Billionaire Jared Isaacman made history in space — again.

On Thursday, Isaacman spent 10 minutes floating in the vacuum of space outside of a SpaceX capsule. Isaacman, the billionaire CEO and founder of payment processing company Shift4 Payments, is part of the first-ever all-civilian spacewalk — three years after he led a 2021 SpaceX mission as commander of the world’s first all-civilian mission to reach orbit.

Both private space missions were funded for undisclosed sums by Isaacman, who boasts an estimated net worth of $1.9 billion, according to Forbes.

“I decided I was going to go to space when I was 5 [years old]. I was pretty calculated about it at that point, it just took me a little while to get it into motion,” Isaacman told CNBC Make It in 2021.

Isaacman, 41, is an accomplished pilot who set a world record in 2009 for the fastest around-the-world flight in a light jet. He’s a longtime advocate for the expansion of the private space industry, which he says could lead to “a world where everybody can go and venture among the stars.”

Here’s how he went from teenage entrepreneur, running a business he founded in his parents’ New Jersey basement, to a billionaire floating in space.

As a teenager, Isaacman’s computer skills helped him land an IT consulting job at a payment processing firm, causing him to drop out of high school. Within months, the 16-year-old decided to create a rival company, simplifying his clients’ experience by having business owners fill out their applications online.

He used a $10,000 check from his grandfather as seed money and set up shop in his childhood home’s basement. “$10,000, you know, you needed to build a couple of computers,” Isaacman said. “That wasn’t expensive. And, you needed some phones, and that was enough to get you going.”

His first employees included his friend Brendan Lauber, who was Shift4’s chief technology officer until last year, and Isaacman’s dad, a salesman who had previously worked for a home security company.

Shift4 went public in June 2020, and has a market value of $7.4 billion, as of Friday afternoon. It’s based out of a 75,000-square-foot headquarters in Center Valley, Pennsylvania, and the company has over 2,000 employees across the country.

“There’s just no way, at that age, you could ever imagine” the company becoming worth billions of dollars, said Isaacman. “One of the best times at a startup is when you’ve got the eight people in the basement eating Chinese food and everybody kind of shares knowledge, and you share in your successes and failures together, and you learn together.”

Working constantly to get his business off the ground, at such a young age, left Isaacman on the verge of early burnout. A lifelong plane enthusiast, Isaacman started taking flying lessons in his 20s to burn off some steam.

In 2009, Isaacman set a world record, flying around the word in a Cessna Citation CJ2 in just under 62 hours — about 20 fewer hours than the previous record-holder. Three years later, he founded Draken International, a company that trains student pilots for the U.S. Air Force. He sold it to investment firm Blackstone Group in 2020 for “a nine-figure sum,” according to Forbes.

As the private space industry grew, Isaacman watched opportunities to take his flying hobby to greater heights, he said: “Probably starting in 2007, I started banging on the door of SpaceX and some of the other [private aerospace companies] just expressing my interest that, you know, ‘Hey, if it ever comes to be, look me up.'”

The chance came in 2021, when he spent three days in orbit commanding a four-person crew. During his five-day trip this week, he got to don a spacesuit and leave the capsule.

“As far as I’m concerned, I’m super lucky in life,” Isaacman told Bloomberg, ahead of the spacewalk. “You know — teenage basement startup, just trying to buy pizza on the weekend, and it’s turned into quite the empire.”

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If you want your degree to help you land a fulfilling job, consider studying music therapy.

The medical and therapeutic fields are among the college majors helping graduates get jobs that make the world a better place, according to graduates surveyed in a recent Payscale report.

Alumni with bachelor’s degrees in music therapy are most likely to do this kind of fulfilling work, with 95% of degree-holders saying their work makes the world a better place, Payscale finds. Music therapy programs cover coursework in music, music therapy, science and psychology, according to the American Music Therapy Association. 

“Knowledge and skills are developed through coursework and clinical training, which cover the theory and practical application of music therapy treatment procedures and techniques,” the organization states on its website. 

