#085 Meaning & Success with Fabrice Desmarescaux

#085 Meaning & Success with Fabrice Desmarescaux

Send us a text

Connect with Fabrice

https://www.linkedin.com/in/fabrice-desmarescaux/?originalSubdomain=sg

Episode Transcript

The transcript is computer generated. There may be errors.

Sharad Lal: Hi, everyone. Welcome to How to Live, a podcast that explores ways to live a good life. I'm your host, Sharad Lal. This is episode 85. Today's guest will inspire you to set deep, meaningful goals for the new year.

Meet Fabrice Demareso. He was a partner at McKinsey and a bank VP climbing the corporate ladder. But in his 40s, Fabrice realized something was missing. Everything on the surface seemed great; he was successful, he had the titles, he had money, but he wasn't happy. That launched a personal discovery for him.

He got into Buddhism, Yoga, Meditation, and combined these principles with Western psychology and philosophy. Fabrice gained deep self-understanding and was able to uncover what truly matters to him. He still remained interested in the business world, but the destination wasn't clear. He moved to an executive search firm, which led him to what he does now. He works with CEOs, business owners, and high-performing teams. His mission is to help leaders perform at their best through a more human-centered approach. In this episode, we'll explore how reflection leads to self-understanding.

We'll talk about how purpose isn't one grand concept, but a continuous journey of discovery, and we'll also dive into how self-awareness can actually fuel ambition.

Now before we begin, thank you very much for your support. We're in the top 3 percent worldwide, listened to in 140 countries. Thank you very much for this.

Let's get started.


Main Recording

Sharad Lal: Good morning, Fabrice. Good to see you here in Singapore. How are you doing this morning?

Fabrice: Morning, Sharad. I'm very well, and you?

Sharad Lal: Doing very well. Welcome to the How to Live podcast.

I'm very happy to have you here.

I know you were a partner at McKinsey and you were doing extremely well. And then this whole movement towards spirituality incorporating into your life.

How did that shift happen?

Fabrice: I had that from probably my teens. And I did absolutely nothing with it.

When I moved to Asia, I was exposed to different ways of spirituality, I started practicing yoga, meditation, read a few books, and discovered Buddhism and found it very interesting. It made sense to me. I decided, okay, let's explore.

I spent time in monasteries with teachers and practiced; that was a gradual shift over the years.

I also shifted my professional work from hard-nosed, hardcore strategy in financial services towards leadership development.

Helping executives with their careers, assessing whether they're fit for a particular role or preparing succession for a CEO, opened up new ways of looking at spirituality.

I continued practicing Buddhism and studied Christian mysticism, incorporating Western spiritual approaches with Eastern traditions, which is pretty much where I am here today.

Sharad Lal: What about Buddhism when you first approached it, drew you towards it? What was interesting about it?

Fabrice: It presented a non-theistic approach. There's no implication that God exists, which is something that I, in my younger years, always had a problem with. Can we prove the existence of God?

No, we can't. And how can we be so sure? So I had a bit of organ rejection with God when I was a young adult. Buddhism doesn't make any claims that there's a God. In fact, it's agnostic. It says, there may be a God or there may not be a God. It doesn't matter because here are a set of principles, the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Noble Path that you can follow without necessarily asking yourself, is there a God or is there not a God?

These practices are universal. And so that clicked for me.

I guess it was the right teaching at the right time.

Living in Asia and being surrounded by a different way of thinking and spiritual traditions, maybe I was more receptive to it. So that's how it started. Then the more I practiced, the more comfortable I

Sharad Lal: As you did all these things and immersed yourself into Buddhism, what were you learning about yourself as you were doing it?

Fabrice: It's like the onion that you keep peeling and you discover new layers. Buddhism, in a way, has many similarities with psychology in understanding the self and the psyche and what the mind is.

Buddhism, just like Hinduism and yoga, makes a very valid attempt at decomposing the different layers of the psyche. There's a whole branch of Buddhism called Abhidharma that is basically Buddhist psychology.

