An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth

by Chris Hadfield

Later, walking back to our cottage, I looked up at the Moon. It was no longer a distant, unknowable orb but a place where people walked, talked, worked and even slept. At that moment, I knew what I wanted to do with my life. I was going to follow in the footsteps so boldly imprinted just moments before. Roaring around in a rocket, exploring space, pushing the boundaries of knowledge and human capability—I knew, with absolute clarity, that I wanted to be an astronaut.

But from that night forward, my dream provided direction to my life. I recognized even as a 9-year-old that I had a lot of choices and my decisions mattered. What I did each day would determine the kind of person I’d become.

My attitude was more, “It’s probably not going to happen, but I should do things that keep me moving in the right direction, just in case—and I should be sure those things interest me, so that whatever happens, I’m happy.”

important it is to retain a strong sense of purpose and optimism even when a goal seems impossible to achieve.

The upshot of all this is that we become competent, which is the most important quality to have if you’re an astronaut—or, frankly, anyone, anywhere, who is striving to succeed at anything at all.

Competence means keeping your head in a crisis, sticking with a task even when it seems hopeless, and improvising good solutions to tough problems when every second counts. It encompasses ingenuity, determination and being prepared for anything.

However, success, to me, never was and still isn’t about lifting off in a rocket (though that sure felt like a great achievement). Success is feeling good about the work you do throughout the long, unheralded journey that may or may not wind up at the launch pad. You can’t view training solely as a stepping stone to something loftier. It’s got to be an end in itself.

In space flight, “attitude” refers to orientation:

In my experience, something similar is true on Earth. Ultimately, I don’t determine whether I arrive at the desired professional destination. Too many variables are out of my control. There’s really just one thing I can control: my attitude during the journey, which is what keeps me feeling steady and stable, and what keeps me headed in the right direction. So I consciously monitor and correct, if necessary, because losing attitude would be far worse than not achieving my goal.

If, when I was 21, someone had asked me to write a film script for the life I wanted, it would’ve gone like this: fighter pilot, test pilot, astronaut. Happy marriage, healthy kids, interesting experiences. My life has followed that script, but there were so many “ifs” that could have changed the plot: if, for instance, I hadn’t seen the CSA’s newspaper ad soliciting applications—which could well have happened, since we were living in the U.S. at the time. However, I never thought, “If I don’t make it as an astronaut, I’m a failure.” The script would have changed a lot if, instead, I’d moved up in the military or become a university professor or a commercial test pilot, but the result wouldn’t have been a horror movie.

In my experience, fear comes from not knowing what to expect and not feeling you have any control over what’s about to happen. When you feel helpless, you’re far more afraid than you would be if you knew the facts. If you’re not sure what to be alarmed about, everything is alarming.

in order to stay calm in a high-stress, high-stakes situation, all you really need is knowledge. Sure, you might still feel a little nervous or stressed or hyper-alert. But what you won’t feel is terrified.

Preparation is not only about managing external risks, but about limiting the likelihood that you’ll unwittingly add to them. When you’re the author of your own fate, you don’t want to write a tragedy. Aside from anything else, the possibility of a sequel is nonexistent.

would really qualify as the worst would be not having a plan for how to cope.

Anticipating problems and figuring out how to solve them is actually the opposite of worrying: it’s productive. Likewise, coming up with a plan of action isn’t a waste of time if it gives you peace of mind. While it’s true that you may wind up being ready for something that never happens, if the stakes are at all high, it’s worth it.

If anything, I’m annoyingly upbeat, at least according to the experts (my family, of course). I tend to expect things will turn out well and they usually do. My optimism and confidence come not from feeling I’m luckier than other mortals, and they sure don’t come from visualizing victory. They’re the result of a lifetime spent visualizing defeat and figuring out how to prevent it. Like most astronauts, I’m pretty sure that I can deal with what life throws at me because I’ve thought about what to do if things go wrong, as well as right. That’s the power of negative thinking.

Management has to create a climate where owning up to mistakes is permissible and colleagues have to agree, collectively, to cut each other some slack.

good leadership means leading the way, not hectoring other people to do things your way.

For me, the takeaway from all my survival training is that the key question to ask when you’re part of a team, whether on Earth or in space, is, “How can I help us get where we need to go?”

if you need to make a strong criticism, it’s a bad idea to lash out wildly; be surgical, pinpoint the problem rather than attack the person. Never ridicule a colleague, even with an offhand remark, no matter how tempting it is or how hilarious the laugh line. The more senior you are, the greater the impact your flippant comment will have. Don’t snap at the people who work with you. When you see red, count to 10.

