Translator: Catherine Dean Reviewer: Denise RQ
I have some good news for you, since tonight's topic is optimism.
In a few minutes, you can go get a drink.
Stay strong!
So, when I was asked to come and talk tonight at this TEDx,
I was really happy,
and I thought, "Great, me too, I can do what the other TED speakers do.
I can talk with passion about a passionate topic,
make you cry, move you."
And at the end, I imagined a vibrant standing ovation;
it was perfect!
I'd forgotten just one little detail: I don't have a passion.
(Laughter)
It's a bit of a problem if you want to do a passionate TEDx.
And when they confirmed that I was coming,
I thought, "That's what I'll talk about: not having a passion.
That it's been ruining my life for a long time;
that'll be my TED topic!"
At the same time, it's a complicated topic.
How many of you can tell me, honestly, that they have finally found their path?
Finally found their passion? Not many, right?
The rest of you, are you alright? Are you doing OK?
My goal for tonight is for all those who, like me,
struggled with not having a passion, leave here with a smile.
Because my smile, I lost it for a long time,
while looking for my passion.
For years, I was convinced that I would also find my passion.
And whenever I thought about the big questions,
I asked the people around me what I could do,
and they always gave me that piece of advice that we all know,
that someone has - no doubt - given you, "Hey, you just need to find your passion!"
Has this advice ever helped you in any way?
Not me.
I went on Amazon thinking that I'd find answers in a book.
So I searched and found 2,000 books.
2,000 books that explain how to find your passion.
Of course, when you see this,
it means there's something to this passion thing.
And when those 2,000 books aren't brain washing us,
it's Steve Jobs, you remember,
who inspired thousands with his famous "Follow Your Passion!"
When the guy who created Apple gives you a piece of advice,
you think, "I'll listen to him."
That's what I did, I listened to Steve Jobs!
And I started searching for my passion, too!
And I didn't find it.
So I started to think there was something wrong with me
in comparison with those people who are successful,
those people who rub their passion into your face,
"I'm passionate about brand content, I'm passionate about design.
I'm passionate about everything!"
It feels like they succeed because they are passionate.
And me, as I was passionate about nothing, I thought that I would fail at life.
Obviously.
And I really didn't want to fail at life! So I started to search for my passion.
Like a madman, like a soldier...
(Laughter)
Lara!
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Thank you!
It became an obsession.
So to find this passion, I tried a few things.
I set up a business, and thought, "That's it! I've found it!"
But no.
I did some financial communication, consulting, and thought,
"I have my thing, finally!"
But no.
I did some parachuting, diving, martial arts.
Every time, I thought, "That's it, OK, I have my thing."
But I didn't, every time.
I wrote books, I set up businesses.
Every time, I really felt I'd finally found my thing,
that I could flaunt my passion, that I would succeed.
But every time, it would collapse like a souffle.
And actually, this problem is that every time, I thought,
in front of clients, "Who am I, really?"
And professionally, it started to pose consistency problems,
because we live in a world that likes experts.
An expert has a passion, he performs, he can be put in a box.
And I didn't fit in any boxes.
On the contrary, people would say that I was a jack of all trades,
a little wayward, with little focus, inconsistent.
Has anybody ever said this about you?
It hurts when you spend your days and nights trying to find focus!
It hurt me.
So, after four years five years of hard work,
asking myself what my passion was, I finally had an epiphany, finally!
I don't have a passion!
(Laughter)
And I probably never will. And it doesn't matter!
And if you don't have one, it doesn't matter!
You won't be fail at life.
However, what I have understood, because I have experimented,
is that we can fail at life searching for a nonexistent passion.
That's what I did.
And it's what I want to spare you from,
this evening, by trying, for a few minutes
to give you some of the tips that I picked up
during these difficult years.
One of the first things I understood, was that, actually,
for those who are lost and searching for their thing,
we can look at life as a blank page.
And on this blank page, you're going to draw.
It's your drawing.
You know those pictures for children with dots they have to connect?
Those sort of things?
Well, imagine that each dot is an experience that you've had,
a professional experience.
If you don't have enough dots, it will never make a shape.
And I've tried joining dots to find a shape,
but I didn't have enough dots so I couldn't find a shape.
However, if you have enough dots, you'll end up with a shape, at some point.