A very fine understanding of what motivates us, how we perceive realities,

And that allowed me, and I think it allows also a lot of people, to start looking under the surface, until you realize that under the various layers of conditioning and memories and experiences and reflexes and desires and the rest, there's a pure consciousness.

That is immaculate. The image that the Tibetans use is the infinite sky. And thoughts, desires, feelings, sensations, emotions, they're just clouds passing in the sky.

They're fleeting.

You can do meditation and focus on the physical sensations in the body, and you'll notice that nothing stays. It's just a constant flow of new sensations appearing and disappearing, and new sensations appearing and vanishing, etc.

Just like thoughts. They arise out of nowhere and they disappear into nowhere.

I thought that was very, very interesting. A different way to see reality that is not centered on ego.

That allows to explain human consciousness in quite a refreshing way, I thought, even though it's 2,500 years old.

Sharad Lal: It was

Fabrice: Refreshing. It was refreshing for me. It was good.

Exactly.

For

Sharad Lal: It's so interesting the way you described it. There's the consciousness, and there's the cloud and patterns on top which are impermanent.

As you go into Buddhism, with your practices like Vipassana, as well as meditation, you get to experience it. And when you get to experience it, it deepens it. So how was your shift towards, instead of this rational thought, now I'm experiencing a thing, I may not be able to explain it intellectually, but I'm experiencing a thing.

How was your experience towards that part

Fabrice: Practicing for me was a life-changing experience because it's like when you want to learn to fly a plane, you can read all the books you want, that doesn't make you a pilot.

There's only one way to become a pilot, go into the cockpit with an instructor and start flying around the airport. Then one day, the instructor will jump off the plane, he'll just say, okay, now you're on your own, and have a good flight. And that's how you become a pilot.

It was the same with my practice of meditation. I've read countless books on meditation, but the practice is really what makes it real. And the practice is difficult.

Sharad Lal: Who's

Fabrice: Everyone who's tried to meditate knows very well.

You sit. And observing your thoughts, observing your breath, observing physical sensations, taking an object of meditation, and staying with it. That's incredibly tough because we are constantly distracted.

That is the practice. It's the realization. If you get distracted five times, you go back to the breath five times.

And that changes your outlook on life in a way to realize that we're only human.

We're going to be distracted. All our flaws, emotions, feelings, and sensations, are impermanent, but when they happen, they're bloody real.

Sharad Lal: Real.

Fabrice: It's like I've done so much of meditation and stuff, I should not get angry. But you are going to get angry. These are maybe tools that help you better deal with what you call the clouds and the things passing over.

It's about daily practice. We're going to fail a thousand times and we'll get back up a thousand times, and that's the practice.

The aspiration that we can be perfect

Is an illusion.

The reality is incredibly messy.

Sharad Lal: Completely miserable.

Fabrice, as you were learning Buddhism, and then you started bringing it back to your life, now you're getting into leadership development, shifting your career path, doing other things, and bringing these learnings back.

Fabrice: How did that process work? I had a rude awakening about mid-career, I was about 40 years

When I was at McKinsey leading the financial services practice in Southeast Asia, I thought, one day when I grow up, I will leave McKinsey, join the bank, and I will become the CEO of the bank. So I had that stepping stone to finally achieve my dream. And that was probably one of the most miserable times of my life.

I was feeling dissatisfied.

I asked myself, why am I doing this? In what way is this useful? I couldn't come up with valid answers. Not that there was anything wrong with the bank or being a banker or selling credit cards and mortgages.

Sharad Lal: Grateful that

Fabrice: It was not about the role, but this is not me. There's a complete lack of a sense of purpose.

But I had no clue what I would be able to do. I had a good brain, trained at McKinsey to solve complex problems.

I had no particularly useful life skills. So what am I going to do with my life? I'm 40 years old. I'm saying these because I think there's a lesson here that is applicable to everyone, which

Is look for the signs and the signs will always manifest.

