Here is the full transcript of 2x startup founder Johanna Feick’s talk titled “How 3 Words Will Change Your Life” at TEDxTwenteU 2024 conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
The Courage to Live Authentically
I wish I had the courage to live life true to myself and not according to the expectations and wishes of others. Now, not living life true to oneself is one of the top regrets of the elderly, according to Bronnie Ware’s famous book, “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying.” And I think we’ve all been there, situations where we’ve given up on ourselves before we even started, telling ourselves that we can’t. And then, then we won’t. We live up to our own self-made prophecy.
I grew up in Germany. I moved to a small town when I was a child, the type of small town where even ten years later, people still consider you to be an outsider. And I was a misfit.
My dreams of making it big, traveling the world and moving abroad, they were seen as fairytale beliefs, as ridiculous, maybe even as an offense. And I was told that I can’t, that people like us can’t. Now for a long time in my life, that used to be my go-to excuse. Big dreams and small ones alike, I told myself that I can’t.
Their prophecy became my own until I decided to change. Now I can still remember that moment as vividly as if it was yesterday. I was walking through a small forest in spring, a breeze flowing around me, circulating flower petals all in the air. I felt as if I was in some sort of movie because that was the very moment I had some sort of epiphany.
The Turning Point
I was fresh out of high school and I knew exactly what was expected of me. It almost felt as if my entire life has been written out by someone else. I have to study, I have to find a stable job, marry and have children. But at the age of 19, that is not exactly what I want to do.
I want to travel the world and I want to learn about life and people and myself. And I’m so young and hopeful and creative and full of ideas. And yet again, I met with an all too familiar reality. I’m told that I can’t, that people like me can’t.
That I, I don’t want to be confined by what other people want my life to look like. So in that very moment, standing in this small forest, surrounded by all these pink, beautiful flower petals, I start entertaining a single thought. How can I? And I, well, I decide that I want to travel first.
So I start researching. Visa requirements, cost of living, airplane tickets, all these things that I had absolutely nothing to do with until that time. I researched it. I made a plan.
Taking the Leap
I executed it. And a few months later, I’m sitting in an airplane to South Korea, all alone at 19 years old. Barely able to speak Korean, knowing full well that just speaking English isn’t exactly going to be enough. And with just enough money in my pocket to last me for roughly two months.
The thought that I can was still just a concept inside of my mind. It was unproven. But I am determined to prove them and my own doubts wrong. And it works out.
I stay for the entire duration of my visa, 12 months in total. I even travel to Thailand and Japan. I pick up different odd jobs and ultimately even get my first real job as a marketing manager. And I come back to Germany and I’m full of motivation. I moved to a large city, found a company, and my team, my co-founders and I, we make it work.
By the age of 22, I’m already able to fulfill one of my dreams, living my passion by leading products and teams in tech. And now, just a few years later, I’m so grateful to be in a position where I can support other people on their journey. By asking myself, how can I?
The Power of “How Can I?”
I even gave myself the chance to prove that I can. And I gave myself the chance to live life true to myself. Now finding out how you can, it is quite the exciting journey and it’s not an easy one. But it is so worth it.
First we need to clearly identify what it is that we want in life. But just knowing what you want is not enough. You have to dig a little bit deeper. Perhaps you’re familiar with Simon Sinek’s famous TED talk, “Start with Why.”
And just like that, we also need to start with why. We need to ask ourselves why again and again and again until we get to the bottom of what it is what we truly desire in life. If you seek wealth and success because you’re hoping that it will help you find love, perhaps it will serve you better to seek love instead. But even when we understand our why, we get stuck so often.
Overcoming Fear and Taking Action
I’ve seen this many times firsthand. People having this grand vision of what their life should be like, but never really asking themselves how they can make it happen. It almost seems as if the fear gap of asking ourselves how is as big as the fear of taking action itself. If we don’t ask ourselves how we can, we can tell ourselves that everything we want in life is just a fairytale belief that it is what it is and that nothing can be done.
And that can be oddly comfortable because we get to offload an entire portion of responsibility.
We also get to avoid some sort of pain. We don’t ask someone that we like out on a date because we fear the rejection. We don’t switch careers even though we don’t like our current one because we fear the failure and we don’t live as our authentic self because we fear to be judged.
