The Finite Time Revolution with François De Neuville
In this hour‑long interview on the Meaningful Revolution podcast, former commando and tsunami survivor François de Neuville shares how confronting his own mortality reshaped his worldview and led to a personal philosophy he calls the “Finite Time Revolution.” He recounts the harrowing moment he rescued a five‑year‑old girl during a tsunami, describing the instant awareness that life is finite and that postponing one’s best life is a self‑inflicted tragedy. From that experience he distilled two core movements: the Finite Revolution – a call to stop delaying one’s best life because time is limited – and the Excellence Movement, which he frames as personal mastery. He outlines a practical four‑step framework (awareness → ownership → action → discipline) and a three‑pillar model of “be great, do good, live epic,” explaining each pillar (mastering body, mind, emotions, spirituality; contributing purposefully; defining personal metrics of success). Throughout the conversation he explores the nature of pain and suffering, arguing that suffering is a choice and a signal for growth, and warns against using self‑compassion as an excuse. He critiques modern shortcuts, instant‑gratification culture, and the lack of life‑skill education, emphasizing that mastery requires sustained effort and delayed gratification. He also shares a deeply personal struggle with infertility, illustrating how even unfulfilled desires must be met with gratitude for what one has. The interview ends with practical advice for listeners to increase self‑awareness, take ownership, and start today, and provides ways to connect with François (LinkedIn, his book on Amazon, free chapter on his website).
Chapters
I was on the beach. I was hanging in a tree, almost being swallowed by this deadly tsunami wave devastating everything on its way around me. Hundreds of people were yelling, trying not to drown or to escape from the collapsing building that was caused by the earthquake that happened just a few minutes before. So I was in the tree, holding the trunk on one side. On the other side I was holding a five year old girl that I rescued from the debris of the hotel behind. The tsunami was coming so fast. I remember looking at this little girl in the eyes and she looked at me so terrified and I was like, it's gonna be alright. In my mind I was just thinking, you liar, we're gonna die. And when I had this moment thinking, oh, this is the last moment of my life, was that it? Was that everything I could be or do. And I knew the answer. I could have done so much more. I could have been so much more.
If you had to name your meaningful revolution, what would you call it and what would be the components of it?
That's interesting. There are two things that come to my mind. The first would be finite and revolution. Just this thing too. We understand that our time here is short and from there we empower ourselves to make sure that we are going to make the most out of it. And so the main message from that would be stop postponing your best time, your best life for later. Now I was starting with this. Or another one would be excellence. Just this one word, excellence movement. Because, you know, when this event happened to me and I decided to be the best of work, to be and support other people, I was like, okay, but how do you do that? How do you make the movement of your life? And that's how I went deep into personal. But I realized it all comes to one thing. It's personal mastery.
Hey everyone. Welcome to the Meaningful Revolution podcast where we interview people about what they're passionate about to inspire you to follow your passions more so that you can be more engaged in your career, relationships and health. Today's guest is a former commando, paratrooper, a husband, an adventurer, an entrepreneur and a tsunami survivor. As a high performance coach, speaker and author, he helps entrepreneurs, CEOs and executives show up in a way that they've never done but before. To achieve greatness. Through his coaching, speaking and writing, he wants to transform the lives of 40,000 people are 10 times the amount of victims of the double natural disaster he survived. It is my distinct pleasure to introduce Francois de Nouvel in today's episode. We're going to be talking about time and how we only have so much about it. And Francois has written a book. And we'll talk about that later. We'll have a link in the show notes. But before we get into that, let's learn a little bit about Francois. So first off, why is the topic of only having so much time important to you today?
Francois, I. I learned to listen the hard way, and that's my message. I want to make people understand that we do have a finite amount of time. And we all know that. We all know that we're born one day, we're going to die one day. That's obvious for everyone. The problem is that we tend to live our life with this illusion of infinite time, you know, And I'm sure you can relate to that. All the listeners can relate to that. The day you said, oh, I'll do that next week, next month, next year, and we keep postponing our best life for later. And this is something that I was doing. And although I was living a great life before this realization, before that happened to me, but still, you know, I was living my dream since I was a kid. I was traveling, discovering the world. That was so amazing. But I was in Colombia thinking, oh, I cannot wait to be in Japan. I was in Japan thinking, oh, the Philippines, that's gonna be great. I was in the Philippines thinking, oh, Indonesia, so great. And I kept doing that all the time. And I realized I'm living in the hope of a better future, even though my present is amazing, but somehow by doing that, it takes away this fully appreciation of the time we have. And when I said, I realized that the hard way. One day I stared at death in the face and I realized, oh, wait, time is short or life is short. Time is ticking. I like Sadhguru saying, it's not time, it is your life ticking away. It's a bit harsh, but this is so true. And this massive realization that I had, like, I need, I want to shake people and help them understand that I got a second chance. But not everybody will. So I want to make the most of this second chance that I got and support other people to make the most of it first. And one of the things that I said, usually we tend to wait for things to go sideways or to be bad before changing something. But you don't need a needed experience to start changing your life. Absolutely not. You don't need to wait to have the divorce paper on the table to start putting effort in your relationship. You don't need to be in a hospital bed before thinking I'm going to take care of my health right now. And that's the message. Because this is a choice that we can make. This is something we can do every single day. We can recreate ourselves. Every day is creation. And so when we realize how much power we have and how much ownership we have about our life, it's empowering us to shape it the way we really want it to. And once again, because time is finite, you better do that today and stop postponing it for another day.
I absolutely agree with that statement. And as a coach myself, you know, helping people realize they have more agency or ability to make choices in their life is. It's an easy win for a coach, but it's also immensely powerful. So I absolutely love that message. So I'm curious now, could you actually tell us about a time when, you know. So you hinted that, you know, you were in all these amazing places waiting for the next time. Is there a time in your life where that really became concrete and it forced you to face the illusion that we have forever to get everything done?
