, the more of those little skills you give yourself, the more relaxed you can be when things go wrong because you've just – “Okay, well, it didn't go as I wanted. The tire blew out on my car. A dog ran out in front of my bicycle. That person did have a heart attack.” It's not what I want to happen, but because I use the time available to improve my skill set, to do a little research, to practice a little bit. I'm not stressed about it. I'm ready for it. And astronauts would much rather be ready than stressed. And for me, that doesn't just apply to spaceships, but it applies to everything in life.

How do you prepare for scenarios that you cannot practice or that won't show up in a simulation?

I'm not sure that those exist. That's just a failure of imagination. You have to prioritize the probability of things happening. People ask me all the time. So, what are you going to do when an alien contacts your ship? Does NASA have a protocol for that? Well, that's a pretty low probability event, since it's never happened, and we don't know of life anywhere but Earth. So, you do have to prioritize what's liable to happen. But when we're getting ready for a spaceflight, we have an entire group of people that call our training team, and they just make up this enormous matrix of things that might happen to how much do we need to see of them in order to get enough training that we can respond appropriately, and then have to get all that balanced and fresh in our mind and complete by the day of launch.

But there's nothing to stop you from tonight, when you go home, sitting down and going, “What are the 10 most likely things to kill me this year?” A car accident, something congenital, a house fire, what are they? It's not hard to think of. You just go online and look statistically. And then go, “Am I ready for any of those things? Are there batteries in my fire alarms? And are they working? If I'm lying in my bed, can I hear the fire alarm? And if I hear, what do I do? Have I ever actually practiced it?”

So, I think it's worthwhile to look at the most probable events down the list, and then when I came back from my first spaceflight, we had gone to the Russian Space Station Mir to build Mir. And we launched without a flight plan because things were so tumultuous. It was just, everything was changing all the time. We didn't even know on the day of launch what we were going to do on the second day after we launched. We had to wait till we woke up in the morning and they sent it up on the telex machine. And when I landed and was coming back to Houston, I realized I was going to have to stand up in front of friends and family in the media, and tell them how it went. I realized nothing had gone according to plan. But everything was within the scope of things that we'd thought about. And so, even though it wasn't what we were expecting, it was something that we could extrapolate the stuff we'd learn and be able to handle. I think, if you can improve your skill sets in various areas that threaten you, then even though what actually happens may be slightly different, it will still give you a good basis to be able to respond appropriately. And if you got another 10 minutes, get ready for something else.

That leads to my next question, how do you mitigate fear when you're dealing with risk and uncertainty like that?

The greatest antidote for fear is competence. We're fearful when we don't know what to do, or when events are overwhelming our capabilities. To go back to a bicycle example, I assume the three of us all know how to ride a bicycle. But there was definitely a stage of life when none of us knew how to ride a bicycle. We didn't have the coordination. We weren't old enough yet. No one had taught us the bike. We didn't have a bike our size. But you can see how much fun bike riding was. You could watch the big people go by on their bikes, “Man, I wish I could be like them”, and then probably had a tricycle or a big wheel or something. And it's okay, but it's not a bicycle. And then somebody started to explain to you how it works and how those handlebars work and how it is that you move the pedals, and maybe gave you training wheels, or one of those bikes, you can just push with your feet. And then someone held the back of your seat as you started to balance it out by yourself until you made it for a little while wobbly, but you made it and you're scared because you don't know what you're doing. But somebody's helping you so that you don't have to be just completely terrified.

And then eventually, that first time you’re riding a bike, and then the next time, you're even better at it. And within a week or two, suddenly, you're one of those cool people riding by on a bike, and the bike didn't change. The danger didn't change at all. The only thing that changed was you became competent, and you're no longer afraid. Pretty much everything in the world is just a bicycle. And the real question is, are you okay with being terrified of things in your own life? Or do you want to learn how to ride that bicycle or not? I don't like being terrified. You're so stressed. And also, while you're stressed and afraid, it's really hard to notice the beautiful stuff going on. The cool things in life. The whole world just is screaming at you with your overpowering emotion of fear, which I think is kind of a debilitating way to go through your life, and it's easy to be overwhelmed.