What I wanted to say,
is that you have to create as many dots as possible,
- in all directions even, if possible - you'll see the shape it'll take.
And while you're there, if you can, create dots in every direction,
and be inconsistent, don't be too focused, be wayward,
because nothing is more boring than a straight line!
The second thing I realized is that this passion thing,
finding your passion, is, I think, the most stupid advice ever.
It's stupid because it is based on a hypothesis.
This hypothesis is that we all have, in our personal software,
pre-installed at birth, a passion.
It's there.
And then you just need to find it,
press on it and bam! everything will be OK.
It's stupid advice for two reasons.
Firstly, I seriously doubt that we are all born
with a passion pre-installed in our personal software
that you just need to find for everything to be OK.
I'm not convinced.
Which means that if, like me,
you don't have a passion pre-installed at birth,
- there are some, it happens, "blondes" for example... -
well, like me, you'll start to chase it... nothing!
And spend years chasing after nothing, it's annoying!
The second reason why this hypothesis is vicious
it simply that once you start firmly believing
that somewhere, in time and space, your passionate life exists,
from that moment on, daily life, - drinking coffee -
becomes absolutely unexciting.
I went through terrible emotions
and started to hate every minute of my unexciting life,
with the fantasy that one day, everything will be totally awesome!
And the problem, is that, when we're are like this,
stuck in this belief that a passion is waiting for us,
and that an exciting life is waiting for us outside,
well, you waste a lot of time chasing after a pipe dream.
I had no wish to waste time.
I didn't want to fail at life
- since I was convinced that I was going to -
and to miss out on life,
it's a topic that has particularly worried me
since I was around 17 years old,
precisely 17 years old,
since is was at that time that I lost my mother to cancer.
I'm not saying this for the emotional minute of this TEDx,
but since that time,
I became blisteringly aware that life is distressingly short.
It's very, very short.
It's so short that, to put it another way,
we can consider that we all have a stock of time on our shoulders.
And this stock of time is limited.
The problem is we don't know how much is left
and we can never, ever, fill it back up.
Which is just as reassuring, I think, as planning a long road trip,
without thinking about how much fuel you'll need.
And when we realize this, we realize something really simple:
that on this Earth, in your lives, in my life,
the most precious resource there is is not petrol, it's not gold;
it's time.
You can never, ever, get the 12 minutes - or maybe more -
of this talk back.
Never.
And you also won't be able to get the years you spent
in a boring life back.
So me, I was blistering aware
that I really had to optimize my stock of time,
as I don't know what's left.
Each drop of time should be optimized.
So I wanted to really go for it, to succeed.
We all want to succeed, but have you ever asked yourselves,
"What does it mean, to succeed?"
In thinking about this day and night, we discover that there is another trap.
I know this because I fell into it yet again.
It's a existential habit, I think.
This trap is to mistake prestige for success.
Prestige is a very powerful force.
An excessively powerful force,
that is defined by society, by culture, by our education,
your parents, television, advertisements, but not by you.
It's sort of the Dark Side.
It can force you to work,
not on something you like but on something you'd like to like.
For example, I can convince myself
that I want a bigger salary to buy a bigger car or house.
But this might not even be true, it won't make me happy.
And in this way, it's a very powerful force,
I see it a bit like a neon sign, a big and powerful artificial neon sign.
And this light is so powerful
that it outshines every other light and blinds us.
A light, to my mind, more important: is your own little light.
Your own. We all have one.
It took me a long time to realize that it's on this light
that we have to focus and not on the light of prestige.
Particularly because, if sometimes, the light of success can lead to prestige,
by contrast, I am quite convinced that prestige
doesn't lead to success.
Because if this was the case,
every rich and powerful person on this Earth
would all be extremely happy!
I don't think this is what we can see.
So, there I was on my existential quest, with the idea that passion is a trap
- and I did fall into it - and prestige, is an illusion.
And so I understood what was needed, and this was to focus on success.
The question is how do we have a successful life?
This is a very broad question, highly subjective,
but I'm going to suggest a factor
that is possibly universal and possibly applies to you and me.
This factor, is not your salary,
it's not the size of your house, it's not the size of your car.
The factor of a successful life, for me, is boredom.
Since time is the most precious thing,
to waste your stock of time in a life that really bores you,
- I don't mean an hour or two - I mean real boredom, structural boredom.