Yeah. Well, I'm going to share with you this moment that I will never forget. I was on the beach. I was hanging in a tree, almost being swallowed by this deadly tsunami wave, devastating everything on its way around me. Hundreds of people were yelling, trying not to drown or to escape from the collapsing building that was caused by the earthquake that happened just a few minutes before. So I was in the tree, holding the trunk on one side. On the other side, I was holding a five year old girl that I rescued from the debris of the hotel behind. The tsunami was coming so fast. I remember looking at this little girl in the eyes and she looked at me so terrified. I was like, it's gonna be alright. In my mind I was just thinking, you liar, we're gonna die. And when I had this moment thinking, oh, this is the last moment of my life, was that it? Was that everything I could be or do? And I knew the answer. I could have done so much more. I could have been so much more. And you know, I took my phone, I wanted to call my wife and say, hey, goodbye, sorry. And I got thinking about this afterwards, like, I want to create a life when I don't need to take my phone to call my loved one the day I'm about to die to say something they don't know, they should know everything. I should not need a last phone call before I pass away. When I was in that tree, I realized that the thing that matters the most was not my Car, my computer, my bank account, the size of my business, the number of followers I had. None of that matters. What I was thinking about is the smiles, the people that I spend time with, the emotion that I shared, the feelings that I accumulated in my life. Those are the memories that I remembered. That was the thing that was thinking about. And so in that moment, it really made me realize afterwards, of course, in the moment, I was like, I might die right now. But all of that came to my head. When I deconstructed all of those thinking, I realized, well, I got it a bit wrong. The way we are chasing success based on other people's metric, what we are really chasing in life, is it what we truly want? Everything that we are really after, it doesn't really matter. We always think it's about the object or the status or whatever it is. No, it's always about the feeling we hope to have, when we're gonna have that or do that. And so that shifted so many things in the way I live, because I keep asking myself, am I pursuing the right stuff? What do I want to experience? What is the feeling that I want to feel? And you realize you want to feel loved. You can feel loved in a million different ways. You want to feel excitement. You can feel excitement in a million different ways. The problem is that we tend to attribute one feeling to a specific thing. I'm going to feel comfort when I have a mansion on this hill next to the lake, or I'm going to feel good about myself when I have 10 million followers on Instagram, or whatever. But so we attribute a feeling wrongly to one specific stuff, and we miss out on all the other ways that we can create this feeling in our lives. And so that gave place to a lot of introspection and reflection. And I realized I need to change the way I live my life. I need to live with more intentionality, and I need to live with more commitment to what I really want to create. And so going with this, it's about, I need to stop postponing my best life for later. That was a slap in my face. But that didn't come so fast, because after this event was obviously very traumatic. 4,000 people died a day. I lost a lot of friends, and I've seen so much suffering. I went to a very dark place. I was so mad at life. I was so angry, Angry. Seriously. I was like, I had no faith on anything anymore. I was angry at life. But then, weeks passing by, I realized, well, for all the people who died that day, for all those People who didn't have a second chance. I was still there. I was still alive. And so I felt that I had the duty to make the most out of it, just at least to honor the memory of the people who died. And that day when I felt this empowerment to, I'm gonna make the most of the time that I have from being a victim, I really became a survivor. Same situation, complete different mindset, complete different perspective on it. And I'm not shy to say today that it did turn my life. It did change my life for the better. It was very traumatic. The pain is never gonna go away. But it really shaped who I am today. And to use this quote that I use a lot, sometimes beautiful gifts come wrapped in ugly paper. I love that we can all relate to that. We can all relate to painful experience in our life that actually turned out for the best, that this loss created new opportunities. And so when we can take perspective to whatever is happening to us, we can really learn to separate ourselves from the suffering. Because, let's be real, pain is happening. You had pain in your life, and you will again. And everyone. And because pain is not bad. Pain is just a signal from the body to say, hey, there's something that doesn't go well here, like, physically or emotionally. So we should not, like, be scared of pain. We don't like to experience pain, of course, but it's amazing it's there because if it wasn't there, we would die with no warning. We would just be like, suddenly, problems, right? So pain is really this message to say, hey, you need to adapt something. You need the suffering. It's what we do with that pain. And usually we grow up and we get less and less good at dealing with the pain because we don't want to accept it. Like, I don't want to have that pain in my life. I'm going to refuse the fact. I'm going to refuse reality. And so as long as we don't accept what is, we create this suffering. I know it's hard to say, but suffering is a choice. I'm not saying it's easy, obviously, because you would have asked me, like, when it happened, like, four years ago, hey, suffering is a choice. I would have punched you in the face and say, but you know what? Because I was not there yet, but I want to share this message to everyone that suffering is a choice. And you can choose to let go. You can make that decision. We need to understand that because you stop suffering, that doesn't take the pain away. Ignoring the pain doesn't take it away neither.
Right.
We need to allow ourselves to fully experience whatever we experience and make peace. Nightmares. Sometimes I wake up and I think about those people and the pain is still there. But I don't suffer about it on the daily basis because I accepted it somehow. And as difficult as it is, I'm sure some people might be judging me, like, oh, you accepted the death of 4,000 people. That's easy for you. You survived. Yeah, okay, I agree. Whatever people can think, I don't care. I made peace with myself, with the feelings that I experienced that day. And I think this is the. It's in the power of everyone to be able to make peace with reality and decide to stop suffering so we can keep moving forward. And the moment we stop suffering, we actually step away from this stages of being a victim. Right? And we become victor, become a survivor. We empower ourselves again. And so from that position, we are actually able to rebuild, reconstruct, and that's what we want. So this is an exercise I love to do. Whatever trauma you have in your life, when you share the story, where do you stop? You know, do you say, whatever, I lost my leg in a car accident and I can never run again. You said, I lost. I saw all my friends die and I've been miserable. This happened to me. Or what if you say, you know what, one day I had a car accident, I lost my leg there. But that taught me that I need to make the most of the body that I have. I need to honor, I need to respect whatever I've been given and make, you know. You know what I mean? You feel when you say that you have this lesson that comes out of it. You have this important torment that comes from the pain, from the difficulty, from the challenge. And if you can change the script in your mind, and when you say the story of your pain, of your struggles, you immediately follow up with the lesson, with the growth. You empower yourself to a level that you cannot imagine. Right. I guess you agree with this. You probably see also in this journey of personal growth, right?