So, you don't want to say, “Okay, today I'm going to master every single vehicle in the world. I'm going to become a formula F1 driver and an F18 pilot and a space shuttle pilot and riding a bike”, because you won't be able to start. So just say today, “I'm going to learn how to ride a tricycle. And this week, a bicycle and this month, whatever, a unicycle or something.” And break it into pieces, so that you can gain competence. So, then the things that otherwise would scare you are no longer scary.

Things aren't scary. Just sometimes people are scared because they haven't gained the capability and the competence to deal with the actual danger. And there's definitely a difference between danger and fear. They are separate things and overcoming the actual danger, will get rid of the fear and allow you to ride your bicycle through life.

Do you think there are areas of life that most people should build competence in to reduce that fear? Or is it different for everybody?

Oh, it's different for everybody. I mean, it depends on the culture of where you live, and the things that you do. I mean, if you are a circus performer who juggles flame, or if you're an actuary, and you walk to work every day, you have different dangers in your life. But I think what you should do is draw a parallel between your dreams and the risks that are involved with those dreams. Like someday I would love to, I don't know, stick my head in the lion's mouth. Someday I would love to stand on the edge of a volcano. And say, the reason I haven't done that is because I don't have the skill. I'm afraid to because I don't think my skills are good enough. Or maybe it's just a fun thing to dream of.

But I think you need to – everybody needs to look at their hopes and their dreams and see if maybe it's just their own skill set, and then they're naturally ensuing fears that is keeping them from attempting that thing. And if it's important to you, then you shouldn't just give up on it because you don't have the skills to do it yet. It doesn't have to be important to anybody else. I would really love to wear a completely pink checkered suit out in public. It doesn't matter to anybody. It just has to matter to you, but you're afraid to. Just decide what's important to you, and then figure out how can I get from where I am to doing the things that are important to me and break it into small enough pieces and gain enough skill, try it out, so that I can accomplish the things that are important to me without being overwhelmed by fear. It's a very personal thing. But the beauty of it is the satisfaction is personal, also.

We've talked quite a bit of a big goals and hopes and dreams just now, can you talk about the benefits of negative thinking and sweating the small stuff?

Yeah. You hear people all the time, “Oh, don't sweat the small stuff.” Astronauts who don't sweat the small stuff are dead. Or definitely – I was a test pilot before that. A test pilot is one of the most dangerous professions that exist. You are going to go do something with a very high-performance vehicle that nobody has ever done before. And then try and figure it out, and learn how to cope with it and develop procedures so that then other people can do it with confidence. So, it's a very dangerous profession. And so, digging into the details, and learning all that can happen and all that can go wrong, and then trying to develop habits and techniques that minimize the risk of the actual danger, and then approaching it in a build-up pattern so that you do a slight departure from the envelope of safety, and then a slightly bigger one, a slightly bigger one. I did a program with F18s where we put them out of control because out in the fleet where they were flying F18s the aeroplanes were going out of control and crashing, and losing a very expensive asset, and occasionally, killing the pilot or people on the ground.

So, there was a huge stake. How can we solve this problem of F18s going out of control? We need different recovery techniques. But I was one of the people that had to go put F18s out of control and invent new recovery techniques. And so, we did it theoretically. We did it in the simulator. We researched it like crazy, how do all the systems interrelate? What's common to the out-of-control flight characteristics and all of that stuff? And then when we actually started learning and developing new techniques, we did it extremely methodically and carefully. We didn't have to do it that way. We would have been completely free to not sweat the small stuff, but fairly predictably, it would have caused a catastrophe.

And if your stakes are low enough, today, I'm going to walk across the lawn, and I know that there might be a trapdoor or there might be a hole in the lawn, or there might be something, but the odds are really, really low. So, I don't need to sweat the small stuff. I'm just going to walk across the grass. If the stakes of what you're doing a very low, then you can relax your necessity to sweat the small stuff. But if what you're doing has a consequence, whether it's financial, or safety, or maybe somebody else's life, somebody else's emotions, then it's worth thinking about. And using the time that's available to look at the small stuff and look at what are the little details here that are going to matter? And how can I use the time available before I go do this thing to be as ready as possible to sweat the small stuff?

Sometimes you can't. If the building is on fire, you just – if you didn't think about it in advance, you just got to go with what you got. But the building's hardly ever on fire, and it's important then too when you have the quiet time, that's the time to anticipate the small stuff and look into the little things so that when an event actually happens, you've got the background and the depth of knowledge to have a much higher chance of doing the right thing.

