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 wishes of others now not living life true to oneself is one of the top regrets of the elderly according to prony wear's famous book the top regrets of the Dy and I think we've all been there situations where we've given up on ourselves before we even started telling ourselves that we can't and then then we won't we live up to our own self-made prophecy I grew up in Germany I moved to a small town when I was

a child the type of small town were even 10 years later people still consider it to be an outsider and I was a misfit my dreams of making it big traveling the world and moving abroad they were seen as fairy tale beliefs as 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 go-to excuse Big Dreams and small ones alike I told myself that I can't their prophecy became my own until I decided to change

now I can still remember that moment as vividly as if it was yesterday I was walking through the small forest in Spring a priest flowing around me circulating flower pettles all in the air I felt as if I was in some sort of movie because that was the very moment I had some sort of epiphany I was fresh out of high school and I knew exactly what was expected of me it almost felt as if my entire life has been written out by someone else I have to study I have to find a stable job

marry and have children but at the age of 19 that is not exactly what I want to do I want to travel the world and I want to learn about life and people and myself and I'm so young and hopeful and creative and full of ideas and yet again I am met with an all too familiar reality I'm told that I can't that people like me can't but I I don't want to be confined by what other people want my life to look like so in that very moment standing in this small for Forest surrounded

by all these pink beautiful flower petals I start entertaining a single thought how can I and I will I decide that I want to travel first so I start researching visa requirements cost of living airplane ticket all these things that I had absolutely nothing to do with until that time I researched it I made a plan I executed it and two months later I'm sitting in an airplane to South Korea all alone at 19 years old barely able to speak Korean knowing full well that just speaking English isn't exactly going to be enough and with

just enough money in my pockets to last me for roughly two months the thought that I can was still just a concept inside of my mind it was unproven but I am determined to prove them and my own doubts wrong and it works out I stay for the entire duration of my Visa 12 months in total I even travel to Thailand and Japan I pick up different odd jobs and ultimately even get my first real job as a marketing manager and I come back to Germany and I'm full of motivation I moved to a large

city found a company and my team my co-founders and I we make it work by the age of 22 I'm already able to fulfill one of my dreams living my passion by Leading products and teams in Tech and now just a few years later I'm so grateful to be in a position where I can support other people on their journey by asking myself how can I I even gave myself the chance to prove that I can and I gave myself the chance to live life true to myself now finding out how you can it is

quite the exciting journey and it's not an easy one but it is so worth it first we need to clearly identify what it is that we want in life but just knowing what you want is not enough you have to dig a little bit deeper perhaps you're familiar with Simon sy's famous tat talk start with why and just like that we also need to start with why we need to ask ourselves why again and again and again until we get to the bottom of what it is what we truly desire in life if you seek

wealth and success because you're hoping that it will help you find love perhaps it will serve you better to seek love instead but even when we understand our why we get stuck so often I've seen this many times firsthand people having this Grand Vision of what they like life should be like but never really asking themselves how they can make it happen it almost seems as if the fear gap of asking ourselves 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 fairy tale belief that it is what it is and that nothing can be done and that can be oddly comfortable because we get to offload an entire portion of responsibility we also get to avoid some sort of pain we don't ask someone that we like out on a date because we fear the rejection we don't switch careers even though we don't like our current one because we fear the failure and we don't live as our authentic self because we fear to be judged but that that also means

that some decisions or even most decisions are going to be made for you and not by you and that can often lead to regret now that is not how it has to be like the things we desire the change that we seek it is always on the other side of our own comfort zone grow involves Growing Pains but only if we take the step to ask ourselves how we can will we be able to find ways that we can we might even realize that the reality that we created inside of our own mind is not

the reality right in front of us and all around us we might also realize that all the rejection and the failure and the Judgment that we feared so much is actually never going to happen now whenever we're talking about change we think we have to have a mindset change I used to think the exact same thing and perhaps you're thinking the same in this very moment that you have to change your mindset but the truth is as simple as it is hard you need to take action because action equals motivation and action is active change

when I went to South Korea or when I started my first company I was not sure that I can I hadn't underwent some magical mindset change that gave me a 100% confidence score that I can do this I just decided to take action because I didn't want these experiences letting me pass by I decided to take action against my own doubts against the doubts of everyone around me and maybe even against all others but I gave myself the chance to learn how I can and in the same sense learning how you can consists of a

step of actions first you have to decide what it is that you want to focus on now it doesn't matter whether that's a big or a small thing it doesn't have to be someone that everyone else will perceive as crant it is just important that it is something that you are really passionate about something that you hold dear to your heart and then don't even go down the entire Rabbit Hole of self-doubt you don't even need to think about your goal in the context of whether you personally believe you can do it you just want

to entertain the thought how someone would go about achieving this it's a little trick that's fairly effective at least for me when I started my company I didn't know anything about managing or starting a company at all I didn't grow up in an entrepreneurial family and I didn't really have any mentors so the only thing in that moment that I could do was look for any type of information about this topic so I started reading through online articles guides YouTube videos and I collected all information that I could about how other people have done this

I even found a startup program where they teach you these type of things and I listed down every single thing that I found and I researched every single item until I had a pretty good understanding of what it is that needs to be done in theory for a company to succeed and after that I had enough information to start setting milestones for myself and breaking them down into actions for example setting up the legal entity of a company could be a milestone and things such as finding a lawyer preparing what questions you want to ask

that lawyer and ultimately having the meeting with them and then have your follow-up items on your to-do list are potential things that you can do to make your dream come true step by step now no matter how big or small your goal is the Baseline of this always stays the same if you want to run a marathon for example you're most likely not going to sign up for the marathon and run it without any prior training you will most likely want to understand everything that is connected to this specific goal how when and where do

marathons happen what is your current Fitness level how do you need to train how often do you need to train what do you need to eat in order to get fit enough perhaps you'd even like to enlist a personal coach that will help you make your plan but ultimately the only way for it to turn into something real is by making this plan by setting the milestones and by creating these daily action items so you can take a step towards your goal every single day in terms of a marathon perhaps that's doing some stretches or

going for a run and no matter again how big or small it is that you want to do as soon as you think it is impossible you need to go through this process because that's how you make it possible starting a company seems impossible calling up a lawyer to get some information or a tax consultant very possible on the other 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 blueprint to life itself now whenever we take the first step honestly it's super scary no matter how often you do it but what is even scarier is having life pass you by because one thing is for sure if you take a step ahead show courage and go against your fears you're not going to regret the courage that you've shown but if you cover in front of your fear you're most likely going to regret not living life true to yourself so don't Be

Your Own Prison don't tell yourself that you can't and don't let other people tell you what your life should look like instead I'd like to challenge you on this very evening to ask yourselves How can I sh