Dare to Dream Bigger - Defying Limits with XPRIZE CEO | Anousheh Ansari
As long as I try something, even if I fail at it, I'm okay with myself.
It's when I don't try that I'm not okay with myself.
Okay, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast.
I'm your host, Dr. Michael Jervé, by trade in training a high performance psychologist.
And I am so excited to welcome Anusha Ansari to the podcast for this week's conversation.
It's almost impossible to pinpoint the most interesting thing about today's guest.
She's a remarkable human who's never met a dream she didn't turn into a reality.
She grew up in Tehran witnessing the Iranian Revolution, then immigrated to the US as a teenager,
where she obtained advanced degrees in engineering, and then had wild success as an entrepreneur
in the telecom industry. Now, she is the CEO of the X Prize Foundation, which offers large sums
of money as incentives to find solutions for seemingly intractable global issues, like ocean
health and climate change, wildfires, and pandemic response. Anusha has made history several times
over. Her most notable feat, however, is being the first woman of Iranian descent and the first
Muslim woman in space, where she spent nine days conducting science experiments on the International
Space Station. Anusha has said that her experience in space, which was both politicized and fraught
with obstacles, has given her the collaborative outlook and drive to tackle some of the world's
biggest challenges. I hope you'll find the same depth of inspiration as I did in this conversation,
specifically about how she's approaching life. So with that, let's get into this week's
conversation with Anusha, I'm sorry. I'm so excited to have this conversation with you.
It's great to be here. Thank you for first and foremost, like what you've done in your commitment
to help people explore and more concretely for being here today. So thank you.
It's a pleasure. Yeah. Okay, so I want to go back. Let's start early. You're a little girl,
you look up into the sky, and you have a dream. Can you start with that dream and help me understand
what that was like when you were in that moment? And I think you know the moment I'm talking about.
Yes. Well, I have to say that it all started not with a dream first. It started with curiosity,
which is what gets me into trouble all the time even today. It's I'm a very curious person,
love to learn. So as a young girl, just staring at the night skies and seeing those little shiny
objects up there, I'm like, what are they? What are they made of? You know, what's happening
up there? So this curiosity of wanting to understand what's happening outside of our world
and being part of it, being close to it, observing it, the experiencing it is what started the
dream of wanting to become an astronaut and actually travel to space and explore space. It continued
to expand. It's what made me interested to learn physics and math and get involving
STEM and different technologies and made me love sci-fi and watch Star Trek in Iran growing up.
And you know, all sorts of different ways that the story of what's out there was told. And
what the future may look like if we were to able to explore made me interested in aliens and
and praying that aliens will come and abduct me because I thought that's the fastest way to go
and find out what's going on. So I think ever since I was a young girl, curiosities,
what's been the driving force of my life. Where were you on the planet and how old were you?
I was born in Iran. So it was in Iran. It was in Tehran, the capital city.
And my grandparents had a balcony. Their apartment had a balcony and summer nights we didn't have
air conditioning. So we would sleep outside to stay cool. And that's where it all started. I
was probably, I don't know, six, seven years old. Oh, so it was young. That's really young. Yeah.
What was it like growing up in Tehran? In my earlier days, it was just like any other
city. I would go to school. I went to a French Catholic school, which was a little different than
most schools that kids would go to. And that's where I'd learn French. And it was a 8 a.m. to
4 p.m. School, half a day in Farsi, half a day in French. And I loved school. So life was normal
until I was about 12. And then the revolution happened. And the revolution sort of turned my
life upside down because all of a sudden I was hearing gunshots and screaming and people being killed
in explosions. And I didn't understand the violence that was happening in the street. And
prior to that, I had never experienced violence in that way. And probably it was a year and a half
into it that the war with the raw cap. And then it went from a revolution to a war and sirens and
get going into shelters and, you know, but standing in line for food and fuel and just to keep
yourself warm. And so it was sort of my whole life, all of a sudden, very rapidly, was turned
upside down. And I was in Iran until I was about 16. So I was there four years into the war.
And then I had the great opportunity to leave and come to US. And that's when my life began again.
When you recount that experience, how is it in your body? Like, do you still feel it? Or
this is like, I don't know if this was traumatic or not. I would make an assumption that it is.
But I didn't live it. And I don't know. Yeah. It's interesting because the first time I recounted
the experience was when I was writing my memoir, Homer Hakem was my co-author who helped me write a book
because I did not write a book. But I would write it and I would send it to him and he would
edit it. And he would ask me questions, you know, probe more. It's like, you didn't talk about this
period or you didn't talk about that. And it became this thing of discovering memories that I had,
you know, tried to forget or didn't want to remember. So it was very therapeutic for me writing that
memoir. But part of it was also I was describing it because, and I think it's part of my personality.
When I'm going through a difficult time, I don't, you know, stop and think how bad it is.
I think because if you do that, you sort of get crushed under the weight of what's happening
at that moment. So I feel like if I just continue going and moving forward and looking forward and
finding that light at the end of the tunnel and moving toward it, that will get me through.
