Nans Thomassey

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What would it be like to put complete trust in the world around you? Nans Thomassey provides answers through lived experience. He threw off his backpack of supplies, his money, and finally his clothes to travel and barter his way across great distances and achieve seemingly impossible objectives. Now, along with his friend “Mouts” (Guillaume Tisserand-Mouton), they host the show Nus et Culottes (translated: “Naked and Cheeky”) on France 5. Discover how they maintained the “magic” of miracles when the camera was rolling, how they managed to repay the generosities of those they encountered on their travels, and the importance of knowing how to celebrate and grieve a dream. Image by Paul Villecourt.

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Transcript

This transcript is unedited.

Peter:

I have a treat today. I have a different guest than normal. We have Nans Thomassey here with us. And I discovered Nans because he emailed me and said, Hey, I read one of your emails about how in this time of COVID we’re all really naked together. We’re seeing parts of ourselves. We wouldn’t see otherwise. And he said, I actually literally get naked and have shot a TV show about it. And, and it’s super interesting. And I kind of want to just leave it there and, and let Nans describe what it is he does. He’s on French television. And it’s, you know, what we’ll do with his permission is, is post one of the shows one of France five, which is TV’s largest Francis largest TV channel for documentary and they’ve made 32 movies. And I’m gonna let you discover who knows is on your own knowledge, welcome to the Bregman leadership podcast.

Nans:

Yeah. Hello, thank you, Peter.

Peter:

So now you’ve spent 427 days and nights on the road. You’ve traveled more than 25,000 kilometers without money. And, and, and I, and you sent me this video of one of the France five TV, which is the TV doc documentary channel of one of your shows. And I absolutely loved it. So tell us what it is you’ve been doing.

Nans:

Yeah, all began after my studies in civil engineering, when I was studying in Toulouse in France I had been graduated in 2000 and after that I wanted to go on the roads. I didn’t know what to work, but I wanted to, to travel and to meet people with this idea that I wanted to go very, very light in my backpack. So the more I was traveling and the more I was getting my backpack, very light. So taking of the tent and then the sleeping bag, because I realized that the more I trust the road and the more magic was the travel and after, yeah.

Peter:

Tell me, let’s, let’s pause on that a little bit. So, so first of all, why did you decide to go camping after a civil engineering degree? I would imagine the thing to do after a civil engineering degree is go get a job in civil engineering. You made a different choice. What led you to make different choice?

Nans:

I don’t know. Just my, my whole body was not a ready to go working. I was burning to, to go travel and to meet people. And I think I wanted to meet myself as well.

Peter:

Right. You want it to discover people? You want it to discover yourself. So, so then you went to this backpack and you started unloading things. And tell me you, you said like, because you discovered that there was magic in having less things or having like to tell, like, what were you like, you know, what led you to give up your sleeping bag? What led you to give up your tent?

Nans:

Yeah, when I was traveling in a Caribbean islands, I met on the Island man that was called [inaudible]. He was like Bob Marley, you know, in the Island was not from everybody from the poorest man to the rich list. And when I met him in the jungle, he was living with no cloth, no money. And he was just singing all day long. And I talked to him and I say, why do you do that? How’s it possible? And he said, that’s, that’s my life. That’s my life. And that’s how I live for how I’ve been leading for 20 years now. How

Peter:

Did he survive? How did he get food? Just

Nans:

In the jungle? Oh, harvesting food. And he was inspiring a lot of people around him. And when I met him, I saw in that person, my own desire of getting the right. And it gave me a lot of Pyre and a lot of trust to go in my own way more and more lights on the roads. So,

Peter:

So I want to pause on this moment because I think it’s such an important moment. And I, I find it’s important for myself to, how do you, so you’re you meet this guy and you feel touched in a certain way and you say, wow, I could feel something move inside me. I could feel it longing. I could feel a desire. I could feel like something that excites me. And how do you know to trust that longing? How do you, because you’re, you’re, you know, you’ve gotten your civil engineering degree and now you’re going to do something like, kind of crazy. I mean, from the traditional perspective. So how do you know that that’s a voice and a longing that you should trust? I’m curious what happened for you in that moment that said I’m willing to take this risk.

