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Ten years ago,
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I quit my job as a bookseller,
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I packed my luggage and I left
to live in Los Angeles.
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I didn’t know anyone there but
I knew I wanted to make movies
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so it made sense to me
to go to Hollywood.
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After a few years
I came back to France,
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and when people would ask me:
"What do you do in life?"
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I would reply:
"I'm a filmmaker, I make movies."
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"I’m just back from a few years in L.A.”
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At that moment I would often
see a sparkle lit in their eyes
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as they'd say, "That's amazing!
what kind of films do you do?
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Can we watch them at
the movie theater?
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Have you worked with famous people?”
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And I would reply:
"I direct mostly fiction."
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You can't watch y films at
the movie theatre...
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not yet!
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And no...
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no, I haven’t worked with
anyone famous.”
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At that moment there would be a silence
long enough for their enthusiasm
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to go down a few inches.
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And then 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
going from curious to disappointed
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when they would realize
that I was a "wannabe"
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I started lying about what I was doing.
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I stopped saying
"I'm a filmmaker"
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to say “I work as a freelance.”
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I stopped saying "I make films"
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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 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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I started to wonder:
"Why do you lie about what you do?"
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And why do you 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
to become interested
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about the concept of “success”.
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And at how it has evolved
in the last few years,
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especially with social media's arrival
in our lives that reminds 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”
explains why sometimes,
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when we talk with people,
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 visited 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
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
for some people,
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and obstacles for others.
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But in the last few years,
things have become so intense
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that I’ve already found myself
listening to 24-year-olds
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explaining to me that they had
abandoned a dream or an idea
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before they had even started.
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And the reason why they
had given up before even trying
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is because they were paralyzed by
the success 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
to me that if they really had something
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to achieve on this planet, 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 with what we could call
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our “expiration date”.
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We used to have one expiration date:
it was the date of our death.
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Today we have a second expiration date
in our lives, and it's
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our social expiration date.
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The idea that when we do something,
its value must be recognized and
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measurable to exist.
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And if we don’t receive immediately
a positive feedback about what we do,
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or worse, if what we do is deemed
useless, 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 to
watch History create itself
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without them, 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
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 is not
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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 seem
useless, but actually,
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storytelling is the best way that we,
humans, have found to survive.
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Tonight,
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if we’ve all come onto this stage
to talk to you for 15 minutes,
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it’s because the best way to
convey an idea is to do it
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with a story.
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In 2018, we could have made a
pdf with each TED Talk's main idea
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summed up in one sentence,
and 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,
and it would have taken us less time.
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But the power of the messages
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,
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 conducted a test.
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They showed a video
to a group of students
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and asked them to answer
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
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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Heider and Simmel discovered
that 33 out of 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
that were randomly moving
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through space that you just saw.
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This study was one of the first
scientific study to confirm
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that our brain understands
the world through stories.
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We cannot help but give meaning
to the world that surrounds us.
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And to give meaning to the world
that surrounds us,
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we fabricate stories.
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Knowing that,
that stories are essential
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to our survival and to our life,
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I want to tell you another
story about success.
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An alternative to the current notion
that paralyzes so many people today.
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Earlier I said 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
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
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
whose job is to distribute jokers:
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the story fabricators.
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Lucky me: it’s my job.
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My job is to hunt, to imagine,
and to share the stories
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of people with a surprising,
innovating and impactful destiny,
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and who embodies strong ideas.
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And currently, we are living through
an extremely interesting period.
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Just like archeologists,
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we are digging out new stories,
different stories.
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Stories of people who often did not receive
immediate and positive feedback
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about the worth of what
they were doing and who,
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5, 50, 100, 200, 500 years later
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end up at the center of the
storytelling stage to help us,
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the new generations, to better
understand the world
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and to move forward.
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For example, some of you
might recognize the name of
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Georgina Reid.
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A textile designer who, in 1971,
when she was 63, decided that
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what she really wanted to do was
to save her little town's lighthouse
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that was at risk of falling down
due to the cliff's erosion.
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Georgina created a whole system
that she patented.
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She presents her project to
the coast guards,
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they listen to her and say:
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“We won’t prevent you from doing it
but we won't help you out either."
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Okay, no problem.
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For 15 years, helped by her husband
and volunteers, Georgina used
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her knowledge and her time
for free, to prevent the lighthouse
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to prevent the lighthouse
from falling down.
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And she will succeed.
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Georgina died in 2001, but
the lightouse is still here.
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And then, 3 years ago,
a French story fabricator,
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Pénélope Bagieu, gave a joker
to Georgina.
