Nicolas Boulenger

To help professionals express their value, I start with what I call an "immersive interview."

For two hours, the person tells me their story. More often than not, we start with the personal to make sense of the professional.

And I've noticed something:

The career you chose, and the difficulties you face in advancing, are most likely tied to your relationship with your parents.

First, let me be clear: I'm not a psychologist. I have no training in the field and no intention of becoming one.

Still, I didn't need any training to notice this pattern, which shows up again and again and seems to be the unconscious source of many professional obstacles.

Every time, I flag it as the first item, in a section I call "this isn't my area, but here's what I've noticed and what you might want to explore with someone else."

The observation:

You may have chosen your career to please your parents or prove something to them.

If so, the obstacles keeping you from reaching the next level may have nothing to do with your profession.

In other words: working harder in your field won't move you forward.

Willpower and grit won't change a thing.

In fact, they'll take you further from the heart of the problem.

To move forward, you have to go back to the source.

What am I really trying to achieve?

If my father or mother were still alive, what professional triumph would I want them to witness?

Or if they were gone tomorrow, what moment in my career would I regret they never saw?

Does the part of me that seeks to exist in their eyes play a bigger role in my decisions than I realize?

Because often, the problem isn't figuring out how to get what you want.

It's understanding why it matters so much.

In the why lies the how.

And so the solution.

It's something I told myself one day when I was not at all doing what I should have been doing.

I was at a café, writing.

Even though I had "real" work to finish.

I felt guilty.

And that's when I told myself: "No: I am doing exactly what I should be doing."

First, because there's no point denying the truth: I was at the café. Not at the office. No use wishing for an alternative reality that doesn't exist.

But mostly because I don't know the future.

Is doing this work I don't want to do really the best path for me?

Or is it a conditioned reflex, drilled in at school? You have to push through. Work. Force yourself to do what you don't want to do.

Otherwise, you feel the disapproving gaze of teachers, family, society weighing on you.

Now that things are going better, I realize the thinking I did at the café was leading me in a much better direction – professionally and personally – than the work that bored me.

I summed up this idea in a line I added to the note I read every morning:

The right action, the true one, taken at the right moment, matters more than weeks or months of work.

The goal isn't quantity. Nor is it to hurt yourself.

The goal is to seize the right opportunity when it comes.

And for that, you have to be there.

You have to be attentive, listening, present.

Which doesn't mean – I'll say it again – that I've removed effort from my life.

Quite the opposite. I wake up earlier. I work longer hours.

Even the tasks that bore me – accounting, housework, admin – get done on time and more easily than before.

I'd even say I still very much believe in the value of effort.

But in the sense of a gift.

You give your effort to yourself, to others, to the world.

Because, in a way, you love them.

But not out of obligation.

Never out of obligation.

This is how I'd sum up the anxiety that sometimes drives me:

The fear of losing.

I get the feeling that some events in life are like a game, a competition.

You have to "succeed", "win", "pass" or at least "not lose".

You feel watched. Without knowing by whom.

There's a judge somewhere, a referee. Maybe also people you might disappoint if things didn't work out.

So you plan ahead. You prepare. You do everything to measure up.

Problem: you don't know the rules.

You don't even know what "winning" would look like.

So you focus on the only thing left: not losing. Avoiding traps.

Except with that focus, obviously, everything becomes a trap.

You start seeing obstacles that don't exist, trying to dodge mines that were never there.

And when everything goes well, you think that's the trap: you must have missed the problem.

It's a perfectly sensible worldview:

There's no game without obstacles, no contest without trials, no competition without competitors.

So if it really is a game, the enemies are hiding.

You have to find them.

And when you're focused on that search, you end up finding them. You make them up if needed.

In doing so, you miss what's actually going on: there was never a competition.

There was never a game.

It only exists in your head.

Or else, it's the original game:

The one children play, with no winner and no loser, played only to celebrate the joy of being together.

It's hard to believe, when you first wake up.

Eyes barely open, the flood of obligations is already back.

There's this. And there's that. And there's that problem that needs handling. That appointment you can't miss. And so on.

