Translator: Pascal Grierson Reviewer: Robert Tucker
How can we explain that some people dare,
when others don't?
How can we explain
that, for example, Antoine Griezmann,
who was told he was too small to play football,
was rejected by four clubs,
could win the World Cup?
How can you explain that a person like Charles Aznavour -
his singing teachers told him
that he had neither the height nor the voice,
and that he'd do better to change careers -
could become a singing legend?
How can we explain
that some people are able to overcome, to transcend,
the fear there is of public speaking
or the fear we have relating to how others see us?
One of the biggest fears for the human being
is the fear of being excluded from the social circle,
the fear of rejection.
As a result, you'll be terrified
of being judged by others, of how others see you.
It's 15 years that I've been passionate about this issue,
and it's led me to make three discoveries
that have radically changed my way of considering, looking at,
what other people see in me.
The reason why I'm so passionate about it
is that I was a young man ill at ease with himself,
who had thoughts of suicide.
I found it hard to dare to raise my hand in class,
to approach that girl that I liked,
I had trouble being myself.
I even managed to put in an excellent performance
of being capable, on the same night,
of being precocious and of having a breakdown.
In all honesty, not everyone can do that!
So I challenged myself to do a lot of things that I didn't know,
that the way others saw me scared me to do.
It started with raising my hand in class.
My buddies used to say:
"You think you'll be confident enough to raise your hand in class?
Everyone knows how to do that."
At the time, I was too nervous to answer yes,
and that was all I had in my head.
So I raised my hand in class, approached hundreds of strangers,
saw those girls I liked, spoke in public,
I even challenged myself to go to nightclubs
and talk to those already there and say hello to them.
I realised that those that arrive later,
they say to themselves:
"But who the hell is this guy that everyone says 'Hi' to?"
What was going on, seeing that everyone's afraid of how others see them,
and everyone wants to seem important in the eyes of others was that
those already at the club would say "Hi" when they passed me.
Some people would ask:
"Are you the boss's son, a celebrity, who are you?"
It fascinated me to think
that little details in how I interacted, how I breathed,
could change everything.
I figured I'd launch a YouTube channel.
I was still stressed, still not at my ease,
but I wanted to share with as many people as possible
how to get to be more confident.
So, I launched my YouTube channel.
It took me several days to dare to film myself.
It took me several days to dare to upload my video onto YouTube privately.
And it took me several more days to click on the publish button
because I worried what others would think of me.
Our brain is funny because it imagines
the whole planet will choose to watch my video
out of a billion there.
I had three subscribers: me, my second account, my mother.
(Laughter)
There was a guy who came out of nowhere -
YouTube must have hired a bunch of cousins
to train people who have trouble with how others see them.
There was a guy who came out of absolutely nowhere,
and he commented,
"David, you don't deserve to live."
(Laughs) (Applause)
I joke about it today;
I didn't joke about it at the time.
I kept making videos, several hundred of them.
Each video aims to do new and different things,
on the subway, outside,
to try and learn how to become a better communicator.
One day, a buddy calls me.
He's a founder of one of the largest incubators
for start-ups in Europe.
"David, I just sent one of your videos out to all my start-ups."
As a result, I'm overjoyed."
I thank him: "It's amazing how much you trust me.
Which video did you choose?"
He said, "One of your firsts."
I say, "But why did you do that?
Why one of my firsts?"
"I know what I'm doing.
I'm going to wait a few weeks
and give them one of your latest ones."
"Why are you doing that?"
He said, "I want to show them that, really, anything's possible."
(Laughter)
And then, just like you, I say to myself:
"Is this a criticism? What does he mean by that?"
It led me to make three discoveries that transformed my vision.
Well, here's a frame from my early videos.
I had tried the T-shirts and figured that that outfit didn't work.
I put on a suit and a guy from nowhere says to me,
"Stop wearing your father's suit."
It wasn't my father's suit.
I don't know why he said it.
But thanks to him, I changed my outfit.
(Laughter)
And I realised
that the value I was putting on the criticism was enormous.
There were always people saying:
"You're too young",
"You won't make it",
"You don’t express yourself well enough".
I was putting too much energy into it,
giving too much weight to what others thought of me.
So, I carried on and wondered what challenge would really freak me out.
And being timid since always,
the most stressful for me was to rent a hall.
So I rented a hall for 1,400 people.
And I figured I had a month to do a one-man show,
knowing that, asking around,
I'd been told that one month, then do a one-man show, wasn't possible.
Here's the hall, this is it!
1,400 people.
I was terrified.
Honestly, before going on stage -
I've never been to the toilet so many times in 20 minutes
[as] before I went on stage.
It allowed me to gain my first discovery:
Training.
Training yourself every day to do things you don't know,
pushing yourself,
questioning yourself,
and, why not, learn from criticism since some of it is interesting.
I realised that training renders criticism obsolete.
A lot of people said a lot of things to the extent of how I wouldn't make it.
But when you're not focused on them,
but on learning and doing things you don't know about,
by the time they're done talking, you've made progress.
