Comment devient-on une bonne histoire ? | Nathalie Sejean | TEDxReims

Ten years ago,

I quit my job as a bookseller,

I packed my luggage,

and I left Paris to live in Los Angeles.

I didn’t know anyone there

but I knew that I wanted to make movies

so it made sense to go to Hollywood.

After a few years I came back to France,

and when people would ask me:

“What do you do in life?”

I would reply,

“I’m a filmmaker. I make movies.

I’m just back from a few years in L.A.”

I would often see a sparkle in their eyes

as they'd say, "That's amazing!

What films do you do?

Can we see them at the movie?

Have you worked with famous people?”

And I would reply,

“I direct mostly fiction."

My films don't play at the movie theatre

- not yet. And no...

I haven’t worked with anyone famous.”

At that moment there would be a silence

long enough for their enthusiasm
to go down a few inches

And then we would keep on talking about

Los Angeles.

Little by little,

tired of seeing people’s reaction
going from curious to disappointed

when they would realize
that I was a "wannabe"

I started lying about what I was doing.

I stopped saying
"I'm a filmmaker"

to say “I work as a freelance.”

I stopped saying "I make films"

to say “I make videos for clients.”

It sounded less dreamy

but it was useful and practical.

We would talk about how to find clients,

how to bill them, about gear.

And more importantly,

I stopped feeling like I had
to apologize for my lack of success.

I began to feel a bit weird
about it though.

I started to wonder:
"Why do you lie about what you do?"

And why do you feel compelled
to diminish people's expectations

so they won’t think you’ve failed?

It’s at that point that I really started
to become interested

about the concept of “success”.

And at how it has evolved
in the last few years,

especially with social media's arrival
in our lives that reminds us daily

how we rank on the graph of success

compared to the other 8 billion.

This ranking on the “success graph”
explains why sometimes,

when we talk with people,
a contest starts

to find out who has the most impact.

It’s conveyed through innocent words:

“I know X person”

“X number of people follow me”,

“I visited X number of countries”,

“I was a speaker at X event”.

Giving a TED Talk is great
to win an impact contest.

Thank you TED.

Power and Success have always existed.

And they’ve always been a fuel
for some people,

and obstacles for others.

But in the last few years,
things have become so intense

that I’ve already found myself
listening to 24-year-olds

explaining to me that they had
abandoned a dream or an idea

before they had even started.

And the reason why they
had given up before even trying

is because they were paralyzed by
the success of people younger than them

that they were witnessing daily
on social media.

I’ve listened to 24-year-olds explaining
to me that if they really had something

to achieve on this planet, they should
have had their breakthrough by now.

At 24 they didn’t feel old,
they felt expired.

We have developed a surprising
relationship with what we could call

our “expiration date”.

We used to have one expiration date:
it was the date of our death.

Today we have a second expiration date
in our lives, and it's

our social expiration date.

The idea that when we do something,
its value must be recognized and

measurable to exist.

And if we don’t receive immediately
a positive feedback about what we do,

or worse, if what we do is deemed
useless, ridicule, or a failure,

then we feel socially expired.

And that’s how some 24-year-olds

prefer to go sit on the bench to
watch History create itself

without them, rather than
risking to do something

and not receive immediately
a positive feedback.

While I was looking into
what "success" means today

and into our date of social expiration,

I’ve realised that my job is not

to write screenplays or direct films.

My job is to fabricate stories.

It’s a job that might seem
useless, but actually,

storytelling is the best way that we,
humans, have found to survive.

Tonight,

if we’ve all come onto this stage
to talk to you for 15 minutes,

it’s because the best way to
convey an idea is to do it

with a story.

In 2018, we could have made a
pdf with each TED Talk's main idea

summed up in one sentence,
and emailed it to you.

Really, we could have done it.

It would have cost you less money,
and it would have taken us less time.

But the power of the messages
we are trying to share

would have evaporated.

We know it and you know it.

And that’s why you are here tonight,
to listen to stories that might open

a world of possibilities.

In 1944,

Professors Fritz Heider and Marianne
Simmel conducted a test.

They showed a video
to a group of students

and asked them to answer
a series of questions

to describe what they had seen.

I’m going to show you 15 seconds
of the video,

it’s going to be quick

but I invite you to try
to answer this question:

“What am I seeing on the screen?”

That was 15 seconds.

When they reviewed the questionnaires,

Heider and Simmel discovered
that 33 out of 34 students

had fabricated a story.

They had imputed motives,

emotions, and behaviours

to the geometrical figures
that were randomly moving

through space that you just saw.

This study was one of the first
scientific study to confirm

that our brain understands
the world through stories.

We cannot help but give meaning
to the world that surrounds us.

And to give meaning to the world
that surrounds us,

we fabricate stories.

Knowing that,
that stories are essential

to our survival and to our life,

I want to tell you another
story about success.

An alternative to the current notion
that paralyzes so many people today.

Earlier I said that we
had two expiration dates:

the date of our death and
the date of our social expiration

that we give to ourselves
sooner and sooner.

What I did not tell you…

is that a phone is ringing right now.

What I didn’t tell you is
that we all have a joker.

We all have the possibility
to become a good story.

We all have the possibility to become
a good story that is going to inspire

other human beings and
help them move forward.

And there’s one group of people
whose job is to distribute jokers:

the story fabricators.

Lucky me: it’s my job.

My job is to hunt, to imagine,
and to share the stories

of people with a surprising,
innovating and impactful destiny,

and who embodies strong ideas.

