🔄 Self-reflection is essential for personal and professional growth and development.

🧠 There is self-reflection, where you analyze your own situation, and reflection prompted by someone else through advice, feedback, criticism, or comments.

💬 Honest and sincere feedback that points out a flaw or bad habits is often hard to accept and hear. But it’s often the most helpful.

📈 I’d like to share my experience and journey with you—specifically, how I’ve learned to listen to feedback and reflect on my own actions in order to grow and develop.

⏳ From age 7 to 36, from the amateur to the professional level, I’ve experienced various categories, levels, and divisions, working with different management styles.

🏉 In my 16 years as a professional rugby player, I’ve only ever had the same coach or manager for two consecutive years.

🏅 From amateur clubs in Clichy to Gennevilliers, including my time at Racing Club de France, where I discovered the dynamics of team life and its complexities, learning day by day to reinvent myself. I was one of those young athletes few people would have bet on.

📄 Following a very successful season during my final year as a junior (Reichel) at Racing Club de France, I was offered my first professional contract.

💼 I turned pro with Racing Club de France, which was struggling in PRO D2 (the second division) at the time, and we were fighting to avoid relegation.

🏟️ The following year, I signed with Stade Français Paris in the Top 14 (first division), surrounded by international players, at a club that was breathing new life into rugby with all its innovations.

🧒 With my spoiled-brat mindset, I hadn’t yet realized the sacrifices, commitment, and dedication required to play there and stay there.

⚠️ Then, the following season, the reality of that coveted world caught up with me. My lack of commitment brought me back down to earth, and I went from the TOP 16 (1st division) to Fédérale 2 (4th division).

📉 During that journey, which took me from PRO D2 (the second division) to the TOP 14 (the first division), I hadn’t realized that my passion, rugby, had become my profession and that I was in such a privileged position.

🔄 Over the course of my 16-year career, I have gone from:

* From the 2nd division (PRO D2) to the 1st division (TOP 14) 🟢
* From the 1st division (TOP 16) to the 4th division (Fédérale 2) 🔴
* From the 3rd division (Fédérale 1) to a return to the 2nd division (PRO D2) 🟢
* Then from the 2nd division (PRO D2) back to the 1st division (TOP 14) 🟢

🎯 Back in the TOP 14 after five years, with a star-studded RC Toulon squad determined to compete and stay there. A TOP 14 season where I was able to finish the year after nine consecutive seasons.

💪 From the first division to the fourth division, I could have come up with a thousand excuses and given up, but I decided to challenge myself and work hard.

🔍 Above all, I stopped lying to myself and pretending that I was doing enough. I started listening to and focusing on my frequently mentioned shortcomings—technical ones, of course, but above all, I began to accept the reality behind the false beliefs I had been trying to impose on myself.

🔎 That belief that we’re doing enough, that we’re doing, saying, and listening the right way—when in fact we’re doing it wrong and only hearing what highlights our strengths. That truth we hide deep inside ourselves, which our loved ones, our true friends, or well-meaning people spend their time trying to share with us. These comments, feedback, and criticisms that we don’t want to hear—they create this sense of self-satisfaction that, over time, becomes our false truth.

🗣️ It’s easy to surround ourselves only with people who reinforce the false belief that we’re doing enough and that our problems are caused by others. But deep down, we know the truth.

🏉 CS Clichy Rugby, CSM Gennevilliers, Racing Club de France (Racing 92), Stade Français Paris, RC Domont, RC Valence, Stade Aurillacois, US Oyonnax, RC Toulon—what an adventure! And thank you once again to everyone I met along the way who helped me reflect on myself and reinvent myself.

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Having a supportive circle of people! But who could be more sincere and selfless than my parents, whom I look up to as role models? I’ve never seen them complain when things got tough or blame others. You’ve taught me the importance of taking responsibility.

🔧 Every time I’ve been able to grow, it’s been linked to hard work, sacrifices, and choices tailored to the realities of the world in which I want to thrive. The concepts of integrity, justice, sincerity, honesty, commitment, and patience—all of these, combined with self-reflection and, above all, the ability to listen to feedback that’s hard to accept—have always led me to a positive outcome once I’ve processed them properly.

📊 Self-reflection involves analyzing the various factors or people that hold us back or prevent us from growing, so that we don’t repeat the same mistakes and can better position ourselves in the future. By focusing on the things we can truly control—ourselves—we realize that life is all about the choices we make.