I want to come back to the test pilot stuff. So, we talked about the importance of practice and simulating as a test pilot, you mentioned that you were testing, you're doing things that hadn't been done before, that hadn't been simulated before. What are the steps that you take or the skills required to deal with those situations? You're throwing yourself into a situation that you know nobody has been able to practice? How do you prepare for that?

So, you want an out, right? And that's why high-performance aircraft have ejection seats because there are some things that even though you prepare for them, they are going to give you a set of circumstances where you can't land the aeroplane. For example, I hit a seagull at 550 miles an hour. And something like that is bound to happen if you fly through the air long enough, eventually, hit something else, another aeroplane or a bird or something. And so, how do you react to that? Or your engines will eventually come apart. All machines eventually fail. So, do you have a backup plan for when that happens? And in the case of me doing out-of-control training, what we normally do is we actually mount a little rocket-powered parachute on the back of the test aeroplane, so that if the aeroplane gets into a spin, where it's spinning so hard that just the straight momentum of the spinning metal is more powerful than the force of the air for you to be able to steer what's happening. It's called a flat spin. Just all this metal whirling of the vehicle going sideways, the air pressure on your control surfaces isn't high enough to recover.

So, what do you do when you get into a flat spin? Well, either you wait until the air gets thick enough so that your aerodynamic forces change, or you put an ejection seat in, but you don't really want to have to destroy the aeroplane. So, what we learned a long time ago is just put a little rocket-thrown parachute in the back of the aeroplane, so that if all else goes to feathers, you can pull this little red handle, and this little rocket is going to fire and throw a parachute out the back, and that should give you enough aerodynamic force to stop your aeroplane’s motion, get it sort of pointed at the ground again. You can jettison that little parachute and then fly away.

So. that's one way. Or you start up high so that you have a lot of atmosphere to fall through as you're trying to different backup plans, as the air gets thicker and thicker. And then always in high-performance aeroplanes, you have the ultimate last-ditch effort of reaching down and pulling the handles and ejecting out of the aeroplane. It's a very expensive thing to do because you lose the aeroplane and some ejections are not successful also. But it's still comforting as a fighter pilot to know that, even in a worst case, I can jump out of this thing.

So, that's the process we went through for my out-of-control testing in the F18. How can we have layers of backup plans so that even if it doesn't go anywhere near right, we still have a pretty reasonable chance of maybe not a desirable, but an acceptable way to stay alive and go fight another day.

Having achieved what you have in your life, where do you think life satisfaction comes from?

I wanted to be an astronaut since I was a little kid. I mean, I made a conscious decision to turn myself into an astronaut when I was nine years old. I mean, it sounds ludicrous. But I watched the people going to the moon and I thought that is the coolest thing ever. I want to do that. How do you do that? How do I turn my little nine-year-old, incompetent, unqualified, scrawny self into someone who can fly a spaceship? So, that was a pretty big, hairy, audacious goal that allowed me then to choose a lot of the other things I chose to do in life. What am I going to study in school? What food should I eat? What am I going to do? Should I exercise? What should I choose as a profession? I loved everything I did. But it was with the idea that these choices are continuing to move the big uncontrollable mix of things in the direction of maybe someday flying in space.

But a few years before I retired from being an astronaut, my wife and I were looking to what are you going to do after you've flown in space? And we started making up a list of what is it about life that we love? What makes you feel worthy? What makes you feel proud? At the end of the day, when you look back, what gives you sort of that glow of satisfaction? And it's a fun list to make up. What surprised me was nowhere on the list did it say flying in space. That wasn't one of the things – it was a cool sort of reward. But it was all of the process. It was teaching and being taught. It was learning new skills. It was gaining new capabilities, seeing new things as a result of those changes, helping other people, and working with a group of people that challenges you. All of this other stuff, that's what the list was. And then what we did was, “Okay, this is actually what we value in life and what we love.” So then, how can we choose things where you can make a living and make a life, doing the things that are on the list that you love?

I think no matter where you are in life because life always goes in stages and steps. Some of them planned, most of them uncontrollable. It's really worth having lists like that, that you're constantly tinkering with, and being brutally honest with yourself about so that you're optimizing your chances to enjoy your own life.

