I had many great adventures in my life and I think most of them happened because instead of deciding whether things were impossible or not, I looked at the costs and rewards of going through the process.

I barely looked at failure except to compare its results with the ultimate reward and pretty much in all cases there was no comparison. Once I had started the process, I focused on the path I was taking, path that was a road through failure, but I never focused on failure itself. It’s like what they teach you in car racing schools: Look at the path through the obstacles, not at the obstacles.

This approach allowed me among others

• To cross the Berlin wall and travel from Paris to Moscow by train in 1965 at the age of 16.
• To get a summer internship in a US University when I was a student in France and I was told I had a chance in a hundred to get one.
• To get a Fulbright fellowship and assistantships that fully paid for tuitions and cost of living while I was at Stanford.
• To assemble a team, and design, build and deliver a flawless system to Federal Express in 9 months when the shortest estimate was 18.
• To win a 10 year fight to give a normal life to an emotionally challenged daughter when most had given up.
• To dig and build a sizable fish pond with one hand (I was born without a left forearm),  lose 30 pounds and get in shape in 6 months so that I would be able to walk hours through the jungle to realize a child’s dream of visiting one of the Amazonian tribe.

To give an example of the process I go through, I will tell you about the Summer Internship. Here I was, a 22 years old student at a French “Grandes Écoles” (engineering school) and I was supposed to get a summer internship. I found the prospect of going to work for some french company totally boring and really wanted to spend my summer traveling and discovering. The US was in my list of places to discover and was technology advanced  giving me the opportunity to work on some cool stuff. One of the issues was that people told me it was impossible to get anything just for a summer: “You have a chance in a hundred to get anything”… and they were actually right.

After doing a bit of research, I figured out there was a really great US documentation center where I could get names and information on companies and universities that could give me a job.

So what was the cost: spending many hours selecting a large number of names of places to write to, writing each letter (it was the era of typewriters), and giving up parties and fun during that time. I also had to start early because if I failed to find anything I would have to scramble to get something in France. What were the rewards: going on a dream trip, a real adventure, and working on really cool stuff. To me the choice was obvious.

So I spent hours and hours discovering US companies and Universities and selecting the ones I was going to apply to. I rejected offers for parties,  outings, dinners out but kept some time for true friends. I selected 200 different places, sorted them in different categories, wrote a resume and cover letter for each category, typed them and sent them. Then I waited… Many people did not answer, many rejected me but on the long run I got two offers and selected to go work on pulsed lasers in Champaign, Illinois. I will remember this trip all my life including the month spent on Greyhound buses discovering the US and Canada and meeting incredible people. At no time during the whole process did I focus on failure, even during the wait for positive answers: there was anxiety, but it was part of the road, of the expected cost and the reward was so much more than the cost!

So next time you consider trying something remember two things:

• Nothing is impossible, everything has costs and rewards.
• Once the adventure has started, just focus on the path.

Happy Adventures!