How I Ended Up In Paris

To quit your job, sell your beloved car and most of your possessions, pack your life into a suitcase and move to a country where you speak little of the language, is pretty mental. Some would say, moronic. I can honestly say it was not a spur of the moment decision. I deliberated over this move and came to the realisation that it was a challenge I could not forego. 

My time living in Brisbane was a period bound by rules and regiment. I saw this move from Sydney as an opportunity to develop positive habits, and begin my career as a physiotherapist. The two main focuses were health & wealth. I wanted to be in the best physical shape and work as hard as I could, saving as much as I could to fill my coffers. So I went all in. I declined nights out, ate the same three meals everyday and went from work to training, six days a week. I thought I was doing this for the betterment of myself, to put my head down and build my place in the world. In reality I was just closing myself off. Sure, my health improved, and I had created financial security, but after a while I realised that life had become very bland. Though work remained mentally challenging, and physically I felt ‘worked’, I was comfortable, and perhaps bored. People would argue that I need to find balance, but  I do not entirely agree with the traditional concept of work-life balance, where it is equal parts work and equal parts life. The former being villainized, becoming the antagonist to the sacred ‘life’. Why can’t your job be an engaging thread in your world and you build life amongst it. Wishing for the weekend and speeding through the week is not the mindset I wanted. I needed something else, something out of my comfort zone that would challenge my ego. French was always a language I wanted to learn, so I joined a french school, Alliance Française de Brisbane.

Wednesday 9:30am - 12:00pm quickly became the best part of my week. Myself and 6-7 other middle to late aged women in a class learning French. I could not have stuck out anymore if I tried. Like some strange self-help group, the class grew into a familial place. We were there to make mistakes with each other. It was like going back to kindergarten and re-doing all the same lessons as an adult. You were forced to make mistakes, not know the answers and look like a fool. It was incredibly humbling, but captivating. I was addicted, French study slotted into my regime and it provided some change from what felt like a life of checklists. I wanted to master the language, and felt that if that was ever going to happen I needed to immerse myself in it. So the seed was sewn. 

While I found great joy in the learning process, I started to think about why I was feeling such happiness from it. At first, I thought it was a change in thinking, away from physiotherapy and the emotional investment it demands. Instead I realised it was the continuous growth through learning and interrogating my ego. Every lesson was building on the previous, and the continued progress made me feel like I was working toward something. I felt such embarrassment when I forgot the word or the conjugation and that sense of “failure” invigorated me to continue to learn and put in time to get better. I had to learn to be wrong, to say I didn’t know the answer or give it a crack. Each time building a little more resilience. That process is what makes great humans, leaders and companies. Those who go through periods of loss or failure, and reflect on the processes that let them down, reworking them to be ironclad. When the All Blacks lost to France in the 2007 Rugby World Cup, it was a complete upset. They had the most dominant team on paper and looked unbeatable. Richie McCaw went away with psychologist Ceri Evans and together they looked at the processes that go into making a great athlete. You could do all the fitness and training, but it was the simple smaller processes that instigated a 10 year run from 2009-2019 as one of the most successful sporting franchises in history. I want a slice of that. 

So how does my love affair with my French lessons wind me up in Paris? Well because I realised that it was not the classes where I felt happiness, but in the place where I am a bit uncomfortable and am inspired to work harder at building that comfortability. I figured, my career as a physio is always going to be there. Australia is always going to be there. I do not have anything holding me at home. I am closing in on 30, and when I looked ahead through other physiotherapists careers I did not envy that life. I did not want the conventional pathway of working in the same role, with limited opportunity for growth. Leveraging myself to the hilt, buy a house, marry and have kids, blink and I am 40-50 and I have been asleep at the wheel. Stuck in a role that is so comfortable and it starts to lose its meaning and purpose. I want challenges, trials and tribulations. I want to feel out of my depth, working hard to understand a role, then mastering it and have the opportunity for growth and possible career change. I want to be involved with different teams, learning about people and businesses injecting my skills and abilities, affecting change in interesting projects. Why not throw myself in the deep end and elevate my language and expand on other possible careers utilising the skills I have learnt as a physiotherapist, administrative assistant, uni student, labourer, rugby player, team captain. 

When I think back to events within my life that have forced me to shed my ego, or thinking I am too cool to do something, they have had much longer lasting effects of positivity on my life. My journey to physiotherapy has been anything but conventional. But I would not change it all. It was difficult, I felt embarrassed a lot of the time. But that is where I want to spend my time. My fathers best friend Noel, used to say: where there’s mystery, there’s margin. It is in reference to sales tactics but I think it equates to life as well. The mystery of what is coming in the future, and how exciting that opportunity is. I figured I can either sit comfortably and wait for it, or I can chase a dream, like mastering French, and see what avenues open up for me. So I pulled the pin. Bought the plane ticket and applied for the visa. Here I am.