Music therapists may work in traditional settings, offering services to clients working through physical disabilities or mental health issues. People in hospice care, substance abuse programs and cancer treatment centers have also benefited from music therapist visits, according to the AMTA.

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However, those positions often don’t pay top dollar. The median income for music therapy degree-holders is just $49,400 in the first five years of working, and $64,900 with 10 or more years of experience.

Other degrees can pay better, though. Here are the nine majors and degrees that alumni are most likely to say led to meaningful careers, according to Payscale.

• Percent of alumni who say their work makes a positive difference: 95%
• Early career median pay: $49,400
• Midcareer median pay: $64,900

• Percent of alumni who say their work makes a positive difference: 92%
• Early career median pay: $58,200
• Midcareer median pay: $84,000

• Percent of alumni who say their work makes a positive difference: 91%
• Early career median pay: $78,100
• Midcareer median pay: $109,500

• Percent of alumni who say their work makes a positive difference: 90%
• Early career median pay: $43,500
• Midcareer median pay: $59,200

• Percent of alumni who say their work makes a positive difference: 89%
• Early career median pay: $45,400
• Midcareer median pay: $51,800

• Percent of alumni who say their work makes a positive difference: 89%
• Early career median pay: $67,800
• Midcareer median pay: $77,900

• Percent of alumni who say their work makes a positive difference: 88%
• Early career median pay: $74,300
• Midcareer median pay: $92,900

• Percent of alumni who say their work makes a positive difference: 88%
• Early career median pay: $57,500
• Midcareer median pay: $112,700

• Percent of alumni who say their work makes a positive difference: 88%
• Early career median pay: $44,700
• Midcareer median pay: $82,400

As evidenced by alumni earnings in fields such as radiation and physical therapies, you don’t always have to choose between a high salary and a high sense of meaning. Workers with those degrees go on to earn median midcareer salaries above $100,000.

Graduates who hold the highest-paying bachelor’s degree — petroleum engineering — earn a median of $212,100 with 10 or more years of experience, but just 60% of workers say their work makes the world a better place, Payscale finds.

Whether you’d prefer more meaning or more money in your career is up to you. For plenty of jobs, it doesn’t matter what you actually majored in as long as you can demonstrate competency in the required skills. 

“For the vast majority of jobs, employers don’t care what you major in,” Christine Cruzvergara, chief education strategy officer at Handshake, a job platform for early talent and Gen Z, told CNBC Make It last year. 

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Danielle and Kreg Jones have a history of renovating homes together and run their own New Hampshire-based architecture firm, Inscription Architects. In 2020, the couple decided they wanted a project they could take on with their son, who had just graduated high school, while he still lived at home.

“Kreg had grown up doing all kinds of projects and building things with his mom, so we wanted to do the same thing with our son so that he could learn how to build and fix whatever goes wrong in a house,” Danielle tells CNBC Make It.

The couple relocated from their home state of Montana to New Hampshire in 2016 to downsize, they say, And it took them almost five years to find a permanent home in the state. On five different occasions, the Jones’ had their attempt to buy a house fall through.

That changed when they came across a 19th-century schoolhouse in Weare, a small town just outside of the state’s capital.

The North Weare Schoolhouse is a historic building built in 1856. It was a public school until 1952, and then used as a town meeting place until the 1980s. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1995.

The schoolhouse had been listed for sale for 15 years as a commercial property, the couple says, but just a few days before they found it, the listing changed to a residential one. Danielle and Kreg toured the property in February 2021 and put an offer in the next day. The $210,000 offer was accepted, and the two took possession of the abandoned schoolhouse in March 2021, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.

“We love old historic buildings to begin with,” Kreg says. “It was in great shape in terms of the foundation and it had huge volume inside and we saw a lot of opportunity to do something with that.”

Danielle adds that architecturally speaking, the building was perfect because it is very proportional, thanks to its 14 to 21 foot ceilings and large windows.

“Even though it’s a big volume, it’s very comfortable. Everything is classically proportioned and symmetrical. It just feels like a good space to inhabit,” she says.

The Jones’ spent $220,000 and eight months turning the schoolhouse into a three-bedroom, two-and-a-half bathroom home.