And because going through the experience, that's what I'm seeing and thinking. I think my memory
of it is not traumatic. Okay. So if I get the framing right, while you're in the heaviness of
the experience, that your focus is on movement, it's on next best step. So you're you have an
bias towards action. Would you numb the feelings? Would you work with the feeling in a way to help
you move? Would you drink and drug the feeling? Like, you know, like there's lots of ways to work
with emotions. Well, I can give you a specific example. And I think it depends on the situation.
But this specific time in Iran, I was the oldest child in the family. How many?
So my siblings, I have a sister who's five years younger. But I was, we were in an apartment
building. And the rest of the households, they all had kids. They were all younger, some maybe
just a year younger, some, you know, so lots of like young vibrant kids. Yeah. Yeah. And what would
happen is every time we would take shelter, we had to go to the basement of the building, we're all
together. For whatever reason, I took comfort in giving comfort to the other kids. So they would
all gather around me. And I would tell them stories and distract them while there were all these
things, sounds and explosions going outside. And they were all scared. How did you do that?
I don't know. It just, and I was young myself. I was, you know, 13, 14 years old. And
tell me about mom. Just for a minute. I don't know. What do you want to know about my mom?
What's the last thing? So my mom is a, also, she's very driven person. She loves my sister and I
did that. She would give her life for us. How do you know that for sure? It's a big statement.
And when you said it, I believed it. I don't know. I just, it's a trust you develop. I guess
over time, her behavior in every situation, I know, I know that we're the most important things
in her life. You know what I'm just like it's just washing over me is that you, it's these small
incremental things that have taken place. So here you are like a massive influence in the world.
And we'll get to that in a minute. But these small incremental steps, small actions during the
ages of 12 to 16, the small storytelling arc, the small actions over time with your mom that have
led to some insights, some quote unquote truths for you. Does that feel accurate? The way you say it,
yes, probably. I never still openings. Yeah, I mean, I don't, I never spend a lot of time
analyzing my past to be honest with you. As I said, I don't know my nature is moving forward,
looking forward. And I rarely look in the back mirror because unless there was a problem or mistake
I made, because I do want to learn from it and not make that mistaken. So I do over analyze
sometimes mistakes. But most of the time I'm looking forward. And yeah, I think from an early age,
and it started maybe because my parents got divorced when I was very young was, you know, about
the five, six years old that I was, my parents got divorced and as a result. Is that rare?
Or so it's, it's, I think we're at the 50% mark in the United States. Yeah, in Iran is not as
accepted as it is in the US, but it's not as taboo as it is in some other Islamic countries. So it's
somewhere in the middle, but still is a very difficult thing for single, you know, mom, a young
woman to continue on and build a new life with two kids. Yeah, right. Okay. So that was hard on her.
If you had three words to describe mom. Resilient, driven, and perfectionist. Oh, really?
And so, okay, resilient, driven, and perfectionist. And you're laughing. Did you pick up the
perfectionist? No, but I hope not, not to hurt the degrees. But even to this state, if she sees me,
it's like, you know, your dress is not straight. You know, your makeup is not dry. Something is not
dried with me that I need to face. Okay, I don't get a sense from meeting you now that you are
overwhelmed with needing to present perfectly. No, that's not where you, so we all have trauma,
right? So I'll tell you all about my traumas, but like, your traumas do not lead you to need to
present perfectly. No, no, that's interesting. Okay. All right. So, so I am hard on myself to make
sure that I do my best, but I have a high bar for myself. So I'm a perfectionist against my own
bar. I don't care what others think of me. So I don't want to be perfect in the eyes of others,
but I want to be perfect in my own based on my own standards. Let's open that up. Okay. Okay.
How did you? Okay. I like the laugh. You're like, oh, God, where are we going?
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Okay, so let's open this up in this way is that what does perfection mean to you?
And then how did you find that freedom from what other people think of you?
My assumption is why I found that freedom is I lived and I grew up in Iran. And the things I
liked to do and wanted to do and interested me was completely opposite of what the society
believed that I should want to do or like to do and all that. And I'm like, I got to pause that
because that I was a tomboy. I loved I loved sports. I loved climbing trees. I loved doing all
the things that the boys were doing. I had no dolls. I had no interest in having tea parties.
I would dug holes and and you know, do construction in the mud. My dress was always full of dirt
and my mom and my dad were horrified about how I always looked so dirty and like not like a girl.
So you had practice of feeling independent from social norms?
Yes. And that was because everyone was so busy. My parents got divorced. My mom was working
full-time. My dad was at work. And I was left to do whatever and just entertain myself.
I like mud. I did. I did. I would keep myself busy doing things that I enjoyed.