Nans:

Yeah. actually there’s a coherence because at the end of my civil engineering studies I am graduated as a construction builder. So I can build ecological houses. That means houses that has a low consumption of energy. Right. But a high quality of life, right after studies, I want to have the same mindset, but on the road, how can I do travels that concern very low energy, but it’s a very great experience of life. Right? So when I go in that travel, I am already in that mindset. I want to experience something very, very raw, so I can’t make it, but I can feel it. So when I have men, it gives me an image, a clear image of my own desire.

Peter:

Right. And then you have to trust yourself to follow it.

Nans:

Yeah. Yeah. Because it’s burning, it’s completely clear inside of me. There’s no questions about it. It’s not all should I do or not? It’s central snow. It’s, there’s no questions that I wait. I recognize it. Great. So what did you do next? So I started to, I kept traveling, but slowly and slowly, I made my backpack lighter and lighter. I didn’t do like Brechtian traveling. It was very achieve. Right. So are you are going out there a little bit in 2009

Peter:

And a little bit, but what you said is you didn’t do one big break. You didn’t say I’m going to go from a full backpack to no backpack at all. What you said was, I don’t need this right now. And then I don’t need that right now. And slowly you started taking weight off. Yeah.

Nans:

Back. Yeah. So that was very joyful. It was not, I didn’t make myself into fears was very joyful. And there were a lot of playfulness in that in that game, it was like a game, right. And in the winter of 2009, I decided to go one step forward, which is to travel without money. We are in Quebec. It’s minus 40 degrees outside. If we don’t find a way to sleep at people’s house we can’t spend the night outside. It’s not possible. So at this moment, I feel that my faith in humanity has to be like maximum.

Peter:

Right. You have to really trust. You have to trust. You have to trust the world. You have to trust other people that you have to trust yourself that you’re going to go out there and you’re going to be okay.

Nans:

Yeah. Oh, well, like, just to remind me, gives me a lot of happiness, because when I trusted the, this way of traveling without money in Quebec, minus 40 degrees outside, like all doors open I, I couldn’t imagine leaving the experience. So

Peter:

I literally went to Quebec. Yeah. You took off all your clothing. No, no, no, no.

Nans:

At this stage we took out money, money, all your money.

Peter:

They took off all your money. I’m jumping the gun here. So you took up all your money. So you had your clothing, you had warmth, et cetera. You took off your money. And did you set a goal for yourself?

Nans:

Yeah. We were in Montreal and we want to, we wanted to go to Halifax. She’s the East coast of Canada. Nova Scotia area. Yeah. Before to take a boat to go back to Europe because it was the end of our travel. Right. And for one week we had been traveling like this and every night we spent a night at people’s house and we had lunches. We had dinners because people invited us to, to eat. So it was really beautiful experience for us. So when we go back to Europe, now we go, okay. We go to, we have to go one step powered, which is travel without money with a backpack. And without clothes, at least the travel, like

Peter:

This is truly trusting yourself, the world. And other people would says, you’re going to literally get dropped in the woods somewhere with nothing. Except you have cameras, at least for the show, you have cameras that

Nans:

Because it was not a show, it was our life, your life. Yeah. It wasn’t an experience.

Peter:

Just drop yourselves naked with zero, with nothing. But men say and with a goal at that point, or just to say, can we travel a little bit like this?

Nans:

Yeah. So I, I called a friend and they said, Hey because I knew he was interesting in a minimalism as well in certain form with minimalism and traveling. And I say, would you be okay to travel with me? We set up money and we thought backpack that. Yeah. But we should start in the first. And I said, yeah. And then we should just start naked. And he said, yeah. And we were like excited. And we said, let’s go to Paris in discotheque in a red convertible where with a suitcase

Peter:

Suit. So you said, okay, so here’s the challenge. We’re going to go naked in the woods. Our goal is to end up in Paris in a suit, in a red convertible, can we make it happen?

