So, when you get these positive results, you will understand that your fear, ultimately, was irrational as it often is. We are often very afraid of things that will never happen. We are the best… From an animal species point of view, we are really those who are most capable of telling ourselves stories and imagining things that will never happen to us.
There is also a quote from Mark Twain, a famous American writer, that I tell very often because I find it brilliant and which says that I am an old man… I paraphrase it, it is not the exact quote, but he says: “I am an old man and I have known a lot of problems in my life, but most of them never happened”. So basically, he stressed a lot about things that ultimately did not happen.
So, as we have this tendency to tell ourselves stories and to stress in a thoughtless and irrational way, it is important to move forward step by step but always focus on action, which is
I have some little practical tips to offer you on the subject. The first tip, before starting, if, let's imagine you have a project that scares you a lot but that seems to you to be a project that will change your life, that is super important.
By the way, a little aside, it's often what scares me the most that's worth it the most. I don't know if you've noticed this, but in my life, my personal life, it's what scared me the most that has brought me the most.
If I think back to my expatriation to Austria in 2007, I was very scared actually. I had just finished my studies, I hadn't had my first job yet. I was offered my first job in Austria, I was going to a france whatsapp number data country where I didn't speak the language, where Céline who became my wife and who was my girlfriend at the time didn't speak the language, I was very scared and I did it, we did it, and it was a fantastic experience that we don't regret at all. Today, we are very happy to have done it.
So a lot of fear often equals a lot of rewards behind it. It's the same for Authentic French. The first time I got behind a camera to try to help non-French speakers better understand French, I was very afraid, really very afraid, and I did it. Today, Authentic French is one of the projects I'm most proud of. So, we can also use fear as an indicator of the quality of the projects we think about doing. If something doesn't scare you, maybe it's not a really good project for you.
Now that we have defined all that, I can give you a few little tips if you, precisely, want to start a project that scares you. The first is, think about the worst that can happen, because the idea is not to be excessively courageous, it is not to be too courageous. Sometimes, there are things that are too dangerous and that we should not do. It is not because something scares us very much and we know deep down that the things that scare us are often good things for us that we should launch into any project just because it scares us. That is obviously not what we are trying to do.
So the first thing to do is to say to yourself: "OK. What's the worst thing that could happen to me if I follow this project?" For Austria, the worst thing that could happen to me would have been that we didn't adapt at all, that Céline and I were unhappy and that we were forced to return after a month or two and go live with our parents for example. So, it's not the kind of thing where you say to yourself: "Oh no! I don't want to take that risk. This risk is too great." But it's good to ask yourself the question whatever the project.
If you have another project where you feel that the worst that could happen to you would be something dramatic, maybe it's worth not doing it. Sometimes, fear is a good advisor. Sometimes, as I said, fear is there to advise us.