The Astronaut Rejection That Changed Everything
12 min read
In 2008, I applied to become an ESA astronaut. I was living in Kourou, French Guiana, launching Ariane 5 rockets. I had the aerospace engineering background, the international experience, the physical fitness. I thought I was the perfect candidate.
The rejection letter arrived six months later. It was polite, professional, and devastating.
I had staked my entire identity on this trajectory: aerospace engineer, rocket scientist, astronaut. Each step was supposed to lead to the next. The logic was impeccable. The plan was perfect. The only problem was that I had never asked myself whether this was actually what I wanted — or whether I was chasing a version of success that someone else had defined for me.
That rejection cracked something open. Not immediately — it took years of sitting with the discomfort, of working at NASA on ISS thermal simulations, of moving to Japan for medical robotics, of becoming a parent. Each experience added data points to a pattern I could not yet see.
The pattern was this: I was excellent at mastering external systems and terrible at understanding my internal one. I could simulate heat transfer across a spacecraft hull but could not name what I was feeling in my own body. I could manage international engineering teams but could not have an honest conversation with the people closest to me.
Coaching found me — or I found it — through Martha Beck's work. The first time someone asked me to "drop into my body and notice what was there," I felt nothing. Literally nothing. That absence of sensation was the most important data point of my career.
Today, I work with engineers and technical professionals who are where I was: accomplished, capable, and quietly miserable. The rejection that felt like the end of my career was actually the beginning of my real work.