Author: Evan Bernache

A survival mechanism is a way of being we have developed over the years, since we were a kid, to “survive” in our society. Just like animals develop survival mechanisms (in the jungle in South America, a certain type of frog is bright colorful (actually beautiful) and can’t really hide and its survival mechanism is its poisonous skin, whereas another type of frog which is not poisonous at all needs to be “invisible” and therefore has the appearance of a leave and is really hard, almost impossible to spot), human beings develop ways of being in the world to protect themselves and do well, depending on their culture, their education, their experience of life, etc… Some will stay invisible like the frog, while others will be very competitive trying to be the best at everything they do, some will not allow anyone to tell them what to do while others will spend most of their time pleasing others, etc…

It’s not a bad thing (although we tend to think it is), it’s just what worked for us. And, at least in coaching (which is Present-Future focused), it doesn’t matter so much why we developed it.  What’s important is to be aware of it, to see if and when it is empowering us, and when it is not empowering us or when it is limiting us, and then intentionally choose.

Today I want to introduce you to Apathetic Hercules, one of my survival mechanisms (yes, it’s fun to give them a name!). Apathetic Hercules is highly determined, competitive and trying to be the best at anything he does, thinks/feels he doesn’t need help, that he’s strong enough to deal with anything, that actually he should be able to deal with anything (otherwise it means he is not perfect). He is usually good at what he does, and he can leave his emotions aside to feel stronger. In this post, I will focus more on the Hercules part than the apathetic part.

Like any survival mechanism, there are some benefits to it, which is why we have developed them. In this case, it helped me be put the work, be persistent and be a successful student and swimmer at the same time, have a successful career so far. It helped me thrive to a certain point.

And like any survival mechanism, there are also some costs to it. For instance:

• It’s hard to receive unsolicited feedback from someone that I feel is not “legitimate” (someone who is not my manager, my mentor, my coach). What I mean by that is that I won’t tell the person to shut up, but I will be internally triggered and I will justify myself and explain why I do what I do etc… which in the end prevents me from really taking the gold that is in the feed back
• I can step over the things I learn, as I understand them rather quickly and then unconsciously think I got them figured out. So instead of letting them sink in, applying them, embodying them, mastering them, I will understand them intellectually and switch to something new and never really get the gold of it, missing out so much. It’s a little like wanting to climb the Everest: I will think I am already there instead of taking the time to hike there.
• I might not dare to say that I don’t know/understand and ask about something, and then stay with my ignorance
• The flip side of it is also disengagement: if I see I can’t be at my best, do great, I won’t engage. For instance, I won’t attend a running race if I am not prepared to do a good performance.
• When interacting with others:
  • when you have several “Hercules” in the same room, the interactions can be tensed: they are usually addicted to being right which prevents them from being open to others’ point of view. This limits the ability to co-create something even better than what each of them have in mind.
  • If a Hercules, interact with someone who is not at all Hercules, the other person might feel disconnected, either admiring the person and thinking they will never be “that strong/perfect”, therefore feeling not worth it, either rejecting the Hercules.

Of course, Hercules types are frequent amongst leaders. That part helped them get where they are. I come from the corporate/project management world and I know a bunch of them. We all know some archetype of Hercules (the bossy manager who thinks he knows it all, who has a top down approach to everything, who is not open to any feedback or new ideas, etc…) but often, it is more subtle, like in my case. If you want to see if you have some “Hercules” survival mechanism, check the following:

• Do you catch yourself thinking, when someone is giving you some advice: “who are you to give me some advice? I know what I’m doing, I got it all figured out”
• When someone is telling you that something is good to do (listening deeply others, delegating, taking a look at yourself, etc…), do you tend to start by “yes I’m doing this” and justify that you are already doing it, while maybe admitting that you could do more of it ?
• Do you have a tendency to step over things quickly (“OK, I got it, what’s next”)?
• Do you have a hard time to ask for help?
• Do you have a hard time to admit you don’t know or to ask for something?
• Do you tend to think that others have a problem but not you? For instance, do you see what I am pointing to in this post and think, “not me”. Maybe you are right. What I can say is that it’s taken me some work to see it, so my invitation is to take the time to take a deep look 😊

Actually, I believe most of us have at least a little bit of it. And it’s OK. Once again, there is nothing wrong with it. There are some great benefits to it. The issue is that when it is automatic and you don’t distinguish it, it gets in your way without you realizing it. The whole point of doing this coaching work and taking a look at oneself is to be aware and choose rather than it be automatic. And the tricky part is that it is hard/impossible to see by oneself. It’s taken me some work with seasoned coaches to start seeing this for me, to admit it and to share it.