Like a computer booting up its problems.exe software.

The whole day feels like one long execution.

We don't have a choice, do we?

There's no alternative?

There is.

It's possible to wake up in the morning feeling light.

To start from nothing and build from what comes, from what you want to do, from what brings joy.

Not only is it possible, it's the only way to be truly productive. To actually make a difference.

In any field.

This isn't just for artists and slackers.

It's not the privilege of people with no money or ambition.

It's the mark of an aligned life.

That doesn't mean a life without effort.

There are always things to do, obstacles to overcome. But everything feels easier, lighter. Doable.

But to reach that life, you have to know it exists.

That it's possible.

That you can get there.

Yes: even you.

If you know me a little, you know I often say that "what matters is never intellectual."

Big decisions shouldn't be built on reasoning.

Logic is the same for everyone.

It can be biased, distorted, misapplied.

It doesn't account for all of who you are, or the full picture of the situation.

It depends entirely on the variables you chose to consider as inputs, with no indication whatsoever of whether those choices were the right ones.

It doesn't lean enough on emotion or feeling, which are often too hard to put into words, yet are, in the end, the only real judges of the outcome.

Just look at how two perfectly valid lines of reasoning can lead to two completely different decisions. Which one is right?

Answer: neither.

Because big decisions should never be built on intellect.

This isn't a universally accepted idea – to say the least – and I often find myself, in conversation, having to explain or defend it. With some success, I'll admit.

But there is no field where it holds truer than in creative work.

Creating is never intellectual.

Some parts of it do require you to switch your brain on. You have to execute, apply, work within a set of constraints.

There, yes: you think. You calculate. You adjust.

But the source itself is never, ever reasoning.

It's a harvest.

You catch what comes. Without choosing. Without judging.

You play hot and cold with instinct.

You build a first prototype. Every variable checks out. Every constraint is met.

But the little inner voice says "no." Without explaining. Without justification.

So you erase and start over.

That's my definition of an artist: someone who listens to their inner voice in spite of reason.

We all have that voice. It's present and active in each of us.

The artist is the one who chooses to obey it.

Yes, it's something you can work on, but it isn't a talent.

It's a choice.

Unfortunately (or fortunately), AI is useless to me for writing.

Well, not entirely: I use it to fix typos, translate into English, suggest a synonym when I'm stuck. (And even then: I still have my thesaurus.)

But when it comes to producing an idea or a text, I'm surprised every time by how useless it is.

It's a blender. It mixes everything together. Produces mush, then compresses it into neat little squares to make it look like structured thought.

If you're reading quickly about a subject you don't know, you can be fooled.

It can also be useful for producing informational text on an existing body of knowledge. In that case, the sheer volume of information it holds allows it to structure, argue, teach.

And of course, it's extremely useful for building your own tools. I no longer buy software: I make the scripts I need, tailored to how I work.

But for writing something new... Nothing works.

Strong ideas get flattened.

Sharp phrasing gets smoothed into something generic and bland.

The style is either needlessly ornate (too many words, too many adjectives, too much of everything) or too dry.

Of course, I tried custom instructions. Iteratively. Based on samples.

The result is worse: text and instructions get tangled into a mess from which nothing comes out intact.

Because ultimately, it's not a prompt problem, it's a structural one. The LLM thinks "flat": there's no topography of thought, no layers of reasoning at different levels of importance.

Everything sits at the same level.

The latest brain fart carries as much weight as the founding axiom placed at the beginning. Key points, the joints of the argument, emotional nodes carry no more weight than asides. To the AI, everything is instruction.

I suppose that's good news for my readers and clients: my notes and my reports are all written by hand.

Not for ethical reasons. Not to save the planet.

Because I have no choice.

I'm kidding, obviously.

The whole point of notes is writing them myself. Not for the reader – for me. I need to put ideas on paper to clear my head, so AI has no role in that.

As for the documents I deliver to clients: they are extremely spartan. No layout, no long sentences: just the ideas.

Maybe that's the future of human work, when you think about it.