The sign for me was a friend of mine who was a headhunter calls me one day, and she says,

I'm working on a very interesting mission in another bank. Would you be interested in taking another role?

I told her, look, don't call me for other banking jobs. And then she said, hey, how about you join us?

Our executive search firm. And that was

The door opening, one door closes, another door opens. The whole process took a lot longer than just a conversation, but eventually, I left banking maybe nine months after that or one year after that and joined that global executive search firm and started working on recruitment mandates, assessing executives, helping clients recruit the best and helping my executives shape their careers,

The point is, be receptive to the signs.

When you think that you're trapped in something, a job, a situation, a relationship you don't like, et cetera, et cetera. There will always be signs. Carl Jung calls it synchronicity. Look for patterns. And if you're receptive to those patterns, you will find ways, you will find a new path in front

Sharad Lal: Are you should make a living, but at least you will find a new path in front of you.

You may not have a rational reason to go there, but something seems reasonably good. A door seems to be opening, go for that. Is there anything else that people can do at that stage when they're not sure what to do? How can they explore? How can they prepare? How can they get themselves ready to be able to go to the door that opens?

Fabrice: This is a very important question that you ask. Typically what I observe when, I've had

Thousands of conversations with senior executives talking about their jobs, their careers, what makes them successful or unsuccessful, etc. When we start feeling that the job is not quite what we like. We start feeling a little bit trapped. I've been in that situation and I've seen senior executives in that position,

We obviously see this in Asia with, the valuing good education, doing well in school, then getting a good job, then making good money. It's part of the ethos in Asia, but it's also a very Western upbringing. And if I'm not happy in the job, I work harder, And, the culture of feedback and annual evaluations doesn't help because it pinpoints at what you're not doing well then you're gonna make yourself even more miserable trying to fix the things that you're not doing well because it's simply not you.

So the mistake number one is to say I'm going to push and persevere on a journey that is not mine. Now, there's a distinction between quitting every six months. And blaming the outside world. That's not what I'm saying, I see people who have absolutely no staying power. They take a job and blame the boss, the environment, the company, and they say, you guys are not good enough for me.

I quit. That's not what I'm saying. I'm talking about being on the path, having signs of awakening that the path is not the right one

I'm advocating reflection, contemplation, introspection.

Mistake number two, blaming the company. I'm unhappy in this job. Because I work for this crappy company I'm gonna find the same job in another company. Nine times out of ten, this is not the solution.

One time out of ten,

Occasionally you can get stuck in a very bad situation because of the boss, or the culture of the company, and obviously, you should move out.

If you blame your company for the realization that this is the wrong journey for you, you're gonna make a lateral move. And taking the same job in a different company most of the time it won't solve the issue

I call that, throwing the baby with the bathwater. A third mistake that people make is that they throw away their entire career, everything they've worked for.

That doesn't work like that. I'm

Sharad Lal: Glad you pointed that out because it's more almost like you move from one lopsided life Which is overworked to another lopsided wildlife Which is like I'm out full of leisure and kind of a knee-jerk reaction and When we're exploring, we don't know whether this is the right path or not.

You said, alright, let's not blame ourselves. The company. But at the same time, we need to explore these signs. What I found useful was to try and explore these two-way doors where you can go in and come out, because you don't know the unknown.

Unknown is where this lies, where you're probably going to go. And if the signs sometimes don't come. It's good to explore things along with what you're doing so that you're learning more about yourself.

Fabrice: I really love what you just said. There are two things that you said that are super important, to understand.

The first concept that you mentioned is the concept of two-way doors. Most of the doors that we go through in life are two-way doors. We think they're one-way doors, but most of the doors that we go through are two-way doors. So for example, I'm an investment banker and I want to change career and teach yoga. Is this a one-way door or a two-way door? I could argue this is a two-way door. I know some people who've done that, and they've actually been very happy teaching yoga,

I thought yoga would be a life of bliss, but I still need to pay invoices worry about making money and serve these annoying clients that is exactly what I didn't like when I was an investment banker I thought yoga would solve my problems and the problems I have as a yoga teacher are the same so life is even worse.