And currently, we are living through
an extremely interesting period.

Just like archeologists,

we are digging out new stories,
different stories.

Stories of people who often did not receive
immediate and positive feedback

about the worth of what
they were doing and who,

5, 50, 100, 200, 500 years later

end up at the center of the
storytelling stage to help us,

the new generations, to better
understand the world

and to move forward.

For example, some of you
might recognize the name of

Georgina Reid.

A textile designer who, in 1971,
when she was 63, decided that

what she really wanted to do was
to save her little town's lighthouse

that was at risk of falling down
due to the cliff's erosion.

Georgina created a whole system
that she patented.

She presents her project to
the coast guards,

they listen to her and say:

“We won’t prevent you from doing it
but we won't help you out either."

Okay, no problem.

For 15 years, helped by her husband
and volunteers, Georgina used

her knowledge and her time
for free, to prevent the lighthouse

to prevent the lighthouse
from falling down.

And she will succeed.

Georgina died in 2001, but
the lightouse is still here.

And then, 3 years ago,
a French story fabricator,

Pénélope Bagieu, gave a joker
to Georgina.

She shared Georgina’s story
in a graphic novel dedicated

to several women who changed
their story and sometimes History

in unexpected ways.

It’s thanks to a story fabricator

that 200,000 French people
and myself, have been inspired

by Georgina and her determination
to fight for something

that mattered to her even though
officially she was told it didn't.

Georgina was able to become
a good story because she was

an active actress of her story.

She didn’t settle for wishing that
the lighthouse wouldn't fall down.

No, she did what she had to do
to make sure the lighthouse

wouldn’t fall down.

And this word, “doing”,

is one of the three steps
to become a good story.

In reality, the recipe to become
a good story is simple.

Well, it fits into three steps.

First, you have to listen
to your intuition,

to hear what each one of us
individually, really want to do.

And once you’ve listened to it,

you need to muster the courage
to go for it, and do it.

And once you’ve had
the courage to do it,

you need to repeat.

Every day, you need to
do it again.

Today we are under a lot of pressure
when it comes to the projects

we decide to pursue.

They need to have a goal.

If they don't have a goal, then
they are not serious.

And if they are not serious,
then they are worth nothing.

I completely disagree with
this way of thinking.

If there’s one thing I've
learned this past decade,

hunting and fabricating stories,

it's that the value of what we do
is not fixed in time.

The value of what we do
can have a surprising impact

in five years, in fifty years,
after our death or

our great-grand-children’s death.

So there’s no point to try
picking something that will have

an impact instantaneously.

We can’t know if it will happen.

We should just keep on doing.

And these three steps:
listening to yourself,

going for it, and
doing it again,

they are crystallized in
Carmen Herrera’s story.

Carmen Herrera was born in La Havana in 1915.

At a young age she realizes that
what she really wants to do

is paint.

So she paints, every day.

And then she realizes that she creates
minimalist abstract paintings,

exactly at the time when abstract
minimalism is trendy.

Perfect.

She sells her first painting,
and then nothing.

She exhibits her work,
the audience doesn't respond.

She tries to find galleries
that would exhibit her work,

everybody says no.

And then one day,

Carmen is offered the opportunity
to exhibit her work again,

and this time people love it.

We are in 2004 at that point,
Carmen is 89.

Today Carmen is 103.

These past 14 years, her
paintings have been exhibited

presented in some of the most
prestigious museums in the world.

For 60 years Carmen Herrera
has created daily,

paintings that nobody thought
had any value.

And then one day,

Carmen Herrera’s story has aligned
with Art’s History.

If I tell you this story, it is not
to tell you that success always comes.

Because it’s not the case.

But it’s because I'm convinced
that Carmen Herrera would still

be painting today, even if
she had never found

her audience while
she was alive.

Carmen Herrera didn’t paint
to become famous.

She painted because it was
giving meaning to her life.

It’s not success that gives meaning to our life

it’s being self-expressed.

And when we are fully expressed,

our social expiration date vanishes.

When we are fully expressed,

our failures as well as our successes

become simply steps,

on the graph of our personal growth.

Tonight what I want to suggest
is to shift your focus

away from what you cannot control.

We cannot control how people
are going to react to what we do.

But we can control what we do.

So, let’s stop paying attention
to society’s feedback

about the value of what gives
meaning to our lives.

Because we rarely can measure the value
of what we do right after doing it.

And more importantly because the value
of what we do will evolve unexpectedly

over time.

Today, when I meet people and
they ask me what I do in life,

I tell them that I am a story fabricator.

Nobody really understands what
it means but it's okay,

because if I have the chance to
talk a little bit more with them,

they understand that fabricating stories
is my way to express myself fully

and daily, doing.

For the last ten years,

I’ve been hunting and fabricating stories
that I share as screenplays, films, lyrics

drawings, podcasts or graphic novels.

Sometimes, I doubt.

I feel that what I’m doing
is completely useless.

And then I remember that my intuition
is probably whispering something to me

and that I should
probably listen to it.

So I listen to it, I go for it,
and then I repeat the process.

If tomorrow when you wake up
you feel like doing something "useless",

listen to yourself, go for it,
and repeat the process.

Because it’s by being active actors
of our story that we will become

good stories.

Stories that other human beings
will be able to use and share

to move forward.

Do what you have to do,

never mind if it feels useless.

If it’s important to you,
then it's worth doing.

Express yourself,

and we, the story fabricators,

we will find you.

Thank you.