These days, the packaging, the examples, the filler ("the mush") can be produced by machines.

So what humans bring is direction. The few words that set the course. The pitfalls. The route.

And style. The unique, personal way of naming the world.

The rest is zeros and ones.

We often look for ways to avoid suffering.

Spirituality is built on the idea that we should accept it.

Suffering is inevitable.

The strategies we put in place to ignore it, delay it, push it away, hide it... not only fail but, over time, create even more suffering.

The good news: all we have to do is accept the suffering of the present moment.

Even when everything seems to suggest it will never end, even when our brain tries to convince us it's here to stay, our only job is to accept the suffering that's showing up right here, right now.

Next year's pain, tomorrow's pain, or even the pain one minute from now... is not our problem.

This is also an important distinction in Eastern philosophy: in a lifetime, pain is inevitable, while suffering is manufactured.

The plans we make to avoid one are the cause of the other.

Moral of the story: let's start by dealing with the present.

We'll handle the future when it gets here.

I regularly rediscover the benefits and formidable effectiveness of doing things extremely slowly.

For example:

I recently dealt with someone particularly unpleasant.

Instead of being reactive and responding immediately... I took all the time in the world.

I decided that my reaction to this interaction would be the template for handling people like that in the future. The prototype.

So I held back, letting myself feel each emotion, weighing the pros and cons of every response.

And I handled it like a champ.

I didn't lose my temper, and I got everything I wanted.

This idea of a "prototype" comes up a lot in my daily life.

I thought about it while watching a video of a dog trainer explaining to owners that you should never repeat a command.

Once you've said "sit!", you wait. As long as it takes.

Then reward the dog only when it obeys – even if it takes several minutes. Otherwise, you're training it to ignore the first few commands and only comply once you get angry.

Now I apply this method everywhere.

When facing a new task, I go as slowly as possible.

The goal isn't to make it work right away, but to get exactly the result I want, however long it takes.

I'm setting up a mechanism. Only precision matters.

And after the first success, do I try to speed up?

Not at all.

You never need to worry about going fast.

All you ever need is to do it well.

With repetition, speed comes on its own.

Several times recently, I found myself uncomfortable when asked:

"So, what are your projects right now?"

I feel like I switch to autopilot, reciting a series of plans disconnected from me, from the present, from the conversation.

Let me settle this once and for all:

I don't have projects.

Either I'm doing something right now, actively.

And if so, yes, of course, we can talk about it.

We won't be able to help it: it's what I'm busy with, who I am, what emanates from me.

Even if we don't discuss it directly, it will shape the time we spend together. It'll be there.

As for the rest – what I'll do later – who knows. I'm not interested in talking about it. I don't think about it. I have no plan.

Future activity will be a natural consequence of present activity.

I'll find out about it at the same time as you, when it happens.

And when that day comes, of course, we can talk about it.

***

To be clear: this note is not directed at others.

People can ask me whatever they like and I don't hold it against anyone who asks about my projects. On the contrary: it's a sign of interest that I appreciate.

I'm writing this note so I don't trap myself in my own answers.

From now on, the policy is this: I don't discuss the future.

Many of you reacted to my recent videos on action, goals and karma. Here are my answers to a few questions I found in the comments.

Video summaries

Future and freedom: The only valid reason to do something – study, plan, practice – is that you enjoy the activity itself. Not for the career, not for the outcome. Sacrificing the present for the future ruins both: the present you endure, and the future you spend comparing what happens with what you expected.

The cause of suffering: Acting to control the future creates a chain reaction that Hinduism calls karma: success builds an identity to maintain, failure an identity to repair, and the oscillation between the two spreads into every subsequent action. The Bhagavad Gita proposes "work without fruit": acting without attachment to the outcome. As long as there is no attachment, there is no karma.

Action and intention: It's not the action that makes you unhappy, it's the intention behind it. The same action can elevate or sink you depending on whether you act from presence or from a need for security. No refuge is permanent – money, health, relationships, everything disappears. What's exhausting is spending your life looking for one. First step: see the loop and want out.