You go back to investment banking. Or something similar. This is a two-way door. If you've been away from the world of investment banking for 12 years, it may not be so easy. But if you realize that you've made a mistake after one year, put it on account of experience. Hey, I took a sabbatical.

A lot of the doors in life are two-way doors, and we imagine that they're one-way, and if I make this choice, quit my job to try something different, and if it fails, it's the end of my life.

Most of the time, it is not. The other thing you asked is, how can we find out?

For me, the best

Way to find out what is something that makes me happy is to look for the breadcrumbs.

What are the activities that you're drawn toward when you have time, for example?

All

The signs about what can make us more fulfilled are actually usually present today.

We're just very good at ignoring them. But if you do deep introspection and look at the patterns in your life, which is why when I work, with clients. I ask them often to draw their lifeline and put all the major events the times when they had to make decisions, what were they attracted to, what is the road not taken,

Because these are the signs of your unlived life. Let me give you an example. My own change,

I thought that my path was to be a banker. Now, why did this career in executive search?

If I look back at my life, what did I really enjoy?

Number one, I've always enjoyed working in a spirit of partnership. So I don't like pyramidal organizations. I can't stand the idea of hierarchies with people who are the bosses, who are entitled to information and power over people below.

When I was at McKinsey, it's a private partnership,

I was very happy because it's not like there's, everybody's at the same level. There are people who are very senior and people who are junior, but it's done in a spirit of whomever has the best ideas can bring them to the table.

And I loved it. When I joined my global executive search firm, it was again,

Similar private partnership. Whereas banks are traditionally pyramidal organizations with a very strong command and control mentality. So I went back to a type of organization that I had loved.

I didn't know I loved it until I left it. The second thing is I always loved recruiting. So when I was at McKinsey, I was always part of the recruiting trips. I was part of the interviewing team. And I really enjoyed meeting

People and guiding them on their careers

I spent a lot of time with people trying to help them figure out, what is the right career choice

That's part of my job as a partner to be part of the recruiting team,

That explains why the choice to go to executive search made so much sense. If you do a bit of introspection, you will find the signs, you will find these breadcrumbs of things that you really love doing.

Sharad Lal: That. Maybe I'll double click into two points which are so powerful. I love this whole thing that the signs are there, breadcrumbs, and it's about removing the noise, whichever framework, like you have the timelining framework, inner journeys framework, removing the noise and seeing what's brought you alive.

The second thing which I love, and that's what keeps a lot of people in their 40s from making the jump is, they think of purpose or passion as one big earth-shattering thing that they need to do.

And if that doesn't happen, they're not moving. But what I hear from that, It's a practical way of understanding what really works for us and how can it come into play versus this idealistic purpose.

So I would love for you to talk about this whole idealistic purpose, the way people think about it.

Fabrice: I'm always very cautious with, this concept of purpose because I think it's, misused most of the time.

Which is why I don't like to talk too much about purpose I prefer to

talk about what gives you a sense of fulfillment. And that sense of fulfillment will change over time.

So there's nothing wrong with realizing that the pursuit that we've had for two decades, is no longer keeping us alive and we need to think about doing something else. That's part of life. We reinvent ourselves and if there's, one view that I believe is not helpful to think we should only have one path in life.

I studied, medicine so I'm going to be a doctor and I will be a doctor for the next 50 years. Maybe yes, and good for you if that's the case, but maybe you can reinvent yourself mid-life and go and do something else. Something related to it, obviously.

But purpose is something that is constantly evolving. It's also not something that, will appear to you as the result of one meditation or one dream

It's a process of constant fine-tuning, right? So it's an iterative process.

Let's get something done first is critically important because when we do something, we acquire experience that we could never imagine. We could never, dream it, we have to do it. I think that my calling in life is to be a banker.