So this is the makings of somebody that eventually looks up into the sky. And so the night sky
and says, I want to go there. How does that work? And so when I hear perfectionist, I go,
oh man, how does that work? Because it's such an exacting standard that is not achievable,
that most people that are perfectionists have a really hard time with the relationship with
themselves. And I don't know if that's the case for you. But I also want to understand
perfectionism before we make any assumptions. Yeah. Yeah. I have an interesting relationship with
myself. Because I am hard on myself. And I drive myself to a point that sometimes I'm like,
can't you just take a break? I mean, I'm constantly talking to myself. If someone was listening
to my internal dialogue, would it would think I'm crazy? And so is it is it sharp in tone?
Like let me give you some examples. Okay. Like I'll use me for an example. I'm thinking of right
now I'm thinking of a sport event that I was at playing. And I was I made like three or four
mistakes in a row. So the narrative right in that moment is like, the fuck is wrong with you?
Get your shit together. Like, like, so it's like a negative bite. And this is me in my early 20s.
And the world does not need me a 20 year old mic. Okay. Like this is not a great version myself.
But I needed to go through that phase for sure. Is it that type of edge bite cutting or is it just
busy with solving something? So do you cut yourself down? Do you build yourself up? Or is it more
tactical about trying to solve things? I would say depending again on the situation, a lot of
time is more tactical. Okay. But I mean, I don't think I'm sharp with myself. I'm actually more
trying to inspire myself. Like back yourself. Yeah, you're like, you can do this. Especially if it's
a physical challenge. Like you can get through. And you know, in life, one thing that I've learned is
I can do better and do more than I believe I can if I take it one step at a time. I never try to
think of a thousand step at a time. I know that, you know, roughly that's where I'm going. So I
look at the destination. Then I put my head down and take one step at a time. And that's high.
I know. I move forward. I know the value of that. And from a research standpoint, as well as
like being able to deploy that now in my life, but I didn't have that young somehow you had that
young. Yeah. And so would you say a best practice for anyone that wants to live, quote, unquote,
their good life, the good life. It'd be fun to open up that with what that means, right? Would
you say have a compelling future, have an idea of a vision of what you want to do or is it more
about who you want to be doing whatever it is you're doing? Very interesting question. I
for me, it was knowing what I want to do and who I became was in the pursuit of that. There you go.
Because, you know, space has been a passion, a driving force in my life. It's funny when I talk about
a lot of things and I'm interested in a lot of things, but I've heard people talk when I talk
about space. It's like, oh my god, every time you talk about space, your face opens up. It's like
you physically change when you talk about space. And you're interesting when you talk about other
things, but somehow things completely physically change with you. And it has been part of my life.
So in pursuit of that, I've changed. I've took advantage of opportunities and I've learned and
grown in that path. So to me, it was more about the destination, fighting that passion and then
becoming who I am in that journey. Yeah, I don't think I had like a specific, I want to be like,
that person in mind, except I wanted to, you know, a few people that fascinated me, one that
fascinated me at a younger age is the moment I learned about Albert Einstein. And I was like,
oh my god, I mean, the fact that he came up with a theory so incredible at the time that
the knowledge about space and time and all this was so classical and that he sat in a room and
imagined something so big and then proved that it's correct and it's right against all the
belief system that existed. That's the part that inspires me about Albert Einstein is that he
pushed against the fray. Exactly. And he was willing to risk it all. Exactly. And he did actually,
because it wasn't right for a while. Yeah. And this quote gets attributed to him, but I don't know
if he actually said it, something that makes me hazy is it I or they crazy, something along those
lines. And so that, to me, speaks to this idea that he was wrestling with his, his idea, his vision.
And the rest of the world was saying, no, no, no, time and space, like their independent construct
that and he's like, wait, hold on, it's different. Yeah. And he figured out how to present that in a
way with the community was like, yeah, we'll see. Yeah. And if it go at one level deeper,
the fact that you do you dare to question something that was believed to be absolute. So that's
what you did. Yeah. Is this specific about your upbringing, meaning Iran, or was this about being
a female? Was it about, yeah, because you did, you did that, or you're doing that.
It definitely not about being a female, because I, this is something interesting. First of all,
in, in Farsi in my native tongue, you don't have gender, like you don't have he or she.
It's just, yeah, it's genderless. So I have a hard time here when I, I mix my he and she's
all the time. But the, so I never thought about myself in doing anything as a woman or a man,
I need to do this one. I was a person and I think of myself as a person. So that has nothing to do
with it. But I think it was more of, I was, I felt that I'm different than people around me or
other, my friends or other girls around me. And the things that interest me, the thing I want to
know, my, you know, a lot of things about me is different. So I think that, that is what sort of,
I felt like, oh, you know, Einstein is different because he, he questioned everything and I,
I loved questioning and I would drive my teachers and my mom crazy because everything's like, why?
Like, why this? Why is this so? Yeah. And she hates that.
Your mom does it. Yeah, it's like, you, you, you, just because just stop just this. Oh my God. Okay.
All right. So I love this. I thought when you're describing that you went to a half French,
there's a half French school or like a French school half the day. Yeah.