I know we're tight on time, Chris, but I have to ask you, to us, you are literally the pinnacle of human achievement. Do you ever get impostor syndrome?

Oh, yeah, of course. Everybody does. Everybody does. And the way I know that is I was listening – I've never met him in person, but someday, if I do, I'm going to thank him. Paul McCartney. Sir Paul McCartney was doing interviews many years ago. And in it, he said, “I always just feel like I have no business being here doing what I'm doing. And I can't believe people are treating me this way.” And he has impostor syndrome. So, I thought, he's a Beatle. I mean, he's an absolute legend. Just everybody in the world knows who Paul McCartney is and the enormous cultural impact and tremendous body of art that he created. And Paul McCartney feels insecure and worried about life.

So, it allowed me to immediately conclude that, okay, everybody feels that way, that's normal. So, don't worry about it. That's how everybody is. People pretend they don't, and for a while, sometimes, you're on top of your game, and you don't have impostor syndrome for a certain period of the day. Everybody does, to some degree. And so, don't worry about it. It's normal. It's just standard human behaviour. Thank you, Sir Paul McCartney, for that. And don't worry about it. Just constantly try and prepare and learn and improve yourself on a regular basis, so that you can conduct your own life as well as conceivable, for your own purposes. Don't worry about the fact that there's always going to be somebody better at every single thing that you do than you are. There's always going to be somebody that's worse than you are.

Even if you win a gold medal. If you're Usain Bolt, and you win a gold medal, you're not winning a gold medal again this year. And eventually, someone's going to break your record. So, don't fret over it. When it's your turn to run the 100 meters, just do it the best you possibly can, and have fun doing it. And recognize that everybody feels sort of the same way that that they're really just sort of an impostor.

Great to hear that coming from you, Chris. You're full of wisdom. What life lessons do you hope to impart to your grandchildren?

Yeah, I have one granddaughter. She's seven. She's named after my mom. Her name is Eleanor. I think one of the most important things that I want her to know is that she is a huge part of her own life, in determining her own success, that her own decisions matter, that the things that she chooses to do, and the things that she chooses to learn, that's going to create her own future. So, for her to recognize that she is a really important and active participant in the process of her own life, is a really worthwhile thing to know. A lot of, apparently grown adults just want to blame their whole life on somebody else, and it's really tempting because it absolves you of responsibility and criticism is the easiest thing in the world. You don't have to have any skills, you can just criticize somebody, right? You're not actually trying to do what they're trying to do. But you're just on the sidelines, sniping.

So, I really, when I spend time with Eleanor, obviously, we need to have fun and need to – she does things because they're fun for grandpa, and I do things because they're fun for Eleanor, we live in different worlds, of course. But I try and let her hopefully learn some of the lessons that I've learned and see the world that's coming, not just the one that she's in right now. And recognizing that every little skill she gets, or gains, every little ability that she has, every bit of understanding she has of what's going on around her, is just one extra chance to not miss stuff and to do things better, and to give herself more opportunity and that she is very much, if not the master, at least a big part of the flow of her own fate.

Our final question for you, Chris, how would you define success in your life?

Success is extremely personal. And I try and lower the bar of success as low as I possibly can. I would rather feel successful 20 times a day than once a year. And nobody else really can tell if I'm feeling successful, and they don't often really care. That's kind of up to me, whether I'm feeling successful or not. So, I can look at it this way. I have a bed to sleep in, and blankets, and an alarm goes off, and I wake up and I like, “Great. I slept right up until my alarm.” And then I go to the bathroom, and the toilet works. I go in the shower, and there's hot water, and there's soap and there's shampoo, and I like the smell of the shampoo. And I have a reasonably sharp blade in my razor. I brush my teeth and I like the minty flavour of the toothpaste that I'm using. And when I come downstairs in the fridge, there is the type of milk that I like. And in the cupboard, there's the type of cereal that I like. And then afterwards, I like a certain type of tea, and it's 7.30am in the morning, and I am victorious. I have had a successful day already and it's 7.30am in the morning.

