The astronaut says that generation Z often leaves when things become uncomfortable – there is the formation of blue origin Jeff Bezos who taught him to cross
It is not a secret that the Gen Z often gets a flak to be “lazy”. Trends from Tiktok like Quiet leaving, Mondays naked minimums and “lazy girls’ jobs, at the CEO of Gen Z who defended the work of his bed, the generation developed to apply a minimal effort. And Egyptian astronaut Sara Sabry noticed some of the same habits among young workers.
“I see a lot of young people now-they want to take the easy way without working so hard,” she said exclusively Fortune. “But the truth is that you have to make the sacrifices. You have to put yourself through a lot of discomfort.”
Sabry knows what means to look at discomfort. As the first Egyptian astronaut – and the first Arab and African woman in space – her career was shaped by brutally early mornings, periods of total isolation and even digital detoxes of social media to tighten her mental objective.
Even now that she has succeeded, the millennium still pulls 1 p.m. and juggles 3 jobs plus a doctorate in aerospace genius. And she has a message for the young generation of enthusiasts of the balance between professional and private life: success does not come to those who remain in their comfort zone.
“Especially Gen Z, every time they start to feel discomfort, they stop,” she said. “We know that there is no balance between professional and private life. My career is my life, my life is my career. I would never be at peace if I did not work so hard. ”
How the Z generation can improve to sit with discomfort
Indeed, the youngest generation of workers reshapes the world of work and obliges employers to rethink their flexible work policies, because many prefer to try to be their own boss rather than to stick to an obsolete employer. But Sabry says whether or not you take the business path or the entrepreneurial way as she did, the fundamental advice of the astronaut from those who seek to “break something” is to rethink the way the discomfort is perceived.
After all, it is not as if she really enjoyed these morning alarms at 4:30 am. Instead, it describes it as a board: the more you remember the uncomfortable position, the more you will feel the advantages later. And Sabry even has a special astronaut that trains in its sleeve which helps you sit with discomfort.
“You can excite yourself on this subject,” said an executive director of Deep Space Initiative – a non -profit organization to make space more accessible – the founder of the Egyptian space agency Ambassador program and researcher for HumanspaceFlight Lab funded by NASA.
“We have so much control over our minds, it is ridiculous that they do not teach us that at school. A large part of the training of astronauts I had to do was psychological; It was a question of changing these moments of stress by visualizing a peaceful place. ”
Before flying on the new Blue Origin rocket by Jeff Bezos on August 4, 2022, Sabry trained to feel comfortable because “when you are on a rocket, and you must have clarity.” And she says that anyone can do it, simply telling their brains that this feeling of palms and sweaty panic is proof that you grow-so instead of resisting it, leaning and using it as a signal that you are about to progress.
“So you pass the discomfort of negativity to positivity. And you know that because you feel discomfort and because you feel that you get resistance, it means that you do something great – and if what you do was not big enough, then you won’t get as much resistance, or you wouldn’t feel so much discomfort.”
