Michel Fortin and Sylvie Charrier found their soulmate in each other and were recently married. Just before their marriage, Sylvie discovered she had a lump in her breast that was cancerous.
She is one of the internet heroes I have yet to interveiw because both my parents are near death and on hospice. It is a full time job keeping them alive.
Sylvie and Michel are sharing Sylvie's experiences with regaining her health in her blog at: BreastCancerVictory Michel's heroes interview was so inspiring, I felt moved to publish it in the In Search Of Heroes Blog.
Michel's response to his wife's health challenges is simply amazing. When you read his interview, you will realize why I chose him as one of my heroes. When you read about Sylvie's pathway back to health, you will understand why she is one of the most inspiring people I have ever met.
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Ralph Zuranski: You know, it’s funny that you talk about journaling. Lori Morgan Forall, who’s another copywriter, I did her interview and she had suffered sexual abuse as a young person and she’s not creating a course using journaling to help other women overcome just the trauma of that situation in growing up. So it’s fascinating that you would talk about journaling. It really helped you also.
Michel Fortin: Oh, absolutely. I hurt in my journals so much, especially in those, those dark times in my life, you know, and it’s also a great reference tool because it makes you more resilient that next time something happens in the future if it happens again, or whenever you do have a chance to go back and reflect and review entries in your journal you realize how far you’ve grown and that in itself is a strengthening process because then you can see wow, I really went through that. I really felt that way? Oh my goodness, how far I’ve grown and that in itself makes you grow even more, even in good times.
Ralph Zuranski: Well, you know, what is the dream or vision that sets the course of your life?
Michel Fortin: The dream or vision that sets the course of my life. There is – I live by one motto and one motto alone. I don’t believe in goals. I don’t believe in an end result specifically in my life. You know, there’s two types of people in this world.
Michel Fortin: There are the people who always will live in the future where they always have something that they want to look for, a vision or a dream or whatever, like you just said. Then there are people who are in the rapture of the moment, people like artists, you know. They’re, I think it was, I can’t remember exactly who but I believe it was Dr. Tony Alessandra who said that you’ve got rowers and you’ve got drifters and then there’s nothing bad with either one of them.
Michel Fortin: People who row, going toward a destination, will row. People who drift will enjoy the scenery along the way as they drift in that river going towards the ocean. Me, that’s what it is and the point is this. If you want me to say that I do have a dream or a vision it is this, to always do what I love. Joseph Campbell said it best, follow your bliss. Do what you love. The money will follow; the business will follow; the success will follow.
Michel Fortin: Even if those things don’t, the fact that once you go through your life and you end up looking back on your life and you say I really enjoyed my life. I’ve really done something that I totally love, so do what you love or love what you do. That’s the ultimate vision and it’s my vision.
Ralph Zuranski: Well, in everybody’s life, you know, there’s positive – I mean, there’s setbacks, there’s misfortunes and mistakes that we make. How important is it to be an optimist and take a positive view of things?
Michel Fortin: Well, optimism has a lot of sometimes bad connotations as much as good connotations.
Ralph Zuranski: Really?
Michel Fortin: You know, optimism is not motivation and people misinterpret that, you know, optimism with for example a positive mental attitude. The one thing that you need the most and that’s beyond being an optimist is not just being a realist but being a student. If you have a bad situation, try to learn as much as you can and try to learn – and that’s why journaling is so important – and try to learn as much as you can in terms of looking at the positive aspect of what happened.
Michel Fortin: You know, there’s a technique called the best and better technique. Look what – what’s the best you can pull from every situation and how you can be better next time – how you can better your own self from the event. Is that an optimist? Not necessarily. People will take optimism and look at it as some form of motivation.
Michel Fortin: Jim Rohn said it best. You know, if somebody’s going down the wrong road they don’t need motivation to speed them up, they need education to turn them around. You know? So being an optimist is not some Pollyanna, bang your head against the wall and hey it hurts but hey, I’m happy about it and I’ll keep, you know, bumping myself against the way.