Definitely. Like, I mean, if we. We only could, as people, learn the lessons we need to learn without all the pain, it's attached with it. That would be ideal.
But would we learn, though?
Would we learn?
Yeah.
How effective would it actually be? And I, I love that the exercise of where does your story stop when you have this traumatic event? Because, you know, I think in the realm of therapists, like, they deal exclusively with that. Like, your story stops when the trauma happens and you stop Living. And so how do you get back into that presence? How do you get back to that new version of yourself after one of those events? Is such an important question. Yeah, we all need to.
And I'm not saying it's easy. No, exactly. And I'm not saying it's easy. Obviously, it's very complicated to do because it takes a lot of. And that goes with a problem that we have. We don't like to take full ownership of whatever is happening to us because it's easy to blame events, circumstances, people, or whatever external things around us than to actually face the reality of selves. Now, I'm not saying it's always your fault. Like, obviously, being in a tsunami was not my fault. I didn't ask for it. I didn't volunteer. Right. For sure, not things happen. But a lot of time in my life, I realize, well, I'm kind of responsible here for being there, for doing that, for that behavior, for that thinking, for that. Those words that come out of my mouth, you know? And when we can be aware about the situation we are in and take ownership of what we should take ownership on and stop trying to control what we cannot control, what is not in this zone of control, we become superheroes of our own lives. Right? Because suddenly we realize, I'm the one writing the script here. I can go the way I want to go. That's so empowering. And that's what I realized that time. And so when I realized life is so short, if I keep living like this, I'm gonna end up with regret 100%. I'm gonna be again. Because it's gonna happen again, the last day of my life. And that day, I'm gonna be the thing did I learn the lesson. And I don't want that day to have any regrets. And so one word that I completely banish from my vocabulary is the word I should. Every time I say I should, I'm like, a lack of integrity. I promise myself to live every single day of my life to the fullest and inspire others to do the same. The word I should. This doesn't happen in ideal life. If you keep saying I should, you have regrets later, that's for sure. And so just to say it again, success, fulfillment, and extraordinary life, it doesn't just happen. It has to be intentionally, consciously created. And that's the power we all have, and that's the responsibility we can all take.
Yeah, I absolutely love that. And as you're talking about the word should, like, one of my favorite analogies is when you Married your spouse? Did you say I should take care of you in sickness and health, or did you say shall? Right. Because if you said should, you're probably not getting married that day for sure. So I love that ownership of, you know, it's you in the moment, recognizing it's time to act. You know, it's time to get in the game. So that's so powerful. I hope, listening at home, you have a note and you, like, underline it and star that. Because I feel like that's such an important thing. No matter what life throws at you, you have every moment to choose an action or not and to be in integrity or not. And it's so important that you follow through with that action of integrity 100%.
I would say to people, it takes courage to do that. It takes effort. And it's highly uncomfortable to do a reality check, to look at your life and say, where am I? Am I at right now? Where do I want to be? And just to be okay for being whatever you are and saying like, hey, I'm here, I want to be there. This is in my control. I can start changing today, I can start being in motion tomorrow. This is a choice, this is a decision. And the reality check is hard to do. But the problem is that denying how you feel, because we all have feelings about how we are in life, right? You look at yourself, you go to the gym, you feel your body, you look in the mirror, you look at your bank account, you look at whatever your relationship, you have clues of the reality. Sometimes we try to ignore that, to not feel our feelings. And now not feeling your feelings doesn't make them go away. Ignoring the pain doesn't make it go away, doesn't make your problem suddenly disappear. No, it does not. It's there you decide not to address them. That doesn't help anything. So it's about having the courage to face the situation, having the courage to listen to the clues, having the courage to say, hey, I'm not where I wanted to be. But you know what? I promise to myself that I commit today. I declare I'm going to do the work to get there. And the moment you start, the moment you start being in motion, then magic happens.
Yeah, absolutely. So such a beautiful sentiment. And it does take. I mean, there's so many. Encourage is such a weird word because it's not really concise because it could mean so many different things. It's doing the thing that you're avoiding in your life, Feeling the thing you're avoiding in your life. Running up A hill in a hail of bullets. If you're in the military, it could be putting yourself out on social media for the first time and, you know, to worry about the judgment that comes with that. Like, there's so many different ways to show up and act to live that ideal life. So I love that idea. So I'm curious, just as a follow up question to this very traumatic tsunami event that happened in your life, not to minimize that, but could you maybe illustrate a couple of examples of how you were before and after, just to kind of contrast where maybe there are times where you put off something or you weren't in that brave integrity area, where now something came up after the tsunami and you're like, no, let's go.
