DOING HARD THINGS With François de Neuville

Howard, hello. It's Howard Brown. It's the Shining

Brightly Show, oh my goodness, I have an amazing guest this week,

all the way from the Dominican Republic on his way to Mexico,

is François de Neuville. Did I say it correctly?

François de Neuville: Yeah, yeah. Almost. Howard, thanks for

having me. I took Latin, and I should have learned French, of

course. So anyways, I'm so happy to have you. Big shout out to

Alex Smith for introducing us. She's in Mexico right now. I

think she's a world traveler too. And oh, you are going to be

excited. My audience is going to love you, so let me just tell

you a little bit about you. So Francois is a former Commando,

paratrooper turned adventurer. We're going to learn about some

of those amazing ventures. He now advises young seven figure

entrepreneurs on business and leadership, and he leads them on

extreme expeditions. It's very experiential for men. He's the

author of the illusion in time, 11 lessons of how not to suck at

life. Let's not suck at life.

He published this book, and also he's going to

tell us he miraculously survived a deadly earthquake and a

tsunami. We got to learn about that. He did some heroic things

there too. For the past eight years, he lives his nomadic

life, chasing adventure across the globe, pushing himself to

live his best life and inspiring others to do the same. Oh, my

God, I'm just like so excited to talk to you, but first I need to

ask you, how do you shine brightly each day?

François de Neuville: I would say that this commitment to

myself to live my best life is a way that you know when you spend

time with people or living their dream and doing everything they

can to live the life they imagined, it's give this very

high energy and motivation and desire to do the same thing. And

I think that's my way of this commitment to myself is also

shining around me. I think

so Exactly. So you use your shining light, okay, to

live as a role model, to inspire others in business, in life, in

health and in relationships. And that's what that's what your

coaches do, and it's such an important function as you lift

up the others around you in the world, around you, locally and

even on a worldwide basis. Since you travel all over the world,

fill in, fill in the place a little bit. Tell me a little bit

more about your background and who you are.

François de Neuville: Yeah, when I was pretty young, I joined the

Army, and I worked my way through to become an officer and

become under paratroopers. So that took me, like, almost seven

years, and then I was on active duty for two and after nine

years, I love my job. Everything was incredible. Being a platoon

leader was was really, really nice. I really enjoyed the

adrenaline, the training that we got, which was very hard, but

also built me up. And one day, I was like, I love everything I'm

doing, but I know there is something else I can get from

life, and I need to go find out. And I decided to quit, which was

a very top decision. And I started traveling around the

world with my wife and and just going on adventure from one to

the other, and exploring places and living this dream that I had

when I was really young was really fulfilling. And then,

like, Okay, I want to maintain that lifestyle. And I started

thinking about, how can I create a business to sustain my life

and to keep traveling and to support others, and everything

kind of fell into place after I nearly died in a tsunami and

earthquake that gave me this, this really big desire to really

support others. Hold on there. We're gonna go. We're gonna go

there next. Yeah,

it's okay. You're going all right. So tell me some

lessons learned about your first of all, thank you for your

service in the military, and that was in Belgium.

in Belgium. Beautiful. Tell me some lessons

François de Neuville: In Belgium, yeah,

learned, okay, from kind of growing up in in the military

leadership and trust and things like that. So what are some of

the lessons learned?

François de Neuville: Yeah, I think one of the main thing I

learned was how to be able to create a vision beyond your

circumstances. And in the sense of the training I followed was

really tough, one of the hardest things I've done in my life, and

to go through that training, I had constantly to imagine myself

at the end of it so I could bear the daily struggle every day for

month, you know. And I think this ability to project myself

in the future and say, Hey, what I'm whatever I'm facing now, is

temporary. I can go through it with strength and courage. I

know what's on the other side. And, you know, so often we get

really this narrow view of we are cold, and we think we're

going to be cold forever, or we're in pain, and we think

we're going to be in pain forever. You know, we tend to

make whatever we feel forever, but it's actually temporary, and

creating this mindset of whatever I'm facing right now

one day is going to be over when I go through hard things, really

helped me in all different facets of life. And I would say

that in the military, the thing I learned.