Though the two have worked on many projects together, this one was extra special because they were working alongside their son, too.

“The most important piece was to spend time together and do this with our son to teach him and train him because, at that point, he wasn’t ready to do something else after high school,” Kreg says.

The family wanted the renovation to stay true to the historic nature of the property. They preserved the original floors, ceiling, chalk rails, stairway, doors, storm windows and even a wall from the early 1900s that had the name of school children carved into it.

“We wanted to add a little color and life to it as well. I still feel like our design is very respectful even though it’s colorful and fun,” Danielle adds.

The couple has lived in the converted schoolhouse for over three years now, and Danielle says she still loves how much light comes into the space.

“These buildings were built before electricity, so they needed great big windows. Any time of the day, it doesn’t matter what it is, there’s light in the living room,” she says. “It’s just like being outside.”

“It’s just kind of fun to be able to live in a place that we rebuilt for ourselves,” Kreg adds.

Danielle says the biggest lesson she learned from this project is that you have to be willing to try something new and different without caring about what others will think.

“Just try it because there aren’t many things that are actually irreversible,” she says.

The couple says they tend to live in a house for a couple years before feeling ready to move on to their next project. This time, they don’t feel that sense of urgency.

“We’ve been married 27 years and our record is four years in a house and for the first time, we’re not getting antsy. We’re not ready to go anywhere, so this is probably going to be our record house even if it isn’t our forever one,” Kreg says.

“We never anticipate the next project coming. They just seem to come to us, so right now we don’t have any plans for a new project but we’ll see what happens,” Danielle added.

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Like a lot of hiring managers, Adriane Schwager likes to ask candidates about times in their career they’ve made a mistake. Usually, it’s to get an idea of how you handle stressful situations and how you learn from previous errors.

For Schwager, the CEO and co-founder of the hiring platform GrowthAssistant with 20 years of recruiting experience, the answer can uncover a big red flag: whether the person has low ownership of their work.

In listening to the response, Schwager tells CNBC Make It that she tries to assess whether the person can own up to the mistake, or if it seems like they’re making it out to be someone else’s fault.

Take an example where someone forgot to send something important to accounting, and it cost the business $250,000, she says. If the candidate discusses how the accident was the result of someone else not sending them the right information, or their manager not helping to provide oversight, “and it turns into someone else’s fault, that shows me they have low ownership,” Schwager says.

On the other hand, she says, a better response might be: “I didn’t send something to accounting once and it cost us $250,000. I thought I was going to lose my job. So I immediately created a calendar reminder so that I send that to accounting every Tuesday.”

“I believe that all situations are co-created, and we all play a part in some of this failure,” Schwager says. “A company fails, your department fails — even if you aren’t running that department, you still played a part in it. That doesn’t make you good or bad. It just is. So be aware of your participation in that outcome, and be able to talk about the learning you had from it.”

Ultimately, Schwager says, “I need somebody who is that aware of how they participated in the outcome.”

Sometimes, she can also tell whether a candidate has low ownership based on how they describe why they left their previous job.

For example, if someone says “I left because my manager had it out for me” or “I wasn’t being managed well,” Schwager says she wants to hear about whether the candidate tried to take ownership and manage up.

Or, if they burned out at a previous job, Schwager wants to know if they learned from the situation to identify their burnout patterns, can communicate them to a boss or colleagues, and that they have acquired strategies to cope: “They recognized it, they learned from it, and they’ve applied those changes to their to experiences.”

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Many of us claim to want to live to 100, but we don’t always do what it takes to increase our chances of getting there.  

I’ve spent years studying and writing about traditional Italian habits for living la dolce vita. When it comes to exceeding the average life expectancy, I can’t help but be inspired by the inhabitants of Sardinia, especially Ogliastra, Barbagia di Ollolai and Barbagia of Seulo. They comprise what’s called a “Blue Zone,” an area of the world where people tend to live exceptionally long lives.

Longevity researcher Dr. Giovanni Mario Pes and his colleagues discovered that happy, productive centenarians were not outliers in this part of Sardinia. When compared to other parts of the world, there are more people here celebrating their 100th birthdays and beyond. 

