Hero of your Game
[Music]
do you
recognize that moment in your life when
your future looked like
one big question mark
that moment after years of hard work
you finally discover this is not what i
want to do
but what do you want to do or maybe
that moment the coronavirus turn your
life
completely upside down and you have
totally no clue
what to do next i had that moment
mid-august 2015
while i was managing my professional
cycling team
i received an email with a short video
and a little note the video
shows a huge american baseball stadium
and in the middle major doctor
daniel posley dan
as we call him was decorated that day
for his heroic actions saving many lives
of soldiers and civilians
in the afghan war zone he was
celebrated as the hero of the game
the little note in the email said
thanks to you coach you’re the hero
the very first moment i received that
i was speechless but i was very proud
i didn’t know what to do because
hey i had coached a real hero and he
called me a hero
but after a few minutes the video and
the note
hit me so hard it felt as if i was
run over by a truck
my brain was like one jungle
of emotions and memories
memories like how it all started with
housing one american cyclist
in 93. soon after
we sold our house bought a small bmb
remodeled it into a cycling center and
grew
towards an international development
center
where we mentored over 50 cyclists
per year then in 2013
we became a professional cycling team
right at the moment
of the email i got with the video
i was managing and running the program
and the logistics of the team meaning
handling a fleet of cars trucks
bus 100 bikes a crew of
20 members all to provide
20 riders a program of about 150
race days per year all over europe and
in the us
that’s why months in a year i lived out
of a suitcase at 200 kilometers an hour
in a mode of 24 7 being online and on
call
that night i went home and i
looked at the video several times
together with my wife
and i was still shaking like a leaf
thinking
what the hell am i doing i hate my life
the way it is right now
and i have no clue how my future is
going to look
what did i miss what did i not see
and while i was thinking that more
memories came came popped up
for example about dan i still see dan
arriving
because he wanted to become a
professional cyclist and he was
very enthusiastic but after three years
no contract no more money
no trophies just one big
broken dream in the eyes of the cycling
world he was a zero because he didn’t
achieve it
he went back to the us went into medical
school
became a doctor went into the army
became an orthopedic surgeon when they
send him to afghanistan
there he did heroic things so you can
see
that was his journey from zero to hero
but then i really realized like wait a
minute
i worked in those 22 years i worked with
about 800 riders
and they all had the same dream like dan
becoming a professional cyclist
about 25 made it meaning all the others
went home
some sort of like dan but
they were not zeros because when i
checked that out
i could see that those guys made a great
life
as they became lawyers doctors pilots
physiotherapists plumbers whatever they
were
good husbands proud fathers and that was
the moment
that late at night on digged up
a present that we got from dan the year
before
in 2014 when he stopped
uh his duty in the army
and in afghanistan he sended us a
present
an american flag with a certificate that
the flag had flown at the war zone cap
and a note the note
said coach
you told us over and over and over again
go find your values and your talents
discover your passions
and do something with it i saved lives
over here
as as an orthopedic surgeon thanks to
you and um
i gotta say the video i just talked
about
that was a wake-up call but this
that was the final knockout never
in my entire life had i noticed that i
did not
practice what i preached as i had never
thought about my own values
my own talents left alone my passions i
did not even notice
that my job in a way over those 20 years
went from mentoring
to managing i just
followed my gut feeling i had ideas i
worked them out
and i got things done over and over
again go go
and that’s exactly why i want to share
with you the two
lessons i learned out of all this two
lessons that changed my life
and made me way more comfortable towards
my future
allow me to take you with me in the
learning journey that i made
since mid-august 2015. first i thought i
was in this alone
but soon i discovered that the me story
is a wii story simply put
without my wife on no cycling center
meaning no stories and no learnings i
wouldn’t even be here
number two the lesson is that
the manual how you get there how you
can go find your values and your talents
discover your passions
was right in front of me it was in the
title hero of the game
where your hero is humble empathic
resilient and optimistic
and your game is a chain of actions
that have a growth mindset have
awareness
meaning and enjoyment so
allow me to take you through all this
and by the way would you know where your
values and your talents are
first i’m going to tell you where i got
triggered to find my values and talents
discovering that the world i was so
passionate about in
in the early 90s looked very
hypocritical to me in 2015
full of lies false promises and hidden
agendas but
i discovered that honesty and respect
are my two most precious values
and my talents i ask myself three
questions
what actions give me energy what actions
make my time fly
and what actions make other people ask
me
bernard how did you do that managing my
professional cycling team
might look glamorous from the outside
but it was a fake
circus to me it sucked away all my
energy
and my joy but hey i found my talent
zone
which was inspiring mentoring and
guiding people
in their talent zone i ask you again
do you know your values your talents
let’s talk a minute about the game so
i have a question what type of actions
would you think you can have for
yourself to grow your talents
hard huh yeah it is hard
learning about yourself is hard but it
is not
ten percent as hard as not knowing what
your future looks like
that uncertainty is a hundred times
worse
believe me i was there awareness
how would you see awareness i would see
it this way are you
curious enough have you patience enough
to notice what your behavior does
with yourself and with your environment
the answers on those questions helped me
a lot to discover that my game
was an infinite game even more so it’s
an infinite
learning game and meaning
what is meaning for you for me it is
doing something i like doing
but that i’m good in in a way that
i can fulfill somebody’s needs
so if that is in balance perfect
and enjoyment i think by now you will
understand that if i see somebody grow
in his talents
gives me a tremendous joy i gotta say
that discovering your hero
that takes more time again my experience
in my uh cycling period
i had no clue whether i was
emphatic resilient or optimistic
no i don’t know i don’t know if i was
humble maybe i was not even any of those
but discovering my game
made me enough hero to stop my cycling
center
yeah i killed my darling but only
after discovering my new darling
helping all kinds of people finding
their values
their talents and discover their
passions to do something with impact
you might ask but what is now the
biggest advantage
of this program of the hero of the game
i would say it’s the combination of
knowing your values
knowing your talents and your continuous
learnings
because that combination grows your
competence
and we all know that competence builds
confidence
but do you also know that it really
inspires you
more deliberate practice
and deliberate practice that is
assessing
and adjusting your practice methods in
little tiny steps
and because you do it that way you get
way more agile
and you feel safe for your future
to end i have one more question
it’s a one million euro question
when when can you do this
are you not too young or too
i personally would say only people that
stop learning are too old
and you can wait for a personal crisis
or
for a world disaster but i would instead
say
be proactive and whether you are in your
20s
your 30s your 40s 50s 60s like i am 70s
80s 90s 100s
doesn’t matter it’s not about age it’s
about
enjoying your game where change
becomes your competence for your future
i helped dan finding the start
of his journey from zero to the hero
of his game i thank them
for helping me
discovering my hero of my game for my
future
and today i want to inspire you all
and take immediate actions dare to go
find your values your cha your talents
discover your passions
and do something with impact as that is
the start
of becoming the hero of your game
for your future and i wish you all
[Music]
success
you