The costs of having our survival mechanism take the wheel automatically can be very important. Some business deals haven’t been closed because the “Hercules” part thought he had it all figured out and didn’t listen to some good advice or didn’t want to compromise. Some people have been fired because they didn’t want to take a look at themselves. And some relationships may fall apart. I can see where I have overlooked some strategies in my business because of my Hercules part. I am not better than anyone else. Now I am just more aware and therefore more at cause rather than at the effect of this survival mechanism.

So, do you have some Hercules in you? To what extent? What are the benefits? How is this getting in your way?

On a side note, we usually say in coaching that our ideal client is us, so my “Hercules” clients are tricky to enroll since their first reaction will be: “I don’t need help, I am doing very well by myself” (which is true by the way), or “I understand this coaching I read about it, that’s all I need”. See the point? If this resonate with you and would like to explore, let’s schedule a phone/skype call.

Take care,

I’m just coming back from a family trip to Costa Rica where we had a lot of fun, seeing numerous wild animals in the jungle, snorkeling and relaxing in an awesome eco lodge with a fantastic view over the jungle and the Pacific Ocean. We also had quite a few unexpected events as often in travel adventures: 2 of my kids got sick on our way there (a stomach virus they had got right before leaving), my wife sprained her ankle in the middle of the jungle and had to be carried back to the station and to end the trip on one leg, we had a flat tire (due to a shock in the off road part of the drive) on our 7h drive back to the airport and we missed our connection in Miami on our flight back home due to the poor management of the airline company to go through the whole custom/security/luggage circuit with my wife in a wheel chair, so we had to fly on another company later during the day…. But overall, we had a great time.

During our 2 days in the jungle in the Corcovado park, where we slept in a very simple base camp with a roof but no walls, just mosquito nets around the beds, hearing the howler monkeys at 4am in the dark night (if you have never heard them, it sounds like a dinosaur, really), we went for various hikes with a guide and looked for wild animals. And I found this quest was a great metaphor for how we go through our lives / career:

• If you just hike on the path, on your own, looking in front of you or even just at your feet, then you won’t see a lot of things, especially if you walk fast. Of course, an animal might appear in your field of vision, just like synchronicities happen in life, but the chances that you see something interesting are very low. And yet I believe this is what most of us do in life. We are on a path and we move on so fast and so focused on ourselves and on what’s right in front of us that we miss out a lot. It can be enjoyable by the way, but there is so much more.

 

• If you start to pay more attention, to watch off the path, on the sides and even behind you, from the ground to the sky, listening to the sounds, then you will see more things. If you slow down and even pause, you will more easily detect any movement by contrast to the stillness (that’s the benefit of meditation or just doing nothing at times). This is like developing your awareness in your life. The more you slow down, the more you listen to yourself and to others, the more you explore outside of what you know or think outside the box, the more you will understand yourself and others, the more possibilities you will see, the more you will realize that you can be at cause in your life as opposed to be at the effect of your life and the more likely you’ll be able to create the life you REALLY want.

• Then you can hire a guide. And that makes all the difference. He knows where to look at, he’s an expert in making the invisible visible. Numerous times, I wondered how he had spotted an animal 50m away hidden in the trees. In a way, it’s like having a coach who helps you see what you can’t see by yourself (ie your blind spots). Like the guide in the jungle, a coach will also partner with you to ask you what you would like to try and see (what do you want in your life), challenge you to continue the hike even if it is hot and tiring (ask my kids) providing that you are clear and committed to your goals, will support you if you get hurt on the way (ask my wife), just like when unpleasant things happen in life. I am using the example of the coach because this is what I do, but any other type of support will help depending on what you are looking for. And this will dramatically increase your chances to achieve your goals.