Is to build my mind to really mind. And having a

you were challenged mentally, you were

challenged physically. I guarantee it right. And you also

had to learn trust and teamwork. It's not a one man show. This is

the thing. So I looked the basis of the military, the discipline

that you had, that you bring forth in your adventurous life

now, because that's with you and that that's really important.

Now, you already teased it up a little bit. What happened in

Indonesia in 2018

François de Neuville: I was at the wrong place at the wrong

time, and I was on the beach, and when an earthquake

devastated the city where I was in. I was there for a

paragliding competition, and everything started collapsing,

and it was followed very fast after by a tsunami that also

completely destroyed the coast. So I was on the beach, and I

managed. I got very lucky to survive, and I think my also my

military training kicked in, and I could really put all these

emotions, because it's very traumatic to experience that,

and you cannot really comprehend. It's really

confusing. And then, I mean, I could really have this past

reaction that helped me stay alive, and I saw a little girl

that I risk you in a collapsing building there, and having her

in my arms, that was just her and me. And it gave me this

mission, this this very strong purpose to survive. Because she

was five years old. She was so small, and I just had her, and

we were just, yeah, that was it. Like, without me, I don't know

if she would survive. And so I was like, I'm going to do

everything I can to to keep her safe and alive, and that gave me

the drive, or the strength, emotionally and physically, to

go through everything that happened in those, I mean, those

few hours that were really that killed a lot of people. 4000

people died that day. I lost a lot of my friends also. So yeah,

on the after, when I, when I came back from this very

traumatic event, thank God, my wife was not there with me. She

was in another place in Indonesia, and I came back to

her. And then the following weeks were really hard trying to

deal with this post traumatic stress, because I could, I could

not unseen, what I've what I saw. So that was, that was quite

intense, and that followed me for for quite a while, you know,

trying to rebuild purpose in my life, and trying to deal with

the grief and and this feeling of injustice, of having people

who passed like they didn't deserve that. And so it really,

I really went on to a big journey of understanding. But

how can I make the most out of my life? Because I got a second

chance in life. And I know you know what I'm talking about when

I say that, Oh, stage four cancer survivor, I second third

chances. They don't come along this often. I have to, I have to

ask you a question, because what I'm just taking right now, okay?

And I know you have the book, but your, your your our military

training. Okay, your survival instincts, okay, you saved this

young child. Did she reunite with her family? Or did she lose

right after it? Yeah, right after the day after, she managed

to find someone. I mean, her mom survived. She was in very bad

states, but she survived. Her dad survived also. And the day

after, we could manage to bring them back to people she knew,

and then, yeah, so everything went well for her, and I visited

her a few months later, and we're still in touch today,

like, like, six years later,

I did read a quote from from your book that you

know we're all going to die. Nobody knows when. I'll just add

that God knows when, when your number is called. God knows

when. But I did, I did read that that's a beautiful thing, that

you are able to save a life and save your own life, and but the

trauma you carry it with you for your life you're never going to

actually get. It's always with you. You have to do something,

and I call trauma from cancer, from an earthquake, from

survivorship, darkness, and now you have to build up the light

to take away from that darkness and that trauma and process it.

And you have and you have, but it's always with you.

François de Neuville: But you know, yeah, it's absolutely

always with you. But I think a trauma can define you in two

ways, because it will define you no matter what, but it can

either crush you, and you bear the weight of it being like it,

and you resist it like it's unfair. I should not, I didn't

deserve, etc, and then you fight what happened. And so you fight

life, which is pointless, but we tend to do that a lot, right?

And the other way is to use that promise. It's going to define

me, but it's going to help me grow. And I'm not saying it's

easy, because if you would have told me that two days after, I

would have punched you in the face. No, no kidding, I would. I

was not ready to hear that. But right now, with a bit more space

and looking at it from more perspective, I'm like, You know

what? There was. This was a very traumatic experience, but it did

change my life for the better, because thanks to that, I'm kind

of grateful it happened somehow. I'm not happy it happened. If

you could.

