Dare to Dream Bigger - Defying Limits with XPRIZE CEO | Anousheh Ansari

Michael Gervais (0:00)

Hey, Dr. Michael Gervais here. Before we get into this week's episode, I have a really exciting announcement that I want to share. This fall, on November 7th, I'll be releasing my first book, The First Rule of Mastery, Stop Worrying About What People Think of You. It's all about understanding and overcoming what I believe to be one of the greatest constrictors of human potential, our fear of people's opinions, also known as FOPO.

I am so excited to introduce this book to you and to our community. If you feel like you're on a treadmill, chasing after the approval of others, the First Rule of Mastery is an off-ramp to a better life.

If you're interested in learning more and to pre-order the book, head over to findingmastery.com forward slash book, where you can also find some amazing pre-order bonuses that we put together for you. Again, that's findingmastery.com forward slash book. With that, let's jump right into this week's episode of Finding Mastery.

Anousheh Ansari (0:59)

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.

Michael Gervais (1:15)

Okay, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade and training a high-performance psychologist. And I am so excited to welcome Anousheh 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 XPrize 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.

Anousheh 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. Anousheh 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 Anousheh Ansari. I'm so excited to have this conversation with you.

Anousheh Ansari (3:00)

It's great to be here.

Michael Gervais (3:01)

Yeah, 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.

Anousheh Ansari (3:14)

It's a pleasure.

Michael Gervais (3:15)

Yeah. OK, 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? I think you know the moment I'm talking about.

Anousheh Ansari (3:33)

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, 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? 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, 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 involved in STEM and different technologies and made me love sci-fi and watch Star Trek in Iran growing up and 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 praying that the 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, curiosity is what's been the driving force of my life.

Michael Gervais (5:11)

Where were you on the planet and how old were you?