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If You Haven't Learned To Ride A Bike By The Time Your Peer Group Has, Then Suddenly It's An Embarrassment And You'll Avoid Opportunities Where You're Expected To Ride A Bike. And Then It Starts Shaping Your Behaviour. Reading Is Much Subtler, But Much More Destructive If You Have Not - For Whatever Reason - Learned To Read By The Time You Should.

-Chris Hadfield

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If You Haven't Learned

Chris Hadfield

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If You Haven't Learned To Ride A Bike By The Time Your Peer Group Has, Then Suddenly It's An Embarrassment And You'll Avoid Opportunities Where You're Expected To Ride A Bike. And Then It Starts Shaping Your Behaviour. Reading Is Much Subtler, But Much More Destructive If You Have Not - For Whatever Reason - Learned To Read By The Time You Should.

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Still, I Also Know That Most People, Including Me, Tend To Applaud The Wrong Things: The Showy, Dramatic Record-setting Sprint Rather Than The Years Of Dogged Preparation Or The Unwavering Grace Displayed During A String Of Losses. Applause, Then, Never Bore Much Relation To The Reality Of My Life As An Astronaut, Which Was Not All About, Or Even Mostly About, Flying Around In Space.

The Nile, Draining Out Into The Mediterranean. The Bright Lights Of Cairo Announce The Opening Of The North-flowing River’s Delta, With Jerusalem’s Answering High Beams To The Northeast. This 4,258 Mile Braid Of Human Life, First Navigated End-to-end In 2004, Is Visible In A Single Glance From Space.

Almost Everything Worthwhile Carries With It Some Sort Of Risk, Whether It's Starting A New Business, Whether It's Leaving Home, Whether It's Getting Married, Or Whether It's Flying In Space.

The Bahamas Are Gorgeous. The Deep Trench In The Ocean Floor Called The Tongue Of The Ocean, Which Comes Between The Islands, Is The Most Beautiful Deep Indigo Colour.

Remember, Nobody Changes The World On Their Own.

Changing The World

One Chief Astronaut Used To Make A Point Of Phoning The Front Desk At The Clinic Where Applicants Are Sent For Medical Testing, To Find Out Which Ones Treated The Staff Well-and Which Ones Stood Out In A Bad Way. The Nurses And Clinic Staff Have Seen A Whole Lot Of Astronauts Over The Years, And They Know What The Wrong Stuff Looks Like. A Person With A Superiority Complex Might Unwittingly, Right There In The Waiting Room, Quash His Or Her Chances Of Ever Going To Space.

It's Good To Have A Fear Of Heights. I Mean, It's Kind Of Crazy Not To Because If You Just Lean Out A Little Bit And There's A Gust Of Wind Or Somebody Bumps You Or Something And You Fall, You're Splat.

We Are Not Machines Exploring The Universe, We Are People.

Decide In Your Heart Of Hearts What Really Excites And Challenges You, And Start Moving Your Life In That Direction

It’s Not Enough To Shelve Your Own Competitive Streak. You Have To Try, Consciously, To Help Others Succeed.

Our Training Pushes Us To Develop A New Set Of Instincts: Instead Of Reacting To Danger With A Fight-or-flight Adrenaline Rush, We're Trained To Respond Unemotionally By Immediately Prioritizing Threats And Methodically Seeking To Defuse Them. We Go From Wanting To Bolt For The Exit To Wanting To Engage And Understand What's Going Wrong, Then Fix It.

Anticipating Problems And Figuring Out How To Solve Them Is Actually The Opposite Of Worrying: It's Productive.

Loneliness... Has Very Little To Do With Location. It's A State Of Mind. In The Centre Of Every City Are Some Of The Loneliest People In The World... Because Our Whole Planet Was Just Outside The Window, I Felt Even More... Connected To The Seven Billion Other People.

By Looking At The Difference Between Perceived Danger And Actual Danger, You Can Fundamentally Change Your Reaction.

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.

I've Been Lucky Enough To Fly To Space Twice.

You Can't Just Ignore Spacewalking Suit; It Partially Defines The Experience. So Maybe The Most Difficult Thing Is Becoming Completely Attuned To Efficiently Wearing A Garment That Is So Inhibiting To Motion, And Making It Look Effortless, As If It's The Most Natural Thing To Be Out There On A Spacewalk.

To Me, It's Not About Being Anywhere, But Being Able To Change My Perceptions And Experience Something New.

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.

"what's The Next Thing That's Going To Kill Me?" Is A Mantra For Pilots And Astronauts.

Imbibe Three Or Four Times As Much Water As You Think You Need And Skip At Least One, If Not Two Meals, When You Are Travelling. You Should Arrive At Your Destination Feeling Slightly Hungry And Your Digestive System Reset.

