Astronaut's Guide to Taking YOUR Moonshot, with Mike Massimino from NASA and Big Bang Theory

25:56Successful people are not those that don't fail. They are those that don't let failure stop them. And I think I learned that in school at an early age because school is never easy for me. I tell my students that the hardest thing I've ever done in life is learn stuff in school. It's not easy to go to school and learn stuff and take tests and everything. It's hard. So those are lessons that I learned on my way to becoming an astronaut, but it was also critical to keep up that attitude. I think once you get the opportunity, get the degree or whatever it is you're looking for, I think it's important to have that same attitude moving forward.

26:28As soon as you lose that attitude, you think, oh, I've made it now. It's time to relax. You're done. Cash it in right there because as soon as you lose that, it's not going to go well. You need to keep that same persistence throughout life, I think, in order to be successful once you get the opportunity you want. I'm hearing the theme of fail and try again. And I'm hearing the theme of take the long shot chance. And, you know, we're talking about getting a Ph.D. from MIT. It makes you sound very smart. But your fourth grade teacher would beg to differ. Yeah. Yes. Mrs. Oko, you've done your research.

27:04I have. Mrs. Oko? Oh, I should get a cameo from her. Yeah, there you go. Mrs. Oko, my fourth grade teacher, was a very young teacher when I had her back into fourth grade. I think it was her first job, but I didn't know that until later because I was reunited with her when I visited my elementary school. Soon after I was selected, about a year and a half after I was picked by NASA, they were having a career day at the elementary school and they asked me to come back. I was like, sure and it was great they had decorated the school with all astronauts and stuff and I was like I think I was like 34 35 years old so Mrs.

27:38Oco was still teaching you know she was still there and um and I was able to have lunch with her and she said uh to me that uh she was having breakfast with her kids she had two boys I think they're like 10 and 12 or something like that you know she said I'm gonna have lunch with one of my students that I had back in you know years ago and he's an astronaut now. What do you think of that? And one of her boys said, Wow, Mom, he must have been really smart, right? And she said, I'm sure he was bright, but if he was really smart, I would have remembered. Like she remembered all the smart kids in the class, and I wasn't one of them.

28:12I was just one of those guys, one of those young kids looking around or whatever. And she didn't remember me in that way. But then she said, but I went on to tell him that being the smartest isn't always the most important thing. and it's having other things. It's being able to work as a team. It's sticking to it. It's not giving up. And I had those things, and I think that makes up for a lot. And I was never the smartest kid anywhere in any class I ever took. That's probably a good place to be because you can learn from others. You want to be challenged. But I had these other things that this realization that the thing I wanted to do in life was to be not just flying space but to be an astronaut like in the lineage of my heroes like Neil Armstrong and John Glenn and those guys and Sally Ride and the ones that came later as well and to do that wasn't going to be easy and so These are things that I kind of discovered along the way that helped me get there and not just get the job, but That's kind of the beginning one in a million is not zero is the first chapter that the odds are against you do it anyway.

29:22One half a million is a non-zero outcome. As soon as you give up, that becomes zero. That one disappears and you know you won't be successful. But as long as you're trying, there's a chance. But most of the rest of the book are things that I learned as an astronaut to help me achieve that moonshot, but can be applied to anything. To personal relationships, to dealing with your family, parenting, I hope. I try to use some of these principles. It doesn't always work, but I think these are, it's kind of like a guidebook from things that I learned that can help you achieve whatever that thing is you're trying to do.

30:02You know, when you're a kid, you dream about being an astronaut or working with wildlife or all these cool things. And then when you grow up, you think about not just what you want to do, but also you think about this other layer to it, which is how do I want to impact the world? What legacy do I want to leave behind? And how do I want to do that through my work? For a lot of people, that's when you start dreaming about owning your own business. But to do that, you're going to need a website, a payment system, a logo, a way to find new customers. And that can be really overwhelming and it's a big workload.

30:33That's where today's sponsor, Shopify, comes in. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10 % of all e-commerce in the U.S., ranging from household names like Mattel and Gymshark to brands that are just getting started. If you need a website, Shopify's got you from the get-go with beautiful ready-to-go templates. You can get help with everyday tasks like writing product descriptions, generating discount codes. Shopify can help you find your customers with easy-to-run email and social media campaigns. And they have award-winning 24-7 customer support.

31:07Turn those dreams into and give them the best shot at success with Shopify. Sign up for your one month,$1 per month trial period and start selling today at shopify.com slash paula. Go to shopify.com slash paula. Shopify.com slash paula. This year, give a gift that goes far beyond the moment, an Invest 529 account. Whether it's a child, grandchild, or someone just starting out, you're helping them safe for education that can open doors for a lifetime. time. Invest 529 is a tax advantaged way to help save for college, trade school, or even apprenticeship programs. It's flexible, easy to start, and you can contribute any amount, big or small.

31:50Because the money can grow tax-free, it's a gift that can really build value over time. So instead of giving something that gets used up or set aside, give the gift that can change a life. Start an Invest 529 account today. Go to invest529.com to learn more and get started.

32:16You know, when I was a kid, I remember on Christmas morning, I got lots of toys, lots of books, lots of clothes, gifts. The books were always my favorite. I'd spent all of Christmas Day just reading and reading and reading. But, you know, none of those are things that I have anymore. They were wonderful in the moment. But decades later, I have no idea where any of those things went. But by contrast, when you give a gift that brings somebody financial security, that's something that lasts a lifetime. Now, when it comes to financial security, nearly half of American adults say that if they lost their primary income earner, they would suffer financial hardship within six months.

32:53And so if you want to secure your future before the new year begins, lock in your life insurance today because that's something that you don't buy for yourself. You buy it for your loved ones. You buy it so that in the event that the worst were to happen, your loved ones would have some financial security. PolicyGenius helps you find your most affordable policy that meets your needs. They answer questions, they handle paperwork. Their license team helps you find what you need in terms of coverage amounts, prices, terms. They have thousands of five-star reviews on Google and Trustpilot. With PolicyGenius, real users have gotten 20-year,$2 million policies for just$53 a month.

33:31Don't wait until next year. Give your family the gift of security today with PolicyGenius. Head to PolicyGenius.com to compare life insurance quotes from top companies and see how much you could save. That's PolicyGenius.com.

33:53I want to get to some of the lessons that you learned as an astronaut. I want to get to that in a moment. But first, on the theme of what Mrs. Oko said. You know, it's not smarts that matter. It's other things such as working together as a team, sticking to it, not giving up. Yeah. There were two things that nearly knocked you out of the running when you became an astronaut candidate. One was your eyesight. The other was swimming. Yeah. Tell us about how you worked through both of those, because they play to that theme of teamwork, sticking to it, not giving up, of everything Mrs. Oko said. So the eyesight issue was during selection.