Nans:

Yeah, because we say, we want to reach to opposites. You know, like the white men and the modern man, the one men and modern, right. And said, if we can reach those two, if we can connect those two architects of humanity, then we will this trouble. We have a value because that means that we will be able to travel in this humanity, from the whiteness to the money.

Peter:

So I want to, I want to pause for a second because I think when I think about, you know, like this is this is about leadership. This podcast itself is about the Bregman leadership podcast. And we talk with, you know, leaders and organizations and, and, and, and I, I speak to so many leaders who are frustrated with the constraints that they have. They don’t have the money, they don’t have the budget that they want in order to make their plans happen. They, you know, they struggle with competition. They, and, and, and what you’re saying is you’re, you’re stepping out of that construct out of that paradigm completely. And you’re saying, you know, it’s like, it’s about fun. It’s about trust. It’s about trying something new. It may or may not work. Now. You don’t necessarily have, you know, an organization of people you have to pay and profitability and shareholders and blah, blah, blah.

Peter:

But there’s something really, really important that has been lost. I speak to so many entrepreneurs who start out exactly. Like you started out saying, Hey, I’ve got this idea. Let’s have fun and let’s do something cool. I’m gonna do it with a friend. Let’s see if we can pull this off. And then 10 years down the road, they’re saddled with a backpack that is heavier than they can carry in, which they’re not having very much more fun and they have way more money than they had beforehand, but they seem to have much less joy of life. And, and I, and I’m just, I’m thinking of that because you’re starting out in this place that, that has the energy of an early entrepreneur.

Nans:

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right. And yeah. Thank you for for this sharing, because it touches me at the place where I remained. I remember when we started the, with my friend woods naked without money today, after the the start, we were like, okay, man, we have to go to Paris to find red convertible. How are we going to do we have to find money? So we should find a work and maybe work for one or two days to have money. And then to, to borrow this red on the table. And every time we saw ourselves shifting in the old pattern, right? I suppose we are not here for that. Right. That button we know it’s you work in Manet and you go to your book. Now what we want to experience something is right. And every time one of, one of the us were falling into the fears, there’s a way where, right. First let’s trust, let’s trust. Right. And the story is great because when we write in Paris, so we had the suits, someone gave it to us and we were looking for this wreck on the table. And we were like, how are we going to be, we have no money. And we say, okay, let’s trust. Let’s trust, let’s trust. And at one point there were, this red took, took comfortable. That came to us, you know, the took the taxi in India,

Peter:

Like like with a bicycle, like a, or like a half motorcycle, half a thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nans:

And it kinda led to us coming to go. And the driver that was a woman looked at us and she was curious and say, what you guys, what are you doing here? And we explained to us the dream, we explained her, our dream. And she said, okay, tonight I am your personal driver. I am completely available for you. Wow. We have the whole evening in the record, they were in a terrorist and then find a way to the discotheque. But it was more symbolic, right. For us, we say, okay, five years, five days ago, we were naked in the woods. And we had traveled for 500 kilometers. Each I King on trucks, on cars, airplane, trains. And here we are in Paris. We were like, like a drug that was like, everything is possible. Right. So we ended up in Paris and we had the little camera is which we, we have taken some pictures and videos. And after that, we set up a little movie of five minutes and we sent it to a TV channel and to say, that’s brilliant. Let’s make movies together. So that was 10 years ago. And today we had make, we had made the 32 movies of that experience.

Peter:

I’m curious about, and maybe we’re jumping ahead very quickly, but I’m curious about like, so you have this thing you do, that’s super fun. And it’s an experiment and it’s trusting the world. And yeah. And it’s also very important, I think, from what you’ve described, but tell me if this is right and all this is that you, you have a goal, but you can’t think you can’t plan too far in advance. Meaning you have this thing you want to go to, but you don’t, you don’t know, here are the 30 steps that are going to get me there. Like that’s the adventure. The adventure is, I dunno how I’m going to get from me. Oh, we have an ocean to cross. How am I going to cross the ocean? I don’t know. I’m going to cross the ocean. Let’s go to the edge of the ocean and see if anyone has a boat.