I thought when you said that that I was going to ask and I didn't do it yet was, oh, you, from an
early age, you felt different. I did. I mean, the school was not the reason I felt different.
But I felt different because of just, I looked around and what my friends and other girls,
I mean, it was a all-girl school. So everyone around me, all these young friends. With one
with a very dirty dress. Me and a few others. Yeah. But like, we had our version of what we call
rugby and, and me and a few of my friends, we would play this rugby game and every time our
uniform, because we had to wear uniforms. Most often, I would come and part of my uniform would
be torn off because it was physical. We were bruised and all that. So it was, but outside of
those few friends, I had very close to me, everyone else with just their behavior was different.
Their interests were different. So I, that's how I felt different than everyone else. But I
didn't feel different in a bad way. It wasn't like they were better than me or I was better than
them. I was just different. And I didn't feel that I have to change and comply to a norm.
And I actually like that I'm different. And a lot of people ask me, you know, it's a standard
question. People ask you, would you change anything in your past? If you, now with everything,
you know, if you could go back and change something, what would you change? And I've thought about
that a lot. And I like who I am today. So I'm like, I don't know if I can change anything,
because if I change one thing, then it won't be me anymore. And I like who I am today. So I wouldn't
change. Even though there's a lot of, you know, really difficult and bad things that happen
in my life. But I think I probably, it's why I am who I am today.
There's a kindness and a sweetness in the tone of your voice when you say, I like who I am.
It feels believable. And does that, did you feel a kindness and a sweetness, like a softness about
yourself when you said it? I do. I have, as I mentioned, I'm hard on myself. So I drive myself.
There's the nexus for you. That's the rub, isn't it? So this is the nexus for most people
that are ambitious. Is am I okay as I am? Question mark. Do I need to do the extraordinary to be okay?
So that's like the nexus. That's the rub. Am I okay without pushing into the frontier?
So the way I would answer that is, and as you're asking this question, I'm really thinking about it,
because I never thought about it in these terms. The sweetness, the softness about myself,
and why I like myself is that I answer my own call when there is a new thing that I want to do.
So I do a debate with myself, especially now I'm 56 years old. So I'm like, do you really want
to push yourself again? Didn't you have enough? Like, no, I need to do this. I can do this. And then,
you know, I answer my own challenge. And that's why I'm like, okay, you know, let's do this. Let's
do this. Let's move forward. And I always, especially now, I give myself room for failure.
I was, I was accepting that failure as part of life was a, I think, where this sweetness comes
from. As long as I try something, even if I fail at it, I'm okay with myself. It's when I don't
try that I'm not okay with myself. I'm going to pause the conversation here for just a few minutes
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And now back to the conversation. You wouldn't know this, but
so I ask that question about failure often to people, especially people that are on paper
incredibly successful. And the way that I've been conceptualizing failure is the inability
or the unwillingness to go for it. Yeah, and you're like, yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah, and so the inability and unwillingness can come from a whole set of resources,
both internal and external resources. But ultimately, for me, it's like, if I've done the right work
and I'm at the cliff's edge and the task is to jump and I've done all the right work to jump
and hold my own parachute, whatever. And I don't go for it. It's because I haven't truly built
the right psychological process to trust myself, to trust my team, to trust the ability that the
next step is going to work out as well. And so it's refreshing for me to hear that for you.
I felt a little alone in that idea. Okay, so going back to like you for just one more moment
and then I want to talk about express. Yes. If you could hydrate a seed and it's the seed of growth
inside of the next generation of girls or boys, would you hydrate the same seed in the way that
you speak to yourself in them? Would that be different or would you want to upgrade it or would
you say it works? This hardness, not hardness, this pointed self-critical conversations I sometimes
have with myself with this ambition and this acceptance of who I am. I would say yes, but I want
to put it in a, put it in a caveat. There are times when I think to myself say, why can't you just
be like others and just enjoy and relax? Well, that's funny because I don't think that others,
the majority of others know how to do that. I don't know. I watch people just relaxing or walking
on the beach and their head is not thinking about there is pollution in the water and look at that
homeless person. I see all the problems. There are people who walk and they see only the beauty
and the greatness and they enjoy. When I'm in any place and this is the perfectionist or whatever
you want to call it in me, when I'm in a place, I see the problems and my nature is such that I can
ignore them and walk away without impacting me. I see the problems. If it's something I can do
about it, I want to do something about it. It occupies my mind. A lot of times is my curiosity
kicking in and wanting to learn what's happening. Why are people having this problem or why is this
problem happening in the oceans? I cannot just sit someplace on a beach, read a book and relax.
Maybe I can do it for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, I start looking around and the first thing I see
is the haziness and the weather. It's hotter than I suppose. All the problems that somehow I know
it starts bubbling up to me. Do you see problems or do you see opportunities? I see problems
that need fixing. I don't see problems as complaining about it or being overwhelmed by the problem.