 

• Eventually, there is another part in this game, which for me is the hardest one. I call it the Puma metaphor. In the Corcovado park, there are some pumas but they are very rare to see (the last time our guide saw it was more than a year ago). But some people saw one the day before us. So suddenly, the possibility to see one seemed higher and we started to hope. But when we were hiking in the jungle, we some time had to choose a path or another. And we had to accept that we would see what would be on our path and not what was on the other path. We can do our best to look for these animals by paying attention, slowing down, hiring a guide, but in the end, we can’t control everything. We can’t control what animals will be on our path, especially the rare puma. And we have to accept it. Same in life: we can do the work, put in the hours, we can do our best and yet, there is a part that is not in our control. For instance, I can serve and impact someone very powerfully, propose to work with this person in the best way because of all the possibilities I see for him/her, and yet he/she might not become a client for plenty of good reasons out of my control. Or you can have done everything you could to be hired for a position and even be THE one for the job but the timing is not OK for all sorts of reasons (no budget, internal hiring policy, etc…).

       And sometimes, we are so focused on what we really want and don’t have that we disregard what else is present. In this analogy, if you are only focused on seeing the puma, you might ruminate the frustration to not see it, you might fall into victimhood (this is unfair, some people saw one yesterday, etc…), you might focus on other people’s path (if they see the puma, that would be super unfair, wouldn’t it? 😊). In doing so:

•           you forget to focus on your own path which make it less likely that you are going to achieve your goals
•           you are not present to all the other amazing animals which are on your path. We didn’t see the puma, but se saw a herd of 30-40 dangerous peccaries (sorts of wild boars) passing 20m away from us which was really impressive, a Michael Jackson bird (which makes backwards moves similar to the moon walk, so funny), a baby tapir suckling his mother (which is also quite dangerous), a crocodile, lots of monkeys jumping from a branch to another, some with their baby on the back, some koatis, some toucans and beautiful ara macaos (red/purple parrots) and more. And that’s enough for us to be super grateful for these hikes. Same in life, we might get so focused on one shiny thing we want that we forget about all that we have, or can have, that is already amazing.

         Finale note: this doesn’t suggest you have to give up or be resigned to not see the Puma (ie achieve your goals). You can see the bigger picture and if what you REALLY want in life is to see a     puma, then you can come back the next year for a week instead of 2 days, you can visit other places with more chances to see one and do this year after year. This is called determination, perseverance, commitment and you can apply this to anything you want to create.

So, what is (are) the puma(s) in your life? Are you committed to see it (them) while accepting that it might not unfold exactly as you plan for? Are you focusing on your path rather than others pass and are you seeing all the other animals on your journey?

Take care,

Photo by Emily Morter on Unsplash

 A more beautiful question is a great book written by Warren Berger. In this book Berger presents the world from the perspective of asking questions, explaining the benefits of it, illustrating how any great innovation started with great questions.

He explains that in our so fast changing world, leaders will be those coming with better questions than with better answers (which tend to quickly be obsolete).

He invites companies to replace Mission Statements by Mission Questions, to encourage questions at all levels and he believes Questions-storming are more effective than brainstorming because:

• It’s easier to come up with questions
• It generates less pressure about what others are going to think
• It’s easier to narrow down to a few great intriguing motivating questions, giving a sense of direction, than to a few answers (difficulty to converge and agree on answers)

 

What’s getting in the way to ask questions?

I have noticed for myself that the following can get in my way to ask questions:

• Fear of being too intrusive
• Fear of embarrassing the other person
• Fear of being seen as not knowing, as a fool
• Lack of curiosity, interest

We are not trained in asking questions. We are educated in learning and knowing answers. In the workplace, we might get away with questions at the beginning when we are new, but quickly we are expected to know and / or we are feeling we should know.

And to be completely transparent, this is a hard part in coaching, which is question-based, where the coach is the expert in not knowing and where the client also has to get comfortable with not knowing. I am constantly being present to that and working on it, as a coach and when I am being coached.

What are the benefits of asking questions?

As I see it, the benefits are four folds:

Asking questions as a way to not make assumptions:

• Everyday, we make tens of assumptions on everything: on what others think, their intention, on how things are going to go etc…
• Understanding that we actually don’t know most of these is the 1^st Then asking questions is the simplest way to not make any wrong assumption and really know what is going on.

 

Asking questions out of curiosity as a way to build rapport and trust

• Have you ever been at the contact of a person who seems genuinely interested in you, asking questions and listening to your answers without the intention to prove you right or wrong or to tell her story? That feels good doesn’t it? Of course, the important word here is genuine, sincere. People can tell if you are really interested or not. And this can actually be learned and practiced.