34:33The first two times, NASA selects astronauts every couple of years. So the first astronaut class that I applied to was the astronaut class in 1990. I applied, waited to hear back. I got a letter saying, no, no good. I said, all right, I'm going to try again. A couple of years go by, the astronaut class in 1992. I applied with that. NASA reads my application. I hear nothing for about nine months. and then I get a letter of no thank you. A couple years go by, astronaut class of 1995 now at this point. I apply to that one. I get an interview. I get a phone call, not a letter, and they want me to come in for an interview.

35:09It's a whole week of stuff, including an eye exam. And I met a lot of medical tests, and I failed the eye exam. I couldn't see well enough. And back then they didn't accept. I don't know if LASIK existed, but they didn't accept any medical procedure. You were done. And once you're disqualified, they won't even read your application again. And that to me was kind of like horrifying. for me it was like if they would have told me now we're going with these other people we like better or whatever that's fine I'll try again but I couldn't even try again it was saying that's it and the first time I was rejected I was like I need more education the second time I need more experience and the third time when I got disqualified I was like I'm physically unfit what am I going to do I'm medically unqualified and I just figured there's got to be some way to get back in this game here and I learned about vision training.

36:00There's a book, it was called Seeing Without Glasses that I found somewhere and ordered it. I don't even know if we had Amazon back then, but I ordered it somewhere and got this book and read it and found an optometrist that worked with these methods of trying to improve your vision. And when I went to see her, I'm sitting in the exam chair and she comes in. She's like, you're here for vision training? I'm like, yes, right? Dr. Hopping, her name was Desiree Hopping out of Houston And she says, well, I don't know if it's going to work. How could you tell? I just got here. And she said, well, I only work with kids.

36:32I've never done it with an adult. You know, kids, their eyes are still forming, their brain is whatever is going on there. And I don't think it'll work on an adult. And I said to her, well, I can be so immature, Dr. Hopping. You won't tell the difference between me and a 10-year-old. And I begged her. It was the only choice I had. And she helped me. And I was able to pick up a couple lines on the eye chart with these techniques and exercises and things to do. So I was able to at least requalify. and that allowed me to submit my application again and then was given another chance. I got another interview for the next selection for the class of 96 and went into that, got through the eye exam.

37:08That wasn't an easy, but I got through it, and I got through all the rest of it, and the interview went well, and they picked me. So once I get picked, that second thing you mentioned came into play because you get a phone call from Dave Lietzma, the head of flight crew operations, calls me up, and they were calling everybody that day, good or bad. And, uh, you know, he said, he said, Mike, how are you doing today? He said, this is Dave Leesman from the Johnson space. And I knew what he was calling about. And he said, uh, how are you doing today? And he's like, Dave, I really don't know yet. You're going to have to tell me.

37:39And he said, well, I hope you're doing well because we want you to be an astronaut. We hope you're still interested. I'm like, yes, absolutely. Yes. Yes. There's no other word that's coming out of my mouth other than yes. And, um, then I got a packet of info in the mail, which I was very excited to open. And first paragraph was like, congratulations, welcome, or something like that. And the second one was, please practice your swimming skills. And it was a whole list of stuff we were going to have to do. And I think it was probably fairly reasonable for someone who was a strong swimmer. But the reason they warned us is because in the past they had people show up.

38:15It's a naval course. It's a water survival course with the Navy. And you have to be able to swim. to do it. You can't drown during this because they'll teach you how to get into the water and parachute into the water and how to do stuff with the parachutes over your head. How do you get into a raft? How do you survive? How do you signal? Everything's in the water. You're surviving in the water. It's not easy. The idea is that we're going to be flying in an ejection seat aircraft and if you jump, if you pull the ripcord on that and the handle on that and you eject out of the airplane, you're going to come down in a parachute and it could be in the water, right?

38:49You've got to be able to know how to enter the water and do what you need to do so you don't drown before they can come get you. And the shuttle also had a bailout scenario. If you got stuck, if you weren't going to get it to space because you had an emergency, something happened, a malfunction or lost an engine or whatever, you would try to turn back to the U.S. and land somewhere there. You needed a runway for the shuttle or try to make it over the ocean to the other side of the ocean in southern Europe and northern Africa. We had some sites there you could land. But if you couldn't do that, you were going in the water, right?

39:21So you had to bail out and you might end up in the water. So you had to know how to survive in the water until somebody found you. So water survival is really important. We couldn't do any of our training until we started that. And you couldn't do the training, the water survival training until you passed the swim test. So they had people, they would send them to Pensacola and the Navy was afraid they were going to drown and send them back. They'd teach these people to swim. That's not our job. And so NASA warned us about this. So I was, I practiced as hard as I could, but I avoided the water my whole life, really, and never really learned to swim very well.

39:54I grew up in New York. We had bridges and tunnels and stuff. There's no reason to swim for it. We got here to Brooklyn over a bridge. We didn't have to jump in now and get over there. No. But now I needed to learn, and I did my best, but I was afraid about being embarrassed in front of my new classmates and all these high-performing people and military test pilots, and here's this egghead jumping in the water not knowing what he's doing. That was going to be me. But the Friday of our first week, after we was made of administrative stuff, that Friday before we went home for the weekend, Jeff Ashby, who was an astronaut in the class before us and was a great leader and was given the assignment of being responsible for all of us to help us with our training, he came in to address the class at the end of our first week, And he said, okay, first week's done.

40:46We're done. But before you go home, I want to remind everyone that we're going to start our training in earnest next week. And Monday, we're going to start with the swim test. That's the first. It's like, can't we have a math quiz? Can we do something else? Why does it have to be that stupid math, this stupid swim test? So anyway, so he goes on to say, who are the strong swimmers in this group? And there was 44 of us from eight different countries there. And a couple people raised their hand that they were strong swimmers. And then he goes, all right, who are the weak swimmers in this group? And don't lie to me.

41:16So I raised my hand. And he said, okay, everyone else can go home. But the strong swimmers and the weak swimmers are going to stay after class. And they're going to arrange a time to meet at a pool over the weekend. And the strong swimmers are going to help the weak swimmers with their swimming. Because when we go to the pool on Monday, no one leaves the pool until everyone passes the test. And that was my indoctrination to this world I was now in. And I thought about that. I've thought about that not just then but since. And while I was at NASA, what that really meant, what that meant was is that it's a team gamer in here.

41:50And you could be Michael Phelps and go in the water and set a world record in the pool. But if you didn't help your crew, if one of your crewmates failed, you also failed. That you can't do this alone. And in space flight, that is heightened because you are depending on each other to keep each other alive in case something goes wrong and to be successful in your missions is too complex. But it's not just spaceflight. Life is like that. Whether you're raising children or you're working whatever job it is or you're trying to achieve your moonshot or dream or whatever it is, you really can't do this alone.