But when they ask me to introduce myself, I always first say I'm an engineer because I feel that's
what I identify more than anything else I've done in my life. It's this thing about problem-solving
and my family members tell me, don't tell her anything because as soon as you say a problem,
she's like, okay, let's do this, let's do that. I'm like ready for solutions. I see a problem,
but not all of them are opportunities, but I look at them with a curious mind of trying to solve
them. Optimist or pessimist? 100% optimist. Okay, so you'll identify the problem. This is a good
engineer. You see where the thing is breaking and then you have high agency, which is a very technical
word for you believe that you have the ability to influence something, right? And so see a problem,
high agency to solve that thing and you believe that the future is going to work out.
Pretty cool psychological framework. Let's go to where I first understood your work was your
TED Talk. And one of our teammates here, Brett was like, you've got to meet. So he's got a picture
of you and he was at a conference. And what was the name of the conference? Empowering billion
women. Okay, so he's been going on and on and on. And so when I when I watched your TED Talk,
I was like, I get it. I totally get it. So how do you capture your what you did in outer space?
You don't like the word like visitor or or or yeah, people use space tourists. And I don't like
space tourists because I feel like, you know, as a tourist, you just buy a ticket and take your
camera and get on a plane and go, I had to train a whole year. So that's why I don't like the
word tourist. But and I always say it's like people who climb Mount Everest, do you call them
Everest tourists? He don't. And they have like a ton of Sherpo to carry their stuff and all that.
So space is not tourism. It's it is exploration. It's it's a adventure trip that you take.
So I trained for a whole year to go there and and it was something I had worked toward and
dreamt of doing all my life. So I that's why I don't like diminishing how important that was.
Okay. So space explore. Would you say that that feels right? Yeah, it feels. It feels right.
But not astronaut. That's a that's a technical. I mean, others call me astronaut. I other astronauts
call me astronaut and I don't mind being called an astronaut. I'm very respectful of career astronauts
people who spend all of their life in a space agency and dedicated everything to space program. So
I put them in a higher sort of standard and that's why I use astronaut. But I think they are
they deserve that, you know, title probably more than I do. Let's go through the checklist.
To be an explorer space in particular. There are capabilities required to go to the frontier.
Physical, mental, technical are the three main buckets, right, of skills and capabilities to build.
Were you physically fit when you made the decision? I was healthy. I I had to
up my game at a hundred percent. Yeah, but you had a base in place?
Yeah, I've always been very athletic and I pay attention to what I eat and my health.
So and I'm going to ask you to just put some numbers to it just for context for me in a minute.
So physical fitness that we can dive into what that means, but I don't think it's that interesting.
Mental fitness, if you will, were you mentally fit to be able to be an explorer in a hostile environment?
Yes, I was and I felt I was and then they did a lot of tests to prove that I was.
Yes, okay. So it's a very important factor in a space travel.
And what would you say the three big capabilities I'm using the three again,
because it's easy for me to remember them, not that it's an absolute.
Yeah, the most important one is the ability to stay calm under stress.
That's right. And so you can go wrong very quickly and
then not losing it and being able to stay calm and follow direction, follow instruction,
take steps to make sure you put yourself and the rest of the crowd take take yourself and the
rest of the crowd of danger. It's very important and so not panicking basically.
Yeah, there's a whole set of ways that we can train it, but also kind of the big rocks to being calm
under pressure is your perspective about pressure, your perspective about like what's on
the other side of this moment. And those take lifetimes to understand those two with clarity.
Also, the reference points in your life about other things that have been quote unquote
high heat or intense. And so I think you probably had a sound understanding of both of those.
Was there any specific way that you trained calm? So this is like building the skill of calm,
not investing in the reference point in the perspective.
I think that I tried to practice more than anything else during this time is breathing.
And just calming myself down with breathing because the thing I was really afraid of was
sitting on top of the rocket on the day of the launch because they monitor your heart rate
and everything. And if they feel like you're not doing well, they're going to stop the launch.
I'm like, I don't want to get all the way there. And then because I'm panicking or I'm scared
to have the launch scrub because they're thinking I'm going to have a heart attack.
So I didn't know if I would be scared or not. So I had been training to make sure that I can do
breathing exercises slow my heart rate down. So even if I was scared mentally in my head scared
that I could physically not demonstrate signs of fear. So I would actually continue with the
mission. But what happened was total opposite. But through that time, I did a lot of breathing
exercises to make sure that I physically don't demonstrate fear even if I'm experiencing it.
Okay. So this is important. You had an idea. You had a vision. If you belong in one day,
I'm going to be in a rocket. And then okay. And then you work backwards. What are the capabilities
I need? And one of the key capabilities to be calm under pressure, that could be a pressure
filled moment for me. And so what I'm going to do is backfill it with a breathing protocol. But
that the mechanics of what we just said is really a rinse and repeat that we could use in any part
of our lives. I want to be in a happy marriage. Okay. What do I need to work on communication?