Peter:

Like you’re, you’re not in. And I’m going to use negative, moral language here to mean a positive thing. You’re totally irresponsible about the, the planning of your approach. And yet you’re completely faith driven, believing that, you know, if we take the next step and we’re open and we’re willing that we’ll find the step after that, we don’t have to plan it all out. Yeah. I’m curious when you started making movies, if that changed, because now you’re working for a TV channel, you’re making movies, you have a product you have to get out, like, how do you manage to maintain that joie to Veeva and that sort of free spirit when you have, you know, deadlines and, you know, people that you’re having to deliver a product to at the end. Do you understand my question?

Nans:

Yeah. Yeah. that’s a beautiful question. Because it was my own question as well. When we first began to do movies about it, my thoughts, my beliefs were, Oh, when we’re going to shoot that miracles are going to disappear because miracles don’t like to be traps into a camera, or they don’t like business. It’s free miracles of three. But the thing is that the first travel we’ve made, we started in a cave in Durham, which is in Southeast of France. And we had to modifier to survive during the night. So I’ve learned a technique of friction, friction, but it didn’t work. There was a lot of steel, but there were no fire. Right? So as the sun was setting and the temperature was getting lower and lower, we say, well, we really need to get some leaves to make cover for us. But it was very freezing cold, like zero degree, right after five minutes of research of leaves, moots found an object on the ground, but we are in the forest in the middle of nowhere. You say, I found a brigade, a lighter

Peter:

Out of nowhere. It’s just random,

Nans:

Random. And it was working. And we couldn’t even shoot that sequence that that moment, because I said, nobody will, will believe us. Right.

Peter:

Right. They wouldn’t believe you. They would say, well, it was planted or it was right. Yeah.

Nans:

So I was, I was like kind of relieved that, Oh yeah. Miracles is still happening, even though this pressure, even though there’s production company, TV channel and everything. And my NLI is, is that as we enter into those travels naked, it’s like a ritual. And in that ritual it’s make us like completely available to, to the travel. Right. And after 10 years of travel, I can say today, like miracles still happens enjoying still here in fire and trust. But I, for me, it’s important to stop naked every time, every time it’s like, if you take off all your comfort zone and all the, the thing that you, you think, you know, but you know, nothing actually. And yeah. And today, even today, after 10 years, sometimes I cry before to go there because I’m afraid because I say, Oh, my come to them. It’s I don’t know what’s going to happen. Sometimes it’s cold. And sometimes I’m afraid of how people are going to react. So fortunately we are too with my friend, we support each other since the first rule of our work together. And yeah. Then after we trust,

Peter:

There’s something else I noticed when I was watching the, the episode that you sent me and I, and it’s left me wanting to watch more episodes. But I noticed, and was very touched by the fact that while you start out naked, you never took anything from anybody without giving them something back that there was, it was not a required transaction. You weren’t buying something with something else, but people were being generous with you. And you were finding ways, even when you had nothing to be generous back with them, maybe you would cook them a meal. And, and, and actually, and, and there was one person who was very negative. And in the show that I showed you that, that you showed me, he was, he actually helped you to find a place to stay at night, but he was just such a pessimist and so negative about people and so negative about life.

Peter:

And everybody’s terrible. And, and at that point you said, you know, I’m going to, what I’m going to try to do is see if he’ll come with us. And, you know, and I was thinking, Oh, I would want to just get away from him. But you, your view was, let me bring him in and see if he could sort of be part of the miracle of our life and, and, and see what we’re doing. Do you want to describe that? And I’m curious about the ethic of giving back as in, you know, of, of, of a willingness to take and a willingness to give.

Nans:

Yeah. Yeah, of course you can imagine. After 10 years of traveling like this, there’s something very heavy to keep. It’s only one way, if you only receive it’s too heavy to keep ourselves. So we really felt like we bodily felt the need of giving back. Like there were this call of giving because it gave us a sense of balance, right? So we felt that for health, we needed to give back. And so we invented some presence made of papers. Like Oregon is some songs we learned how to, to, to cook, as you said, or to give yeah. To give services or anything that we could that gave us the opportunity to share or energy as well for, with people. Right.

