How 3 words will change your life | Johanna Feick | TEDxTwenteU

I wish I had the courage to live

life

true to myself and not according to the expectations and desires of others. Now not living

life

true to oneself is one of the main regrets of older people according to Prony Wear's famous book, Dy's main regrets. and I think we've all been through situations where we've given up before we even start telling ourselves we can't and then we won't, we'll fulfill our own prophecy that I grew up with. Germany I moved to a small town when I was a kid, the kind of small town that even 10 years later people still consider you an outsider and I was a misfit.

My dreams of succeeding, traveling the world and moving abroad were seen. like fairy tale beliefs so ridiculous maybe even as an offense and I was told that I can't, that people like us can't now for a long time in my life, that used to be my excuse for big dreams and small ones alike. I told myself I couldn't, his prophecy became mine until I decided to

change

. Now I can still remember that moment as vividly as if it were yesterday. I was walking through the small forest in spring, a priest flowed around me circulating flowers everywhere. in the air I felt like I was in some kind of movie because that was the moment I had some kind of epiphany.

I was just out of high school and knew exactly what was expected of me. I almost felt like my whole life has been written by someone else I have to study I have to find a stable job get married and have children but at 19 that's not exactly what I want to do I want to travel the world and I want to learn about life and the people and I and I am so young and hopeful and creative and full of ideas and once again I find myself faced with a very familiar reality. They tell me I can't, that people like me can't, but not me.

I don't want to be limited by how other people want my life to be, so at that very moment, standing in this little forest surrounded by all these beautiful pink flower petals, I start entertaining myself with a single thought: how can I? and I'll do it. I want to travel first, so I start researching visa requirements, the cost of living, the plane ticket, all these things that I had absolutely nothing to do with until that moment. I researched it, made a plan, executed it and two months later I'm sitting on a plane. to South Korea completely alone at 19, barely able to speak Korean, knowing full well that speaking English won't be enough and with enough money in my pockets for about two months, the idea that I can do it was still just a concept. inside my mind, it was unproven, but I am determined to prove it and my own doubts are wrong and it works.

I stay for the entire duration of my Visa, 12 months in total. I even traveled to Thailand and Japan. I pick up different odd jobs and finally I even got my first real job as a marketing manager and I come back to Germany and I'm full of motivation. I moved to a big city, found a company, and my team, my co-founders and I, made it work. at the age of 22 I can already fulfill one of my dreams by living my passion by leading products and teams in technology and now, just a few years later, I am very grateful to be in a position where I can support other people on their journey wondering how can I even gave myself the opportunity to prove that I can and gave myself the opportunity to live life true to myself now finding out how you can is quite an exciting journey and it is not easy but it is worth it, first we must clearly identify what is what we want in life, but knowing what you want is not enough, you have to dig a little deeper, maybe you are familiar with Simon Sy's famous talk, start with why and so we must also start with why we should ask ourselves why over and over again until we get to the bottom of what we really want in life if you seek wealth and success because you hope so.

It

will

help you find love, maybe it

will

serve you better to look for love, but even when we understand why we stay stuck so often. I've seen this many times firsthand, people who have this Grand Vision of how they like life should be, but never. really wondering how they can achieve it, it almost seems as if the fear gap of asking how is as big as the fear of taking action itself, if we don't ask ourselves how we can, we can tell ourselves that everything we want in life is just a belief fairy tale that it is what it is and that nothing can be done and that can be strangely comfortable because we can discharge a whole part of responsibility, we can also avoid some kind of pain that we do not ask anyone about. that we like dating because we fear rejection, we don't

change

careers even if we don't like our current one because we fear failure, and we don't live as our authentic selves because we fear being judged, but that this also means that some decisions or even most decisions will be made for you and not by you and that can often lead to regret now, that's not how it has to be like the things we want, the change we seek.

Always on the other side of our own comfort zone, growing up involves growing pains, but only if we take the step of asking ourselves how we can find ways in which we can, we might even realize that the reality we create within our own comfort zone comfort. Our own mind is not the reality that we have right in front of us and around us, we can also realize that all the rejection, failure and Judgment that we feared so much is never going to happen now, when we talk about change, we think. We have to have a change of mentality.

I used to think exactly the same thing and maybe you are thinking the same thing right now that you have to change

your

mindset, but the truth is as simple as it is difficult, you must take action because action equals motivation and action is active change when I was to South Korea or when I started my first company I wasn't sure I could do it. I hadn't gone through some magical mindset shift that gave me a 100% confidence score that I can do this. I simply decided to act because I didn't want these experiences to pass me by.

I decided to act against my own doubts, against the doubts of everyone around me and maybe even against everyone else, but I gave myself the opportunity to learn how I can act. you can and in the same sense learning how you can consists of a step of actions first you have to decide what you want to focus on now it doesn't matter if that is something big or small, it doesn't have to be that way. be someone that everyone else will perceive as crazy, it's just important that it's something that you're really passionate about, something that you hold dear to

your

heart and then don't even go down the whole rabbit hole of doubts that you don't have.

You don't even need to think about your goal in the context of whether you personally think you can achieve it, you just want to think about how someone would go about achieving it. It's a little trick that is quite effective at least for me when I started my company. I didn't know anything about running or starting a business. I didn't grow up in an entrepreneurial family and didn't really have any mentors, so the only thing I could do at that time was look for any kind of information on this topic, so I started reading online articles, guides, YouTube videos and collected everything any information I could on how other people have done this.

I even found a starter program where they teach you this type of stuff and I listed each thing. that I found and researched each element until I understood pretty well what needs to be done in theory for a company to be successful and after that I had enough information to start setting milestones and breaking them down into actions, for example establishing the legal entity of a company, they could be a milestone and things like finding a lawyer, preparing the questions you want to ask them and ultimately having a meeting with them and then having follow-up items on your agenda.

Bucket lists are potential things you can do to make your dream a reality step by step, no matter how big or small your goal is. The baseline always remains the same, if you want to run a marathon for example, you will most likely do it. You are not going to sign up for the marathon and run it without any prior training. Most likely, you want to understand everything that is connected to this specific goal. How when and where marathons are held. What is your current fitness level? How do you need to train? Do you often need to train?

What do you need to eat to be fit enough? Maybe you would even like to hire a personal trainer to help you make your plan, but ultimately the only way to make it real is to make this plan by setting milestones and creating these daily action items so you can take a step towards your goal every day in terms of a marathon, maybe that's doing some stretches or going for a run and it doesn't matter how big or small it is. is what you want to do as soon as you think it's impossible, you need to go through this process because that's how you make it possible.

Starting a business seems impossible, calling a lawyer for information or a tax advisor, on the other hand, is very possible. hand and that at the end of the day is the answer to how you can you need to learn everything that comes with this goal and you need to turn it into an action plan and execute it that is the answer to the question and that is also the model of life itself now , every time we take the first step, honestly, it's very scary, no matter how often you do it, but what's even scarier is when life passes you by, because one thing is for sure, if you take a step forward , show courage and move forward.

Against your fears you will not regret the courage you have shown, but if you cover yourself against your fears, you will most likely regret not having lived life true to yourself, so do not be your own prison. Don't tell yourself you can't and don't let other people tell you what your life should be. I would like to challenge you tonight to ask yourself: How can I do it?