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Pick Your Gummy Bear

Lessons from My Biggest Life Choices

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Pub Date Mar 19 2026 | Archive Date Oct 15 2026


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Description

From muddy football fields in Belgium to a dot-com start-up in New York, from the heights of the Tibetan Plateau to the stillness of a meditation hall in Kyoto, Johan Depraetere's journey has been shaped not by caution but by moments of daring. He imagined these choices as reaching into a bag of gummy bears and pulling out the rare green ones: dramatic, bold, life-changing. Others were like picking a yellow gummy bear: quieter, softer. Yet each choice, whatever its colour, opened doors to possibility and growth.

Through twelve vivid, personal and honest stories, Johan shows how both subtle whispers and bold leaps pushed him beyond comfort and into a fuller, unbounded life - the thrill of stepping past the familiar. This is an invitation to recognise the inflection points in your own journey: the moments when comfort pulls one way and curiosity beckons another.

Pick Your Gummy Bear is your companion for those crossroads in life, when you pause and ask: Which gummy bear will I choose?

From muddy football fields in Belgium to a dot-com start-up in New York, from the heights of the Tibetan Plateau to the stillness of a meditation hall in Kyoto, Johan Depraetere's journey has been...

Advance Praise

Powerful, deeply personal and ultimately transferable - a great tool for us to reflect on our careers and lives, and how we can future proof success and fulfilment.
Sharath Jeevan OBE, Author of ‘Intrinsic’ and ‘Inflection’, Founder of the Generational Success Lab 

Pick Your Gummy Bear is a joyful and honest reflection on the pivotal choices that shape our lives. Johan Depraetere’s ‘gummy bear moments’ is a brilliant way to frame the courage it takes to seek purpose and dare to grow. This is a powerful read for anyone ready to step off the expected path and discover what lies beyond the familiar.
Barbara Martin Coppola, Former CEO of Decathlon, Board Director INSEAD

Pick Your Gummy Bear is a wonderful read, written warmly and tenderly; it’s an incredibly open and honest story, an intimate reflection on life and inevitably, very thought-provoking. It speaks strongly to Johan’s reflective, spiritual side, combined with an unusual willingness to take risks and his extraordinary strength in coming to terms with his losses over the last five years.
Patrick Wall, Founder and CEO of Metapack, co-founder of Centre for Education Systems 

A powerful way of understanding one’s life, is to identify crucial moments of choice. Choices that open doors to new and unforeseen opportunities in work and personal life. By sharing his remarkable personal journey of choices, Johan Depraetere inspires readers to deepen exploring their own story of life-shaping choices.
Professor Erik van de Loo, psychoanalyst, INSEAD

Powerful, deeply personal and ultimately transferable - a great tool for us to reflect on our careers and lives, and how we can future proof success and fulfilment.
Sharath Jeevan OBE, Author of...


Available Editions

ISBN 9781918191936
PRICE 14.99
PAGES 244

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