The Rough And Ready Improvisational Quality To Life On Board The International Space Station Is Reminiscent Of A Long Trip In A Sailboat: Privacy And Fresh Produce Are In Short Supply, Hygiene Is Basic, And A Fair Amount Of The Crew's Time Is Spent Just On Maintaining And Repairing The Craft.

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.

My Favourite City For Nightlife Is Toronto, As It Has Such A Multicultural Feel, With So Many Different Restaurants And Theatres.

Doing A Space Walk. It Is One Of The Most Rare Human Experiences. To Leave Your Spaceship And Go Outside, So That You Are Alone In The Universe With Earth Distant And The Universe Around You. That Is Amazing.

Human Experience

Other Anatomical Changes Associated With Long-duration Space Flight Are Definitely Negative: The Immune System Weakens, The Heart Shrinks Because It Doesn't Have To Strain Against Gravity, Eyesight Tends To Degrade, Sometimes Markedly (no One's Exactly Sure Why Yet). The Spine Lengthens As The Little Sacs Of Fluid Between The Vertebrae Expand, And Bone Mass Decreases As The Body Sheds Calcium. Without Gravity, We Don't Need Muscle And Bone Mass To Support Our Own Weight, Which Is What Makes Life In Space So Much Fun But Also So Inherently Bad For The Human Body, Long-term.

In Any Field, It's A Plus If You View Criticism As Potentially Helpful Advice Rather Than As A Personal Attack.

Our Three Big Emergencies Are Fire, Loss Of Pressurization Or Contaminated Atmosphere. Any Of Those Things In A Spaceship Are Very Deadly And Time Critical. Everybody's Trained, But I'm The Commander Of The Ship, And It's Up To Me To Decide.

Early Success Is A Terrible Teacher. You're Essentially Being Rewarded For A Lack Of Preparation, So When You Find Yourself In A Situation Where You Must Prepare, You Can't Do It. You Don't Know How.

Finding Yourself

People Tend To Think Astronauts Have The Courage Of A Superhero - Or Maybe The Emotional Range Of A Robot. But 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.

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.

Helping Someone

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.

Scientific Literacy Is One Of The Underpinnings Of Everything I Do. It's Why I Work With Schools. It's Why I Teach At University. I Do A Lot Of Outreach To Try And Improve General Scientific Literacy, But The Core Of All Scientific Literacy Is Just Literacy.

It's Almost Comical That Astronauts Are Stereotyped As Daredevils And Cowboys. As A Rule, We're Highly Methodical And Detail-oriented. Our Passion Isn't For Thrills But For The Grindstone, And Pressing Our Noses To It.

If You Haven't Learned To Ride A Bike By The Time Your Peer Group Has, Then Suddenly It's An Embarrassment And You'll Avoid Opportunities Where You're Expected To Ride A Bike. And Then It Starts Shaping Your Behaviour. Reading Is Much Subtler, But Much More Destructive If You Have Not - For Whatever Reason - Learned To Read By The Time You Should.

For The Last Several Years And Culminating In Six Months In Orbit Next Year, I've Been Training For My Third Space Flight. This One Is Almost In A Category Completely Different Than The Previous Two, Specifically To Live In On The Space Station For Six Months, To Command A Space Ship And To Fly A New Rocket Ship.

No One Ever Accomplished Anything Great Sitting Down.

You Can't Change The Bricks, And Together, You Still Have To Build A Wall.

Almost Everything Worthwhile Carries With It Some Sort Of Risk.

I've Had A Chance To Fly A Lot Of Different Airplanes, But It Was Nothing Like The Shuttle Ride.

There Is A Sunrise Or A Sunset From Space Every 92 Minutes So There Is An Incredible Amount Of Beauty To See From Up There.

I Guarantee If You Walk Into 100 Spider Webs, You Will Have Changed Your Fundamental Human Behavior. And You Can Apply This To Anything, And Figure Out A Way To Reprogram Yourself, To Change Your Primal Fear.

The Danger Is Different From The Fear. ... [practice] What To Do If Things Go Wrong, As Well As Right.

The Cool Things About Space Is When You Put Your Pants On Here, You Can Put Them On Two Legs At A Time.

I'm Really Looking Forward To It, If You Can Imagine Floating Weightless, Watching The World Pour By Through The Big Bay Window Of The Space Station Playing A Guitar; Just A Tremendous Place To Think About Where We Are In History.

When I Stand On The Edge Of A Cliff Or Right At The Edge Of A Building Or Something, It's One Of The Few Things That Gives Me Kind Of A Deep, Overwhelming, Irrational Fear Where It Affects My Physiology.

Irrational Fear

Fatherhood Is The Unending Imperfect Task Of Turning Yourself Into Your Dad While Secretly Maintaining The Unbridled Elation Of Your Boyhood

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 Short-cuts, Unfortunately.