42:24And it's heightened in the space program because bad things can really happen to you. Right. But it's the same principle if you want to be successful, I think, in anything. The other thing that I thought was interesting about that, Paula, was that when you, he made us raise our hand that we were not strong swimmers, right? And I kind of did that sort of shyly, you know, that, yeah, I'm one of the weak guys here, right? But that was the right thing to do. Because if I didn't raise my hand and faked it and then went in there and totally bombed the test, it would not have been good for our group, right?

42:58And so you have to raise your hand when you're having trouble, when you make a mistake, when you fail. the thing that would get you in trouble was if you didn't admit that and so that was the other part of it and sometimes it's easy to think I'm going to help someone you know we got it makes us feel good we're helping somebody but what happens when you're when you need help you need to speak up and and help will be there for you and that actually leads perfectly to some of the lessons that you learned, including speaking up. Yes. So tell us about Jim Kelly. Yeah, Vegas. Yeah, who went by the nickname Vegas.

43:38Tell us about the time that you didn't speak up. So this is where I was a new person. I think for new people, a lot of times when you're new at something, especially when you're working with someone who's very experienced, we tend to not say anything. It's okay if you're doing that to learn, but it's important for you to say things when you're the new person. we were always encouraged to speak up because you're not kind of sucked into the usual way of doing things and your antenna might be up a little bit more. And that goes for a new idea, something that might be a problem, identifying it with a different perspective.

44:12And a lot of the ideas or the things you speak up about may not make any sense and might not be good, but every once in a while you'll come up with something that might be important and you should make sure that you vocalize everything and leadership should be there to listen and encourage it and not squash someone speaking up. So that was our culture. And one of the ways I learned this in a practical way was flying with Vegas, my buddy Jim Kelly. And it was one of my first flights. I probably had two hours, maybe two flights in the airplane, the T-38. Vegas had thousands of hours. He was a military pilot, flew combat in the Air Force, flew F-16s.

44:49He said 3 ,800 hours. 3 ,800 hours, yeah. Yeah, he was an F-15 pilot. Flew the Eagle, I remember he was saying. And, yeah, 30, okay, that number's correct. Then 3 ,800 hours in high-performance jets as a combat pilot and as a test pilot. He was one of the best pilots. He was a young guy, too. I think he might have, my age or maybe younger. We were kind of on the young side. So he had accumulated all this in a fairly short amount of time. And great guy, you know, wonderful personality, good friend, still is. and we get in the airplane and we were going flying together. It was going to be out and back.

45:25We were going to go to San Antonio, hang out for a little bit, and then come back at night because he needed to get nighttime. That's part of the deal. He needed to get a night flight in. So he went there toward the end of our day. It was a great flight out there. We were talking and he was teaching me stuff and it was great. And then it becomes nighttime. And at nighttime, I think just in general, it just gets, You're not scary, but you just don't see what's going on as well as you did in the daytime. You've got to be more vigilant at things, just in general. Walking around town, driving a car, whatever you're doing, nighttime I think you need a heightened awareness because you don't see as well and you're kind of tired and it's the end of the day or whatever.

46:04So we're ready to come back and we get a clearance, and my job was to kind of write stuff down and put it in the flight computer. And the tower gave us a heading out of El Paso to go, your initial heading. So it was like maybe 180 was going to be our initial heading. So I write that down and put it in the flight computer. And we taxi to the runway now. So there's a few minutes between being at the base ops, going through the taxiways, through this field, and getting out to the runway. And by the time we got to the runway and we got our true final clearance from this guy, it's like cleared for takeoff, turned 360, a different heading than what we had, than the initial, you know, climbed to 10 ,000, cleared for takeoff.

46:42So I changed the heading. and as we're rolling down the runway, he lights the afterburner and we get off the ground and he raises the gear. We're going really fast and he starts turning toward the old heading of 180. And I see him doing this and I know that the guy just said 360 and I put that in the computer and I'm like, what the hell do I know? I don't want to say. I mean, this guy is like one of the greatest pilots in our country. I don't even know how to get inside of the airplane without help. I guess he knows what he's doing. I'm just going to shut up. Well, a few seconds after that, the tower comes over the radio and says, NASA 911, turn right now, hard right now.

47:30So Vegas takes the airplane and makes its hard right bank. And he's like, what the hell was that? what had happened was is that another aircraft had showed up in the in the time that we took to get to the runway and we were headed toward that aircraft with that initial heading we almost had a midair with another airplane a midair collision yeah because we were headed he was coming in and we were headed right toward him with that old heading that's why they changed the heading and that's why this this controller the tower guy came on and right you know immediate and it's rare that they'll scare you like that but it's time to go so he made this quick turn and we avoided the other aircraft.

48:08But he was like, holy cow. He goes, what was that all about? He goes, did he change our heading? And I go, yeah, it's right there in the flight computer. He goes, he's like, you heard him change it. You saw me go in the wrong direction and you didn't say anything. Now, I can't see him. I can only see the back of his head because the aircraft was a front and back. So you have the piloting command that's in front. I'm behind him. I can see the back of his head. I can't see his face, but I can hear him. and he's like, you knew that, and you saw me do that, and you didn't say anything, and I was like, no, I thought you knew what you were doing.

48:39That's what I said to this guy. That was it. There was no more conversation. There was no chit-chat, no what's going on with the football game this weekend, nothing. We came back, and we just communicated to complete the mission, complete that fight, and when we landed, we get out of the jet. I get down the ladder, and I was like, okay, maybe we won't be talking about this, hopefully. I get out of the ladder, and now he's right in my face. not in a mean way at all. You know, it's still my buddy. He's still my colleague. And he just says, Mass, one thing you need. Before we got out of the air, right next to the airplane, just could not wait until after we took a pee.

49:15It was going to be like right now. It's like, Mass, number one thing you have to learn from tonight is that when you see something, you need to speak up. We almost got killed tonight because I went in the wrong direction, and that's on me. And he said, that's my bad. But you didn't speak up, and that almost got us killed as well. You almost got us killed for not speaking up and you can't ever do that again. Speak up, even if you're wrong, I will tell you you're wrong, but I will always thank you for speaking up. You have to speak up. And he was being really serious about this because we got away with one and maybe next time I'd be with someone else and we wouldn't.

49:52And I got that message loud and clear. And then that I think is a good lesson for everyone here. You may not be life-threatening, but it's important to speak up. It could be something that deals with the product that you're making or the company you're working for or whatever you're trying to accomplish. And you're a new person coming in there and you're seeing something that doesn't seem quite right. And everyone else has already assimilated this into that this is going to be normal. I don't know. Maybe one out of a thousand times the guy changes your heading on the runway. It's really rare that that happens as it turned out.