Not, I mean, good, but I can see the lesson, and I can see how it

changed my life for the better, and how it puts me on a on the

path that I'm here. We do today, actually, thanks to that event,

you know, it doesn't take the trauma away, it doesn't take the

pain away, but on that I can build, uh, fulfillment and

happiness, you know, love.

Another one of your quotes is, life is

precious, and boy, do both of us know it. We embrace it. We know

it's precious. So, so let's talk about, you're an adventurer, so

why don't you know I've come I'm meeting you like, like, I think

we got introduced a couple months ago, but I had a week for

you to finish your last adventure. So you just went on

the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico all the way up to what

Vancouver, Canada, to the Canadian border, yeah.

François de Neuville: And I just finished, like, two weeks ago,

yeah, I was okay. I had probably about a desire to do it through

hike. I always wanted to do it through hike, to go into in the

forest, in nature for months at a time, and just walk a very

long distance. And I heard first of the Appalachian trail that a

lot of people know about. And I was about doing research. I

found the Pacific Crest Trail. And I'm, I'm more like, like,

the mountains is my playground, you know, I really like that.

And I thought, you know, if I don't do it now, when it's a

five month hike, I mean, it's a long journey, it's 2650 miles,

I'm like, it's very scary to start doing such a thing,

because I worked so hard for my business. I put everything into

place. I have momentum, and I'm just gonna go in the woods. I

was like, I got to do it. I need to walk my talk. Because I keep

telling the people I work with, like, what are the dreams in

your life? Let's work on them. Let's make them happen. That

that was one of my dream I had to and so I put everything on

both and with my wife, we started, and I started working

from the Mexican border. And unfortunately, she got injured,

so she could not finish, but she gave me the support and the

space to say, go for it. Keep doing. Go to the end. And so I

walked, I kept the continuous food path from the Mexican

border across California, Oregon and Washington, and I finally

reached the Canadian border in northern Washington, in the

North Cascades National Park, which is absolutely amazing the

late September and having this beautiful feeling of

accomplishment. And also I learned a lot being walking for

10 to 12 hours every single day, being alone in the woods. There

are other people liking that trade. I was not alone for five

months, absolutely not. Usually I was meeting people at camp,

etc. But during the day, everybody's walking at his own

peace. Pace, sorry. So I was, I was really alone most of the

time, and then you have this moment where you cannot ignore

the thoughts that you have. You cannot ignore deny the noise

that is up there that we all have. I know I'm not crazy.

Yeah, we all have those voices, right? And then facing all of

that and being like, Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna face everything

I didn't face, I'm going to grieve those different things in

my life that didn't take time to grieve. And I'm really going to

slow down and take a complete break of all distractions that

we're constantly bombarded with, social media and advertisement

and and the business of cities, etc. There everything that I

experienced was very present centered. I had no connection.

So everything that happened as an immediate reaction, and I

could really tap into that. And, yeah, that was a profound

experience. Those are, those are great lessons.

And you even said it, you created a new reality.

But what I want someone to say is that you, you spoke to me

when we spoke earlier, that you met people. You met it. You had

experiences. And I think one of the takeaways that I got from

you is that the generosity the community of the other hikers on

their way passing by to assist anyone in you know, in their

need. And when you went into a small town to get supplies, or

if you needed something, or someone else needed something. I

didn't realize that out in the middle of strangers meeting in

the middle of nowhere, yeah, this was incredible.