It's totally up to me. But to be thankful for what's actually going on around you, and to celebrate the little parts of those victories. Because by my own definition, I'm a winner by 7.30am in the morning, whereas I could have looked at it all completely in a different way. So, I try and lower the bar of victory as low as I possibly can, and notice when I make it over the bar and congratulate myself. Because when I first got to space on my very first flight, I had no idea whether I could do all those things I trained for. I've never been there before. I've never been in weightlessness when the pressure is really hitting. I try to simulate and try to get myself ready and I practice, and I knew what I was going to do and I hit it pretty clear in my head. But when I got the first thing done, the engine shut off and I got the little handwritten checklist of stuff, the 20 things I needed to do first, and I got through them all. I'm like, “Alright, I made it through the first 10 things, and everything's going fine. I've got my helmet off. Okay, let's do the next thing.” And I could almost feel the wave of success supporting me.

Like when you catch a wave when you are body surfing. It’s because I had visualized what I was going to do when I practiced and I gained the skills. But it's also because I noticed that, I mean, we're only 10 minutes into this flight. But already, I've got my act together, and things are happening. And so, there's going to be stuff going wrong up ahead. But I'm gaining momentum. And so far, I am victorious and I'm going to celebrate that and try and keep this wave going for as long as I possibly can. And to me, that is very much the measure of success and victory within life. And I try and conduct my entire life, every single day, that way.

What a beautiful answer. Chris, it's been incredible to see you and thanks so much for these lessons.

Oh, Ben, and Cameron, thank you very much for including me in the conversation today and it's good to meet you both. Even virtually, I hope Henry the Dog who's chewing my hand, I hope that Henry and I have a chance to meet you in person someday.

Ben Felix: All right, we hope you enjoyed that conversation and we're going to quickly now go through Chris's list of how to think like an astronaut. And again, bits and pieces of this came out through the conversation. So, first up on the list, learn how to learn.

Cameron Passmore: Next up, separate out the vital from the trivial.

Ben Felix: Figure out what is actually important, as opposed to just nice to know.

Cameron Passmore: Learn how to anticipate problems in order to prevent them.

Ben Felix: I liked what – what was the example he gave, of sitting on an aeroplane, and seeing the guy looking a little bit grey. I guess that ties in a few of these take a minute to remind yourself how to do d CPR. Learn how to neutralize fear. And he gave us during the conversation, he said something powerful, like competence is the best way to deal with fear.

Cameron Passmore: Competence is the antidote to fear. That's right.

Ben Felix: Oh, yeah, that's so good.

Cameron Passmore: Stay focused to succeed.

Ben Felix: One of the big takeaways for me in the whole conversation related to that is just the concept of having a goal, as kind of like a guidepost that helps you make decisions. But you still have to enjoy the process. You have to enjoy what you're doing. But having that big goal, like in reading his book, he talks about how that would inform every decision that he makes during the day. What would an astronaut do? Or what would someone who's going to be an astronaut do? Do I sleep in or do I get up early? Do I read this book before I go to bed or do I watch TV?

Cameron Passmore: And that's why I inserted that comment in the question to him. The goal to become an astronaut, not to be an astronaut. So, you want to enjoy the process of becoming an astronaut. It's very different.

Ben Felix: Yeah. All right. Next lesson, retain a strong sense of purpose and optimism even when a goal seems impossible to achieve.

Cameron Passmore: Be ready, work hard, and enjoy it.

Ben Felix: I like that. My dad used to always say, “Success comes when opportunity meets preparation.” It's not the catchiest quote. It’s good though. If you've got the time, use it to get ready, never stop getting ready. Just in case.

Cameron Passmore: Being responsible for the consequences of your actions is a given.

Ben Felix: I like that one. That's one of the ones he talked about with his granddaughter. You are the culmination of your own decisions or something like that. Your decisions matter in who you are, right?

Cameron Passmore: That's right. And it's all those minute by minute decisions you make through your life, that form part of becoming what you become.

Ben Felix: And you own that completely.

Cameron Passmore: Correct.

Ben Felix: What's that, locus of control, internal locus of control, I think that's what that is called. The best way to reduce stress is to sweat the small stuff. Look on the dark side to imagine the worst things that could possibly happen. It’s referring to preparedness, though. It sounds like a pretty bad way to reduce stress, but it's be ready.

Cameron Passmore: Well, didn't you love his quote? “When things go wrong. Well, that's just going.” It was a terrific quote. Next one, if you're not sure what to be alarmed about, everything is alarming.

