Chris Hadfield Quotes

25 Sourced Quotes

People tend to think astronauts have the courage of a superhero - or maybe the emotional range of a robot. But in order to stay calm in a high-stress, high-stakes situation, all you really need is knowledge. Sure, you might still feel a little nervous or stressed or hyper-alert. But what you won't feel is terrified.

Chris Hadfield
Focus on the journey, not on arriving at a certain destination.

Chris Hadfield
Success is feeling good about the work you do throughout the long, unheralded journey that may or may not wind up at the launch pad. You can't view training solely as a stepping stone to something loftier. It's got to be an end in itself.

Chris Hadfield
Square astronaut, round hole. But somehow, I'd managed to push myself through it, and here was the truly amazing part: along the way, I'd become a good fit. It had only taken 21 years.

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

Chris Hadfield
Still, I also know that most people, including me, tend to applaud the wrong things: the showy, dramatic record-setting sprint rather than the years of dogged preparation or the unwavering grace displayed during a string of losses. Applause, then, never bore much relation to the reality of my life as an astronaut, which was not all about, or even mostly about, flying around in space.

Chris Hadfield
To me, it's simple: if you've got the time, use it to get ready. What else could you possibly have to do that's more important? Yes, maybe you'll learn how to do a few things you'll never wind up actually needing to do, but that's a much better problem to have than needing to do something and having no clue where to start.

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

Chris Hadfield
Good leadership means leading the way, not hectoring other people to do things your way.

Chris Hadfield
It's almost comical that astronauts are stereotyped as daredevils and cowboys. As a rule, we're highly methodical and detail-oriented. Our passion isn't for thrills but for the grindstone, and pressing our noses to it.

Chris Hadfield
You can't change the bricks, and together, you still have to build a wall.

Chris Hadfield
Anticipating problems and figuring out how to solve them is actually the opposite of worrying: it's productive.

Chris Hadfield
Our training pushes us to develop a new set of instincts: instead of reacting to danger with a fight-or-flight adrenaline rush, we're trained to respond unemotionally by immediately prioritizing threats and methodically seeking to defuse them. We go from wanting to bolt for the exit to wanting to engage and understand what's going wrong, then fix it.

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

Chris Hadfield
In any field, it's a plus if you view criticism as potentially helpful advice rather than as a personal attack.

Chris Hadfield
It's like being a newborn, this sudden sensory overload of noise, color, smells and gravity after months of quietly floating, encased in relative calm and isolation. No wonder babies cry in protest when they're born.

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

Chris Hadfield
There's really just one thing I can control: my attitude during the journey, which is what keeps me feeling steady and stable, and what keeps me headed in the right direction. So I consciously monitor and correct, if necessary, because losing attitude would be far worse than not achieving my goal.

Chris Hadfield
As I have discovered again and again, things are never as bad (or as good) as they seem at the time.

Chris Hadfield
In my experience, fear comes from not knowing what to expect and not feeling you have any control over what's about to happen. When you feel helpless, you're far more afraid than you would be if you knew the facts.

Chris Hadfield
I wasn't destined to be an astronaut. I had to turn myself into one.

Chris Hadfield
Early success is a terrible teacher. You're essentially being rewarded for a lack of preparation, so when you find yourself in a situation where you must prepare, you can't do it. You don't know how.

Chris Hadfield
Life off Earth is in two important respects not at all unworldly: you can choose to focus on the surprises and pleasures, or the frustrations. And you can choose to appreciate the smallest scraps of experience, the everyday moments, or to value only the grandest, most stirring ones.

Chris Hadfield
My optimism and confidence come not from feeling I'm luckier than other mortals, and they sure don't come from visualizing victory. They're the result of a lifetime spent visualizing defeat and figuring out how to prevent it. Like most astronauts, I'm pretty sure that I can deal with what life throws at me because I've thought about what to do if things go wrong, as well as right. That's the power of negative thinking.

Chris Hadfield
It's not enough to shelve your own competitive streak. You have to try, consciously, to help others succeed.

Chris Hadfield