Wasting your stock of time in a life that bores you,
it's like throwing gold out the window!
Would you throw gold out the window? No!
Yet, you know as well as I do, an incredible amount of people,
at the office or on the train,
who look like people who are truly bored.
Those people are throwing
their stock of time out the window as if it was diamonds.
Because they have forgotten that this stock of time is limited.
And our Anglo-Saxon friends - before leaving Europe -
they have a word, a word that for me is the exact opposite of boredom;
it's the "flow."
Do you know this word: "flow"?
This wonderful feeling of the body and mind being aligned,
to lose the sense of time, to lose the sense of space.
You know this feeling. You've all felt it many times.
Do you know when? When you were children.
Everyone!
And I am convinced
that behind our grown-up looks, behind our suits and ties,
our makeup, our responsible facade,
is hiding a person who is an expert in going with the flow,
who has a PhD in the flow.
This person is the mini you.
(Laughter)
When I was a mini me, before becoming big, bald, and annoying,
when I was a mini me, I spent all my spare time drawing,
inventing stories, and I had fun, I loved it,
I created my own universes, I was in them all day long!
Do you remember this feeling, how great it was?
It's a fabulous feeling. That's how I spend all my spare time.
And then, years went by, and little by little,
I lost sight of my mini me.
Because I fell into the trap that is passion,
and I was blinded by the light of prestige.
So I couldn't see him anymore.
And then one day, somewhat by chance, - that's another story -
I was asked to write a book.
So I wrote a book,
and I wrote this book in 11 days, while I was on holiday,
without anyone forcing me to, and I loved it.
I recaptured this flow feeling from when I was small.
I drew, told stories, threw some jokes in,
that the editor took out because they were rubbish.
I had a blast, I was like a kid.
I'm telling you this
because, after this book, I was invited to conferences.
In life, I hadn't planned on speaking at conferences.
But I thought, "Why not?
It'll be another dot on the page of my life;
we'll see if it helps me find a shape."
So I said, "Let's go!"
A business school invited me to a quirky conference on entrepreneurship.
And I had, they told me, "carte Blanche."
I'll let you guess, as soon as they said "carte blanche",
who took the reins?
Mini me.
I had a blast, I was like a kid. I drew, told jokes, made up stories, etc.
I had a blast, and had even more fun speaking at this conference.
I remember the feeling very well.
I was talking to my students:
a story that I had invented, showing them some drawings I had done.
And I felt, right at that moment,
that feeling of alignment people often talk about.
Right at that moment.
I was doing exactly what I liked to do, what I wanted to do, and what I had to do.
It's really important, because that day,
mini me was sitting on my shoulders,
and I think - I felt it that way - that I had a sparkle in my eye.
So, it was a really important experience for me.
Because, as I see it in everyday life,
there is no such thing as chance,
and today, in my professional life,
most of what I do, and what I enjoy the most,
is speaking at conferences, telling stories,
and putting my drawings in the slides.
That's what I enjoy the most.
However, one thing you can't forget about the mini you:
is that mini you is a child.
Children are easily scared,
and when you doubt something, when you're worried,
when you're questioning your responsibilities, etc.,
for all the mini yous out there, all that are monsters.
Doubt, worry, fear, are monsters.
And every time mini you sees a monster,
he disappears back into his cave with your little flame,
and we can't see you anymore.
And again the light of prestige dazzles and blinds you.
Me, every time I doubt, worry and am afraid,
- it happens - my mini me disappears.
I think that it's your adult duty to fight these monsters
to let that mini you exist.
A child won't fight.
It's your duty to protect him, because in return, he'll protect you.
So I would like to leave you with three small things.
The first is: stop, for those who are a little clueless about passion,
stop chasing a passion that doesn't exist outside of you.
This passion, is inside you
this little flame, it's already inside you.
However, if you want to see it,
start by turning off the light of prestige.
This light blinds you, blinds us,
and prevents us from seeing what matters: your little flame.
It's the most beautiful thing you have to offer the world,
who really needs it.
And for this flame to turn on,
you need someone who knows how to turn it on
to take back the reins: that's mini you.
Let him take the reins, for as long as you can,
as much as you can, because he knows how to turn it on.
He knows how because every time your eyes sparkle,
every time mini you is around, every time you have the flame,
your eyes gleam.
And no one can ignore that for long.
Thank you.
(Applause)