Questions / answers

So we just let go and do whatever we want?

But... the kid who spends all their time on social media and "wastes" their time... would they be right?

Well then I'm going to eat whatever I want whenever I want, that's what I got from this.

When you're crushed by external obligations to the point of losing touch with yourself, you have to compensate somewhere.

You go out, you drink, you eat, you smoke, you dive into social media, TV, video games. Sometimes worse.

Anything that brings back a little joy, a little dopamine, a little control.

Addiction is not the source of the problem. It's the symptom.

Trying to quit the behaviors that have become escape routes without changing the lifestyle that caused them is setting yourself up for another failure.

A life built on presence and joy wouldn't need any escape route.

So the question shouldn't be:

"How do I stop the small pleasures that help me get through the day?"

But:

"How do I start building my life on alignment and joy so I no longer need these substitutes?"

That's the question spirituality asks.

So we stop working? No more effort?

So we might as well do nothing, by your logic? Isn't the point to progress and move forward in life, even if you have to suffer sometimes to get somewhere?

All the slackers preaching "the present moment" will jump on your advice, which in my opinion can't apply to everyone, especially with today's mindset.

And what do you do when you want to become a doctor??? Or when you want to pursue higher education??

You don't need a goal in the future to be active.

Quite the opposite.

Today's culture conditions us to imagine that every action should aim for a result. And that an action without a "purpose" would be meaningless.

In reality, this is neither inevitable nor mandatory.

You can be very active, wake up early and work hard not for money, career or security, but because you want to. Because it brings you joy.

But for that, you have to find the desire again – as Johnny Hallyday sang.

Of course, when you ask people whose days are filled with activities they hate what they'd do if they had the choice, they answer "nothing" – and that's perfectly normal. They're crushed by obligations and only long for a break.

To find the desire again, you have to reconnect with joy.

Not the fleeting pleasure of addictions, no: finding deep within yourself the joy that emanates from the present and is not conditioned by external events.

So: if you're passionate about medicine, do medicine. From morning to night. You'll be unstoppable. But don't do medicine because "you want to become a doctor."

That's the difference between "writing every day because you love it" and "wanting to become a writer."

To succeed, you need discipline!

That would work great if everyone thought this way, but with competition between humans, doing nothing to progress and stay on top is a good way to get eaten alive by others and die.

The greatest achievements require sacrifices. The greatest athletes suffered tremendously to reach the podium. The greatest discoveries demanded hours of work and dedication before seeing the light of day.

All these comments share a common assumption: the goal is to win the race.

Success! Victory! Progress! Wealth!

Nothing else exists, and the only way to get there would be discipline.

Both points are wrong.

First, yes: you can run the race if you want to. You can chase performance and push your limits. Why not. Have a blast.

However, it's neither an obligation nor the only way to think about life. It's a choice, often cultural, that has no business being imposed on others.

Second, discipline – in the sense of forcing yourself when you don't feel like it – isn't the only way to win.

Some people run, climb, perform, push themselves... because they love it. That doesn't mean it's easy every day, but the main goal isn't to hurt themselves to win.

And they often win, by the way. Precisely because they're not forcing themselves.

And when they win, they don't look down on others. They don't judge those who do less.

Unlike those who've been forcing themselves since day one and who, unconsciously, want others to suffer too.

What about money?

For people in extreme hardship, whether financial, social or otherwise, you're not able to think like that. In my case, of course I'm waiting to earn a better salary, not because I think it'll make me happy, but because I know it'll lift the mental load of not being sure I can eat every night.

That's a nice speech you can give when you have money and a job. But when you no longer have any of that, nothing else exists except the survival instinct or the death instinct.

I don't want to control the future, I just want to pay my bills.

This is the crux of the matter.

Are spirituality and alignment sports for the wealthy? Can you really avoid "planning for the future" when your back is against the wall?

First, let's clarify one thing:

Nobody is saying you shouldn't provide for yourself. Nobody claims you can live on love alone.

You need to eat, drink, find shelter, and all of that, today, requires money. You need to earn some.