 

Asking questions as a way to open new possibilities and spark creativity

• Asking questions takes us out of our usual, narrow way of thinking. It helps us see what we usually don’t see and it widens the range of possibilities.
• Berger talks about the Vujade Principle which is to see things as a beginner, as if you had never experienced it before (the opposite of the Dejavu principle). It is hard because our ego tends to not want to be a beginner. It’s hard enough to prove ourselves in this world so it doesn’t feel good to be a beginner again. But when we take the time to do it, we definitely see new things that we didn’t see before.
• As Berger explains it, the brain is like a forest with trees (the cells) and branches (the dendrites). When they connect to another dendrite from another tree, it creates new ideas. The right brain (creative one) has longer dendrites than the left brain (the rational, logical one) which enables more faraway connections and therefore more creativity. A great illustration of what it means concretely is the connective inquiry: connect ideas from faraway and unrelated domains. Instead of asking “what if we combine A and B”, ask “what if we combine A and Z” or even better “what if we combine A and 26”. Then you create new concepts, new products, new services, new experiences.

Note: if you want to develop your creativity, slowing down, relaxing, meditating, taking a walk in nature, will ease it. It’s all about creating some space in the noise of our heads to let new ideas/perspectives pop up.

Asking questions to move on:

Just living into a question might be enough, you sometimes don’t even need to know the answer. It will guide your actions and move you forward until you either reach what you wanted to achieve with that question (then you realize you couldn’t have come with the path you actually followed should you have tried to plan for it), or your question (and even more so the answer) becomes obsolete.

 

Examples of interesting questions

To conclude, here are some example of interesting questions you can ask yourselves or others (the key is to take the time to really sit with them):

• To explore what you really want in life, business or at work:
  • What do you (I) want? What else? What else? What else? What else? What else? (We really don’t spend enough time wondering what we want)
  • Wouldn’t it be cool if? (no censorship because we usually tend to want what we think we can get)
  • Why is this important for you (me)?
  • What would that do for you (me)?
  • What does success look like?
  • What does success feel like?
  • Why not?

• To challenge the initial assumptions
  • Is it true? Are you (am I) 100% sure?
  • What if you (I) were wrong?
  • Instead of asking “why is this?”, start with “is this?” Doing this tends to take your judgment or bias out of the equation.

• To brainstorm:
  • What if there was no constraint?
  • What if everything was possible?

• To understand yourself and others
  • What does it mean for you (me)?
  • What would that look like?
  • How do you (I) feel about it?
  • What’s coming for you (me)?

• When you are stuck
  • If your (my) best friend would come and ask you (me) about this situation, what would you (I) tell him?
  • What if you (I) simply did nothing?
  • Why is it bothering you (me)? Why are you (am I) actually having this question?

• Vulnerable questions to deepen your exploration:
  • What do you (I) know is true but don’t want to admit?
  • What are you (am I) afraid of?
  • What don’t you (I) want others to know?

 

As a conclusion, if we can switch from “needing to know all the answers” to asking ourselves “what would be a (more) beautiful question?”, I truly believe that the relationships, the workplace, the businesses and the whole world will be in a better place.

Take care,

When I am asked what I do, I answer differently depending on my mood, my energy in the moment. I might say that I help people get out of their own way, or to create a life/business/career by design as opposed to by default. I sometimes say that I support people in achieving more external achievement (Success) AND more internal fulfillment. And sometime I just say I’m a personal and professional coach. And usually people go either” OK, got it” without really getting it or “what kind of coaching?”. The truth is coaching is used for so many different things that it is confusing for a lot of people. I therefore wanted to talk a little bit about what is and is not and will do in different posts.

So, let’s start today with the basics:

What Coaching is Not:

It’s often clearer to explain what something is by defining what it is not. So here are 2 services with which coaching is often mistaken:

• Consulting: a consultant is someone who comes with a certain expertise, with solutions to propose, who might even do the work for you and deliver the end result. A consultant might come with a strategy to grow your business, some recommendations to improve your relationships or your management. They will usually come with answers, tips, advice and tell you what to do. A lot of coaches are also blending coaching with consulting which is totally fine but which explains why it might be confusing to some people. 