Yeah, no, definitely. I would say that before I had. After nine years in the military, I decided to quit everything just to follow a child dream. So I was already there and thinking, I need to do things now because later it's not gonna really work. And so I did some of those scary steps to start creating the life I wanted to. Now. Still, I had a lot of wishes. I wish I had a better body, I wish my health was a bit better, I wish I would do that differently, or I wish I had that kind of friends, etc. And I was doing something that the majority of the population is doing. You wish for something you don't have, and so you complained because you don't have it. And so we do all of that from time to time, but complaining is really not helping. And so after this traumatic event happened, I realized that everything is under my control. Everything that I can't control is under my control. And so I build the discipline of reflecting on what is in my control and what is not of my control. And to decide that, you know what, whatever is in my control, I'm going to do whatever I can to use that power I have over things. And whatever is not under my control, I'm gonna do whatever I can to let go, to stop trying to control what I can't. And this simple, don't know if I can call it the mantra or formula of things to follow really helped me a lot because it's raining. Like, ah, damn, it's raining. Can I control it? No. Okay, so what can I control? My behavior? My response to whatever? I can't control this. I can. You know, I think shortly after I read the book from Viktor Frankl, Men's Search for Meaning. And this book was profound. It really put so many things into consideration for me, thinking like, well, if he, if he could do that in the death camp, if he could change his, his mindset and his psychology, then I can. Whatever situation I'm experiencing right now, compared to what he lived, there is nothing. And so that gave me back a lot of power, a lot of control over my life. And so I would say that definitely a few things that I differently, I use this, this formula, I would say, to analyze events that are happening in my life. And secondly, I don't say I should, I don't wish, I transform the wishes into goals. And I make sure that I stop postponing my best life for later. To be able to do that, I had to dive deep into what is my best life means. And I realized, damn, I was, I was 27 at the time and I was like, I never really took the time to deeply define how I want my life to be. And when I was talking with the people around me, I realized, actually not a lot of people do. We all think we know what we want until we get it. And like, ah, that was not that. I'm still empty. I have this million dollar on my account that I wanted to have. I have the Porsche I wanted to have, or I have the multiple business, but I'm still feeling miserable. Because we are chasing success just to realize that it is fulfillment that we are after. But because the whole world turns around success, because this is what people show. You see a picture of someone on social media that is very successful, you don't see the feeling. And fulfillment is a feeling, right? Everybody can smile on the photo. That doesn't mean that their life is great. And so I realized I was basing everything that I wanted in life on success that was displayed by other sources. But this doesn't reflect the fulfillment. And as Tony Robbins says, success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure. Because you feel so miserable when you have everything you want, but you feel empty. And so I realized, well, let me put success aside, let me see what is really fulfilling me. And this profoundly changed my life, profoundly changed the way I show up every single day. Because no, I know what I stand for. I know what I want. Despite the successful facade, I know deep inside the feelings that I want to experience on a daily basis. And this changed everything. And so from this, I created this formula to guide me. Like success and fulfillment in life for me is based on three things. To be great, to do good, and to live epic. So what does it mean to be great? To be great? To me, it means to learn to master your body, your nutrition, your movement, your sleep. Etc. Learning to master your mind, things that you want to learn, the resilience, the discipline, the virtues you want to live by, etc. To learn to master your emotions, right? To deal with the pain, to deal with the suffering, to deal with all the feelings that we are experiencing every single day. And to learn when to use them, when to not trust them, right? And lastly is the spirituality. Learning to master my spirituality, to feel what is bigger than myself, what do I belong to? So that's the first part to be great. The second is to do good. In doing good is finding what is my purpose. And I don't really like to talk about finding your purpose because it put so much stress on me when I was younger. Like, I need a purpose. Everybody has a statement. I don't. I'm miserable. I have no purpose in my life. Well, I think the purpose is not found, it's created. And it takes potentiality. And if we don't have it perfectly right, it doesn't really matter. That's something we keep constructing days after days, right? So doing good is finding what you want to. What is your purpose, but what do you want to contribute to? Contributing to make the world a better place. It sounds a bit cliche, but with all the people I work with, every time we talked about contribution, there is never a moment that someone said, oh, my purpose in life is something completely individualistic. There is always a dimension of other people. It can be the planet, it can be humans, it can be animals, but there is always a sense of contribution. So that's the question I would ask myself. What is the contribution that I want to give to the world? So that's the second part of doing good. The last part is living epic. And what I mean by living epic is defining your own success, your own metrics for success. So I really know what I'm after and I know the feeling I'm chasing and going with. This is one of the things that I want to experience and learn in my life. And so if I put everything together, I want to be great, do good and live epic. I'm for sure if I follow the steps, I'm going to create success and fulfillment life, whatever form it is, right? And so to get there, well, I need awareness about my situation. When I'm aware about where I'm right now and when I want to go, I need to take ownership because I need to realize this is my goal, this is me doing the work. But he's going to do it for me. Nobody is going to be happy for me, right? You cannot delegate success and fulfillment. This is, this is your own journey. So that was the awareness, taking the ownership of it, and then committing to take action. And we know one action doesn't lead you anywhere. It's not like you want to give one hug, one more hug to your wife or your partner. That doesn't gonna show love for the rest of your life. It's a continuous action over time. And so to have sustained action over time regarding your health, your personal growth, your intellect, the way you show up, etc. You need to build self discipline. And that's completing this, this practice formula to gain awareness. Take ownership, take action, build discipline to keep doing it. And then you go back to the first part, where am I? Awareness, ownership, action, self discipline. And you keep doing the loop and you realize like, well, it's never going to be over. And that's great because actually life is this transition. Life is this journey from one point to the other. And it's never really one point to reach. There is always something to grow. And so I also had to relearn to appreciate the process of creation. And that's something I was not so good at. I was completely always focused on the goal and, and thinking like, I just want to get rid of the process. I want the goal. And that changed also everything. One of the best metaphor that I. I can share with this to learn to celebrate the success, to learn to enjoy the step and the process. I was. I went to Tanzania to climb the Kilimanjaro years ago. And if you ever seen the Kilimanjaro, this is a massive volcano in the middle of a plane. So it's like flat and then in the middle of. I. I mean, it's very impressive. When I arrived the first day I looked at it, I'm like, that's going to be a tough walk to get there. Day one, I started walking. I was looking at the summit. Dang, that's really far. Day two, that's still very far. Day four, I'm feeling going away from it. I was like supposed to be there in four days. And then I turned around and I saw that I was already above the clouds. But you see, I was so focused on looking at the summit that I forgot where I was coming from. And so that's a little bit. The pitfall of high performers is that we are always looking for what next. I can do more, I can be more. And it's great. I love being obsessed and chasing the horizon. You know, there's nothing wrong with that. As long as we take the time to look back, to acknowledge the path we're taking, to acknowledge the journey, and to learn to enjoy the process of creation. So these were a few things that I really learned at that moment that put a lot of perspective in my life and much more intentionality in the way I show up, in the way I live.