Okay, then do it, And I did it I realized that it was not it. Now

How can I change course slightly to make it more meaningful? In my case, I kept my knowledge of financial services, my networks,

I applied it to recruiting senior executives and bankers, instead of being a banker myself.

So that was not a huge move, It was back to being in a global partnership, like when I was at McKinsey. Dealing with senior executives, in the financial services sector, which I had done all my life, except that the topic of conversation would be, is this person the right CEO for the job, or the right CFO, or the right head of, equities or consumer banking.

It looks like a massive career change, but it was a two-way door. Because for the next three years after becoming a headhunter, I had banks calling me and say, would you come back and be the head of consumer banking here, the CEO there? So it was clearly a two-way door.

Experience showed me it was a two-way door. What did I realize doing this? I realized that I didn't love so much the transaction of recruiting, et cetera, but I love the advisory part of helping people with their careers.

And so over the following years, I did more advisory work and less transaction work. And there came a point where the transaction work of, recruiting someone became a distraction. I said, I'm going to dedicate myself exclusively. To coaching executives and their teams and advising them on their careers and professional success and finding a sense of meaning and that's what I've been doing now for the last five-six years, but it's a gradual evolution Based on learning what works and what doesn't work for you.

As you gain experience and wisdom, you tend to converge towards something that gives you a lot of meaning and fulfillment.

Sharad Lal: Something that and fulfillment.

You're clarifying your values because you might have certain values that you think you have, but when you actually do it, it's not exactly this or the practical implication is different and you keep changing I've experienced this tug of war where I went the other extreme.

Like I hate money. Hate achievements. And then after a point in time while going down a different path, I realized, no, actually there's some value to achievements. In fact, I like the achievement mindset, but let's me point it towards meaningful achievements. And I love working with high achievers because I like that whole skill of trying to get something.

So it clarifies tug of wars, clarifies your parts, your values. You might discard part of yourself, bring that back. Get some new parts, change it and evolve. And that keeps happening as a journey. So I wonder if that's how you've seen yourself and other people you've worked with, experience it.

Fabrice: Absolutely. Absolutely. It's a constant refinement. And it's a very delicate equilibrium because if you find

The perfect, fit in a role, profession, company, location with the right relationships, everything clicks at one point in time. There's nothing

That guarantees that 10 years from now, you will not have changed. Because we keep changing and we're so complex as human beings, that something that gave you a great sense of meaning and at one point in time may become meaningless

It's a constant process that's why I believe that having some contemplative practices in your life

Is important because it keeps you tuned. On the right path we don't, obviously change drastically from one year to the next, unless there's some dramatic event that happens in your life.

With very different aspirations we keep changing.

Sharad Lal: For many people, when they look at spirituality, they think, this is going to come in the way of ambition. But there are parts of spirituality, like knowing yourself, which can help you get to a new level of performance.

So how do you think of ambition, performance, spirituality, or knowing yourself, can people use it who are still very ambitious to take themselves to the next level?

Fabrice: The first step is to realize that it's not either or.

Sharad Lal:

Fabrice: There is no incompatibility between living a spiritual life and living a life of ambition and achievement. You need both.

A life of contemplation, I like to picture it, as, the being.

The ambition, achievement, that's doing. You can be very successful in the world of doing, but you can also spend time in the world of being, that provides you with new, insights and, perspectives on what you're doing when you're in the world of doing.

Sometimes we think, these two things are incompatible, because on the spiritual front, we have this image of the monks or the hermits, or, they live in retreats, high in the mountains of Tibet,

That's quite of an

Extreme archetype.

Our audience here is mostly people in the corporate world. The other mistake that we make is to think that, if I, committed to achievement and success, I

Get very busy and that's the problem I see with a lot of executives is they're so busy.

That there's no space for them to open up to that orthogonal dimension of being. It's the reality of life.

That's the difference between being an executive and being, someone who does stuff, on a nine-to-five basis. And when it's 5 p.m., you're done.

