Have you ever thought about going to space? I have to admit I certainly have not. That is until about 8:25 on Tuesday 18 August.
A week or 2 earlier my partner had asked if I wanted to go and listen to Chris Hadfield as part of Science Week. I have to admit to not immediately recognizing the name although I knew he would be interesting if I was being invited to go along.
The talk/ interview didn’t start till 8pm and I was training a room full of almost 100 people all day both Tuesday and Wednesday, what was I thinking going out to an event that only started at 8pm; I’m usually thinking about bed at 8:30pm
The very first thing that struck me as we arrived at the very crowded venue was the number of children, and I’m talking about young children, in the audience. I felt privileged to be in an audience with young people and their parents who believed Chris Hadfield was worth coming out so late on a “school night”.
Then he started to speak. I was transfixed. At the age of 9 Chris Hadfield watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon and at that moment decided that he would go to space.
This man had almost no chance of going to space. He is Canadian, there was no Canadian space astronaut program. The barriers were endless.
Chris Hadfield has spent 166 days in space and has flown 3 different rocket ships.
Chris Hadfield decided that every day he would do things that would lead him to being in space. He knew he couldn’t change the Canadian space system, the only thing he could do was change himself; he could turn himself into the person who he wanted to be. He spent 20.5 years training to be an astronaut including living at the bottom of the ocean, and that allowed him to spend 6 months in space.
His story of having a long-term goal and how that guided his daily activity and activities; that every small decision “what am I going to do next?”
In all my years of studying goal setting and with working with clients about goals and what they want to achieve I have never heard anyone talk about using their long-term goal to influence every day of their life in quite the way Chris Hadfield talks about how his long-term goal took that 9 year old boy to space .
Another inspiring aspect to the talk/ interview was how inspired and inspiring Chris Hadfield is. How many times has he told his story? answered the questions? And his tone, energy, enthusiasm is as if he is telling it all for the first or second time. If you want to watch/ listen to some great interviews with Chris click here
As a fun aspect of Chris Hadfield he has recorded David Bowie song “Ground Control to Major Tom”
I’m Ingrid Thompson and thank you for reading this post.
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