50:23The guy, they're not making his stuff up. There's a reason why you're going in that direction. And it's rare that they'll change it at the last second. And maybe me as a new guy, I'm actually paying attention the whole time. And Vegas is like, I heard 1-8-0, 5 minutes ago, it hasn't changed. So you don't know why. And you need to speak up when those things happen. And that was a lesson I learned and put into practice from then on. I got away with it the first time. And I was never going to let that happen again. Wow. So a couple of lessons. One is that lesson of take the long shot, try. Yeah. One is the lesson of teamwork.

50:58Nobody leaves the swimming pool until we all pass. And then another is that lesson of speak up. Otherwise, you might have a midair collision. Yeah. Yeah.

51:12If you're someone who's been meaning to get a real handle on your retirement plan, I want to point you to something that I think is genuinely worth your time. Bolden. It's a modern retirement planning tool that takes all the confusion out of figuring out your financial future. So most calculators give you a quick estimate and call it a day. Bolden goes way deeper. You can model different scenarios, test real choices, and see exactly how things like saving more, retiring earlier, or adjusting social security timing impact your plan. Bolden doesn't just give you numbers. It's visual. It can give you clarity and helps make it easy to get real answers without needing to hire a financial planner.

51:51I've looked into what they're building and it's one of the smartest, most accessible tools out there to help you take control of your retirement plan. One thing I like about them is the dashboard is really easy to see. At a glance, you see your projected net worth. You see your current net worth. You see your chance of retirement success. It's like at a glance gives you a ton of information. And you can look at the effect of taxes, state modeling, depending on where you might live. You can look at the impact of Medicare and long-term care and calculate the what-ifs. So if you want a simple way to get confident about your future, check out go.boldin.com slash afford.

52:27That's go.boldin.com slash afford. Go take a look. It could make a big difference in how you think about your financial future. Boldin is for informational and education purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. It's time for Cyber Monday. Dell Technologies' biggest sale of the year. Enjoy the lowest prices of the year on select PCs like the Dell 16 Plus, featuring Intel Core Ultra processors. And with built-in advanced features, it's the PC that helps you do more, faster. Plus, earn Dell rewards and enjoy many other benefits like free shipping, price match guarantee, and expert support.

53:09They also have huge deals on accessories that pair perfectly with your Dell PC and make perfect gifts for everyone on your list. Shop now at dell.com slash deals.

53:31You also learned the lesson about the importance of trust, trusting yourself, trusting your training, trusting your team, trusting your gear. to kind of talk about this. Tell us about February 1st, 2003. Yeah, so that was when we lost the Space Shuttle Columbia, Space Shuttle and crew. And that was a bad day. It was the worst day of my life, pretty much. Where were you when you got the news? Oh, I was, so that morning, that Saturday, I was with my son, Daniel. How old was he? He was seven years old. So we were at the Cub Scout Pinewood Derby race that morning. We were heading into the school for that race, into his elementary school.

54:25And one of the parents saw me and he says, have you heard anything? I'm like, heard anything about what? And he said, he goes, Daniel, why don't you go inside? Your dad will meet you. And so what happened? He goes, they lost the shuttle, they think. Like, it lost communication. So I immediately called my friend Steve Smith on the phone. I think it was the only number I knew by heart. It was back then. I don't know what kind of cell phones we had. But I called Steve up, and he's like, what's going on, Mike? I go, turn your TV on, CNN or something like that, and tell me what you're looking at. And he's looking, and he's like, and he started, you know, like saying things I can't really say on your head, like, you know, like, holy cow, right?

55:06And he goes, it doesn't look good here. I go, what do we do? He goes, go to work. We all got to go to the office. And so that's what we did. We all congregated there. And what had happened is that we lost the shuttle. They had taken damage on Ascent when they launched. We didn't know. No one knew that. I mean, they knew they got hit by a piece of debris, but it put a hole in the wing that we weren't aware of and the crew wasn't aware of. There was no way to inspect the vehicle, and they couldn't repair it even if there was. And it's like one of these things you do it a thousand times and it's okay, and then a thousand and one it's not.

55:38And the external tank of the shuttle debris had been flying off of it and hitting the space shuttle. It's the big tank where the fuel was for the main engines. And it never caused a problem before, so like, ah, it's probably okay. But it wasn't this time. This was the one time when it wasn't. And so when they tried to reenter, they had a hole in the spaceship that they didn't know about. And when you come in and slow down in the friction in the atmosphere, it builds up a lot of heat, like 5 ,000 degrees worth of heat, and that entered the wing and took it off, and we lost the shuttle and the crew.

56:08So that's what ended up we found in the investigation. Did you leave your son at the Cub Scout thing? Yeah, I did. I got one of the parents to watch him, and I said, Dan, I got to go, and figured out what was going on, went into work, found out what was happening, and it was really chaotic. But the first thing that we needed to do was take care of the families because they were coming back from the Cape, and I knew them really well. So I went to meet them and see what I could do to help with them. And people did different things, whatever they – everyone had an assignment to do that day and moving forward.

56:42And then we had to figure out how we were going to fly the spaceship again was the other thing and how we were going to build up that trust. Because when you do things, when you mention trust, when you do something that's kind of scary, the only way I found I could do that was to trust different things, Trust the gear that I was going to work with. The space shuttle was going to work. Trust my training. A lot of times we think that we're not ready for something, but you're not. You're not set up for failure when you're given an assignment. You have to trust whatever got you there. Your name wasn't picked out of a hat.

57:10That was a tough one for me to learn that, no, I am ready to fly in space. Also, they wouldn't let me. They're not doing this because I won a contest. I'm the person that's supposed to do this. Willy Wonka. Yeah, right, exactly. My name wasn't picked out of a hat here. But that's something I think we need to remember no matter what it is when we're scared about stuff or nervous about things. And then trust your team. And trust yourself as well. Your team is with you. And trust yourself to execute the plan. And so it was a lot of trust. And all of a sudden, like, well, how do we trust anything anymore because this thing's gone?

57:41And the way we rebuilt that trust was by doing a thorough investigation where nothing was covered up, everything was honestly exposed. We all felt like complete idiots because there were things that we had thought were safe that weren't. and not even what happened with that debris, but even the way we approached entry of how the importance of – we thought entry was easy. We were worried about on ascent, that's where you lost people. That's where things blow up with the engine running. Coming back from a space mission on the shuttle, there's no fuel left. You're just gliding back. I mean, you first have to use your engines to maneuver, but after that, it's a glider coming home, and there's no fire there.

