Cosmonauts Are Made, Not Born—And That Path Is Open to Many!

Today, having come right up to the fifty-year mark, I can say with confidence: I have managed to find my calling and to fulfill my potential. That is happiness! The only thing is that I walked the path to it intuitively rather than deliberately.

And what happens when an intuitive path leads you somewhere else? When the result brings no joy, we tend to shift the responsibility: bad luck, fate, circumstances. There is a well-known thought attributed to Carl Jung: until the unconscious becomes conscious, it will rule our lives and we will call it fate. That is exactly why it is so important to work out deliberately what stands behind our decisions and actions and shapes our path.

Looking back and breaking what you have lived through into separate elements, you begin to see the connections, the personal attitudes, and everything that in the end allowed me to be where I am today. You realize: this is neither chance nor luck—there are definite patterns behind it all.

Self-realization is one of the key goals for every person. But it is also an important task for society as a whole: people who have found their place create value around them. Can you arrive at it deliberately? What determines hardiness, and how do you find your strong line? Let us work it out together.

Storytelling. The lecture is built on Alexander’s experience—from the dream of becoming a cosmonaut to making it real—and on the stories of other people. The lecture is accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation with integrated photo and video material, and a dialogue with the audience is maintained, including a warm-up quiz about space.

The lecture “Cosmonauts Are Made, Not Born—And That Path Is Open to Many!” will be of interest to:

1. outreach organizations and educational foundations;
2. educational institutions (schools, colleges, universities);
3. organizers of youth forums and development programs;
4. parents;
5. young people at the stage of choosing a profession and a path in life;
6. people in a career transition.

1. Happiness is when what you do becomes what you want. The path to it runs through self-realization.
2. In any undertaking the first step is the right question to yourself; setting a goal is the second.
3. Hardiness is determined by three basic attitudes—control, commitment, challenge—and they can be developed.
4. The main skills demanded of cosmonaut candidates are needed in any profession.
5. Your strong line is the thing you do best, and it is the first thing worth developing.
6. A dream is desirable; a goal is essential.
7. A self-realized person creates value for others not because they have to, but because they cannot do otherwise.

INTRODUCTION:

To create a sense of what human spaceflight is like, an eight-minute video about Alexander’s spaceflights will be shown at in-person events, accompanied by his own voice commentary. The introduction closes with the experiments on the ISS that make a human being necessary in orbit: from plasma physics to 3D bioprinting.

HAPPINESS AND THE RIGHT QUESTION:

Alexander largely walked his own path to orbit intuitively. The deliberate path begins with what every person wants—with happiness:

1. happiness is always wanting what you do (a well-known thought often attributed to Leo Tolstoy);
2. the ability to ask yourself the right questions helps you reach such happiness (a thought of the businessman Oskar Hartmann);
3. setting a goal is only the second step (the story of choosing a profession at 14).

HARDINESS:

Asking the right question is half the job: some people take the next step, others explain why they do not (a conversation with the Japanese entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa, who flew in Alexander’s crew). Research by the psychologist Salvatore Maddi links this difference to three basic attitudes:

1. control—“it depends on me” (Sergei Korolev’s note “The Moon is solid”);
2. commitment—“I care” (Korolev and GIRD—the Group for the Study of Reactive Motion);
3. challenge—“through hardships to the stars” (the same note, “The Moon is solid”).

All three attitudes worked along Alexander’s path into the profession, a path first sketched out by his schoolteacher: the flying club, the flight school, the cosmonaut corps. They are not innate—they can be developed, just like abilities (Carol Dweck’s “growth mindset”).

THE NECESSARY SKILLS AND ABILITIES:

The attitudes give you the resolve to take on difficult things and to master and apply the skills that carry the work through to a result. The three main requirements for candidates were named to Alexander by psychologists at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center:

1. the ability to work in a team;
2. the ability to work under stress;
3. the ability to learn new things.

On top of these three you need a sense of humor—one of the manifestations of positive thinking. The same three skills are needed in any profession: the historian Yuval Noah Harari and the physicist Max Tegmark name qualities close to them as a person’s protection against being displaced by artificial intelligence, and they add creativity (the story of a call to a live radio show, after which Alexander learned about the selection).

SELF-REALIZATION. THE PATH TO HAPPINESS:

The attitudes, the right questions, the strong line, and the skills add up to a single path, step by step:

1. at the base—hardiness;
2. the direction is set by the right questions to yourself and by your strong line (advice from Sargylana Zakharova, a psychologist at the Cosmonaut Training Center);
3. above that—openness to learning and the habit of doing everything at 110% (a regiment commander’s rule and the experience of preparing for the first flight);
4. the top steps—teamwork and stress resistance, which sport develops best of all (the example of four-time Olympic champion Ludmilla Tourischeva).

WHAT SETS THINGS IN MOTION. ENERGY, DREAM, GOAL:

To set out along this path you need energy, and every person has more of it than it seems (the story of what cosmonauts carry to the rocket in their small cases). A dream helps you direct that energy into the work even when you are afraid. If there is no dream, it is worth looking for a goal:

1. you can find your strong line by trial, provided you see every attempt through to the end (the example of Vladimir Pozner);
2. a goal can be derived by counting backwards, by asking yourself: “How do I want to live in 10–15 years? What is my strong line? What profession will join the two together?”;
3. a dream is desirable, a goal is essential: “The goal you set is the life you get” (Igor Mann).

VALUE FOR OTHERS. Conclusion:

Doing work you love is the most effective way to meet your basic needs, and once they are met, the next one appears, in Abraham Maslow’s terms—to make the world around you a little better. Leo Tolstoy himself has words about happiness—“to live for another.” A self-realized person creates value for others (the Sozidanie foundation and the B-612 nonprofit founded by Alexander).

1. learn what elements make up a deliberate path to self-realization;
2. get to know the three hardiness attitudes and see how they work on the path into a profession;
3. understand why a cosmonaut’s main skills are needed in any profession in the age of artificial intelligence;
4. receive the questions that help you find your strong line and your goal;
5. hear real stories—from a schoolboy’s dream to a spaceflight.

60–90 minutes, including Q&A.