If you’re seen as being consistently inconsiderate, or just out for yourself, there’s a direct impact on communication and, usually, overall productivity. People simply won’t work as well with you as they would with someone whose behavior was a little more expeditionary.

It’s not enough to shelve your own competitive streak. You have to try, consciously, to help others succeed. Some people feel this is like shooting themselves in the foot—why aid someone else in creating a competitive advantage? I don’t look at it that way. Helping someone else look good doesn’t make me look worse. In fact, it often improves my own performance, particularly in stressful situations.

If you’re focused on the wrong things, like the bee in your helmet or whose fault it is that the g-suit came unplugged, you are likely to miss the very narrow window of opportunity to correct a bad situation.

The main thing we decided during that drive is that we would not be defined by this experience. I wouldn’t go through the rest of my life being the commander-who-wasn’t, that poor guy who didn’t get to go to space a third time. We’d seen what had happened to other astronauts who were scrubbed from missions, and we thought that the next thing that would kill us, metaphorically speaking, wasn’t an ultrasound but a loss of our own sense of purpose. Fortunately, we also knew the boldface that could save us: focus on the journey, not on arriving at a certain destination. Keep looking to the future, not mourning the past.

Prioritizing family time—making it mandatory, in the same way that a meeting at work is mandatory—helps show the people who are most important to me that they are, in fact, important to me.

Depeche Mode’s “World in My Eyes,” which starts, “Let me take you on a trip / Around the world and back / And you won’t have to move / You just sit still.”

Sweat the small stuff. Without letting anyone see you sweat.

Over the years, I’ve realized that in any new situation, whether it involves an elevator or a rocket ship, you will almost certainly be viewed in one of three ways. As a minus one: actively harmful, someone who creates problems. Or as a zero: your impact is neutral and doesn’t tip the balance one way or the other. Or you’ll be seen as 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. This might seem self-evident, but it can’t be, because so many people do it.

When you have some skills but don’t fully understand your environment, there is no way you can be a plus one. At best, you can be a zero. But a zero isn’t a bad thing to be. You’re competent enough not to create problems or make more work for everyone else. And you have to be competent, and prove to others that you are, before you can be extraordinary. There are no shortcuts, unfortunately.

The ideal entry is not to sail in and make your presence known immediately. It’s to ingress without causing a ripple. The best way to contribute to a brand-new environment is not by trying to prove what a wonderful addition you are. It’s by trying to have a neutral impact, to observe and learn from those who are already there, and to pitch in with the grunt work wherever possible.

My smartest strategy was simply to try not to mess anything up or make things worse. I was sure that once in a while, I’d be able to do something good and make an authoritative decision, but it didn’t need to happen in the first hour or even the first week. If I barged in, intent on making my mark, I probably would—just not in the way I wanted. Two decades into my career as an astronaut, I felt as close to being a plus one as I ever had. And I knew that my best bet of getting the crew to see me that way was to keep on doing what has always worked for me: aiming to be a zero.

Ultimately, leadership is not about glorious crowning acts. It’s about keeping your team focused on a goal and motivated to do their best to achieve it, especially when the stakes are high and the consequences really matter. It is about laying the groundwork for others’ success, and then standing back and letting them shine.

The lesson for me was that the very last thing you do on a mission is just as important as the first thing you did—perhaps even more important, actually, because now you’re tired. It’s like the last mile of a marathon: the effort has to be more deliberate and you’ve got to push yourself, hard, to keep going right to the very end.

pouring off

mashed back

drogue chute

well-wishers,

low-ceilinged

whisked off

two-stringed

gourd-shaped

trundles me off

drag race.

shallow bin

bulbous rover

bashed into

ill-advised.

flung down

I view each mission as just one thread in the overall fabric of my life—which is, I hope, nowhere near over.

If you start thinking that only your biggest and shiniest moments count, you’re setting yourself up to feel like a failure most of the time. Personally, I’d rather feel good most of the time, so to me everything counts: the small moments, the medium ones, the successes that make the papers and also the ones that no one knows about but me. The challenge is avoiding being derailed by the big, shiny moments that turn other people’s heads. You have to figure out for yourself how to enjoy and celebrate them, and then move on.