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.

The Moon Has Given Us Months, Tides And A Destination That Ever-beckons. It's Time We Build A Rocket And Go To Stay.

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.

Every Decision You Make, From What You Eat To What You Do With Your Time Tonight, Turns You Into Who You Are Tomorrow And The Day After That.

Decisions You Make

Don`t Let Life Randomly Kick You Into The Adult You Don`t Want To Become

My Favourite City Is Moscow, Because Of Its History, Which I Find Fascinating. As I Learned To Speak Russian, It Made It Even More Interesting.

Our Role Is To Develop Techniques That Allow Us To Provide Emergency Life-saving Procedures To Injured Patients In An Extreme, Remote Environment Without The Presence Of A Physician.

It Is Spectacular. From About Five Minutes In, When We Knew For Sure That We Were Going To Have The Weather To Go, The Smile On My Face Just Got Bigger And Bigger, And I Was Just Beaming Through The Whole Launch. I Mean, It Is Just An Amazing Ride.

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.

In All Of The Movie Portrayals, A Spacewalking Suit Seems Sort Of Insignificant, Like A Pair Of Shorts And A T-shirt. No One Thinks Much About It. But It's A Spaceship, Not A Spacesuit, An Entire Life-support Mechanism That's Incredibly Complex And Cumbersome. It's Very Difficult To Put On And Off. You Have To Run It The Whole Time You Are Wearing It, And It Redefines How You Move. It's Like If You Put On A Wetsuit And A Snowmobile Suit And Froze Yourself Solid And Then Tried To Go And Do Work.

Square Astronaut, Round Hole. But Somehow, I'd Managed To Push Myself Through It, And Here Was The Truly Amazing Part: Along The Way, I'd Become A Good Fit. It Had Only Taken 21 Years.

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.

Most Budget Airlines Anywhere In The World Are Going To Leave You Dissatisfied After Using Them.

Decide In Your Heart Of Hearts What Really Excites And Challenges You, And Start Moving Your Life In That Direction. Every Decision You Make, From What You Eat To What You Do With Your Time Tonight, Turns You Into Who You Are Tomorrow, And The Day After That. Look At Who You Want To Be, And Start Sculpting Yourself Into That Person. You May Not Get Exactly Where You Thought You'd Be, But You Will Be Doing Things That Suit You In A Profession You Believe In. Don't Let Life Randomly Kick You Into The Adult You Don't Want To Become.

From Space, The Bahamas Is The Most Beautiful Place On Earth.

So Without That Canadian Invention We Were Grounded. And So That Was A Really Important And Key Part Of The Mission And Canadians Should Take Real Pride In It.

The Emotional Build-up And Anticipation If You Travel At Christmas Can Make It Harder To Enjoy A Trip. I Think Sometimes It Is Better To Travel Outside Of Conventional Holiday Times For That Reason.

Do Your Homework In Advance About The Actual Travel Details So Transportation Issues Do Not Define Your Holiday.

Every Single Day You're The Result Of What You Did On The Days Prior.

As I Have Discovered Again And Again, Things Are Never As Bad (or As Good) As They Seem At The Time.

Again And Again

I'm Not A Wealthy Person And I Don't Think That I Would Be Able To Prioritize That Much Money To Go For A Ride To A Place That I Have Already Lived. But If The Price Comes Down Or I Win A Lottery Or Something, Why Not?

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.

It's Like Being A Newborn, This Sudden Sensory Overload Of Noise, Color, Smells And Gravity After Months Of Quietly Floating, Encased In Relative Calm And Isolation. No Wonder Babies Cry In Protest When They're Born.

I Wasn’t Destined To Be An Astronaut. I Had To Turn Myself Into One.

Sweat The Small Stuff. Without Letting Anyone See You Sweat.

Sweat The Small Stuff

To Me, It's Simple: If You've Got The Time, Use It To Get Ready. What Else Could You Possibly Have To Do That's More Important? Yes, Maybe You'll Learn How To Do A Few Things You'll Never Wind Up Actually Needing To Do, But That's A Much Better Problem To Have Than Needing To Do Something And Having No Clue Where To Start.

There Is No Problem So Bad That You Cannot Make It Worse

Life Off Earth Is In Two Important Respects Not At All Unworldly: 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.

Spaceflight Isn't Just About Doing Experiments, It's About An Extension Of Human Culture.

I Want To Know: How Does A Space Suit On Mars Work? Show Me How It Is Pressurized, And How It Is Cooled. What's The Glove Design? None Of That Stuff Can Be Bought Off The Rack. It Does Not Exist. You Can't Just Go To Spacemart And Buy Those Things.

Good Leadership Means Leading The Way, Not Hectoring Other People To Do Things Your Way.

Focus On The Journey, Not On Arriving At A Certain Destination.

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