François de Neuville: Like every hikers, we are sharing all the

same goals, so we really understand we are on the same

journey. We are sharing the same difficulties, the same highs and

the same lows. But also for the people who are supporting the

hikers, like I was, I would be arriving in a small village or

small town, and then, like, I need to do some laundry, but I

was no laundromat. And some random people say, Hey, don't

worry, I'll pick you up. You come to my home. You can sit in

my living room, I'll do the laundry for you, and then you

can go back on trail and I drop you back. Or people just

offering meals. And I was so touched by the kindness and

generosity of people. We're like, you know, they just wanted

to pay it forward. And that was one of the big lesson of my

trail, and I really want to do that in the future. More of that

at least. I had one of my friend who said, what's your big wish

for the world? And I thought, I think my big wish is that

everyone is paying it forward a little bit more. Because when

you pay it forward to someone else, this person is inspired to

do the same. And so that creates this domino effect where

everybody does a small, small thing to help someone else, and

then it's spread all around the planet very fast. And that

creates this high energy, high frequency and and just makes

people feel like we're not alone. We can be supported by

others, and we. Can support others without having a motive.

We can just give because we can, and we don't need to wait to

receive before giving. And that was such a big lesson for me in

Australia, like to really experience that. Yeah, that was

really beautiful,

absolutely incredible, because that's

chapter one of my book of shining brightly to choose

choose kindness, choose giving, choose healing, choose

gratitude, choose joy, choose not to hate. So this is

completely aligned. I love it, and you discovered it and lived

it out there. Tell me very briefly, because I want people

to go out and buy your book, but tell me just the tease about

illusions of time and what you wrote about.