But that also means that some decisions or even most decisions are going to be made for you and not by you. And that can often lead to regret. Now that is not how it has to be like. The things we desire, the change that we seek, it is always on the other side of our own comfort zone.
Growth involves growing pains. But only if we take the step to ask ourselves how we can, will we be able to find ways that we can. We might even realize that the reality that we created inside of our own mind is not the reality right in front of us and all around us. We might also realize that all the rejection and the failure and the judgment that we feared so much is actually never going to happen.
The Myth of Mindset Change
Now whenever we’re talking about change, we think we have to have a mindset change. I used to think the exact same thing and perhaps you’re thinking the same in this very moment that you have to change your mindset. But the truth is as simple as it is hard, you need to take action because action equals motivation and action is active change.
When I went to South Korea or when I started my first company, I was not sure that I can. I hadn’t undergone some magical mindset change that gave me a 100% confidence score that I can do this. I just decided to take action because I didn’t want these experiences letting me pass by. I decided to take action against my own doubts, against the doubts of everyone around me and maybe even against all odds. But I gave myself the chance to learn how I can.
And in the same sense, learning how you can consists of a step of action. First you have to decide what it is that you want to focus on. Now it doesn’t matter whether that’s a big or a small thing. It doesn’t have to be something that everyone else will perceive as grand.
The Blueprint for Success
It is just important that it is something that you are really passionate about, something that you hold dear to your heart. And then don’t even go down the entire rabbit hole of self-doubt. You don’t even need to think about your goal in the context of whether you personally believe you can do it. You just want to entertain the thought how someone would go about achieving this.
It’s a little trick that’s fairly effective, at least for me. When I started my company, I didn’t know anything about managing or starting a company at all. I didn’t grow up in an entrepreneurial family and I didn’t really have any mentors. So the only thing in that moment that I could do was look for any type of information about this topic.
So I started reading through online articles, guides, YouTube videos, and I collected all information that I could about how other people have done this. I even found a startup program where they teach you these type of things. And I listed down every single thing that I found and I researched every single item until I had a pretty good understanding of what it is that needs to be done, in theory, for a company to succeed.
And after that, I had enough information to start setting milestones for myself and breaking them down into actions. For example, setting up the legal entity of a company could be a milestone. And things such as finding a lawyer, preparing what questions you want to ask that lawyer, and ultimately having a meeting with them, and then have your follow-up items on your to-do list are potential things that you can do to make your dream come true, step by step.
Now, no matter how big or small your goal is, the baseline of this always stays the same. If you want to run a marathon, for example, you’re most likely not going to sign up for the marathon and run it without any prior training.
Breaking Down Your Goals
You will most likely want to understand everything that is connected to this specific goal. How, when, and where do marathons happen? What is your current fitness level? How do you need to train? How often do you need to train? What do you need to eat in order to get fit enough? Perhaps you’d even like to enlist a personal coach that will help you make your plan.
But ultimately, the only way for it to turn into something real is by making this plan, by setting the milestones, and by creating these daily action items, so you can take a step towards your goal every single day.
In terms of a marathon, perhaps that’s doing some stretches or going for a run. And no matter, again, how big or small it is that you want to do, as soon as you think it is impossible, you need to go through this process because that’s how you make it possible.
Starting a company seems impossible. Calling up a lawyer to get some information or a tax consultant, very possible on the other hand. And that, at the end of the day, is the answer to how you can. You need to learn everything that comes with this goal. You need to turn it into an action plan and execute it. That is the answer to the question, and that is also the blueprint to life itself.
Embrace Courage and Live True to Yourself
Now whenever we take the first step, honestly, it’s super scary, no matter how often you do it. But what is even scarier is having life pass you by. Because one thing is for sure, if you take a step ahead, show courage and go against your fears, you’re not going to regret the courage that you’ve shown. But if you hover in front of your fear, you’re most likely going to regret not living life true to yourself.
So don’t be your own prison. Don’t tell yourself that you can’t, and don’t let other people tell you what your life should look like. Instead, I’d like to challenge you on this very evening to ask yourself, how can I?
