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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,
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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 to make movies
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so it made sense 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:
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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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I’m just back from a few years in L.A.”
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I would often see a sparkle in their eyes
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as they'd say, "That's amazing!
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What films do you do?
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Can we see them at the movie?
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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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My films don't play at the movie theatre
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- not yet. And no...
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I haven’t worked with anyone famous.”
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At that moment there would be a silence
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long enough for their enthusiasm
to go down a few inches
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And then we would keep on talking about
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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 decided, in 1971, when she was 63
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, that what she really wanted to do
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was to save her little town’s lighthouse
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that was at risk of falling down
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due to the cliffs’ erosion.
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Georgina created a whole system
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that she patented.
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She presented her project to the coast guards,
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they listened and told her
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“We won’t prevent you from doing it
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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,
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Georgina used her knowledge
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and her time for free
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to prevent the lighthouse from falling down.
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And she succeeded.
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Georgina died in 2001
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but the lighthouse is still here.
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And then 3 years ago
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a French story fabricator,
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Pénélope Bagieu, gave a joker to Georgina.
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She shared Georgina’s story
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in a graphic novel dedicated to several women
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who’ve changed their story
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and sometimes History in unexpected ways.
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It’s thanks to a story fabricator
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that 200,000 French people
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and myself have been inspired
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by Georgina and her determination
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to fight for something that mattered to her
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even though officially she was told it didn’t.
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Georgina was able to become a good story
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because she was an active actress of her story.
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She didn’t settle for wishing that the lighthouse
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wouldn’t fall down
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No, she did what she had to do
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to make sure the lighthouse 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,
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the recipe to become a good story is simple.
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Well, it fits into three steps.
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First,
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you have to listen to your intuition
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to hear what you 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,
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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
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when it comes to picking the projects
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we decide to pursue.
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We need to have a goal.
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there’s no goal, then it’s not serious.
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And if it’s not serious
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then our projects don’t have any value.
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I completely disagree with this way of thinking.
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If there’s one thing
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I’ve learned this past decade
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hunting and fabricating stories,
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it is that the value of what we do is not fixed in time.
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The value of what we do
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can have a surprising impact in five years,
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fifty years, after our death
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or our great-grand-children’s death.
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So there’s no point to try
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doing something that will have 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:
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listening to yourself,
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going for it
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and repeating
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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 realized
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that what she really wanted to do was to paint.
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So she painted, every day.
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And then she realised that she created
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minimalist abstract paintings
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exactly at the time when abstract minimalism was trendy
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Perfect
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She sold a first painting. And that was it.
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She exhibited her work, the audience didn’t respond.
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She tried to find a gallery
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who would show her work, everybody said no.
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And then one day,
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Carmen was offered the opportunity
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to exhibit her work again
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and this time people loved it.
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That was in 2004, Carmen was 89.
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Today Carmen is 103.
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These past 14 years,
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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 she has been creating daily
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paintings that nobody thought had 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
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it’s not to say that success always arrives.
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Because it’s not the case.
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But it’s because
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I’m convinced that Carmen Herrera
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would still be painting today
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even if she had never found
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an audience for her work while she was alive.
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Carmen Herrera didn’t paint
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in order to become famous
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She painted because
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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 steps on the graph
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of our personal growth.
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Tonight what I want to suggest
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is to shift your focus
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away from what you cannot control.
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We cannot control how people
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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
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of what we do right after doing it.
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Especially because the value of what we do
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will evolve in unexpected ways over time.
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Today, when I meet people
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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
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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
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is my way to express myself fully and daily,
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, it is my way of doing.
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For the last ten years
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I’ve been hunting and fabricating stories
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that I share as screenplays, films, lyrics, drawings,
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podcasts or graphic novels.
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Sometimes,
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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
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is probably trying to whisper something to my ear
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and that I should listen to it.
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So I listen, I go for it, and I repeat.
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If tomorrow,
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you wake up wanting to do something “useless”,
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listen to yourself, do it, and repeat.
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Because it’s by being active actors
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of our story that we will become good stories.
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Stories that other human beings will be able to use
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and share to move forward.
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Do what you have to do,
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never mind if it doesn’t seem useful.
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If it’s important to you
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then it’s worth doing.
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Express yourself and we,
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the story fabricators, we will find you.
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Thank you