François de Neuville: Yeah. So in this book The Illusion of

Time, I really shared my experience of surviving the

earthquake and the tsunami, but most importantly, I share about

different lessons that I got in my life, and I really wanted to

share that with other people. So like, Hey, this is what I've

learned. And the main message of the book is like, we tend to

live with this illusion of infinite time. We tend to keep

postponing our best life for later. You know, like, Oh, I'll

do that in January. I'll do that in three months. Oh, I'll do

that next weekend. And we can postponing and postponing, but

we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, and we tend to

deny our own mortality, and sometimes it needs a big slap in

the face to realize that we are not immune. Things can happen no

matter when. I mean, it can happen tomorrow. And so if we

keep postponing who we want to be, how we want to show up in

the world, we might never get there. And for me, having this

circumstance in life and facing death really made made me like

whoa. I don't need to wait to be sick to pay attention to my

health. I don't need to wait to have divorced paper on the table

to put more time in my relationship with my wife. I

don't need to wait to die to realize, Oh, damn, I should have

done those things. You know, we can make a decision to do those

things today tomorrow, that's really living with more

intention. So we don't settle for random, because it's easy to

settle for random in this society that is giving so much

destruction all the time, and then we don't really live our

life anymore until we regret, and I don't want to regret, I

want to make the most of my second chance, because a lot of

my friends didn't got a second chance right back there in

Indonesia. And I think at least just to honor the memory they to

honor them, I really have to do that. And that's a promise I

made to myself. Yeah, I love, I love that promise. I do the same

with with cancer patients that got called to call to heaven,

and for the ones that are fighting in treatment. And I

tell people not to get cancer. That's the best thing. Live your

best life. Don't get it. It's horrible. All right, just touch

base a little bit on your executive coaching and your

experiential kind of work that you do, on taking these trips

the modern masculinity. I'm really excited about that. So

talk about that just a little bit. Yeah, I have a passion. I

mean, since I joined the Army and when I was younger, I have a

passion for adventure, extreme sport, adrenaline and all of

that. And so, like, you know what? I'm going to combine this

and create an environment for coaching, because I love

coaching. This is the passion I had since this traumatic event

happened in my life. Like really dedicated my time to get better

and inspire others to do the same thing. And so I love

coaching through zoom. It's fun or in person, but if I can take

people and go jump from a bridge, and we talk about

courage and fears, or we just go climbing, rock climbing, in on a

canyon, and we climb up, and you realize, whoa, the path up is

hard. Sometimes I slip, sometimes I need to do left and

right. Sometimes I fall, and I realize I don't have the skills

to get there. I need to learn, I need to train myself, and then

I'm going to get there. So actually, everything is a

metaphor. And so not only we talk about concept in the

cognitive level, but you feel the emotions in your body. And

whenever you feel something, you remember it. And so you can,

yeah, this is this part and the brotherhood. I you know, in the

army, we have this very tight brotherhood, and I kind of miss

that when I was driving and moving a lot and I had a lot of

friends. But I wanted to go deeper and creating this

brotherhood. When we have a group of guys who are there to

support each other, to challenge each other, and to grow

together, I think to me, it's priceless. And I really wanted

to create that brotherhood through that expedition, because

we go do difficult things, and when we go through hardship, we

tend to connect well with each other. And then you see like,

Oh, I'm going to support you, because right now your fear of

height, and we go climbing, and another one is fear of water,

and we go kayaking or rafting, and you're like, Whoa. And then

we can all support each other. And you realize also that you're

not alone in facing the difficulties that you're facing

in your life. If you can tap it, that support network, that

support group, you become, I would say, almost invincible, to

move forward, because, you know, someone got you back, and that

feels great, and I really want that for other people. So those

expeditions are in nature. We go survive. We go in the mountains,

we go in the jungle, and it's intense. It's not for everyone,

for sure, but that makes me, that makes me alive, but I'm

sure it has profound things to for your life, for yourself, for

your family, for your spouse, or relationships.

Uh, for you and your business, it's profound. So

well, this incredible, this show, is always a tease, because

there's so much more that we want to talk about. But we're

going to have you put on your sunglasses. Okay? Because it's

the time for the shining brightly spotlight, and we're

going to shine brightly together. And I want people to

tell people how they should best get a hold of you. Okay, I will,

of course, include all your links in the show notes and in

social media posts, and then let's close the show out with

some inspiration and kick it back to me.

François de Neuville: Yeah, sure. You can send me an email.

You find my email address on the website in the links here, or on

social media, on Instagram or on LinkedIn. I like to receive

personal messages, that's always better. So yeah, feel free to

reach out, even if it's just for a chat, and saying hi and yeah.

So I will, I will tell you that there's, if you

will spell out your name, but François de Neuville.com or man

hyphen uncharted.com, for those that are listening, obviously,

LinkedIn, Amazon, Instagram, you can find them. We'll search

Francois, you'll find them as well. All right, so put the

sunglasses back on, and I want you to share with me an

inspirational quote or story that we're going to leave with

the audience,

François de Neuville: awesome. And that's something that I

realized very recently. People say it's never too late to make

I love it. Let's get going. Let's start now. So

thank you for that. This has been an amazing show. Oh my god.

your dream come true, but that's a lie, because one day it will

You have to get to know Francois and his adventures and his

coaching practice and his story. It's deep like mine, and this

show just doesn't do it justice. But you've been listening or

watching the shining brightly show, and of course, you can get

be too late, and we just need to stop denying that. And so if you

a hold of me. Howard Brown, your Mr. Shining Brightly at

shiningbrightly.com where you can hear about this show, you

can see and get a hold of the book, and also bring me to speak

and make your event shine brightly. But also very

important is my advocacy, my advocacy with the world of

know that one day is going to be too late, why not start now?

cancer, the mentorship and leadership with Babson College

of young people making their mark in the world, and then also

with the interfaith world of choosing not to hate that's very

important to me, to choose that kindness, as we both discussed

That's the message I want to share.

as well. And I want to thank the people that got me here. So I've

done now over 100 shows. Thank you for the loyal listening,

over 210,000 downloads. I'm so grateful that you care to check

in with me once a week for 30 minutes of your day, and I'll

give special thanks out to read the spirit, which is a weekly

magazine that I blog in my publishing house called front

edge publishing, the place that makes me look good my podcast

services, which is amplify you out of British Columbia,

Vancouver. And then lastly, diamond moments magazine. So

thank you for your sponsorship and your dedication to me, and

just remember, if we choose to shine brightly, that Francois

and I do every day, okay, to lift up yourself, first take

care of self, then go lift up others, our neighborhoods, our

communities and the world will be a better place. Francois,

it's just been a pleasure. Thank you for a great

François de Neuville: Thank you Howard, Thank you.

Excellent.