58:19There's no active fuel there. What could happen? And that's what happened. and it made us all feel like idiots. There was plenty of blame to go around. But what got restored the trust was how everyone reacted to it. No one was trying to cover it up. No one was saying it's that person's fault, not mine. Everyone was fully engaged with trying to find out what had happened and making sure it wasn't going to go again. And so the next flight, the first flight up there, we were pretty sure that was going to work well and that we were going to be able to fly out the program safely, and we did. So we had to rebuild that trust.

58:53So trust allows you to do things. Sometimes things don't go well, but it's no time to point fingers and throw people under the bus. And I'm really proud the way that we reacted to it. We came together as a team. You find out what your team is like when you experience disappointment, tragedy, bad times. When things are going well, you high-five, everything's great. But what happens when things don't go well? Do you retreat? Do you give up? Do you say it's your fault, not mine? Or do you come together to fix the problem? And that's what we did. And I'm really proud. I would never want to go through that accident again, but I'm really proud of the way we reacted to it to get flying again.

59:28What advice would you have for anyone who's listening to this who's having a hard time trusting, either trusting their team or trusting themselves? Yeah, I think you have to, for me, what it was is have to believe that if you can't trust yourself, that's not good. So look at your trust in other areas. Like, I would trust, for the space shuttle, I was nervous at first, you know, going on the space shuttle. The thing that gave me the courage to do that, it's kind of scary looking up at the spaceship when the day comes, arrives, like, ooh, this looks kind of scary. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea.

1:00:04But I just thought that this spaceship's ready to go. A lot of people have checked it. I'm going to trust that machine. I'm going to trust my spacesuit when I'm spacewalking. I'm going to trust my tools, my tether. And I'm going to trust my training. For me, I felt the reason I was kind of worried going into my first flight was I felt I wasn't ready. How do I know if I'm ready? I've never flown in space before. But I was pulled aside. I think people could suspect that, and I think it's pretty common. But I was pulled aside to be told that we have full confidence in you. You've shown that you're fully capable, and you're not really a rookie, is what I was told.

1:00:39You're ready to go just like any of the veterans. And I knew I needed to accept that. You have to accept that because you have to do your job and you have to have the trust that you are ready to go or else it could affect your performance and could mess up the whole thing. So you want to have trust that you're trained well and you're trained and ready to execute the plan. How do you square that, though, with those moments that I think all of us inevitably face when we disappoint ourselves? You're like, I want to trust myself, but I once completely got tangled up in my tether. That's what happens to me.

1:01:12Yep. Yeah, at the, where were you, the International Space Station? And you like... We were practicing there. That was a practice run, but the tether snarl happened. It never happened in orbit, luckily. But yeah, for things like that, when you mess things up, I think that you're going to make mistakes. And no one wants to make mistakes. So the issue, I think, is learning how to deal with those mistakes. So when you do make a mistake, it's okay to be disappointed in yourself. But you have to cap it. Give yourself 30 seconds of regret. beat yourself up internally man that was the dumbest mistake I've ever made I can't believe I'm the stupidest astronaut ever whatever it might be and after 30 seconds let it go and move on and don't repeat that mistake try not to repeat it but leave it in the past and move forward don't dwell on it because if you dwell on your mistakes you're just you're just you're living in misery and you're not going to be a functioning person, at least that's the way I was.

1:02:11Before I learned how to deal with my mistakes, I would ruminate over them, sometimes for days. I can't believe I did that. When I failed my qualifying exam, it was like a week of misery. You know, more was me. That's not helpful. That week goes by, you don't get those days back in life. They're gone. So you need to figure out a way to leave it in the past. But I do think it's okay to be mad at yourself and to be regretful and remorseful and call yourself an idiot. But keep it to 30 seconds and just get rid of it, and then let's move on and move forward. And then the other thing, when you make a mistake, what I learned with that tether snarl, because I got myself tangled in my tether, and at first it wasn't so bad.

1:02:51So the tether's there to keep you so you don't float off into the sun and become a satellite. Something happens. It's a really important piece of equipment, but it's also a hazard because it's this wire that's always with you and so you can get wrapped around your legs which is what happened to me and that's fairly common especially when you're learning but i didn't want anyone to notice so i'm like okay let me try to fix this on my own and maybe one no one will ever notice or my training this was and next thing you know it's like going around my back down my backpack around my head and i there's no way i'm getting this thing out and i had created a really bad problem and so that's where i learned this what we call hoots law is hoot gibson came up with this hoot was a former chief of the astronaut office and a very talented pilot.

1:03:34And his motto, Hoot's Law, was you can always make it worse. No matter how bad you've messed up, you need to remember you can make it worse. And oftentimes we make a mistake and we're like, oh, man, I'm going to make up for it. No one will notice. I'm going to rush now. No, no, no, no, no. Just take a beat here and don't make it worse. And you can actually think about how it can make this worse. Like in the tether situation, okay, I've got to snarl around my leg. If I move too quickly and I don't get help and I make it worse, then a snarl is going to be around my head, or I'm going to somehow damage my tether or my spacesuit, or I'm going to lose something, or I'm going to lose.

1:04:12Let's not let any of that happen. Let's just deal with this problem. Let's recruit help. Let's get a second set of eyes on it. Let's slow down and take it easy for a minute here before we make things worse. And those are my two reactions. Whenever I made mistakes, it was, all right, I'm going to give myself. It's okay to feel upset with myself, but I'm going to cap it at 30 seconds and then work toward the solution and not wallow in the misery. And I'm not going to make this worse. I'm not going to create a problem B for us to fix before we can get back to problem A because problem A is bad enough.

1:04:42Right. And so in order to take that beat, you've got a saying. It's go slow like Joe Lopicolo. So Joel Apicolo was a family friend who could fix anything because he went slow. He took his time and could fix anything. And he was famous for this. He would take a long time, but he wouldn't break anything. If he did break something, he would slow down even more. When I got to NASA, I would hear this as well, go slow, slow down, especially when you make a mistake. You go slow to speed up. The idea was don't rush. Don't do something you're going to regret. Take your time. Get a second set of eyes, especially when something goes wrong.

1:05:26And so he kept saying, go slow. And I blurted out one time in our training after we were getting debriefed. I was like, I mean, go slow like Joel Apiccolo. I couldn't help myself any longer. And I go, what? And I explained the story, and it became like a theme. And he goes, exactly right. And Joel Apiccolo became somewhat of a celebrity in our training team. But, yes, go slow. Think of Joel La Piccolo when something goes wrong. And how do you square that? You know, with something like spacewalking, the goal, as I understand it, is to shave minutes off of the spacewalk. Right. So how do you square, hey, here's this thing that we're doing where we want to shave minutes off of the length of time that we're doing it.