And so what are the skills underneath of that that I can be better at communicating? Well, I
probably going to serve well if I talk about my emotions and my experience as opposed to pointing
the finger at the other person blaming them or whatever. So there's a whole set of practices that
can come that you can invest in once you have clarity of where you're going to vision and who you
want to be in that moment or those moments. All right. So what was it like to be in space?
It was incredible. One of the experiences I had that I didn't anticipate was a sense of freedom
that I felt, which was strange. It was a freedom I have never felt in my entire life and not
since I came back. I don't know if it was because I felt free of the force of gravity and I was
just floating and I was looking at our planet through this portal and you know, basically it was
an out-of-body experience of everything, all my memories, people I cared about, my life,
everything was right there in front of me and I was out here floating free of the force of gravity.
And I love that sense of freedom. It's hard for me to relate to it because I don't have a
reference point, but I do know what freedom feels like. I do know what seeing and having a yearning
or perspective that is different than people that I, you know, my friends or family members,
like I understand that, but is the what is the freedom? I can imagine weightlessness because I've
been at zero Gs or whatever it is like when you're like at a roller coaster, but not really,
but what kind of freedom are you talking about? It was a freedom. You know, we live our lives, we have
people we care about, we have commitments, we have things that we need to do, we have jobs,
work, lots of noise, noise of life. And you're in the middle of it and I was all of a sudden
outside of it. And even though it was temporary, somehow my brain believed that that is not temporary.
So for that moment, I'm like, life has stopped. It's like imagine that someone presses a pause button
on your life. And the only person who's animated is you. Nothing else moves, nothing, nothing
going on. You don't have to worry about anything. Yeah. It's like, I can do whatever and everything
else is paused. It's down there. It's like almost like, you know what the image I just had was,
what's the Marvel character flash? I think it's Marvel. Yeah. Right. Like, do you know? I think so.
Yeah. I know flash, but I don't know if it's Marvel or DC. Yeah. I always mix them up. Does that
kind of work? Yeah. In a way, I mean, he's going fast. To me, it's more of a slowing down.
Yeah. There you go. So it's almost exactly. Yeah. It's slowing down. It's relaxing. It's
it's like floating like a feather in space. And everything is in slow motion.
And this is more psychological than it is physical. But of course, so it's the physical triggers it.
I don't know if it's what which triggered which so I don't know. Yeah. But it was a feeling I had
and I'm like, oh my god, this is amazing. Yeah. And you can research on yourself as well while
you're there. Yeah. Physical changes. Yeah. Right. The international space. Yeah. I was doing some
measurements on my body to see the physical changes that happens in microgravity. A lot of my
study was actually with the European Space Agency and NASA published or gave all the data to them
to publish. But yeah, I was trying to understand what's happening to me. It was such an amazing
learning experience. I learned that as human beings were so adaptable. I mean,
everything changed about how I would eat or move or drink water or everything changed when
you're in this new environment. And it took my body about two, three days to adjust.
And then everything became normal again. And then when I came back, it was like a reset button.
It's like, oh my god, what does it mean to walk in gravity? This is crazy. I felt like I'm
sinking in the ground and moving my hand and arm became difficult. Yeah. And then we had to
I had to learn again how to move in gravity. So our bodies and mind can change between
environment, everything about your world changes. Not to be dramatic, but there's some research that
people that are in abusive relationship for X number of months. I think the number was four.
I'll have to go back and deep dive into it. It's between four and six. That there's physical
structures and electrical pattern, patterning in the brain changes. So just being in an abusive
environment, not just being in an abusive environment for not a very long amount of time
creates physical changes. And you're saying being in that environment creates all of these
other changes. I think it's part of the way we're constructed. We are we're built to survive.
So our body brain, everything starts figuring out how to survive in whatever situation is.
When something changes, your first reaction is like, I need to overcome this. I need to survive
it. So your body starts reacting to it and you know, sometimes pleasant, sometimes unpleasant,
and sometimes you know, you go through a period of unpleasant. It's until you get to a new normal.
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I don't feel like you are working on surviving. I feel like you've got that down.
But every day is survival. What are you talking about? So one time though, I believe that that
was probably very primary. When you were 14-year-old sharing stories, like there was a survival
essence there. You came as an immigrant. You didn't speak the language. You graduated.
Where did you go school? High school. What age did you come on? I was 16. So I finished high school
here in Virginia, Northern Virginia, Lake Braddock. And then I went to George Mason University.
That's right. And then George Washington for my masters.