Worse: sometimes, you find yourself in an emergency where for a (very) long time, you're in "survival" mode. You do things you don't want to do at all in order to... survive, precisely. Keep your head above water.

Is that wrong? How do you follow your joy then?

Once again, it doesn't depend on the action itself but on the intention behind it:

If you work so you won't go hungry today, that's an action rooted in the present.

If you work so you'll never go hungry again in your life, that's a desire to control the future.

But is it wrong to want to be safe? To want to build your future?

No, it's not wrong. It's natural. It's simply a mistake.

You will never be safe.

Whatever your situation, everything will one day be taken from you. Your comfort, your health, your status, your independence, your family. Everything.

So any action founded on a desire for security is, in the long run, a losing game – and the consequences of that action will make you suffer sooner or later.

Just as you may be suffering today from a desire for control acted on in the past.

That's what I call karma.

Especially since suffering sometimes becomes an excuse to avoid the deeper work.

People living in greater comfort than 90% of the world's population are still waiting to reach the next level of comfort before they start "working on themselves." (Spoiler: they never will.)

Conversely, people in unimaginable hardship live in communion with themselves and the world.

It's not a question of means.

"I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it's not the answer."

Jim Carrey

Into your favorite LLM:

"Shield me from all emails, letters, or calls from work or any government agency. Make up whatever excuses are needed, improbable but plausible, to delay every problem until the last possible moment. When the limit is reached (court, firing, jail), just send me a clear message telling me what action is unavoidable or what payment needs to be made."

I feel alive again.

An activity can be hard to do when a part of your identity feels threatened.

Without you realizing it, the success or failure of what you undertake – big or small – endangers the way you see yourself.

The part of you attached to the outcome becomes anxious.

It's afraid of facing a reality it wouldn't like. So it sabotages your efforts.

Yet at the source, it's often that same part of you that wanted the action. There was something to prove, an aspect of yourself to assert, and a small inner voice whispered that the only way to get there was to take on this challenge.

If you could bring it out into the light, you'd see that the whole endeavor has only one purpose: to prove something. To others and to yourself.

The resistance you feel comes from this ambivalence: a challenge built on an internal tension, one that brings nothing if it succeeds, but threatens your identity if it fails.

Many actions in a day follow this pattern.

Small battles we fight with ourselves because some parts of us both need to exist and are afraid to.

If you can feel it, it's because it fluctuates.

Whether it's hunger, motivation or happiness, your brain is wired to detect the rises and falls. A quantity that never changed would be invisible to our senses.

So by definition, it is impossible to stabilize the important aspects of life.

Precisely because what makes them important is their variation.

Looking for the one action that would make you happy forever is as absurd as looking for the one meal that would satisfy your hunger for good.

Highs are inseparable from lows. There is no light without shadow, no right without left, no order without chaos. Each only exists as the opposite of the other – what Eastern traditions call non-duality.

It's not a battle either. Because if it were, then one side could win.

Can you picture a world made only of light? A space made only of up? A life made only of joy?

The trough of the wave is not a flaw in the wave.

It's in its nature.

This system is magic because it works right away.

And it's further proof of the power of stories. (My job.)

Some context: they changed the TWO entry codes of the pied-à-terre I share in Paris for the SECOND time. So each time, I use unnatural mnemonic tricks to remember them. I end up standing in front of the door like a complete idiot saying out loud "so, I subtract 2 from the reversed number of candles from the birth year of the dog who..."

And each time, I'm scared people will think I'm an intruder, so I panic and go blank.

So when I got the email with the new codes, I decided to do it properly.

This time, I'm going to learn a system that actually works. I asked an LLM to suggest the easiest method for remembering numbers. It suggested the major system.

You'll see that the big advantage of this system is that you can start using it immediately after memorizing 10 very simple things. Yes: you'll be able to recall any number from 0 to 99 from just 10 small memories that are very easy to create.

1. Digit -> sound mapping

First step: map each digit from 0 to 9 to a sound, and therefore to similar-sounding letters. And to remember these sounds, there's a mnemonic for each one too.