Peter:

That, that felt very important as I was watching, that felt important both in terms of the Rwanda Viv, in terms of like living life in an adventure in an exciting way. And also, you know, about this trust thing, like to trust that not only will people be generous with us, but even naked, we have value to give to other people that will be treasured by them, even if it’s in the experience of helping us and engaging with us, that feels like it’s an important part of the story.

Nans:

Yeah. Yeah. What we discovered you know, I’m not sure is that money is one way to give, but it’s not the only one. These are many ways to, to make connections between people. And sometimes those other ways are a Mo are more adapted to the situation. Sometimes people do not need money. They need the law, they need attention. They need care. Sometimes they feel so grateful just because we are here for half an hour listening to the story, right. Sometimes they say the first time I feel listened to, and this is the most precious present for them. Or sometimes people, the, the, the they’re happy to share a meal in France, 1% of a 10 feel lonely, or with the studies, perhaps another 10. So this is great gifts sometimes that you can offer to someone just to share time with him. Right. So, yeah, we want all those different ways to give back. And we felt like there’s a great richness beside money.

Peter:

What are some of the lessons that you would want to share with leaders in companies and in organizations from what you’ve learned over the past 10 years?

Nans:

Well, what, I’m very happy to share with those those travels is to not forget the playfulness and the innocence in which we enter into a new project, into a dream, because I, I, today I really trusted the power of getting in touch with the plugging with that. Impulsion that drive us into a dream or whatever, and to stay here. Yeah. This is for me, the, the great how do you say in English? [inaudible] Or say it in French caviar.

Peter:

I don’t know. I thought I might

Nans:

Into your car, you know, well, it’s a great energy, right? It’s a great energy to be connected with. And I really trust that this energy has its own intelligence to, to drive us on the way.

Peter:

So we’re, we’re, I don’t know exactly when this will air, but we’re talking in the middle of a pandemic in the middle of an economic crisis in the middle of a time when there’s a lot of fear when people are afraid for themselves and their families and their health, where people are afraid for their businesses and their money. And right. And I’m curious about how at the same time, and you have felt afraid, you talked about feeling afraid, how at the same time, as you feel fear and afraid you could still access the playfulness.

Nans:

Yeah. that’s, that’s a great question today. For me, one one, one of the challenge I see in that situation of pandemic is that it brings a distances between people. And so there’s this tendency to go alone, to stay at home. But I want to remind myself that having distances for dependency do not mean staying lonely inside of us. For me, the, I activate the playfulness with the relationship, talking, listening to the other, being curious with the other, being authentic with oneself. This brings something that’s for me, actually brings me back to the playfulness and to the heart, but playfulness for me, the home of playfulness in the heart. And I connect with my heart mostly in the relationship with authenticity and, and attention.

Peter:

And let me ask you a question, because as you’re speaking, I’m thinking, I wonder whether there’s something else also, which is there is playfulness in the risks that you take. And there are generally risks. Like for the most part, you know, you’re going to survive. Like you’re not risking your life for the most part. Maybe, maybe you are, maybe I’m wrong, but it feels like you’re taking a risk. And it’s kind of like the, like, like a kid, like mentality. When you go, I wonder what would happen if I wonder what would happen if I did this, I wonder what would happen? And it’s that you’re, it’s, it’s, it, it feels to me like, there’s something very important that you’re saying about the relationship, but also there’s something very important. You’re saying about the imagination and the willingness to dream and to create, and to take some risks to follow through on that without the heaviness or the seriousness of this had better work, but with both a certain trust and an openness and a curiosity to see what happens if dot.dot.