Awesome. Awesome. So the. There's a lot of really good stuff. I have, like, a page of notes right now as you're talking. I love that metaphor of the mountain. And I think a lot of the work we do as coaches, too, is helping people turn around and look back and own the feeling of how far you've come. Because like you said, like, we're always on to the next thing. So I say that. And leading into this question, if you could start a meaningful revolution, which to me, it's a fulfilling transformation. So there's a couple of language things that you were had just shared where I'm like, okay, this is pretty good. So it sounds like you found that fulfilling transformation for yourself or that authentic movement. If you had to name your meaningful revolution, what would you call it and what would be the components of it?
That's interesting. There are two things that are coming to my mind. The first would be finite and revolution. Just this thing, too. We understand that our time here is short, and from there, we implore ourselves to make sure that we are going to make the most out of it. And so the main message from that would be stop postponing your best time, your best life for later. Now I was starting with this or another one would be excellence. Just this one word, excellence movement. Because, you know, when this event happened to me and I decided to be the best of who I could be and support other people, I was like, okay, but how do you do that? How do you make them out of your life? And that's how I went deep into personal. But I realized it all comes to one thing. It's personal mastery. You need to learn to master yourself. You need to deal with the software and the hardware that we've been given. And this is really the journey. And so if everybody was aiming for excellence, I think the word would be in such a different place. Being willing to acknowledge our fault, acknowledge our limitation, and move forward with that. Being willing to ask for help when we need it. Being willing to say, hey, I'm not the best at that, but I'm working on it. I'm dedicating to getting better. And to me, this word excellence, if everybody would take that as a Mantra. I love this quote from Emile Kuei said, every day in every way, I'm getting better and better. Wow. Something I keep telling myself every morning I wake up before I go to bed, every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better. And I ask myself, did I not go learn something, go do something, send that text, give that phone call, give that hug or whatever it is? Right? But I think if every human on the planet would be willing to get a little better than we were yesterday, every single day, we would have collective growth. Amazing. We would change the way the planet, the behavior of human. We would change the relationship, we would change everything. And so I think the excellence movement could be something very powerful.
Awesome. I love that. Adding on the benefit, like painting that picture of everyone focused on just getting a little bit better every day as a human being in whatever way that is. A better parent, a better musician, a better barista, a better, you know, list goes on and on. But that dedication to just turning the dial up a little bit every day over a year, you know, if you just do 1%, that's 365% more. I mean, that's not proper math, but you get the point.
No, exactly. And what I love about that is that you don't need anything to do it. You don't need more tools, you don't need nothing we can do. There is absolutely no excuse to not get better than you were yesterday. It just comes down to a decision. That's just it, a decision. I have a chapter in my book when I say be great or make excuses, but you cannot do both at the same time. That's true. We either make excuses for ourselves, we just. And that's. I've been diving deep into that for the moment because I'm quite hard on myself. This is what I learned in the military and it works well for me and it doesn't work for everyone. And I think it's not a good option for sure. Now we need to demonstrate self love and self compassion. Very important. Now what I want to provoke people is when you used self love or self compassion to justify your lack of self. I'm going four times to the gym or I'm going to do this or not do that. And they're like, oh, but you know, you worked hard yesterday or that was a long day at work or you're too tired. You should, you should not be too hard on yourself. Now there is a fine line there because we should not fall into the trap to say, I'm going to justify my Lack of commitment with self compassion, that's not going to lead you to success for sure. And so I think again taking ownership of this reality and be careful with our mind because it's all a mind game, right? To not do that. So we keep progressing and daring and encourage us to confront the hard truth when it's there. Confront the brutal facts and say like hey, I take ownership of it. I decided I'm not going to the gym today. I'm screwing up. That doesn't serve my purpose. That doesn't lead me to this path that I want to take. Just get your thing together and go do it. Right. I think you deserve self love and self compassion if you are doing your very best. If you're not doing your best, just, you know, just kick yourself in the ass. Just go do it. This is what it takes. I think a lot of people and I think that's the problem of the society, we want success today, that we want to do the thing that leads to success tomorrow. Right. We all been there. And in this society, when everything goes, lose the ability to wait for transformation. But transformation takes time, right? Secondly, we are more and more willing to soon. Everything in our life is made for a comfort. Marketing is just bombarding us with things that are easy, faster, cheaper, less effort. It's a, etc. Every time we don't feel really great, we take our phone, we open the computer, we watch a movie, we have immediate hit of dopamine all the time. And so every time things are getting a little bit difficult, a little bit challenging, like no, it's too comfortable. I quit. And I think it's especially a problem for the younger generations, older generation, they learn to deal with what it takes to reach the goals, like to sit more with discomfort. Nowadays we can have immediate comfort in everything. So we lose this ability to delay gratification. And I think that's something that needs, that we all need to keep in check in the pursuit of our goals to realize, hey, my goals here, they're not going to happen overnight. Absolutely not. Success does not just happen. It takes time and I need to remind myself of that. So I keep adapting my behavior in alignment to where I want to go.
Yeah, the, the thing that's sticking out for me as you're explaining this and I, I agree. So like, you know, growing up my dad was a carpenter and like one of the things that, you know, one of the values he instilled in me and my younger brother was like, always do your best, right? It's always 100 and if that falls short, that's where the self compassion could be. Because I think another way to say what you were saying is like, if you're giving yourself grace and compassion but you're not acting in integrity to your best self, then that, that's an excuse. You're just, you're just doing a psychological coping thing. But if you put everything out, you gave your full effort and you still like you're making a piece of art and it's just stick figures because that's the edge of your ability. That is something to be proud about. That is something to be like, okay, like maybe that's where I'm at today, Tomorrow I can try, maybe not doing stick figures in that particular weird example I pulled from my mind, you know, but it's that, are you acting in integrity or are you giving yourself an excuse? And, and there's also the fine line, like, are you burnt out? And like you really do need a break. Like there's, there's so many different ways you could take it. It's why a lot of people, I think, hire coaches to be that sounding board. Like you've been working, you need to look back, you've done so much for yourself, for your family, for your organizations. Maybe you just need to go walk outside a little bit more and that'll shift your perspective or get your butt into action, buddy, you know?