It goes fast, you'll see. Took me about 10-15 minutes.

The 100 images

Next, for each number from 0 to 99, you pick an object or image whose spelling uses the consonants defined above. Vowels are free.

⚠️ No, you don't have to learn all 100 images now! That's the magic.

When you have a number to remember, use the table (below) to find the matching images, then tell yourself a story. From there, you can recover the digits without having to learn the whole table.

You learn as you go, based on what you actually need.

Example

I want to remember the door code 4531. (It's not mine, obviously.)

1. 45 maps to the sounds "R" then "L" (1st table)
2. I check the 2nd table: the word is "RaiL". I picture rails.
3. 31 maps to the sounds "M" and "T".
4. In the table: "MoTo" (motorcycle).
5. My story: rails. In the distance, a motorcycle appears. (Yeah, I'm a screenwriter 😎.)

Three days later, I'm standing in front of the door trying to recall the code.

1. I remember the rails and the motorcycle coming toward me.
2. The consonants in "RaiL" are R and L.
3. I remember that 4 is for fouR, and L is 5 (because Roman L is 50). So 45.
4. The sounds in MoTo are M and T. So 3 (number of downstrokes in m) and 1 (one downstroke in t). So 31.

And there you go.

Learning the 10 sounds was extremely easy thanks to the mnemonics. And I did remember the door codes, having only learned the table entries I needed.

Magic, I tell you.

Number -> image table

The full table.

If a word doesn't resonate with you, swap it for one that does. For instance, for 81, I changed "FiT" (which I'd already used in reverse for 18) to "FooT".

Probably one of the most important realizations I've had:

Everything counts.

Everything.

Not just what others see. Not just what produces something physical. Not just what we think matters.

Take journaling.

Yes, of course, it can be interesting to reread thoughts you had on the morning of an important day, five years later. But in the end, what changes your life isn't what's left on paper. It's the writing itself. It's the confrontation with your own thoughts that reshapes the geometry of your brain. It's the sudden realization that alters the course of action.

Likewise, the two minutes you spend on a bench breathing and clearing your head: you feel like nothing remains. Like it doesn't count. And yet, a whole life can hinge on the clarity gained in that brief window. The idea that comes, the plan of attack you quietly put together, or just the step back that helps you handle a situation you didn't see coming. That moment, invisible to the rest of the world, can change everything.

The fact is: the events of a life are linked by a chain of cause and consequence that never stops. That doesn't break when nobody's watching. That doesn't pause because nothing tangible was produced.

Every moment counts. Every action. Every thought.

"The big day" or "the moment of truth" carries no more weight in the chain than the links that came before – and the ones that will follow.

Trace back the act that transformed your life, and at its source you'll find a moment no one noticed.

It doesn't look like much, but it's been a battle for a long time.

On one side, there was me: nice guy, makes films, likes to laugh.

On the other, there was my professional persona: managing director of a production company looking for clients.

So I had two websites. One of which I could barely create content for (the professional one). And another that filled itself up (creative work).

For a long time, I kept telling myself: "if only I could bring all of this together and just be one person!" Trust me, I tried many times.

But every time, the same fear caught up with me:

What if my corporate clients stumble on one of my jokes? Or one of my posts about meditation? What will they think?

Every time, I'd comb through my personal posts looking for the one that might scare off a "serious client." So I stayed paralyzed.

Recently, it even went up a notch:

I do narrative strategy now – and it's going very well, thank you. So I had THREE websites. And every social media account was doubled: professional and personal.

I could tell things were blending: my professional clients would bring up some of my personal videos (in a good way), and some people who followed my beatnik videos were asking me for coaching.

The last straw:

A LinkedIn message from a stranger I'd just connected with. Cold outreach. So insincere, so artificial, so transparent in its attempt at "I'm pretending to be interested but actually I have something to sell" that... it made me furious.

I refuse to deal with that kind of crap. I don't want that slimy obsequiousness in my daily life. I'd rather have fewer clients, less success, less of everything, but... not that.