But when you're an executive, if you had five more hours to the day, you could fill these additional five hours with additional meetings people

Who are very committed to the world of achievement are subject to the disease of busyness. Instead of opening up part of their schedule to reflection, introspection, contemplation, they fill all the available time with stuff,

And, not that there's anything wrong with recovery and, leisure but I think we suffer from, an epidemic of busyness.

That when two people meet and they say, Hey, how are you? I'm so busy. Which is meant to say I'm important. No one likes to say, I actually don't have much to do these

Sharad Lal: Pass it

Fabrice: In Singapore New York Paris London Tokyo and in Delhi, it's the same, If you say, I have a lot of space in my

Life

Sharad Lal: You're a loser,

Fabrice: And people look at you like you're a complete loser. In fact, you're probably much more successful than they are. Because I would put it to you that success is having space in your

Life. It's not running around like a little rat on a wheel.

We've been conditioned to see busyness as a marker of success. And that leaves little time for spirituality,

The other disease that we have in, the world of action is technology. And we've become conditioned to always be connected to technology in one way or another. Less so for my generation, but more with the digital natives, that younger people

All, all ages, like I've seen

Right? Maybe all

Sharad Lal: And where, just have to look at some video if you go in the MRT, you'll see, adults

Fabrice: Correct. And people walking in the streets and crossing the street, and everybody's looking at their phone.

As a constant companion

So this ideology of busyness and the omnipresence of technology are, tightly associated with the world of doing the world of achievement and ambition

Are two major, distractions from a more contemplative life. And when I say contemplative life, I'm not saying quit your job and retire to a monastery. I say, take an hour or two regularly to sit by yourself in silence and solitude, just to process what is going on. Look for the signs, look for the breadcrumbs.

What is giving me a sense of fulfillment these days, assessing relationships, assessing what we've done. Revisiting what we have done the day before or the week before and was that really skillful? The way I handled this situation, this person, was that really skillful?

Or could I do it in a different way? And that is a contemplative path

Sharad Lal: I love the being and doing. For a lot of high achievers, they need to see value for this. Sometimes in society, they're throwing certain terms like, self-care or work-life balance, which in a lot of high achievers sound like lip service and they don't really resonate.

So what's the way that a high achiever can get it into their head that one or two hours of reflection a week, is such a good practice that it'll actually help me go to the

next level. How can we reframe it that they get attracted to something like this?

Fabrice: In my book, I tried to make it easy by saying, you don't have to take a week off and go into a hut or in the forest. Start with one hour,

Disconnect the phone, sit by yourself in a place that

Gives you a sense of being at peace and stay in silence and solitude

Bring

A notebook with you, a physical notebook, not a tablet, Not a phone, Pen and paper, and write whatever comes to you and see if that process helps you just a little bit like, deep sleep and REM sleep allows us to process, clear the memory, and process the experiences of the day,

Right?

Trying, it's a culture of absence. So why don't you reconnect with a culture of presence?

Sharad Lal: I love that. Culture of absence versus culture of presence. Like you said, once you go beyond the noise and the clouds, that's where you can see the real depth of yourself.

It's a great intellectual exercise as well, where you get to know yourself well,

Fabrice: Yeah. The other thing is that there are stages in life.

When we are in our 20s and 30s, we're in a stage of life

That is very much the achievement, ambition, doing stuff. When we emerge from childhood and young adulthood, teenage years, we need to prove ourselves.

We need to demonstrate that we're competent adults.

And I would not distract young people from proving themselves, which is why I believe being ambitious, wanting to be a billionaire, wanting to build a unicorn, when you're in your 20s and 30s, I find that healthy to a certain extent. As long as it doesn't continue in your 50s and 60s because then it just tells me that you haven't grown up.

