Category: Life in Switzerland

In this article I share with you the key ingredient that nurishes my constant optimism and work dedication from these days. This is about unleashing your potential. This is about strategy. Enjoy!

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Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.

Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)

This is one of my favorite quote. When I was volunteering in Nepal last year, it was extremely motivating. Sometimes when I realized how big were the problems that the people in the Himalayas were facing daily, I felt powerless. But then I would remember this quote and start doing something. It was not much, but at least it was something. Often, it would also remind me this other beautiful quote that I love:

You can not do all the good the world needs, but the world needs all the good you can do.

So, I would keep doing my little things, thinking that it was all I could do, but also the best that I could do. I had no money, no network of influential people, no building skills. But I knew quite well how to turn web technologies to my advantage and thus worked on improving the NGO’s web communication strategy.

But I was frustrated. Was this really all I could do, with what I had, right here?

I could not accept that. I could not accept that I could not do more. But I could not find any other way to do more. I had sleepless nights thinking about that. Until I found out the missing ingredient: time.

Time was the key. I was completely focused on my immediate resources, the things and skills I possessed right at that moment.

But there was something huge that I also had, and that I forgot to consider:

Potential.

Because I was stuck in projections of my immediate future actions, I completely overlooked my own potential to achieve amazing things.

So I started reconsidering my action plan, getting back to the original idea of “doing all I can, with what I have, where I am”, but this time considering a bigger timespan. What is the best I can reach in 5 years? 10 years? 25 years? How am I going to realize my full potential?

And furthermore, what should I start doing immediately to reach that?

There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.

Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)

It took me a couple more sleepless nights to figure it out, and I am not going to share the whole thing with you here now, but I can tell you: it changed the way I woke up every morning since then.

With ambitious love,

Bastien

PS: I would appreciate your thoughts on this article. Please click here or leave a comment!

Long story short: It’s Baghdad in my agenda, but I still meditate.

 

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Gosh, already one month since I last wrote you. Time is flying like a potato in a potato cannon (that is: super fast). So fast that I can hardly follow actually. I won’t review my progress with you now, I think it’s kinda long and may not be of utmost interest. Feel free to ask questions in the comments.

One interesting thing is that I have finally hit the Available Time Wall. That is, now I can’t say “yes” to anything without it having a direct consequence on my sleeping time or social life. Two months ago when I came back from Thailand I was like “Hey let’s say yes to everything without much thinking and see how things evolve, better be doing something than nothing”. I still don’t know if this was a great idea or not but let me share the results with you:

As an immediate consequence of all these networking events I attended recently, in the past two weeks I was offered 3 co-founding positions in very promising start-ups which I had to decline. I am already actively involved in 4 start-ups now and passively involved in 6 other projects. My to-do list contains 41 tasks, 8 of them being already overdued. On the other side, it forces me to optimize my time, refine my sense of priorities, brings me to heaps of events where I meet fascinating people and other inspiring peers.

And it’s incredibly exciting.

Thanks God I still meditate, more than one hour a day now. Interestingly, keeping my meditation practice is on top of my priorities, like, everything is built around it. It’s like it’s part of my everyday teeth-brushing/sleeping routine: you wouldn’t skip brushing your teeth because you are busy, would you?

Note: I am studying the opportunity of publishing a couple of home-made videos quite soon. Let’s see how you’ll react to it.

PS: I’ve hidden a couple of interesting links here and there.

With entrepreneurial love <3

B

 

It’s been now one month since I came back from Thailand. And what a month! Long story short, I already attended 7 entrepreneurship events, I won two ticket for this weekend to go to one of the biggest start-up event in Europe. I am now working on setting up my own web service and collaborating on two other ones, possibly three. I am working 10 hours a day on average, grew my LinkedIn network by 20% and learned new programming skills. Very exciting also, I am about to move out next to Lausanne by the end of the month with some of my best friends. On top of that, I have decided to work on my public speaking skills by following the Toastmasters courses, which is a consequence of my meeting with public speaking expert John Zimmer during one of my entrepreneurship course. This guy is really great (and he featured my story on his blog). I set up a daily routine that integrates two meditation sessions morning and evening, which I am super proud to have been able to maintain at 100% success for the last 30 days. I am increasing by 5 minutes the duration of the meditation sessions every week, and thus tomorrow’s sessions will last 25-min. At this rate I should reach my objective of 60-min/session twice a day by the 2nd of May 2016. My last attempt failed at 45-min/session 2 years ago when I broke up with my girlfriend. I am determined at least to beat that. Aside, I am reading Warren Buffet’s biography which is quite interesting. That’s all for today. Keeping you posted. Kiss flex.

It’s been more than a month since I arrived home. People are asking: How do you feel about going back to real life ?

And the answer is: fucking good. For real life has no constraining meaning to me yet. My real life was first about going to weddings, Christmas parties, new year parties and celebrating reunions with friends. Still, I haven’t had enough time yet to meet all the people I want to see.

But this is not what my idea of real life is really about. If I was so enthusiastic about coming home, it is because I had great plans that needed a stable, rock-solid environment to build on. I want to achieve great things in the forthcoming years, and for that I need a top-notch daily routine that does not let me waste my time. A virtuous routine encouraging introspection and action, that motivates me to do nothing less than my very best and work hard every single moment. That’s why I came back to Switzerland. Because here I can get that. Here I can build that. Together with all of you.

So I took eight days of almost complete isolation very recently in order to make a deep clean of my environment here: cleaning the room, cleaning the long-awaiting administrative tasks that stacked upon my shoulders. Cleaning my spirit with meditation and yoga exercises. But also cleaning the body: I fasted four days. I abstained eating. I only drank juices. This was an amazing experience about myself that lightened my relation to food and hunger. I prepared for two days prior to fasting by progressively removing some food. Then I took one day for readaptation.

During these days, I also spent time considering my future. My values. What I want to be, and what I want to do. For that, I read a very interesting book on self-development by Robin Sharma and also answered these 27 questions to find your passion from Live Your Legend, an online community of people actively working on living their dream. I applied and was admitted to a weekly three-months-long entrepreneurship program funded by the government. I met start-ups and companies to discuss job opportunities that helped me identifying more clearly my interests.

This leads us to today, Saturday the 23rd of January. In four hours, I will be in a plane going to Thailand with my father. For three weeks, I will have the opportunity to rediscover my own culture, which I haven’t experienced for ten years. Back in those times, I was a sixteen-years-old kid. A baby. It’s now time to get to know my roots. Get to know the source of my father’s life teachings. With him. And get to know the color of the blood that flows through my veins. I expect this to be the last chapter of this great journey I started almost one year ago. The closing chapter that will offer me the opportunity to start writing a new book immediately afterwards: the book of my entrepreneurship life.