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She shared Georgina’s story
in a graphic novel dedicated
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to several women who changed
their story and sometimes History
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in unexpected ways.
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It’s thanks to a story fabricator
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that 200,000 French people
and myself, have been inspired
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by Georgina and her determination
to fight for something
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that mattered to her even though
officially she was told it didn't.
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Georgina was able to become
a good story because she was
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an active actress of her story.
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She didn’t settle for wishing that
the lighthouse wouldn't fall down.
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No, she did what she had to do
to make sure the lighthouse
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wouldn’t fall down.
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And this word, “doing”,
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is one of the three steps
to become a good story.
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In reality, the recipe to become
a good story is simple.
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Well, it fits into three steps.
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First, you have to listen
to your intuition,
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to hear what each one of us
individually, really want to do.
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And once you’ve listened to it,
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you need to muster the courage
to go for it, and do it.
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And once you’ve had
the courage to do it,
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you need to repeat.
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Every day, you need to
do it again.
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Today we are under a lot of pressure
when it comes to the projects
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we decide to pursue.
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They need to have a goal.
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If they don't have a goal, then
they are not serious.
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And if they are not serious,
then they are worth nothing.
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I completely disagree with
this way of thinking.
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If there’s one thing I've
learned this past decade,
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hunting and fabricating stories,
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it's that the value of what we do
is not fixed in time.
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The value of what we do
can have a surprising impact
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in five years, in fifty years,
after our death or
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our great-grand-children’s death.
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So there’s no point to try
picking something that will have
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an impact instantaneously.
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We can’t know if it will happen.
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We should just keep on doing.
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And these three steps:
listening to yourself,
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going for it, and
doing it again,
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they are crystallized in
Carmen Herrera’s story.
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Carmen Herrera was born in La Havana in 1915.
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At a young age she realizes that
what she really wants to do
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is paint.
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So she paints, every day.
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And then she realizes that she creates
minimalist abstract paintings,
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exactly at the time when abstract
minimalism is trendy.
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Perfect.
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She sells her first painting,
and then nothing.
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She exhibits her work,
the audience doesn't respond.
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She tries to find galleries
that would exhibit her work,
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everybody says no.
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And then one day,
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Carmen is offered the opportunity
to exhibit her work again,
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and this time people love it.
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We are in 2004 at that point,
Carmen is 89.
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Today Carmen is 103.
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These past 14 years, her
paintings have been exhibited
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presented in some of the most
prestigious museums in the world.
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For 60 years Carmen Herrera
has created daily,
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paintings that nobody thought
had any value.
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And then one day,
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Carmen Herrera’s story has aligned
with Art’s History.
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If I tell you this story, it is not
to tell you that success always comes.
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Because it’s not the case.
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But it’s because I'm convinced
that Carmen Herrera would still
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be painting today, even if
she had never found
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her audience while
she was alive.
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Carmen Herrera didn’t paint
to become famous.
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She painted because it was
giving meaning to her life.
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It’s not success that gives meaning to our life
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it’s being self-expressed.
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And when we are fully expressed,
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our social expiration date vanishes.
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When we are fully expressed,
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our failures as well as our successes
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become simply steps,
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on the graph of our personal growth.
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Tonight what I want to suggest
is to shift your focus
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away from what you cannot control.
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We cannot control how people
are going to react to what we do.
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But we can control what we do.
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So, let’s stop paying attention
to society’s feedback
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about the value of what gives
meaning to our lives.
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Because we rarely can measure the value
of what we do right after doing it.
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And more importantly because the value
of what we do will evolve unexpectedly
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over time.
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Today, when I meet people and
they ask me what I do in life,
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I tell them that I am a story fabricator.
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Nobody really understands what
it means but it's okay,
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because if I have the chance to
talk a little bit more with them,
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they understand that fabricating stories
is my way to express myself fully
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and daily, doing.
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For the last ten years,
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I’ve been hunting and fabricating stories
that I share as screenplays, films, lyrics
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drawings, podcasts or graphic novels.
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Sometimes, I doubt.
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I feel that what I’m doing
is completely useless.
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And then I remember that my intuition
is probably whispering something to me
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and that I should
probably listen to it.
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So I listen to it, I go for it,
and then I repeat the process.
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If tomorrow when you wake up
you feel like doing something "useless",
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listen to yourself, go for it,
and repeat the process.
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Because it’s by being active actors
of our story that we will become
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good stories.
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Stories that other human beings
will be able to use and share
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to move forward.
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Do what you have to do,
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never mind if it feels useless.
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If it’s important to you,
then it's worth doing.
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Express yourself,
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and we, the story fabricators,
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we will find you.
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Thank you.