Nans:

Yeah. Yeah. And for me to regress to skills for that, the first one is to dare to dream like it’s to free your imagination for me, that it happened when I was a child, you know, with my father, he, he brought me very often, you in, under the sky and looking at the stars and saying, each time we saw a star, you know, like this, like starting stuff thing, make a wish, a shooting star shooting star, like make a wish. And then we were going in the fields, looking for the fall leaves Claver. And I was looking for one finding ones that make a wish, make a wish so far from very child. I learned how to make wishes and to allow myself to dream. So that’s, that’s, I find it’s important. And there’s a skill is important for me is to be able to celebrate when you reach your dream, but also be able to tomorrow to I’ll just say you know, when you like to grieve to grieve when you don’t success, right? Like a city to grieve, to mourn, and to be able to find some Supartz around and support inside, then the more I am able to mourn my, my dreams when they are not realized the more I feel secure inside and say, okay, because the fear is not to fail the, the dream, the fear is not to be able to handle the emotional intensity. And when I say

Peter:

That’s amazing, it’s like, w we don’t fear. And I, I, I mean, I don’t know if you know this, but my last book was leading with emotional courage, the willingness to feel things. And what you’re saying is which I agree 100% with is that we don’t fear failure. We fear what we will feel when we fail. And if we’re willing to feel all of that, then we could fail. It’s okay.

Nans:

Yeah. Right. Yeah. So I can’t talk about all of this project without talking of my family, my friends that I know I have supports. If I fail in my project, my dreams, I know that they are here and then I can maybe cry or maybe express myself or what I feel and it’s okay. I will, there’s something else that will the born from that. But we’ll start again from that, you know, and my sacred arts that we have forgotten in our culture, the secret art of grieving, right. It’s beauty. This is absolutely beautiful. Yeah, it’s beautiful to celebrate and it’s beautiful to grieve when it’s happened.

Peter:

Right. It’s true. We really like, you’re, you’re speaking to an expansiveness of facing life of living life and expansiveness. And we you know, we learn over time, I think to get more and more and more narrow. And like, we want, we want the good things and not the bad things, and we want the money and not the poverty. And we want the, and, and what you’re is, it’s all life. And it’s all beautiful. And it’s, and, and if we’re not afraid of either one side or the other side, then we can live fully into all of who we are as people.

Nans:

Yeah. Yeah. But like the, the, the thought, the thought I had when you were speaking is that if you want to open up all the possibilities of your life, you have to be able to receive all the passivity, the possibilities of the life as well. So, yeah.

Peter:

I love that analogy. I love that. And it’s not just a empty, philosophical approach to life. It’s one you live. And it’s also one that you’ve I’m, I’m sure you’ve had failures. I know you’ve had successes, but it’s one that you’ve continued to live in the context of working on significant projects that have been brought to fruition. So you’re not you’re not meditating on all of this and not moving forward. You’re, you’re living this life in a way that’s creating value out in the world and, and still maintaining the same kind of openness, which I, I don’t know. I feel like I’m not articulating this well, but I think it’s, it’s like one thing for someone in college to say, wouldn’t this be an amazing way to live idealistically? And it’s another to say, it might be an ideal, but it’s also very livable. And like, here I am, I’m a TV star, I’m a French TV star. And I’ve got, you know, we’ve got a TV show and we’ve done multiple seasons. And, and this is, this is the philosophy of life that I live in the context of the things that I’ve achieved. It’s not giving up one for the other. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nans:

I love it. One thing today that I celebrate is that after seven years of doing that a TV program, a friend of mine, which is called Amanda, came to see me and say, you know, I just lost my, my, my child. He was a one year old and today I completely lost, and I’m not sure I will be able to cross this experience of loss. And she said, I want you to bring me in a travel and to meet people that can inspire me because they lost someone there and maybe a child, they can give me the, the trust that it’s possible, not only to, to cross this express, but only to grow from it. Right. So we decided to go on a travel together and she asked to make a movie of it because she said, if it can help me, maybe it will help other people that are like completely lost in the loss.