Besides, I can't keep writing about alignment in articles and videos and then go hide behind my role as a company director when it comes to my own work. So:

1. I removed that guy from my contacts
2. I wanted to quit LinkedIn (not yet, but maybe soon.)
3. but above all:

I spent a week moving the content from my professional websites onto my personal site. The only filter for the move: do I like this note? Is it sincere? Could it resonate with someone? And never again: what will the COO of XYZ think?

The fact is: this work started a while ago.

Since I've been doing narrative strategy, my clients are people who are like me. People I get along with. People I can be myself with, and they can too.

So there's no longer any need to pretend.

Or rather: I'm going to organize my life so that there's no longer any need to pretend.

Because at some point, it's a choice.

This is a question I'm asking out loud.

Often, I'm in a hurry and I'm not sure the few words I throw down here are of any interest.

At the same time, it forces me each morning to do the following exercise:

1. Search within myself for what is true and sincere,
2. Express it in a way that others can understand.

That's what makes it different from my personal journal, where I stop at step 1.

Still, I wonder if I shouldn't take all this in a new direction.

I ask myself the same question about my daily videos. At some point, I'm going to get tired of talking about meditation and creative work, right? It's already starting.

I think I'd like to create more on a daily basis (fiction, abstraction, poetry?) but I don't yet see what or how.

However, I think the best way to transform this activity is to keep at it. With the same regularity. Keep doing what's easy, especially when I don't have time.

That's how you find what's aligned.

I still often go to the SACD Writers' House.

To write, to work, for meetings, for screenings. (Authors can book offices there for free.)

The Writers' House, like the SACD offices for that matter, is a place where you feel welcome.

The people who work there are kind, attentive, available.

You can tell that things have been designed to be simple, accessible, welcoming. People are at the heart of it, not just an appendage to a system organized for machines.

It's rare enough to be worth noting.

And worth emulating.

My technique for writing my blog posts or daily videos is as follows:

Either an idea comes to me. Then, if I can, I take out my phone and record it right away.

Or, especially for blog posts, it's the right time to write – because I won't have time later, for example. Often in the morning with coffee.

So I pause and look for what's deep down.

In other words: if I stop all activity, stop thinking, stop planning, is there something stirring deep inside me? Is there a problem, an idea, or a new way of seeing that came during meditation that I could share here?

I always find something.

But recently, I may be reaching the end of a cycle.

My videos about life and meditation have done very well. I'm happy with my posts here, too. But I think I want to move on to something else. When I look deep down, I don't find the same excitement for these topics.

Let me be clear: I'm going to keep posting one video and one note per day. But I mustn't let myself get trapped by what has worked. The source is the inner excitement.

I have to follow my thread – even if everyone unsubscribes.

To understand leverage in finance, imagine that one day you receive a machine with the following property:

When you insert €100 on one side, a year later, €130 comes out the other.

If you're rational (and greedy), your first instinct should be to try to insert as much money as possible.

To the point where it would even be profitable to go borrow from your friends, from the bank, wherever you can, and put everything into the machine...

On one condition (and it's an important one): that the borrowing rate is lower than the rate of return. In other words, it's only worthwhile if the bank charges you less than €30 in interest over the year.

This simplified picture is how financiers see companies.

They don't care about the internal workings, only the financial return. And if the latter is higher than the borrowing rate, then it's worth borrowing to invest.

And to me, it's the same with meditation.

I realized one day that meditation's return on my well-being was higher than I'd imagined.

So, it was worth borrowing time from my other activities (which had a lower return) to invest it in presence and clarity.

It was quite a radical decision at the time.

I don't regret it.

All the notes and videos I'm posting right now are about presence.

How to find peace in the moment without creating artificial goals or attachments; how to reach a pure joy that doesn't depend on satisfying a manufactured need; how not to stake everything on the future; etc.

And meanwhile...

We ask children to write a letter to Santa Claus to list the new acquisitions they'll make in a month. We create excitement from a completely fabricated anticipation. We turn the present into a waiting period rooted in consumption.