Ben Felix: Yeah, that's a good one too. like ties into being prepared. Know what you should be scared about, so you can build the competence to not be scared about it. There's no such thing as over preparation, it's your best chance of improving your odds.

Cameron Passmore: Anticipating problems and figuring out how to solve them is actually the opposite of worrying. It is productive.

Ben Felix: Never give up on a problem and never assume that everything will turn out fine.

Cameron Passmore: Individually and organizationally, you must have the patience to sweat the small stuff, especially when you're pursuing major goals.

Ben Felix: What did he say, “Astronauts that don't sweat the small stuff are dead.”

Cameron Passmore: It's pretty compelling.

Ben Felix: In any new situation, you will be viewed one of three ways. A minus one, actively harmful. Someone who creates problems. Zero, your impact is neutral and doesn't tip the balance one way or the other. Or a plus one, someone who actively adds value. Everyone wants to be a plus one, of course but proclaiming your plus oneness at the outset almost guarantees you'll be perceived as a minus one, regardless of the skills you bring to the table or how you actually perform. Is that being humble?

Cameron Passmore: Yeah. So, that's in reference to when you join a new group, for example, or new team at work, talked about how you're perceived when you join that group. And it's about – my interpretation was exactly that being humble, and trying to be a plus one, but don't announce yourself as a plus one. You have to earn your plus oneness. Next one, become competent, then extraordinary. There are no shortcuts.

Ben Felix: Yeah, I like that too. Compounding. Compounding of skills over time. Simulate practice and anticipate, build the necessary skills and create the correct mindset.

Cameron Passmore: Find every day fulfilling, work hard at whatever you're doing, find satisfaction in small things.

Ben Felix: That came up so many times during the conversation. That was his answer to so many questions. Enjoy what you're doing, be mindful, know what's going on and enjoy every little detail. It's pretty powerful.

Cameron Passmore: And you think about what it takes for all those details to happen. He talked about his cereal and his tea and his morning routines. There's so much infrastructure and systems and processing and people, just to have all this come together. It's incredible. Over time, you get used to it, of course, you adapt, and it doesn't become so special anymore.

Ben Felix: It's such an important takeaway, though, to just like, slow down, enjoy the cereal. I like cereal. But how many times have I rushed through my bowl of cereal? Not that many. I think I tried to enjoy the cereal. What really matters is not the value someone else assigns to a task, but how you personally feel while performing it.

Cameron Passmore: Next, life is just a lot better if you feel you're having 10 wins a day, rather than a win every 10 years or so.

Ben Felix: I love that. Dude, that was the definition of success. That's so good, though. Make everything a small victory.

Cameron Passmore: Didn’t he say, “Yeah, going into space is kind of cool” or something that effect. Yeah, it’s kind of cool.

Ben Felix: But you say that jokingly, but it Chris says it seriously. That's why it's interesting to ask him that question. Like he's accomplished this thing that every – not everybody, but lots of people would dream about, is like the absolute pinnacle of human achievement and he's like, “Yeah, that's not really what makes me happy.”

Cameron Passmore: I mean, the example that I've given, I'm sure we've talked about this in the podcast is running a marathon. And I'm not comparing going to space with running a marathon, but it's a miniature version. I've always said, the actual marathon. Yes, it's cool and passing that finish line is unreal. But it's the hundreds of hours that you're pounding the pavement, you have to enjoy that process in order to be able to cross the finish line. It's the same thing, right? You have to enjoy being a runner, not just have a goal of crossing the finish line of a marathon.

Ben Felix: Yeah, this is the thing. There's pre and post goal attainment satisfaction. We talked about this a while ago when we're doing happiness stuff. Post goal, attainment satisfaction is very short lived. But pre-goal can be satisfying for the whole, the whole time that you're working toward it.

Cameron Passmore: Absolutely. For sure.

Ben Felix: Which is, it can be one of the problems with goals. When you achieve the goal and then you're in trouble, because what's next? You can choose to focus on the surprises and pleasures or the frustrations, and you can choose to appreciate the smallest scraps of experience the everyday moments or to value only the grandest most stirring ones.

Cameron Passmore: There's the list. Kind of a new form that we tried out. I think it's pretty cool.

Ben Felix: Yeah, new format, new astronaut on the podcast.

Cameron Passmore: All right, as always, thanks everybody for listening.

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