Yeah, yeah, no, you're right. And thank you for bringing this, this precision because I think that's a problem that leads to burnout, is that you do your best, but the result is not matching your expectation or you don't have success. And that's the moment when you should give yourself self compassion and self love. And if you don't, then you keep being too hard. It's a negative spiral, you know. So I think this is really the moment. Like you don't do your best. Just get your shit together and keep doing the work you do your best. Give yourself so much love and compassion. And if you don't have to reach success in one day, but just keep going and celebrate the successes, I think that goes back also to the celebration and the acknowledging all the struggles that we face because a part of it.
Yeah, I was sharing.
If we could just push on a switch and be successful, would you do it? I think most people say, yeah, I would do it. But I can say if you want, let's see, you have a beautiful mountain, you want to get on the top. There are two ways to get there. The first one you do, you buy the equipment you train before and then you start the expedition. You get on the summit after weeks and weeks. You stand tall on it. You're like, yeah, or you get dropped by an helicopter, you're going to be on top. But I can absolutely say that the feeling are not going to be the same. Obviously not. And so I think if it would be instantaneously successful, it would take away the pride, it would take away the feeling of fulfillment that we get from going through the hardship. And that's something also another chapter in my book, that hardship is temporary. There is always an end. I love this quote from John Lennon, who says, everything is going to be okay at the end. And if it's not okay, it's not the end. I love it. And this is something that I. I really practiced a lot when I was in my training in the command of paratroopers. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done. I knew when I started that I'm going to suffer for the next coming five, six days. It's going to be very hard. I'm going to be like, I want to quit. But I know that eventually I'm going to be having a hot shower, a warm meal and sitting in my bed. And I kept thinking that hardship is temporary. I can grow through the difficulties now because it's not going to be forever. And that's a good reminder for everyone. We all go through hardship. This is part of life. We should not want them. This is what makes us human. Right. To experience the full scope of our emotions. So that's great. But we need to remember that one day it's going to be better.
Yeah, I am thinking about that. I have an uncommon belief when it comes to what makes people feel fulfilled in life. And that is we crave challenge. Right? You don't want something that's so out of your skill set or capability that it crushes you. But you don't want something too easy so that you don't appreciate. The people want challenge in their lives. And, you know, there's a lot of people, there's this movement, at least they talk about it here in the States a lot called quiet quitting, where you show up to your job and you just put in the minimum effort. You know, the time you're. They're the hours that you're supposed to. And it's a really interesting conversation because on one hand, if you're with an abusive employer who has hired you to do the job of five people, and you know you're going to kind of crazy like it's healthy to set boundaries, to say, I'm not going to work weekends. Or it could be viewed as people not trying to go that extra mile because they're not really, you know, passionate about what they're working on.
I want to jump on that because, you know, we see in marketing all the time Those promises of seven figures in seven days, 2 million followers in two hours, Beachbody without working out, weight loss, pill, whatever. We. We are offered shortcuts all the time, and people buy into it. People like, why I cannot blame anyone. We are wired to stay away from pain and discomfort and choose immediate gratification. Right. We want to go away from whatever is difficult, so we want to have shortcuts. Our brain tries to conserve energy. We are wired to be lazy. The problem is that there is no shortcut for success. There is no shortcut to become a great leader. There is no shortcut to become a great partner, husband, wife, son, daughter, friend, whatever. There is not. We need just to do the work. And going with this of the society gives us everything we want instantly. We are used to not tolerate pain so much. We are used to this dopamine hit all the time. And so we're like, I don't have what I want right now. I don't have time to do the work to get better. I don't have time for the transformation, whatever. So people quit too soon? Yeah, definitely. I think it's a really a problem right now. And we see the turnover is so high in companies. People come, they stay for a few months. Like, no, they change and they change and they change. But mastery takes time. You need to reach a certain level of mastery and autonomy in whatever you do to really start developing passion about it.
Absolutely. And to piggyback what I. The point I was trying to make was with quiet quitting, too, is when you get in that mode of not putting forth your best effort that over a long time leads to misery or restlessness, and it leads to people, oh, I should try something new, because this doesn't matter. I don't feel it deeply. Yeah. And if it's that instant dopamine hit, you know, if you're not familiar with struggle or you've never lived through an economy with a global recession that, you know, a lot of people are talking about due to a lot of factors of the last couple of years, you know, how do you weather that in a way where you're not completely broken or miserable in the process is a big question.