I think one of the worst advice that I ever heard, what was that Steve Jobs, follow your passions BS,

No, please. Do not follow your passion. First of all, you have no idea what your passions are. You're 20 years old, What do you know about life? What do you know about what's going to fulfill you or not, Do not follow your passions. That's rubbish. Get a job. Make money, and then start this process of constant fine-tuning.

Sharad Lal: Such good advice to youngsters. I

Love that.

Fabrice: Do the work. Do well, and over a process of time, figure out what's really important to you, was lucky because my passions 20 years old were either illegal

Sharad Lal: A leader, or I'd be

Fabrice: And so I'm glad I didn't follow them.

Sharad Lal: Follower.

Fabrice: It's very hard to know

Yourself when you're 20 years old. You're right in the process of figuring life out.

By doing something, you will learn so much about

Sharad Lal: About yourself. About yourself. Absolutely.

Don't look at your belly button and wondering, what is the meaning of life? What is my true passion? Get a job, do something, learn from doing, iterate. I love that. Fabrice, as we end out, we have two last questions. Folks in their 40s who are stuck like you and I were at one stage, what would be your bottom line advice to them?

Fabrice: Look for the signs, spend time, reflecting on what are the breadcrumbs. Draw your lifeline and map the road not taken. And imagine what if I had chosen to go left instead of going right. What could be a relatively small change that I could make?

To

My life that would bring me one step closer. You don't have to aspire for the absolute perfection. For some people, it will be just make small adjustments to the job description.

Look at small changes. And for that, you need time in, in silence and solitude. You're not going to figure out, you're not going to hear faint noises, the whispers of your soul, as I call it,

Sharad Lal: In a

Fabrice: If you're in a very noisy environment, because the soul is never going to shout unless it's too late.

So, make silence. Disconnect the technology, start listening to your soul and your soul will point you towards the right direction.

It's a continuous journey. There's no destination. We keep walking, hopefully going in the right direction. It never stops.

Sharad Lal: You've taken all this deep wisdom and brought it out in a practical way to people that it's not destination, it's direction. We started with your story and you've lived such a wonderful life as you've evolved.

At the end, how would you want to be

Fabrice: I don't know. I'm a little bit cautious about this notion of legacy.

It's become very popular I want to leave a legacy, And the reality is most of us will be completely

Forgotten

Sharad Lal: Or maybe five years, maybe

Fabrice: Do you know the names of your great grandparents? You may or may not know their names. So they are forgotten, So I'm not sure spending too much time leaving a legacy as much as, I, want, every day of my life to, count.

I want to make sure whatever that day was, I moved one step in the right direction. I had this concept of, zero days, which are the wasted days. Where you've done absolutely nothing to move in the right direction or to improve yourself.

And I don't want to have any zero days. For me, that's, the guiding principle, not so much egoistic notions of legacy rest.

Sharad Lal: Thank you for sharing that, Fabrice. So much of depth. People listening are going to get so much out of this. If folks want to get in touch with you, is your LinkedIn the best

Fabrice: Way?

LinkedIn,

Sharad Lal: LinkedIn is the best way. So folks listening, we will have in the show notes, Fabrice's LinkedIn. Please follow him. He's got so much wisdom for all of us. I'm so grateful he was part of this. Thank you very much, Fabrice.

Fabrice: Thank you, Sharad. I really enjoyed it.


Outro

Sharad Lal: Thank you, Fabrice, for such a wise, inspirational conversation. For more on Fabrice, please check out the show notes. Try as we get into 2025. Let's set an hour for self-reflection.

Find a spot. Maybe it's a cafe or maybe home where no one is around. We have a notepad and we just write.

We write whatever comes to us. And if you want a prompt, I like what Jeremy Corona uses. He always starts with saying, I am feeling. And then goes from there.

Let's try this for a month and see what it does to us. Does it reduce stress? Can we sleep better? Do we have some little better understanding of ourselves?

If we find this useful, we can make it a ritual. All the very best. I hope you enjoyed this episode. The next episode will drop two weeks from now. Do join us for that. Till next time, have a wonderful day ahead. Bye bye.