1:06:02How do you square that with going slow? I don't know if it's the story of the hare and the tortoise. You know, slow and steady wins the race. but what we found remarkably enough was that if you try to speed up by moving more quickly I mean sometimes you have to make haste if you're being chased if you're being chased by something or whatever you gotta run you gotta go right but you can't really think about it I don't know if that even makes sense if you're being if a wild dog is after you you might want to I'm gonna go slow here there are maybe times we need to go quickly But what we found in what I was taught in this world that I entered at NASA and what I discovered on my own is that what we really mean is move with purpose, think before you act.

1:06:55One bad mistake can cost you ten times the amount of time of what you do by going slow. And when we were, especially for things that had a high consequence or that you could make an error, particularly maybe when you're fatigued toward the end of the day or when it's high pressure or whatever it might be that's going on, that's the time to take a beat and go slowly. Because if you rush to do something, you might do something incorrectly, make a mistake, break something, that's going to set you back a lot more than just a couple seconds. And so it was just as you're saying, my first reaction was, ah, that's nonsense.

1:07:33You've got to move quickly. You don't save time by trying to go fast. You save time actually by trying to go slow and deliberate and executing at the right pace. Because once you start rushing, that's when you start missing things. And in the work we were doing, you couldn't afford to miss things or miss a step because you're going to pay for that later. So as counterintuitive as that might be, slow and steady does win the race. And I think that that's the way it is with most things. Once we start rushing, especially if we're driving in a car and we're trying to rush, that doesn't work. That's when you start making wrong turns.

1:08:11God forbid you get in an accident. But now all of a sudden you're in the wrong street and you're like, oh, man, I was rushing to get there and now I don't know where I am. And now you've just lost 10 minutes because you're in a hurry. And now you don't want to do anything that might slow you down even longer by doing something with the car or, God forbid, getting in an accident or whatever it might be. That's the time to slow down. And we tend to feel rushed at things. But we've got to be really careful of taking it too fast because that's where you could start making mistakes that you'll regret.

1:08:40I think that goes to decision making and sending out that email that you might regret sending out. Don't be quick to the draw here. Let's take a beat when something goes wrong or when we're not feeling good about stuff. Just give it a moment. Recruit some help. Slow down. It'll save you time in the end. So we've talked about the importance of teamwork. we've talked about taking the the long shot the moonshot try we've talked about the importance of speaking up about the importance of trusting your team and yourself uh the importance of going slow the the last uh lesson of the many that you outline um the last lesson that i want to cover is the importance of staying amazed yeah um why why sometimes you can get bogged down in the details of your life.

1:09:32And even as an astronaut, as exciting as that sounds, it was a job. It really was. It was a lot of hard training and working hard and things that were sometimes scary and dangerous and time away from home and missed holidays. We're coming up on Thanksgiving. I missed more than one Thanksgiving with my family because I was doing something at work that I needed to do, working in a control center, working shifts for flights that were up. And it's not always a bowl of cherries. And I think that that's the way it is for most of us. Even, you know, we think that sometimes there are glamorous jobs out there.

1:10:08A job is a job. And I think there's always those good elements and there's always those tough parts to it, too. And I think we need to take time out to remember how amazing it is that we're here in the first place. And it hit me on my very first space flight, on my second spacewalk, looking at our planet and realizing how beautiful it is from that perspective. And it's still beautiful down here on Earth. In fact, it's more beautiful engaging it on Earth, but you don't see it in its full glory unless you're in space, I think. I think it was meant to be seen from space. And you see this beautiful place that I thought looked like heaven to me.

1:10:43I can't imagine any place being more beautiful than our planet. But you can't go to space all the time to see it. I can't, but I can engage it here on Earth. I can see the beauty of, if you're out in a remote area, of the mountains or the ocean or the clouds above you or the stars at night. But even in the city, just the buildings around us, the faces of people in the subway, if we're riding around New York City, there's a certain tempo to it. There's a beauty to it. It's amazing that we're all here. It's a very fragile place we have. Our planet, our atmosphere is very thin. You see that in space.

1:11:19If you look at a picture, it's just a thin blue line above the planet. If you think of the Earth as an onion, the top thin layer of the onion is the size relationship between the atmosphere and the rest of our planet. And we've checked out the neighborhood. We've got nowhere else to go. We have to make this planet work. We have to take care of it. And it's amazing that we're here. It's been here for a long time. Going through a sunrise in space, you go from darkness into sunlight. And if you look out, I was on one of my spacewalks looking down at the planet. You see the line that separates night and day.

1:11:51that on the left it's dark, on the right side it's light, and there's a very distinct line that we call the Terminator that separates that. And that line is moving across our planet. It's moving across our planet right now. But we don't think of it that way because we see the sun rising in the morning or going down at night if we're lucky to catch that. That's not what's really happening. Our planet is rotating toward the sun and away from it, depending on where you are. And so we see that line moving, and I could see the rotation of our planet, and it's a very steady motion. And I got the sense of permanence was the word that came to my mind because it's been going on for billions of years and it's going to go on for much longer.

1:12:32Billions of years after each one of us who are alive today are gone. Our time is now to be a part of this. And I think we need to do our best to try to enjoy it as much as we can, hand the baton on to our children, so that they can continue to make this place, make this planet a better place. But we should try to appreciate it as much as we can. So just the fact that we are here, the miracle that we are here, I think is enough to be amazing. Look out the window once in a while. If you can, get outside, look around. Even if it's raining, we don't get rain in space. That's a miracle too, I think.

1:13:12We don't have breezes or temperature changes. We do have temperature changes, but not the cool breeze or the warm sun that you feel when you're out there in a park. You feel it, but you feel it in a different way through your spaceship. So you don't get the wondrous things that we have down here on the planet. And I think we need to be amazed every day and try to take that time out to realize how lucky we are to be here in the first place. That view of the Earth from space, did it ever get old? No. It's different every time. You see things that are just extraordinary. The clouds, the storms, the thunderstorms at night, the stars in the sky that you see, it's the best planetarium I've ever been in because you're above the atmosphere, and all the stars are perfect points of light.

1:13:56Seeing the sun in a black sky, it doesn't get old. But it does end. You only get to do that for a certain number of days. Even if you're my colleague Peggy Whitson, who has 675 days in space, that's a long time. But that's kind of small compared to how many days she's been alive, right? She's about my age, so she's been spending most of her time on the planet. I think what it truly does is it allows you to engage the planet in a different way and with a different perspective and appreciation for what we have. And it also is a planet that we all share. My concept of home has changed. When I think of home, I used to think of my town of Franklin Square or New York or United States as I got older, and I'll always be from those places.

1:14:35But I think of myself now as a citizen of Earth. That's where we're all from. It's a place we all share. and I think especially when we run into tough days, we should try to remember that, just how lucky we are just to be here. Two last questions. I realize the next one that I'm about to ask could be a very long answer. I'll try to keep it short. That's on me. Do you think we'll ever be multi-planetary and do you think that's a good idea? Like we'll live somewhere else? Yeah. I think so. I think Mars is a place for exploration. I think we can learn a lot. about our solar system and about our planet going to Mars.

