The Number One Thing Holding Me Back

When I started building my business, I was building it on the side. Watch the following video or keep reading to know why…

At the time, I had this negative self-talk, this voice in my head telling me: "You really have to keep your full-time job. It's never going to work. There's no money to earn. You want to become a speaker? Really? You mean you want to become an English-speaking speaker? Ben voyons donc, tu parles même pas anglais! You don't even speak English and you want to write books in English?!"

Truth is, my English was indeed really bad! I remember one particular day, I was teaching a yoga class and at the end of the routine, there’s this short amount of time where you lay back and relax for a couple of minutes, right? I wanted them to relax their body, relax their face, relax their jaw… To do so, I tried to tell them to put their tongues on the roofs of their mouths. So I said: "Put your thong behind your tits." Beautiful.

In all fairness, the English language is far from easy to learn. Does anybody want to back me up on this? Leave a comment or send me an email if English is not your first language and you had to learn it. Sometimes, the English language is not great at all. Furthermore, when English-speakers try to translate something to our language (mine is French, for instance), it’s just hilarious. Let me tell you about a time when I was staying in a hotel. Not just a Motel 6, you know? I was in a big chain hotel, very respectable. There was a sign in the shower that advised us to please hang our towels if we wanted to re-use them, to save some water and energy. Do you know how they translated that in French? "Please strangle your towels." étranglez vos serviettes! They probably used the word-for-word translation for “hanging” : strangle.

What about contronyms? Have you ever heard of contronyms? I looked it up: it's a word that can have two totally opposite meanings. For example, when the alarm goes off in the morning, shouldn't it be going ON? Or the word "left". When you say “she left”, it means “she's gone”. But when you say "she left the book on the table", the book is not gone. It's still there. How confusing is that?! Oh, and please don't get me started on the letter “K”. What a useless letter! Why does that even exist? I just don't get it.

You may be wondering why I am talking about this. Well, we live in a country where 20% of people do not speak English at home... That's a lot of people, just on this list. Thousands of them.

I know that a lot of you are in the same situation than I was (and still am, in some way!). Whatever negative self-talk is happening in your head, you got to push through it. I didn't speak English, and I've written 15 books in English so far! I make a living as a professional speaker and I make money with my (sometimes shaky) English. At the end of the day, you will want to push through.

I know that a lot of you can relate to this. If it's not your language holding you back, it might be something else. There might be that negative voice in your head that's keeping you from doing what you always dreamed of, because it keeps telling you: "You can't do this, you know. You're not good enough."

That limiting belief about my English was the thing holding me back: not the fact that I had trouble speaking English! Have you ever heard the saying that: Your beliefs become your thoughts and your thoughts become your actions”? Well, in that case, my limiting belief became my negative self-talk and my negative self-talk was leading to inaction. It kept me stuck for a long time. Try to remember: When there's something in your head that doesn't register with you that you don't like to hear, you don't have to talk to yourself that way. Change your language when you talk to yourself.

Give yourself a break.

Because if I can do it, you guys can do it.