I'd like to share this idea and this invitation
to go and do things that are a challenge to you.
To each his own.
Today, I'm privileged, I'm lucky,
to rub shoulders with, to meet, to interview, to hang out with,
people who excel in their field:
film producers,
Olympic sportsmen and women, world champions,
entrepreneurs who generate tens of millions of euros,
no matter where they are.
For all of us, there's something that makes us fear how people see us.
My invitation is to say
what it is that I can do that will make me really freaked out
and that perhaps will also allow me to be proud of myself.
Being here with you allows me to think back to that young man I once was
and to say to myself, "Wow!"
It seemed impossible to me and was beyond what I imagined
because it started with my buddies mocking me -
raise your hand in class.
I continued on with these challenges and said to myself:
"OK, what would freak me out even more than the show?
I'll go to the United States,
and I'll tell everyone,
on my YouTube channel and everywhere I can,
that I'm going to interview 30 Americans considered to be inaccessible,
knowing that when I announce this, I'll have no idea of how to do it."
So I end up in New York.
First time in New York.
I don't know how I'm going to do it,
and I get an interview with Seth Godin,
a marketing legend in the United States,
someone who was part of Yahoo.
At the end of the interview, he says to me:
"When's your train?"
In other words, get out of here.
(Laughter)
I'm on the train platform,
this is the first interview of my life
in New York City, United States,
and it's coming to me that I'd just messed up
one of the most important interviews in my life.
The reason I messed up that interview is that my English is really terrible.
(Laughter)
And so, Seth Godin appears on TED in the US,
the biggest TED, on TV, on radio,
and he's used to telling jokes.
When he tells a joke, he's used to people laughing.
But given my bad English,
when he tells a joke, I don't realise it's a joke,
or I get it two minutes later.
That's why [in] my subsequent interviews,
when you look at them on my American YouTube channel,
you'll see uncertainty in my laughter.
(Laughter)
Sometimes, I laugh when there's nothing to laugh about,
and that's why I have some comments on my American channel like this:
[Great interview, on the speaker side!]
Not bad, eh?
[But if I hear Frenchie boy giggling like a little girl ...]
Dot, dot, dot.
I have hundreds of these.
Some people tell me it's better I stop speaking English
as it hurts their ears.
(Laughter)
People really tell me
that my crap English insults the people I interview.
So, I embarked on another challenge:
to speak, for example, before 200 people
who were the heads of companies found in the S&P500 - it's like the CAC40.
At the end of my speech, someone goes up to see the host,
and says to him, "Why him?"
(Laughter)
Really, why him, there are others who are excellent?
Another says to the host,
"You know, among all the speakers, there's only one I'll remember.
I didn't understand everything he spoke about,
but on the other hand, I think our company needs a little more of the spirit he had.
Travels over 6,000 miles; goes and speaks in a language he doesn't know,
before people who impress him;
I think if we did a little more of that in our company,
the things that could happen."
So I started asking myself some questions:
Am I the only one to receive criticism?
So I went onto a website called "AlloCiné",
to see what people thought of my favourite movie -
five Oscars,
second best film at box office worldwide the year it was released.
When you look at the worst comments on "AlloCiné",
there are people there who are sincere.
I've selected three of them for you I saw today.
I thought they were magnificent.
The first one:
"It's definitely one of the worst films in the history of cinema,
(Laughter)
in short, masterful crap."
It's my favourite movie.
(Laughter)
"The movie's so lame, it becomes a parody,
the actors are terrible with no charisma."
And the last one I found very effective:
"Unbearable."
That was a relief!
I was relieved as I thought
if people can say that about "Gladiator", frankly, anything's possible for me now.
It reassured me and provided my second discovery:
that, in fact, no matter what you do -
you can be the best athlete in the world,
you can be Michael Jordan,
you can be Kobe Bryant,
be no matter who,
you can excel, spend your whole life excelling at something,
art, science, entrepreneurship -
you will always have people that say what you're doing is rubbish.
And the worst part is that they're being genuine.
(Laughter)
It was a second important discovery for me,
which is supported by scientific studies.
Geraint Rees,
Professor at the University of London,
realised that every human being has a different brain,
and, therefore, each person's perception of the world is different.
It’s why what's important to you can be rubbish to others.
It's good news, actually.
We can free ourselves from the fact that other people may criticise us
and just accept this second discovery:
criticism is inevitable.d
I already knew this - I've met scientists who've shared it with me,
and living this experience has set me free.
So, since it's inevitable, I might as well go and do what I love.
If it's art that thrills me,
I might as well go and do art.
If it's travel, then travel,
if it's to learn a language, learn it.
Take a round-the-world trip, travel into space,
set up a business.
How many people do not dare to do things that are important to them,
just because someone close to them,
a friend, a child, a parent, a co-worker,
told them, "Forget it."
After that ...
I went on further with another challenge: to interview people who excel.
I was able to interview someone who is one of the biggest French actors,
a comedian who also does theatre.