• Psychotherapy: Coaching might involve some deep personal introspection which we are not used to and which may make it a little scary to some but it is not a therapy. A simplified but rather clear way to separate therapy from coaching is the following:
  • Therapy is focused on the past and painful issues, aiming at coming to term with these.
  • Coaching is focused on the present and the future, the past might come into play but it is a fact, not a problem.

People can work with both a coach and a psychotherapist at the same time. I found that one the reason that hold people back from even just trying to work with a coach is the belief that if you see a coach, it means something is wrong with you and you have to fix it. People are then worried about what other might think about them. If you or some people you know are in that case, I am inviting you to shift the perspective to something that is inspiring and moving you toward the life you REALLY want to create.

What is Coaching?

The International Coach Federation defines it as follows:

“Coaching is a partnership with clients in a thought provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.”

There are different coaching models, different coaching styles and there is no ONE way to go with a coaching session (I’ll talk about this more in another post). But there are some mains common skills and core competencies that are taught in proper coaching trainings, like coaching presence (being really present and connected with the person), powerful questioning (asking questions that will move the person forward and stay stuck or help shift their perspective), active deep listening (what is said, how it is said, what is not said), direct communication (to create shifts, to challenge, to support), creating awareness (helping to see in our blind spots), designing actions (how to put into practice the insights to move forward). These skills and competencies might seem obvious and easy but believe me, mastering them is not.

In a world where we are used to give advice, look for the right way to do things, it can feel weird the first time you are being coached. But it also feels great. Because you feel heard (and sometimes that’s all you need), not judged (who can you talk to without fear of being judged or concerned by what the person is going to think), unconditionally supported. And it is powerful because it is about finding what YOU need, what is YOUR perspective and YOUR best way to move on (sometimes you don’t even need a solution, the problem might just disappear) and YOUR greatness and genius is trusted and enhanced in the process.

Sometimes, shifts happen during a session, with a big haha moment, when the light goes off suddenly, like the fish which now sees the water he is in and couldn’t see before since he had been completely immersed in it since he was born. Sometime, there is just a “hum” which indicates that something is happening. Sometime, a seed is planted that will grow later and have ripple effects. An insight might come in between sessions. Or at the end of the session, it might feel like chaos, which is great and just means the work is being done. Often, people will even change or create new results without realizing it until someone points it out to them. And all this add up, week after week, month after month, to create a new reality and a new experience of life.

To conclude, I like to say that coaching is:

• Some skills and competencies to learn and nurture
• An art, developed by each coach in a different and personal way
• A science (science of the mind, neurosciences, behavioral sciences, etc.)

In the end, it’s not magical but it sometimes looks like magic. I know it as a coach and as a client (I have my own coach).

Take care,

I am an over thinker. What I mean by that is I tend to analyze, to want to understand and optimize everything, to need everything to be clear before engaging.
There is nothing wrong with that. It comes from a survival mechanism (a way to operate in the world that we developed over the years since we were born) which enables me to:

• Feel safe: if I can think of everything that needs to be done, everything that can go wrong, understand how things work, to be in control, then I know where I am going. Then I can’t fail, or at least I minimize the risk of failures. And I feel safe.
• Optimize: since I was a kid, I always wanted to have it all. When I was asked do you want A or B, I would say both and I was said it’s impossible, I would find ways to demonstrate that it was possible, it was just a matter of motivation and optimization.
• Seek perfection, which is great for a perfectionist.

There are some benefits to overthink:

• I am usually good, sometime great, at what I do
• I am pretty reliable to do what I have to do
• I am professional
• I am rarely taken aback
• I am in control, stay safe and it feels good

Now here is the flip side:

• The most obvious one is that it costs a lot of time trying to optimize and plan for everything. I remember, in my previous career as a project manager, spending hours to review and tweak my slides for the steering committees of boards of Directors. All this for details that no one would even notice. Now I’m not saying I should have gone unprepared, it was of course a good thing to anticipate what could go wrong and to clear my message but not that much.
• It creates blind spots. When doing my first videos on Facebook, I was so much overthinking about how I should do it, what people would think and so concerned about bothering people (that’s one of my internal roadblocks) that I didn’t realize that I was actually posting on my Facebook Page, my wall. It’s like being scared to bother people with what you are doing in your own home which sounds ridiculous. But I didn’t see that, lost in my overthinking.
• It holds me back from taking actions and doing things. Since I need everything to be clear before I move on so, I will prepare and prepare and prepare but this just postpones the time for me to take a leap. And it’s an easy way to avoid doing what’s uncomfortable.
• It creates frustration when things don’t unfold as planned, and they most often don’t. If you spend so much time thinking and preparing something, the frustration is even bigger when it doesn’t happen the way you want
• It kill possibilities: as soon as I start to think, fear will show up, and my brain will find all the reasons why doing that thing is impossible or irrelevant, or not worth it, and why I should stay comfortable where I am.
• I miss opportunities: By the time I have gone through my process, analysis, optimization, decision making and I am ready, the opportunity is gone. Really.

