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Ten years ago, I quit my job as a bookseller
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I packed my luggage
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and I left Paris to live in Los Angeles.
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I didn’t know anyone there
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but I knew that I wanted
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to make movies
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so it made sense to go to Hollywood.
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I came back to France
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after a few years
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and when people would ask me:
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: “What do you do in life?”
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I would reply:
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: “I’m a filmmaker. I make movies.
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Actually, I’m just back from a few years in Los Angeles.”
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I would oftentimes see a little sparkle
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in their eyes as they'd say:
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“That’s amazing!
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What type of films do you direct?
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Can we see them at the movie theatre?
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Have you worked with famous people?”
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And I would reply:
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: “I direct mostly fiction.
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You can’t watch my films at the movie theatre
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- not yet.
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And no...no, I haven’t worked with anyone famous.”
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At that moment
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there would be a silence
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long enough for their enthusiasm
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to go down a few inches
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And then,
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we would keep on talking about Los Angeles.
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Little by little,
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tired of seeing people’s reaction
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going from curious to disappointed
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when they would realize
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that I was a “wannabe”,
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I started lying about what I was doing.
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I stopped saying
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“I’m a filmmaker”
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to say “I work as a freelance.”
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I stopped saying
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to say “I make videos for clients.”
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It sounded less dreamy
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but it was useful and practical.
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We would talk about how to find clients,
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how to bill them, about gear.
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And more importantly,
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I stopped feeling like
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like I had to apologize for my lack of success.
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I began to feel a bit weird about it though
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, so I asked myself
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“Why do you lie about what you do?
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And why do you feel
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feel compelled to diminish people's expectations
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so they won’t think you’ve failed?”
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It’s at that point that I really started
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to become interested
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about the concept of “success”
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and how it has evolved
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in the last few years,
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especially with the social medias’ arrival in our lives
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that remind us daily
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how we rank on the graph of success
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compared to the other 8 billion.
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This ranking on the “success graph”
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explains why sometimes,
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when we talk with people,
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a contest starts
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to find out who has the most impact.
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It’s conveyed through innocent words:
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“I know X person”
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“X number of people follow me”
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“I travelled through X number of countries”,
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“I was a speaker at X event”.
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Giving a TED Talk is great
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to win an impact contest.
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Thank you TED.
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Power and Success have always existed.
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And they’ve always been a fuel
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for some people
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and obstacles for others.
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But in the last few years,
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things have become so intense
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that I’ve found myself listening to 24-year-olds
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explaining that they had abandoned a dream
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or an idea before they had even started.
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And the reason why
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they had given up before trying
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is that they were paralysed by the success
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of people younger than them
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that they were witnessing daily on social media.
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I’ve listened to 24-year-olds explaining
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to me that if they really had something
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to achieve on this planet
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they should have had their breakthrough by now.
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At 24 they didn’t feel old, they felt expired.
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We have developed a surprising relationship
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with what we could call our “expiration date”.
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We used to have one expiration date:
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: our death.
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Today we have a second expiration date in our lives,
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and it’s our social expiration date.
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The idea that what we do must
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be recognised and measurable to have value
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And if we don’t receive immediately
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a positive feedback about what we do,
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or worse, if what we do is deemed useless,
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ridicule, or a failure
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, then we feel socially expired.
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And that’s how some 24-year-olds
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prefer to go sit on the bench
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to watch History create itself without them
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rather than risking to do something
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and not receive immediately a positive feedback.
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While I was looking into
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what “success” means today
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and into our date of social expiration,
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I’ve realised that my job
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is not to write screenplays or direct films,
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, my job is to fabricate stories.
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It’s a job that might
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seem useless but actually,
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, storytelling is the best way that we,
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humans, have found to survive.
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Tonight,
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if we’ve all come onto this stage
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to talk to you for 15 minutes one after the other
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it’s because the best way
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to convey an idea is to do it with a story.
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In 2018 we could have made
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a pdf with each TED Talk’s main idea
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summed up in one sentence
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and we could have emailed it to you.
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Really, we could have done it.
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It would have cost you less money,
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and it would have taken us less time.
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But the power of messages
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we are trying to share
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would have evaporated.
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We know it and you know it.
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And that’s why you are here tonight
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, to listen to stories that might open
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a world of possibilities.
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In 1944,
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Professors Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel
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conducted a test.
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They showed a video
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to a group of students
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and asked them to answer
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a series of questions
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to describe what they had seen.
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I’m going to show you 15 seconds of the video,
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it’s going to be quick
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but I invite you to try
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to answer this question:
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“What am I seeing on the screen?”
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That was 15 seconds.
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When they reviewed the questionnaires,
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Heidel and Simmel discovered
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that 33 out of the 34 students
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had fabricated a story.
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They had imputed motives,
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emotions, and behaviours
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to the geometrical figures
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that were randomly moving
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through space that you just saw.
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This study was
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one of the first scientific study
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study that confirmed that our brain
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understands the world through stories
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We cannot help but give meaning
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to the world that surrounds us
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And to give meaning to the world that
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that surrounds us,
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we fabricate stories.
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Knowing that,
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that stories are essential
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to our survival and to our life
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I want to tell you
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another story about success.
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An alternative to the current notion
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that paralyses so many people today.
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Earlier I said that
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that we had two expiration dates:
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the date of our death and the date of our social expiration
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that we give to ourselves sooner and sooner.
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What I did not tell you…
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is that a phone is ringing right now.
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What I didn’t tell you is
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that we all have a joker.
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We all have the possibility to become a good story.
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We all have the possibility to become
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a good story that is going to inspire
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other human beings and help them move forward.
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And there’s one group of people
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whose job is to distribute jokers:
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the story fabricators.
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Lucky me: it’s my job.