Yeah, it is. And, you know, I love what Brendan is Sharing. If you want more, you have to be more. This is so foundational. And I can share a story that illustrates that. When I was in the last day of my commander paratrooper training, so it was after four months of suffering. Four months were so complicated. On the last day we were tested formally, I say formal because we were tested every single day, emotionally, physically, psychologically, whatever. But this last day that would start like this, we would have a 5 meter high rope parkour. So we just had to go from the streets and ropes and stuff without safety line. Just after that we would have an obstacle run for. So this, this run with different obstacles that when you finish, the only thing you want to do is to throw up because you're so exhausted and your heart is beating all of your chest. After we would have a carry the men, you know, carry someone on your shoulder with a, with a weapon and a chest swapping and everything and run a certain distance under a certain time. And so we were exhausted. But the final, final test, the one we were like, what's called the speed march. And it's a, it's a test that has been used by a lot of different armies all around the world based on something that happened during the second World War. So there was kind of an heroic. It's to honor the memory of some paratroopers that did something here. And so we have a lot of pride going to this exercise and we want to do it good. And so it is like we have to complete a 16km run 10 miles under 100 minutes. So we are in full combat uniform with the boots, we have the helmet, we have the chest ribbing, the magazines, we have the weapon, we have the shuffle, we have water, etc. So you would say, well, 16 kilometers under 100 minutes, that's doable. I mean, you train soldiers well. I want to remind you that we are exhausted after four months of training plus all the tests that started early morning. Right. The thing is, we were not allowed to have a watch, meaning that the only way to get to the finish line on time was to give 100% from the first step was to give it all. You couldn't manage the time. You couldn't say, oh, I have 10 minutes left, I need to go faster. No, no, no, no way to know. So you have push, push from the very beginning. And that's really where I learned what it means to show up as my best. That changed everything. And I keep this memory and this story with me everywhere I go and think, am I showing up as my best Today in this situation. And I think the more you dare to ask yourself that question and once again to go back to having this reality check, the better you can adapt your behavior.
Yeah, I love that idea of are you paying attention to the task? Are you checking at. Looking at the clock to see where you're at? So that's super powerful. I wanted to shift gears a little bit, and I'm curious, do you have any uncommon mindsets or beliefs? You know, because there's a lot of people that talk about, we only have some amount of time, we get the second chance. There's not a lot of people, but there are folks out there. One of our mentors, Brendan Burchard, talks a lot about that. Do you have any beliefs or mindsets outside of what other people say? It's a little bit uncommon or a little bit more unique to you.
I can tell. I didn't reinvent anything. My message, I think if you look at all personal growth, all the books that have ever been written, they usually reshare the same ideas in different language. And there is still power in that because something that one of the guru, the leader in personal development world would share, you will not especially resonate with it. But sometimes you would resonate with the world, with someone else. And so I think everybody start find their own truth. But it's, you know, we all go through the same things, we all experience the same feelings. There's just a context that is different. That's it. That's what I can share.
Okay, right on. I absolutely love it. Now, I think we already share this. So usually at the end, I ask folks to share a way to kind of get started into the topic. So if you wanted to live fully, and we did talk about, you know, that, that, you know, you want to be great, do good, and be epic, meaning the process is to be aware of what's going on currently, to take ownership of your situation and then commit to taking action. And that next action of integrity, Is that like the best way to get started or is there another way for folks who, if you're. If they're listening right now and they're like, maybe I'm not giving 100% in all the areas of my life that I want to. How can I switch that?
Yeah, I think it goes back to this simple four steps of taking. I mean, increasing your awareness about your situation. And I think this is one of the most complicating things to do. The awareness and the ownership are very hard because it's taking all the responsibilities that goes with it. And usually we don't want to do that because the moment you take responsibility for whatever situation you're in, you're like, it's maybe partially my fault. And no, I can do something about it, and I'm gonna have to do something about it Sometimes this is one reason of people, they don't share their dreams because they're too scared that if they share their dreams, they're gonna have to do something about it. Right. I think this is a very limiting way of going through life. You know, there are two ways to live. You can either maximize your life experience or minimize the struggle. I would say that the majority of people, they try to go through life by minimizing the struggle, meaning trying to have at least pain and suffering as possible. There's a few percentage of the population who trying to maximize their experience, and they actually take the time to define what is a great life, to define the way they need to show up. And in this exercise, that's either with a coach, you do it with your journal, or you do that with your best friend on a stroll in the woods, whatever. I think this is something we should be doing, and if you've never done it before, it should be today. And we should support kids to start having those conversations. You know, I don't want to go deep into the educational system, but I feel that we go through school, etc. And we're not good at life. When you. When you get out of school, we have some knowledge, but they're not always useful. I'm not saying it's bad what we learn at school, but I'm saying, like, we are missing crucial skills about communication, relationship, money, dynamics, about fulfillment, about understanding our emotion, understanding our mind, understanding our own psychology. We don't do that at school, which is a pity, because this is what most adults are struggling with in their life. I cannot imagine that the educational system still did not change. When we see all the people who feel like so much hurt and so much difficulty to go through life like that should ring the bell, right? And I think as coaches, we do by being able to support people to go that path, to actually get better at life. That was the whole concept of my book. It was really a book to support people to get better at life, because this is the only way to create a great life. Awesome.
All right, so with that said, before we wrap up and, you know, share where people can follow up. And again, I'll put those in the show notes, Is there one thing that you haven't shared on another Podcast or form of content that you could share with the audience today, maybe that you haven't already.