And so in all of that, the speed of that learning a new language and having an advanced degree in
engineering, okay, not lost to me, then there's this big gap in my mind. I understand the psychology,
your makeup better now. But then to go build a huge business that was beyond financially successful,
you know, outsize that most people would ever imagine. And to have this commitment to space your
entire life, it feels like things are pretty good. Not when you're going through it, but you're now
looking back at this. So is there a couple unlocks that you might be able to share about
building the business as well? There's plenty of folks that are burnout right now that are in
the corporate world. They're grinding. They're exhausted. They have lost their way of the purpose,
their life purpose is consumed by the life purpose or the purpose of the company and they just
have swallowed up by it. And there's a human energy crisis to quote my colleague, Kathleen Hogan,
could you give a couple unlocks about folks that are wanting to take a step out and maybe start
their own thing? How would you suggest they begin? Anyone who wants to start a new company or
have an idea, the first thing I tell them, I want them to be realistic about what it takes
to build a company. Because if you enter something with the wrong expectations, then you're not
going to survive, it's going to be more difficult and it's just not going to be what you are hoping.
It would be. So if you enter this, not through the rosy glass lens of Silicon
Vani and what you hear about it, but that's going to be hard work. Lots of sleepless hour,
lots of stress requires lots of energy and sacrifice. And you're going to dedicate yourself and
life to it for a period of time. If you go into it with that expectation, then the next most
important question comes to you is, is it worth it? So are you passionate, truly about what you
want to start and build? Because that's what it takes. If you're not passionate, all this pressure
and sacrifice and stress will make you say, ah, it's not worth it and I don't want to do this
anymore. But if the end goal is so important to you that none of these things matters or actually
you don't feel the pressure, you don't feel stress because you're just excited about what you're
building. That's the type of entrepreneur who will be successful. So I think being realistic about
it's going to be hard, it's going to be very difficult. It requires a lot of sacrifice and energy
and positivity, hopefulness, all of that and not letting yourself get down when things don't work out
and having the right passion or purpose for building it, then that's what you really need.
Then comes building a team. The third thing is having the right people around you. It doesn't
have to be a large group of people, but people who will share this passion with you, who will be
on this journey with you to hold your hand to help you get up when you're down and you will be
there for them. So this sort of sense of camaraderie, friendship, trust with small group of people
that will help you through this very difficult and long journey. I think those are some of the most
important ingredients. I love it. It feels so honest. It just feels so. Yeah. So this is I think an
eloquent way into express. So this is something you've been passionate about. There's clear purpose
involved. Of course, I don't know about the teammate piece here, but I believe that you're a good
teammate and a good leader. And so give a flyover for what ex-prises and how people can be involved
in it and how you hope people can be connected to it. Express has been part of my life for over
20 some odd years. I got involved because that's how I thought I will find a way to, you know,
making my dream come true. I'm going to space and Peter D. Amanda's was the founder of Express had
announced this competition without successfully securing the funding for the competition and
happened to like a good entrepreneur. Like a good entrepreneur. He's a great entrepreneur.
And he I had at the same time sold my company in my interviews. I always talked about my passion.
I believe that if you're passionate about something, even if it's a crazy idea, you need to talk
about it because you never know who's going to read or listen to it and be in the room and help you.
So I always talked about it. So he read this, decided to come meet me and told me about this concept.
Then as an entrepreneur, it made sense to me and this is at the core of Express where
you have a big problem. In this case was opening up space to commercial activities and access to
space. So you set this target and you tell the world to go solve it, to build a solution for it
and then demonstrate the solution successfully with very measurable objectives. And then once they
do, they win the prize. In this case, they had to build a spaceship. This isn't, you know,
date 1990s early 2000. There was no SpaceX around. Nobody talked about space. Nobody imagined that
anyone other than, you know, governments should go to space. So we're asking people to go build
spaceship in their garages, fly it to space, edge of space, 100 kilometers, not once, but twice.
Without government money, they had to build one ship so they couldn't build two,
you know, prototypes and destroy it afterwards. So it had to be reusable. This is why we have
reusable space access today. So three usability was important. And once you fly and you had to
carry the equivalent weight of three people. So one pilot, two passengers, but we only wanted one
person to risk their life. So just one pilot and two, you know, big sandbags and do it within,
you know, twice within two weeks. So it's an entrepreneur. I'm like, this is amazing. I should have
done this building my company. Instead of one team working on the solution, I could have asked,
you know, hundreds of teams working on building what I wanted them to build and just pay them when
they finished, instead of, you know, stressing over it for, you know, 10 years. So it was a great
way of building difficult, complex things that are risky to me. So I said, yes, my family and I
became sponsors and I served on the board until four years ago when I became the CEO. And through
these years, after the success of the first competition, the AnsariEx Prize, we saw that this model
really works when you have big problems to solve. So we, itself, just focusing on space, we now
have applied it to seven domains. So space and exploration always is one, but we work in climate
and energy, biodiversity, learning and society, health, deep tech, quantum, food waste water.
And in each of these areas, we have targets on how to create a equitable world of abundance
in health, in food and nutrition, in, you know, energy and sustainable climate. So we have these
targets and we are launching these series of competitions on a roadmap to get us to that future.
So instead of being victims of the future, we want to become architects of the future.
