Welcome back to the series where we look to the stars to better understand ourselves. As a coach, my work often begins in a place of subtle misalignment. I speak with people who have checked all the right boxes, yet they carry a persistent, nagging feeling that something is off. They feel like they’re playing a role, following a script that was handed to them, their own inner voice growing fainter with each passing year. It’s the feeling of living an artificial life.
As we’ve explored before, I believe the most profound truths about the human condition are often found not in textbooks, but in stories. It’s why this series uses science fiction as a powerful thought experiment for the soul. By taking our deepest anxieties and placing them in a futuristic, unfamiliar world, sci-fi allows us to see our own lives with shocking clarity. It uses the unreal to reveal what is most real about us.
For this series, we are diving into a book that takes this exploration to its absolute limit: Andy Weir's modern survival masterpiece, The Martian.
On the surface, it’s a brilliant technical manual disguised as a novel—a testament to human ingenuity and the power of engineering. But beneath the gripping story of survival, it is a relentless, practical investigation into the very things my clients and I explore every day: How do we find confidence when all the odds are against us? What does true authenticity look like in the face of despair? How do we build a balanced, fulfilling life when everything is going south?
The book’s central conflict revolves around astronaut Mark Watney, who is stranded alone on Mars and presumed dead. With limited supplies and a monumental series of problems to solve, his journey becomes a masterclass in functional psychology. He doesn't have the luxury of existential angst; he has to get to work. His approach to survival—scientific, irreverent, and profoundly human—gives us a rugged, functional model for navigating the chaos of modern professional and personal life.
Over the next seven articles, we will journey to the Red Planet together. We will use the central themes of Watney’s struggle as a lens to examine our own. We will explore how his mantra to “science the sh*t out of it” is a new manifesto for confidence, how his unfiltered video logs illustrate the radical act of an authentic voice, and how his choice to “get to work” is the most practical definition of fearlessness. This series is an invitation to look at the unforgiving landscape of Mars and, in its reflection, see our own capacity for resilience and grit more clearly.