And ...
in private, he told me an anecdote from his life.
He's to be on stage, in an auditorium like this -
I mean, it's really awesome to walk into a place like this -
it's 7:30, the show starts at 8:00.
He's freaked out, he's not feeling well,
he's used to stress but this is something else.
7:45.
Still in the dressing room,
he's stressed, not managing to remember his lines.
8 o'clock, time for the show to start,
he's still in the dressing room.
What do you think is going on?
08:15.
Still in the dressing room, panicked, sweaty hands, he's not well.
The more time passes, the more he says to himself:
"With the fame that I enjoy, it's a real shame to go on stage
if I babble, if I don't know my lines."
08:30.
Still in the dressing room.
The audience have been waiting for 30 minutes.
His director is as lost as he is and says:
"Do something, get on stage, take your script, go on!"
"I'm not going on stage with my script, that's ridiculous."
08:45.
He decides to take his script and go on stage.
What do you think happens next?
He'll spend the rest of the play
with the script in his hand,
unable to remember his lines.
That's a long time:
an entire play, while you are stressed out, panicked,
and you have your script in your hand.
And at the end, he gets a standing ovation,
the longest, the biggest, he's ever had in his entire career.
Three years later, he's in another city,
and someone comes up to him and says, "I was there!"
"You were where?"
"I was there!"
"You were where?"
"I was there that night.
The night you had your script."
Maybe it wasn’t the best show of your life, for you,
but for me, it's the one that's had the greatest impact on my life.
That night changed my life.
You've no idea how many things I didn't dare to do for fear of criticism,
because I thought it wasn't perfect enough,
because I was waiting to become perfect to start my business, to speak in public.
That night you set me free,
I permitted myself to go and make my dreams come true.
Thank you.
Thank you."
His story has had a huge impact on me,
as I realise that I am extremely committed to the way others see me.
Actually, we're extremely addicted to being valued by others.
I realise that the moment you break free of the need to be valued by others,
you also free yourself, in the process, from the criticism of others.
Still more important than that,
I made a third discovery, utterly important for me.
The fact is, the only thing you risk, on taking the risk of being criticised,
is to inspire someone.
If someone sees you, hears you, looks at you,
and says to themself, "If he or she can do it, so can I",
Is it not a great thing
to inspire your mother, your father, your children, a stranger?
Is that not worth taking a little criticism,
someone who's just going to tell you that what you're doing sucks?
I've told you about a lot of greater and greater things for me,
but there was one thing I didn't dare do,
that for a lot of people is extremely simple,
but that I passed over every year, telling myself I'd do it later.
It terrorised me a lot more than going out on stage in English.
It was to say "I love you" to my dad.
My father was abandoned by his father,
then by his mother,
then by his grandmother.
He had a hard time understanding what it was like to feel loved.
This underlay the fact that during my adolescence
I got very angry with him
and held him responsible for my lack of esteem.
Telling my dad "I love you" was highly stressful for me,
far more so than anything I've ever done in my life up to today.
Again, it's that fear of how others see you;
the fear that my father wouldn’t answer;
the fear that he would reject me, since I felt rejected by him as a child.
And one day, I pick up my phone and I write to my father:
"Dad, I love you."
Doing this, this act of courage,
for me, was more important than so many things I've managed to accomplish.
The next day, no answer from my father.
The day after, no answer from my father.
The third day, I forget about the text message.
Forgetting about the SMS was one of the greatest victories of my life,
since, for the first time in my life,
it wasn't so important anymore that my father or whoever would value me.
It wasn't so important anymore to get an answer from him:
I had done what was important to me.
Two weeks go by.
My father, meanwhile, must have wondered how to answer a text like that.
Because nobody had told him how to.
After two weeks, he found a formula that I found interesting:
"Likewise."
(Laughter) (Applause)
Had I received that text when I was 15, I would have hated him for it.
But when I got this text, tears came to my eyes,
because I realised, with all this experience, that my father,
who stiffens as I embrace him,
that my father, actually always loved me,
except I couldn't see it because we've had two different brains and childhoods.
My father gave me everything he didn't get:
a roof, food, education.
When I thought he didn't love me, he was actually saying to me,
"Be careful, continue your studies because I know what it's like not to eat."
I understood that my father had always loved me.
It changed our relationship,
and I'm very grateful for him today
because he contributes to the success of my enterprise:
I've dared to get over what others think of me,
and ready myself to be rejected by them.
I'd like to end with an invitation,
the invitation to do at least one thing that you don't feel comfortable doing.
It might be small in the eyes of others, or big for you;
it might be something huge in the eyes of others,
or just raising your hand in class.
I imagine a world,
and dare to imagine a world with you,
where we, together, dare to do things that inspire us.
Maybe together, we can see a world where young people, children, and adults,
dare to live a vibrant life,
no matter what anyone else thinks.
I'd like to end
with this sentence from Steve Jobs,
that I love, that's greatly influenced my life:
"Your time is limited,
don't ruin it by leading an existence that isn't yours."
Thank you.
(Applause)