And we are inviting the world to join us, to participate with us, to be a, you know,
brain trust or advisor or a visionary who will help us, you know, set these targets, find ways,
what breakthroughs we need, what behavior changes we need. You know, how can we create awareness
about the problems and bring more people, join us to join us in this movement. So everyone,
somehow they can participate on this journey as long as they see the world through this
hopeful lens that yes, we can build a better future and we can't wait for others to do it. We
can just complain about the problems. We are the place people go to when they want to take action.
As we discuss, I'm a very action oriented person. I hear all these talks at COP, at the UN General
Assembly, at, you know, World Economic Forum and all these leaders get together and talk, talk,
talk, talk, talk. Not much happens. So if you want to do something about it,
expires is the place. And we found the model. It works. It inspires innovators who didn't even
know they're going to become an entrepreneur and all of a sudden they were working on a project
in their school. It's like, oh, maybe I can use this project to solve this problem. And we give
them very specific targets. And the next thing they know, they have a team. We hope their hands
help them find capital, help them find teammates, you know, they compete and they build solutions that
will change the world and will be on this journey with them. And it's an expires family that
continues to grow with every competition. And the more people join this movement, I think the
better, you know, future we will have for humanity. It's really exciting. I mean, it's a beautiful
vision. It's got real legs and teeth to make a difference. And at some level, it feels overwhelming.
So like the purpose of finding mastery is to help people live in the present moment more often.
That's that is our sole purpose. And the reason that's so important to us is because
the present moment is where the unlock happens. It's where wisdom is revealed. It's where high
performance is expressed. It's the entryway in a flow state. Even for like for me listening to
you right now, and I've spent a lot of time thinking about purpose and the mechanisms to help that
purpose, I'm not sure how to, how would I hook in, you know, like, or somebody, not none about me,
but how would somebody that's got clear purpose? And they look at one of the seven pillars and
they say, Oh, so this is probably sitting, what I just described is probably sitting under
health. Yeah. So like, how would somebody get involved? So I say people can help us with
time treasure or talent. And it depends on the individual where they are in their life and
what they are, what they feel like they can contribute. But more than anything else,
I want them to just be curious and try to learn about our work. It's cool. I think once they
join our community, whether it's reading our newsletters or reading our posts or getting to know
the teams, we do a lot of work just highlighting the entrepreneurs who are actually making the
solution. We don't make anything at the express. We just inspire and give targets to the rest of the
world to go build. And we put them on a pedestal. So learn about what they're doing. Maybe you're
not even doing something, you know, directly with the express, but there's a team in your hometown
who's working on something that you have some talent that will help them. And then connect with
them through us and go help them build something, help them put a pitch deck together, help them.
I see. Yeah. Very cool. You know, screw a bolt that they don't know how to screw. I don't know.
But it's, it's whatever you can, there's always a need for what you're, you know, what you can
offer. There's someone, one of our teams or express itself or something that we need that you
can bring your time, treasure, talent to us and put it to great use. So inspiring. It's big.
It's got real momentum that you've been able to generate over decades. Where's the best place
that you want to drive people? So I think the best place is to go to our website and then sign up
to get the information and tell us what's your interest. And we're building more engines to really
specifically connect you with exactly what you want to be connected with. Yeah, that's great.
So right now it's a little manual, but very soon it's going to be a lot more automated. So we can
quickly make connections between what you're interested in and want to offer with a need that
us as a foundation or our community has and connects you directly with the right person and
right place. And then what about social for you? My social life or social media. Social media.
Yeah. Social has so many meanings. Yes, we're very active on both Instagram and
X now Twitter. Our logo has been taken away from us. Affiliate or not affiliate? Not affiliate at all.
I think we inspire Elon. So when we launched Express, our logo was this launch profile. So the
part of the X was this launch profile. So when Elon launched SpaceX, you know, somehow that logo
became very familiar to our express logo. And then recently, because everyone thought we're
affiliated, we changed our logo. We just made it a very simple X blackout white. And then
the next thing I know Twitter changes to X. Maybe he doesn't have a very creative, creative team.
So he gets inspired by us. I don't know. I love Elon. He's been the biggest supporter of
our work. And I don't mind it. But yes, it is. We are active on Twitter, X, whatever you call it
this days. So fun. But however, I'm excited to introduce you to our community. And I know that
there's folks right now that are going on. And so I'm really excited to share. And thank you
for your honesty, your courage in that honesty for the clarity of your how you work from the inside
out. So people can go, Oh, I can invest in that. I can solve problems and go to work. I could read
stories to other people during trauma. I could I could. And having an optimistic view about what
the three variables that are really important is you find a problem. You have the agency to take
action and you believe that it's going to work out. And then you start filling in gaps accordingly.
That's a beautiful psychological foundation to make change to live the happy life, the good life,
however you describe it. Before we go, maybe what's the good life? And I know that's a difficult
question. But as a forcing function, if you only had 20 seconds to answer it, what's the good life?
A good life for me is a life without regrets. There you go. How you doing on it?
So far so good. So far so good. Yeah. So thank you so much. I'm honored to share your insights
with our community. So thank you. Thank you.
All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us.
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