Yeah. So there is another message I could give is that we don't always have what we want most, but we are always responsible to make the most of what we have. It's been more than five years that with my wife we're trying to have a child and unfortunately we've been going to this unexplained infertility, meaning that we don't know, doctors don't know why, but we just cannot conceive a child. And it's not on her, it's not on me. I mean, we don't know, it's probably both, but no idea. And that was one of the. Another very big trauma in our life because we went through a lot of medical procedures, ivf, etc, trying to make everything we could to have this thing that we desired most. And since I'm a kid, I love children. My mom was a teacher, my wife is a teacher as well. I've been a Scot leader for years. I mean, I really love children. I always saw me as a father. And since this whole thing started, you're like, I had to face the reality that maybe I'm never going to be a father. I'm never going to be a dad. And that was very painful. And emotionally and physically, I can't even describe how it impacted my wife, myself and our relationship together. It has been very traumatic event. It's kind of in the moment, but also grieving the idea of being a parent now. We had a lot of conversation about that, trying to say, like, what's the point? We're trying to make everything perfect in life or at least striving for excellence. But there are things that we're just not going to be able to have and this is out of our control. And that made us realize that you can do whatever you can, but you're not always going to receive whatever you want the most. It's not always I wish it for everyone, but sometimes the reality is not there. But it's always our choice to make the most of what we have and we hear a lot. I know it's nothing new here because what I'm saying is kind of gratitude. But sometimes it goes so deep that I could not really have gratitude about anything because I was constantly focusing on the only thing that I really wanted. I didn't have like a car. I don't care. Ten clients, I don't care. Six figure business, I don't care. I just want to Be a father, just give me that. And making peace with the fact that I'm never going to have that. And I know it happens for everyone in a different context. Once again, the feeling of grieving, the feeling of being disappointed by not receiving something, what we truly desire, it hurts. It's always in our responsibility to look at what we have and being grateful for what we have. And I think that's a reminder. I mean, I can hear this reminder to myself every week, every month. It's not because we know it that we really do it. And so I would really encourage people to cherish what they have. And that goes again with this illusion of time. Because in our case, we cannot have what we want. So there is a future we can never have. But a lot of time, we live with things in the present, and we only realize how precious it is the moment it is taken away from us. And so we'd really invite people to this time to reflect on what they have, right? And we all have something to make us happy, to make us feel good just right here, now. And if you think about it, the ultimate goal in life is to feel good right now. This is really what we're all after in whatever form that takes. Because it's different for everyone. And that's great. We all have a different creativity, different expression of self. But when you realize the only thing that we aiming for is to feel good right now, it's like, I can do that today. I can do that just now, right? Putting a smile on my face and going in my heart and say, hey, I'm alive. This itself is a gift. It is. And so whatever project that we have, whatever future goals and targets and objectives, it's great. Let's keep having them, because that's pulling us forward, forward. But we should not forget to acknowledge where we are right now and cherish the precious things that we have in life before they're taking away from us.
That's so beautiful. Thank you for sharing something so personal. Like, that's. I can't imagine how hard it is. And with me and my wife talking about starting a family too, and being a little bit older, you know, this is definitely something that's on my mind. You know, starting a family and will it happen? Will it not? How will it impact our relationship? And I think it's a really awesome example of everything we've talked about today. Like, okay, like, we spend so much time maybe focusing on the one thing that we don't have, but we live in abundance. You know, so many of us Live in so much abundance. And, you know, you can define yourself on the one thing that you really want, or you can define yourself about everything else that you do, you're lucky to have in your. In your life. And I think that's a really beautiful message, and I think it's something really important for people to be thinking about.
Yeah.
So you're not miserable. You're not. You're not successful and miserable. Right. Because that's like the opposite of what we do as coaches is we don't want that.
So you said a very powerful word, and I want to highlight it. You said define yourself, and I would say define yourself about who you are and how you show up. Don't define yourself, but your goals and the future, because it does not exist. And you can have the most beautiful vision to support people, etc. You can still be a person lacking of integrity right now, today. I mean, your mission, your vision doesn't make you how you show up today. So define yourself by how you sharpen today and not how and who you want to become later. That's a powerful takeaway as well. Yeah.
Oh, I love that. All right, Francois, we are at the end of our time. I'll put this in the show notes. But what is the best way for people to find your book or follow up with you? After listening to this powerful interview?
I would love people to just connect on LinkedIn with me. I love to meet other extraordinary people. I love to grow my network and just learn from all other people that are going to connect with me because we all together. Growing together. This is. I didn't. Can I say all of that again? Of course.
Yeah. Yeah, go for it.
So I'll be super happy if people can connect with me on LinkedIn. I love to connect with new people and learning from everyone around me. My book is available on Amazon. You can also download the first chapter for free on my website@Francois deneuville.com so I'm really looking forward to connecting with a lot of people.
Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. So again, those links will be in the show notes below. Francois, thank you so much for being on the Meaningful Revolution. I'm so glad we got to have this conversation.
And.
And if you are listening and you are delaying something, if you are putting off something, if you are not living in integrity, get into action today. Trust us, you will feel better afterwards. Even if it's a hot mess, even if it's a struggle, it's definitely worth it. So with that said, thank you for listening to this episode of the Meaningful Revolution Podcast. What is your meaningful revolution? Right. On the podcast we talk about people that have done a lot of work and getting clarity about what their mission is, what they find fulfillment in, what is helping them engage in their life more and in the hopes of inspiring you to do so for yourself. But how do you go about doing that, right? Maybe you are new to personal development, maybe you're new to wanting change in your life and you don't know how to get to that next step. Well, good news. I got a three day challenge for you that will help guide you through just that. It's the Meaningful Revolution Challenge where we'll spend three days together, one hour each. We're on day one. We'll talk about clearly defining your personal meaningful revolution, which is your fulfilling transformation. It's your purposeful impact. It's that authentic movement that gets you up and excited out of bed every morning to go out and chase and create in the world. Because I believe if we have more people living into their personal meaningful revolutions, that we will have a lot more people engaged in their lives, which helps us out in society, it helps us provide more for our families, it helps us feel better about our lives. And these are all things that we all strive for, right? I feel like we all strive for joy, growth and impact in life. And a lot of that revolves. If you can achieve those three things, you have your personal meaningful revolution. So I'd love for you to join us in this free three day challenge which is live. And so like I said, on the first day we'll go through clearly defining your personal meaningful revolution. The second day we'll talk about building your plan and the components of that so you can know your next steps and follow through and feel a little bit of momentum there. And then the third day we'll talk about your commitment to that vision and habits, strategies, tactics to help make sure you follow through. So I love doing these challenges because one, I get to know you guys more, I get to understand, ask you questions. You know, there's a place each day for some question answers and for some one off coaching if you're struggling with something in particular. As a certified high performance coach, I am a coach first. I love coaching people. It's my bread and butter and it's not me telling you what to do, but it's us co creating and figuring out a solution together to whatever is getting in your way. So love to do that for you. Join us in the Meaningful Revolution Challenge by clicking on the link below. Wherever you're watching or listening to this podcast. So see you in the challenge, guys. You got this. This is the year to step up that vision for your life, to really build into that vision and to get some momentum going into this new year. So join us. See you there.