1:15:16It's not a trip to the Caribbean, though. You know, this is not like, oh, this is a nicer place to go. You're not going to Disney World here. It's going to be really interesting, but it's very inhospitable there. We can't. Do you see us terraforming it, like Elon's plan to bring a million people there and terraform it? I don't know about a million. I think we'll start off with a couple at first. But I think eventually, I think the reason to go there is to study and to do things that will help our planet here. I don't think we're ever going to be leaving Earth. I think our exploration is really about preserving the Earth.

1:15:46If we can find energy sources other places, if we can understand how to better take care of our planet, if we can do some of the polluting somewhere else and keep Earth as pristine as possible, the most unhospitable environment on planet Earth would be a paradise on Mars. It's not an easy place to live. That's why we haven't been there yet with people. We haven't been back to the moon in 50 years. It's not so easy to live there either, but at least you're closer to home. If you have trouble, you can get back, and your communication is only about a second and a half. You can get help from the control center.

1:16:19But Mars is really far away, so I don't think it's going to be that easy. I do think we'll be there, but I don't think we're ever going to give up this place. I mean, this place is a paradise, and I think we need to take better care of it, and I think going to Mars will allow us to do that, and exploring space will allow us to do that. But we're going to have to figure out a way to live there. It's going to be pretty challenging. And speaking of visiting, that leads perfectly to my next question, which is Blue Origin, all the SpaceX now that we've got these private companies that may be going into space tourism.

1:16:56Do you see that as, is that the next frontier? Is that the future? And is that something that appeals to you? Like for me to go as a tourist? No, or for humans? For our society generally? No, I think it's perfectly fine. I don't think it's the whole part of the future. I think people want to go to space to experience it and look out the window and look at the planet and float around a little bit. I think that's great as a tourist location, sure. So I think people can still learn and experience it that way. I think that that's great. But I also think that getting more people to space also leads to more research opportunities.

1:17:34to learn about our planet. My students at Columbia have flown two experiments in space, and that's a result of the privatization. It opens up more opportunities. One of their experiments flew on a Blue Origin vehicle a couple years ago, and more recently they flew an experiment up on a spacecraft to the space station. The experiment was on the space station for a couple months and then returned back to Earth for analysis. So it was a biomedical experiment. So our students, researchers, entrepreneurs have more access to space. And I think what's great about the commercialization of it, that it's not just NASA going anymore.

1:18:17It's private citizens or companies or people with good ideas now can access space and use microgravity or whatever else, mining an asteroid or some process they want to try out on Mars or that's further down the road or the moon maybe. that's all open now. And we couldn't do that before. It was just NASA going for reasons that a government would go for exploration and hopefully turning it over to private enterprise. And that's what we're seeing now, that a lot of space operations are being turned over to these commercial companies. So I think the tourism thing's kind of cool. You're going to experience it, bring that story home, tell people about it, share your pictures.

1:18:57It's going to allow more people to go with a real purpose too. And I think tourism is a, to experience that, I think, is a real purpose. But I think also in the areas of research or doing work, to go the route I took was not easy, right? It's not going to get any easier. It's still years of trying to get in, and then you get there, and it's going to be years of training before you get to go. A lot of people don't have that much time, right? They're involved in whatever they're doing on the planet here, and maybe they want to try out a new manufacturing process, or maybe they want to try out some sort of new technology that can only be made in space or whatever it is that they want to do, they now have the opportunities to do those things without having to spend 20 years to get there.

1:19:39They can hopefully get a chance to go with relatively little training because these spaceships are highly automated to get there, do their stuff, and then come back and not have it as a career. I wanted to be part of that team, and that's what I share in the book is the lessons I learned that helped me achieve my moonshot. But a lot of people, if they want to go to space and don't want to be a NASA astronaut, they can do that. Or if they want to try out their technology, there's different ways to do that now that were not available just a few years ago. So I think that all of that is part of the future.

1:20:14And the commercialization of it, whether it's tourism or manufacturing or whatever, making movies, who knows what people are going to be doing. I think that's where the future is. The first movie shot in space. The first movie shot in space. And you were, we never even talked about, you're a TV star too. Not about a star. You were on the Big Bang Theory. I was on the Big Bang Theory though, yeah. When NASA called you about it, they said, have you heard of the Big Bang Theory? Yeah. And at first I thought they were talking about the theory itself, you know, and like, no, the TV show. Go, yeah, of course I've heard of it.

1:20:44Yeah, what about it? But yeah, I didn't, I wasn't, I wasn't very, I was familiar with the show, but I became more familiar with it and a really great group of people. So, yeah. Nice. Well, thank you for spending this time with us. Are there any final lessons that you want to impart to everyone listening about how they can take their moonshot? For me, becoming an astronaut seemed like an unreachable goal. And I don't know what the stereotypical astronaut is, but it's not what people think. I think in any regard, we have this idea of what a successful actress or actor or entrepreneur or astronaut might be.

1:21:28They're just regular people who don't give up and don't let failure stop them and have a passion for something and work hard at it and surround themselves with a good team and are good teammates. These are qualities, I think, that are important for success for anyone. And there was nothing special about me. I learned these things. Some of them I was driven, I think, by my passion to want to be a part of the space program. And that was important to get me to that opportunity. And then these things I learned in teamwork and leadership and perseverance and dealing with mistakes and speaking up this guidebook that I've accumulated over those years, I hope can be helpful to people.

1:22:17Because if I can do it, so can you. That's what I want people to remember. There's nothing special about me or anyone else who's successful. There are things that we've learned along the way that helped. And hopefully now these things are, at least from what I've learned, are available to you to help whatever that moonshot is or developing that moonshot. I hope they keep that in mind that they can do it as well. Great. Thank you so much for spending time with us. Where can people find your book if they want to read it? It's available just about any place. Whenever you buy your book, the neighborhood bookstores are always good places to go to.

1:22:55Let's start there if you can. But order on Amazon or Barnes & Noble or whatever bookseller you use. It's everywhere. You can also go to my website, MikeMassimino.com. If you want to get a hold of me, there's a way to do that. There's also a way to order the book there as well. that'll send you to different booksellers if you want to go that route. And I also am active on social media, the first guy to tweet from space. You were the first guy to tweet from space? I was the first guy to tweet from space. Take that and the alarm strong. Wow. So there you go. I got that going for me. So you can follow me on social media as well.