What do I do with this?  

• I notice when I tend to overthink and I ask myself “what do I want to do now?”, to be at choice rather than it being an automatism.
• I practice raising my hand without knowing. This analogy comes from when my coach invited me to raise my hand, in a group coaching program I am in, even before I start to think about whether my question is good enough, whether I want to coach or be coached, etc… Very challenging. The few times I did it though, it was great. I didn’t have the opportunity to stress, I just dived in. This happened recently as I was on a call with Michael Neil, a very notorious coach, in a group program. I just raised my hand and was coached by him in front of a hundred of people, on video. It didn’t feel stressful or awesome, it just was. Only the next day did I start to overthink again (“oh, I must have looked stupid etc…”). So, I try to practice just doing without knowing all I would normally need to know, but I must admit it is still hard.
• I have a post-it in front of me where it is written: Seeking Perfection is easier than Taking Action. A great reminder to check if what I am trying to do by thinking is actually a way for me to avoid doing what’s uncomfortable and if so, then just do what’s uncomfortable.

So, where/when are you overthinking? What are the benefits? And what are the costs? Can you be at choice?

Take care,

 

Photo by Sammie Vasquez on Unsplash

Last year, as I brought fear to the conversation with my coach, she read me an extract from a book called Big Magic from Elizabeth Gilbert. And I found it so beautifully written, and actually so helpful to remember each time I feel fear is showing up, that I wanted to share the best parts with you. So, here we go, the chapter is called “the Road Trip”:

“Here’s How I’ve learned to deal with my fear: I made a decision a long time ago that if I want creativity in my life – and I do – then I will have to make space for fear too. Plenty of space. …. Since it appeared that they would always be together. In fact, it seems to me that my fear and my creativity are basically conjoined twins – as evidenced by the fact that creativity cannot take a single step forward without fear marching right alongside it. …. This is why we have to be careful of how we handle our fear – because I’ve noticed that when people try to kill of their fear, they often end up inadvertently murdering their creativity in the process.

 So, I don’t try to kill off my fear. …. It seems to me that the less I fight my fear, the less it fights back. If I can relax, fear relaxes too. In fact I cordially invite fear to come along with me everywhere I go. I even have a welcoming speech prepared for fear, which I deliver right before embarking upon any new project or big adventure.

It goes something like this:

 “Dearest Fear: Creativity and I are about to go on a road trip together. I understand you’ll be joining us, because you always do. I acknowledge that you believe you have an important job to do in my life, and that you take your job seriously. Apparently, your job is to induce complete panic whenever I’m about to do anything interesting – and, may I say, you are superb at your job. So by all means, keep doing your job, if you feel you must. But I will also be doing my job on this road trip which is to work hard and stay focused. And Creativity will be doing its job, which is to remain stimulating and inspiring. There is plenty of room in this vehicle for all of us, so make yourself at home, but understand this:  Creativity and I are the only ones who will be making any decision along the way. I recognize and respect that you are part of the family, and so I will never exclude you from our activities, but still – your suggestions will never be followed. You’re allowed to have a seat, and you’re allowed to have a voice, but you are not allowed to have a vote. You’re not allowed to touch the road maps; you’re not allowed to suggest detours. … But above all else, my dear all familiar friend, you are absolutely forbidden to drive.”

 Then we head off together – me and creativity and fear – side by side by side forever, advancing once more into the terrifying but marvelous terrain of unknown outcome.”

Isn’t it beautiful? How often do you start thinking of something you’d like to create in your life, business or career and as soon as you start to envision it, fear shows up and convinces you that maybe you’d better stay where you are because it’s safe and comfortable?

When that happens, I invite you to remember this extract and to not allow fear to drive on your road trip to wherever you want to head off.

Take care,