Michel Fortin: No, I think if you want to look at optimism in the best way is to look at it as an educational process. Learn, and drilling is part of it, sitting down with people, talking with them, spending time with them, reading books, you know, spending your time on learning as much as you possibly can.
Michel Fortin: You will be able to go down the right road. Fast or slow doesn’t matter and that’s not optimism. That’s just being, you know, that’s just following your conscience. That’s just being a realist, I guess. It’s not being pessimist. It’s not being optimist. It’s probably an optimal point of looking at it, an optimal point or way to look at things but it’s not necessarily optimistic.
Ralph Zuranski: Well, do you think it takes courage to pursue new ideas?
Michel Fortin: It absolutely takes courage. I mean, you know, courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is the ability to take risks when there is fear, you know. As the old saying goes for people who, like speakers when they speak onstage, they say you’ll never be able to get rid of those butterflies. Your job is to make those butterflies dance in formation and courage is that.
Michel Fortin: You know, if I pray to any one God or any one Spirit or any one process in this world, I pray for three major things strength, courage and wisdom. And the strength to be able to do what is necessary, the courage to be able to go ahead and do it, the courage to be able to also accept defeat when you need to accept defeat, and the wisdom, exactly, that’s the prayer of serenity that they use for example in Alcoholics’ Anonymous, and it’s – that’s the most beautiful prayer in the world because then you have, you know, the wisdom to know the difference, the wisdom to know what to do, when to do it, how to do it, who to say it to, at what time, and when not to do things, when to shut up, when to stop yourself from doing things that you shouldn’t be doing, stuff like that, so to me courage, yeah, absolutely.
Michel Fortin: If you have a new idea, you know, you’re always pushing the envelope in every day of your life because you’re always growing and evolving. The problem is are you going to be pushing it by a millimeter today or are you going to be pushing it by a yard and that takes courage and it also takes courage to realize that in the first place, not just courage to do it. That takes strength but to me courage is absolutely necessary, absolutely.
Ralph Zuranski: Well, do you think that in the process of pursuing new ideas and using that courage that you’re gonna experience discomfort in the pursuit of your dreams?
Michel Fortin: Well, absolutely. I mean, that’s, you know, it’s like, you know, going through life, you know. If you’re ever going to do something you have to take the goods and the bads with it. The good will outweigh the bad, of course, but there will always be bad. There’s always gonna be a discomfort.
Michel Fortin: We, you know, if – but here’s the point and coming back and tying it to what I was saying earlier. If you do what you love, if you do something that you have zest and passion and you’re so fully absorbed in the process you tend to not even think of the discomfort even though you are actually feeling it, your body is feeling it. If I’m doing something that I love, and I’m just gonna finish this because it’s important.
Michel Fortin: If I do something that I love the discomfort level will be on the back burner in my mind, although it will always be there. You know, Yanni, very famous composer who writes New Age-type music, he’s, you know, he’s like me in a certain way. Whenever he writes a whole CD or a new song or even a new kind of, a better word for it is symphony, he locks himself in his room for two, three weeks at a time and he forgets to bathe, he forgets to eat, he forgets to sleep, because he is so engrossed in the moment.
Michel Fortin: Discomfort, yes, but are you actually, you know, are you focused on your discomfort? No, if you do something, you know, you love. In fact, here’s another way and a final way and I’ll finish it with this is if you do what you love, then you’ll have a chance to look at all the things that are uncomfortable, drudgery, perfunctory or even painful, as things that are important to you because they’re part of something that gives you purpose. You will turn the important into the urgent.
Michel Fortin: You will turn the discomfort into comfort. It’s like a natural, I guess, physical knee-jerk reaction. I can’t really express it well enough in words but essentially you’ll be able to turn the uncomfortable into the comfort or you’ll be able to accept or have a tolerance level higher if you were doing something you absolutely love because that purpose drives you and everything that happens to you that may be bad or may make you uncomfortable is so in the back of your mind and you just trudge along and you will be going wherever you want to go.