1:23:31But the book is available everywhere. So if you think it might be helpful, and I hope it will be helpful to you, go pick up a copy. What was the first tweet from space? Yeah, I was given advice by Neil Armstrong not to think about it because I asked him how he came up with what he said on the moon, and one small step for mankind, one giant leap for mankind. So when I first met him, I asked him how he came up with that. Did his wife tell him to say that or whatever? And he said, he told me he didn't think about it until after he landed on the moon. I was like, really? And I was a brand-new astronaut.

1:24:02I met him my first week at NASA, and he said, Mike, if I didn't land on the moon, there'd be no reason to say anything. I was worried about landing on the moon. I wasn't worried about what I was going to say. And then he said, you know, Mike, there's a lot of distractions in this world you've entered with this astronaut business. And you're new to this, but you've got to stick to your job first. Don't worry about that other stuff. Do your job and worry about that other stuff later. And I was like, okay. So I was asked by the press on our last press conference what I was going to tweet. And I channeled Neil Armstrong and said, I'm not worried about that.

1:24:32We've got to get to space first. I'll worry about that after we get there. So we get to space, and I open up the computer. I'm ready to send this tweet. I hadn't thought about it, and I couldn't think of a thing. And I started thinking, he must have lied to me. There's no way this dude stepped on the moon and came up with that. I'm just floating around a couple hundred miles above the planet, and I can't think of anything. What I wanted to write, Paula, was curse you, Neil Armstrong. It's like this guy lied to me. He set me up here. And so I just wrote launch was awesome. The adventure of a lifetime has begun or something like that.

1:25:02So I sent that out on Monday. On Saturday, I get made fun of on Saturday Night Live. Seth Meyers is doing Weekend Update. And I didn't know this. I found out about this later because I'm busy in space, right? But he says, we have the first tweet from Space, Mike Massimino. Here it is. Launch was awesome. In 40 years, we've gone from one giant leap for mankind to launch was awesome.

1:25:28So he let that one sit for a moment, like you're laughing here and what the audience was doing. And then he continues and says, I assume if we're ever to discover life in the universe, this is how I'll be notified. And it shows my little Twitter thing. And he says, it says, geez, dudes, aliens. So that was that. And I didn't know this was going on. But my kids were 13 and 15 at the time. And so that was on Saturday. On Sunday, they go to school, of course. And I get email from them after school. And they sent me an email. And the space walks her over. and I go over to see what they had to tell me.

1:26:04And this is how I found out about this Saturday Night Live. And he said, Dad, they made fun of you on Saturday Night Live. All the kids at school loved it. Keep up the good work. And I was like, okay, great. Finally, I was getting a little street cred here. Not for anything I did in space, but for the getting made fun of on Saturday Night Live. There you go. So you can find me on Twitter, X, Instagram, Facebook as well. But the book's available anywhere. Well, thank you. Well, the book was awesome and this interview was awesome. Yeah. Thanks, Paula.

1:26:36What three key takeaways did we get from this conversation? Number one, there are many misconceptions about what it takes for somebody to succeed. Often, we believe that what it takes for someone to succeed is some type of innate characteristic or ability. We think that people are naturally gifted, naturally talented, born brilliant. In reality, Mike shares with us that what it takes to succeed is persistence, grit, doggedness, tenacity. It requires not giving up. But you don't necessarily have to be the smartest kid in class. In fact, your fourth grade teacher might have thought you were kind of average.

1:27:30Anything you're trying to do that's new, if you're trying to learn something, if you're trying to do something with your family, if you're trying to accomplish something as a parent or something at work, if it's something that's challenging, don't expect it to be easy. There's a reason why things are hard. Not everybody does them, and not everybody can do everything. And people that do, it's not like they're super talented, but they just stick to it. and they try to forge on when they get hit with difficulties. Successful people are not those that don't fail. They are those that don't let failure stop them.

1:28:02After all, if you never try, your chances are zero. If you try, your chances are greater than zero. They may not be great, but they are at least better than zero. One out of a million is a non-zero outcome. As soon as you give up, that becomes zero. Key takeaway number two. Mike shares the story of how not speaking up, even though he was the rookie, not speaking up nearly cost him his life. Now, most of us are not going to face consequences that dire when we fail to speak up. But it doesn't change the fact that failing to speak up, failing to advocate for yourself or for an idea, for something that you believe is in the best interest of your team, your organization, your mission.

1:28:59Failing to speak up has consequences and everyone, even rookies, should pipe up when they see something or when they sense that something is wrong. A lot of times when you're new at something, especially when you're working with someone who's very experienced, we tend to not say anything. It's okay if you're doing that to learn, but it's important for you to say things when you're the new person. We were always encouraged to speak up because you're not kind of sucked into the usual way of doing things, and your antenna might be up a little bit more. And that goes for a new idea, something that might be a problem, identifying it with a different perspective.

1:29:39That is the second key takeaway. Finally, key takeaway number three. There are times when we are tempted to let our failures or setbacks derail us. Mike walks us through how to deal with a disappointment without letting it derail us. When you do make a mistake, it's okay to be disappointed in yourself, but you have to cap it. Give yourself 30 seconds of regret. Beat yourself up internally. Man, that was the dumbest mistake I've ever made. I can't believe I'm the stupidest astronaut ever, whatever it might be. And after 30 seconds, let it go and move on. And don't repeat that mistake. Try not to repeat it, but leave it in the past and move forward.

1:30:29Don't dwell on it because if you dwell on your mistakes, you're living in misery and you're not going to be a functioning person. At least that's the way I was. Before I learned how to deal with my mistakes, I would ruminate over them, sometimes for days. I can't believe I did that. When I failed my qualifying exam, it was like a week of misery. You know, more was me. That's not helpful. That week goes by, you don't get those days back in life. They're gone. So you need to figure out a way to leave it in the past. but I do think it's okay to be mad at yourself. Those are three key takeaways from this conversation with NASA astronaut Mike Massimino, who was also on the Big Bang Theory.

1:31:13Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been one of the most special episodes that we have created ever. Those of you who are listening to this through audio, please go to our YouTube channel and watch this one. It is absolutely incredible to watch. Mike is so wonderful. So absolutely wonderful. So youtube.com slash afford anything. And for those of you who are on YouTube right now, hello, hi, please drop a comment below. Let us know what you thought. I'll be reading every single one of these. Thank you so much for being part of the Afford Anything community. Make sure that you are subscribed to this podcast on YouTube.

1:31:52Make sure that you are subscribed to the show notes, which you can get for free by going to affordanything.com slash show notes. And most importantly, share this with a friend, share it with a neighbor, a colleague, a family member, with someone you love, someone you kind of like, someone you sort of tolerate, someone you dislike. Share it with everybody because that is how we spread these positive, uplifting messages of how you can take your moonshot. Thank you so much for tuning in. This is the Afford Anything Podcast. My name is Paula Pant, and I will catch you in the next episode.