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You might think good genes alone are required to be able to live to 100. But Pes offers a more hopeful narrative for those of us who might not be so fortunate. While genetics do have some impact on longevity, according to Pes, they most likely account for only about 20% to 25% of differences in lifespan.

Lifestyle habits — which we can control — drive the rest. And we can learn from the cultural traditions and lifestyle habits Sardinian elders have maintained.

Here are some practices that may be linked to their exceptional longevity — and may help the rest of us live longer, healthier lives.

The people of this Sardinian Blue Zone have no use for a grueling morning workout followed by a day of inertia. Instead, they continually move their bodies while performing ordinary tasks. 

The hilly landscape provides plenty of opportunities to get the heart rate up and strengthen leg muscles without needing a treadmill or mechanical stair-stepper. Outdoor activities like shepherding, farming, gardening, walking, and foraging for wild greens and mushrooms burn calories and keep the body and mind strong. 

Research has found that physical activity has a major influence on health and longevity, so it makes sense to follow Sardinians’ example in this regard.

We might not all be fortunate enough to live in an environment where we can be active all day without even trying, but we can find opportunities to increase physical activity by taking a daily brisk walk, getting up from the couch during TV commercials and marching in place, and taking the stairs instead of an elevator whenever feasible. 

You won’t find most elders in this Blue Zone chomping on a fast-food hamburger with one hand on a steering wheel. Nor are they likely to be found paying hundreds of Euros for a fancy meal at a five-star restaurant.  

They’ve traditionally opted for locally grown ingredients and simple, seasonal food combinations made in their own kitchens without appliances that do the work for them. Staying loyal to these culinary traditions and dietary practices has a positive effect not only on their bodies, but also on their well-being. 

Sardinians tend to eat fresh, home-cooked meals. There are no additives or preservatives when they make their own pasta or bread, like pistoccu bread or su coccoi sourdough bread.

They eat meat only four or five times a month. The bulk of their protein comes from beans, a rich source of fiber and other important nutrients.

A glass or two of local Cannonau red wine with some bread and cheese is a snack shared with friends in a celebratory moment of relaxation.

One way to avoid the common temptation to eat fast food on the run is to prepare simple recipes like Sardinian pasta fagioli or minestrone soup on the weekend and keep a bowl of fresh fruit always within reach on the kitchen counter. 

The oldest Sardinians report high levels of psychological well-being and low levels of depressive symptoms, thanks in part to their resilience and social ties. 

The elders of this part of the island aren’t isolated. Instead, they enjoy an important role both within their families and in the broader community. They’re given an honored place at the family table. Their wisdom is valued by the younger generations.

They find purpose and solidarity in communal activities such as shared meals, religious ceremonies, a game of bocce (similar to lawn bowling), gardening, or just hanging out with each other for a good long chat and a stress-reducing dose of laughter.  

It’s hard not to fall into a pattern of self-isolation, mesmerized by a TV or computer screen for hours. One idea to help reverse this trend is to invite: Ask a neighbor to take a walk with you, or invite friends over for an impromptu spaghettata di mezzanote, or “midnight spaghetti.”

The older residents of Sardinia and other parts of Italy tend to be religious. Some research has shown prayer and spirituality may account for life satisfaction as we age. The social interaction associated with religious services also contributes to a positive outlook on life.

Not everyone adheres to a formal religion, and you don’t need to in order to learn from Sardinian centenarians. Consider alternative ways to gain a sense of spirituality, like joining a meditation workshop, developing a yoga practice, or starting an inspirational book club.

Raeleen D’Agostino Mautner, Ph. D. is a widely published writer and authority on ways to adopt Italian cultural traditions to enhance personal contentment and well-being. She’s the author of ”45 Ways to Live Like An Italian: Italian-Inspired Self-Care Traditions for Everyday Happiness,” ”Living la Dolce Vita: Italian Secrets to Living a Healthy, Passionate, and Well-Balanced Life,″ and ”Lemons into Limoncello: From Loss to Personal Renaissance with the Zest of Italy.″

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