Nans:

So we made a movie out of that, but I was, I came to say, okay, I, what you want, because I want really to, to help you. But let’s, and this, this movie had been shown in many, many cinema. It had been a big, big, big, big movie in France. And so proud of it as a part of, and then that in the plane, in the core of the pain that she founded the courage to say, I want to help my SF and to help others. And she, she went to a support from her friends, and now we made a beautiful a movie that helped a lot of people here in Prince.

Peter:

It’s amazing. It’s amazing. And, and what’s amazing about it is it used some of what, you know, but you also said, like, I dunno, like you’re willing to be in the space of not knowing and to have that be the next adventure that hopefully can help people. I love it. It’s a place, you know, place of not knowing is not a place that people are very comfortable with. Often, like we, like, I was just reading a book, I’m going to have someone on my podcast. But one, one of the things that he wrote is what’s the difference between dreams and priorities is dreams are long-term desires without a plan or a deadline. Priorities are dreams that you’re willing to sacrifice for that. You have to turn into a plan with a deadline. And, and I think that, I think you’re saying something very different in a sense, which is, you know, like dream, like it’s, it’s actually important in some ways not to have figured it all out planning and having a deadline. I mean, there’s some element of planning a deadline that’s useful, but there’s some element when we plan everything out where we plan the magic and the potential out of something that otherwise could be

Nans:

Great. Yeah. Let’s say, I would say, yeah, when I, there there are different kinds of dreams, but the dreams I’m talking about, other dreams that just the fact, the very fact of dreaming make you feel very alive and it’s already like the dream is already reached and realize as you feel it like Holy in your body and those kinds of dreams it is, it’s that kind of dream that I’m talking about doing,

Peter:

Do you have any advice where we’re just wrapping up here, but do you have any advice for people about how to open up to their dreams? A lot of times we have dreams and we shut them down because they’re a little scary. So, and maybe you, maybe you haven’t had this experience, but I’m curious for people who might have dreams, but they even have a hard time admitting to themselves with their dreams are because they could be scary. Any advice about opening yourself up to your dreams?

Nans:

Yeah. my advice is to to, to lead, to be, to be very aware about the little dreams of everyday, you know, like everything that makes you feel happy and joyful in your body. So the first advice is to keep attention to how do you feel inside of you and to be attention that is the joy and happiness and everything that resonates with those those feeling of expansion, eh, to be, yeah. Be aware of that and try it sometimes just to do a little step towards this kind of little dream that you can follow every day. And it’s like a muscle, the more you listen to it, and the more you listen to your inner joy and the more you listen to your, to yourself, and the more you’re able then to trust yourself to follow your big dream of life, love it.

Peter:

We have been speaking with Nans Thomassey. While you’ve you, you know what he’s been doing, but he’s been traveling for the last 10 years. He’s been following his dreams. He’s created a TV series. They’ve made 32 movies. And, and, and you’re such a beautiful example of, of exactly what you’ve just described, taking steps one by one, starting with nothing to build up something that’s really beautiful, but then not resting on that, continuing to step back to continuing to go back to where you started naked and start again. And, and it’s this, you know, I remember reading a an article about this woman. Who’s a Chinese billionaires she’s lives in China, and she’s a billionaire she’s, you know, maybe the richest woman in China. I can’t, I can’t remember what this was about 10 years ago, but I remember reading in the article as she described what it was like to start her company living in a sleeping bag in one room and the excitement with which she described that. And, and the longing that this billionaire who has everything that she could possibly need, the longing that she had for that moment of being in the sleeping bag by herself, in a room, you know, with the dream of starting something. And, and I think we forget that the dream is sometimes more important than the accomplishment of the dream that it’s like, we accomplish it. And then we stopped dreaming. And then that becomes a block to really living life so fully. And so I so appreciate you reminding us of that.

Nans:

Oh, thank you. Peter. There was a lot of your curiosity as well. And thank you for making me, making me able to share those stories with you and New York and America, because this is my, this is my longing to share my stories and to inspire maybe people, I have been inspired by many people here in France and all the generosity I’ve met on the road. I want to say that yet it exists today and it had to be known.

Peter:

That’s great. So I’m so happy. You’ve been on the podcast. Thank you for coming Nans.