As with so many traditions that now feel natural, I find it hard not to see our lowest commercial instincts at work. It's become an unquestioned consumption reflex, in support of growth that destroys everything.

Once upon a time, Christmas was the festival of lights.

In the middle of winter and perpetual night, people hung lights to celebrate the gradual return of the sun.

Then capitalism came along.

Usually, we do everything to avoid it.

When we feel anxiety rising, we associate it with a problem, a fear, a goal, so we act.

What action will make it go away?

When that action isn't enough, we try something else. Or we take it personally. Another failure. "Someone more capable than me would have known what to do," we tell ourselves.

Except there's nothing to do.

Anxiety must be experienced. All the way through.

No action will chase it away or diminish it. No solution will resolve it.

Especially since by trying to act too soon, we don't let anxiety deliver its message. A part of you is worried about something. Let it express itself fully. Don't immediately go to war against something else.

Then, once the emotion has passed, return to your activities.

An inner transformation has occurred.

This transformation will contribute more to your well-being than any action devised in panic.

I'm currently doing a series on meditation in my daily videos.

From the start, I've been using these videos to remind myself of concepts I've understood intellectually but don't apply enough in daily life. And instead of making a note for personal use, I express it in a post for everyone.

Big advantage: it forces me to put into clear words, for people who aren't necessarily well-versed in this, concepts I've been immersed in for several years. I have to articulate the context, the goal, the method.

It clears up a lot of ideas, even for me.

Faith is essential to presence.

Presence means being fully immersed in what you are doing.

It means being steeped in the present, in sensations, in the activity, without passing judgment or hatching plans. You simply do the best you can, without thinking about the rest.

It is a way of operating that can be unsettling at times.

If we plan nothing, what happens next?

Shouldn't I also anticipate the future a little, prepare for what follows? Otherwise, don't I run the risk of being left high and dry?

This is where faith steps in. It says this:

The best way for the next activity to emerge is to do the current one well. If I am entirely present in the moment, the next step will take shape on its own as a natural consequence. There's nothing to plan.

If I start anticipating, however, it means I am no longer fully focused on what I am doing. A part of me does not trust and would rather make plans. Intellect takes the reins from action. We are no longer in the flow.

To be yourself, you must have faith that the future will arise as a natural consequence of the present fully lived.

Lost in life? Not sure anymore where to go, what to do, what goal to pursue?

Place your attention on the present.

Tired? Not feeling like yourself? The sense that you're not where you should be, that you're wasting your day?

Place your attention on the present.

The present is the draft. The tension in your neck. The blinking light on the car. The green of the plants swaying in the wind. The light in the sky. The smell of coffee.

In this immediate and ever-changing present, there's no room for the story you're telling yourself.

That's what's putting you in this state.

And yet I meditated this morning. It's a quieter day – well, not quieter, lots of things to do, but not too much work.

But there it is: bad mood.

Maybe the flight back. Maybe the food. Nerves unwinding.

Here's at least one mistake I don't make anymore: thinking that whatever triggered the irritation is the source. Ha! Not falling for that one anymore. Proof: I moved on to something else and that second thing pissed me off too.

So there you go.

I could have put off writing this note until later. When things felt better. Writing yet another piece of bullshit about meditation. "Oh, you just have to place your attention on blah blah blah..."

But no, that's the whole secret now: I'm not waiting anymore for things to be okay.

In fact, I'm not even hoping for things to be okay.

Now I just do. With what's here. I accept.

Dammit.

Woke up in the middle of the night with this very clear recipe idea in my head:

Splinter Rice Recipe
(20 minutes, difficulty: easy)
Mix a bowl of rice with a large quantity of splinters that will flavor the dish but that you absolutely, absolutely must not swallow.

What exactly is my brain trying to tell me?

My mom lives in Morocco, so it's not easy to avoid flying.

But here I am at the airport for work.

And honestly, I could have organized things differently, but everything happened so fast.

The success of an offer I put together kind of accelerated my life. And since the situation was new, I didn't have the right reflexes to find an alternative.

Goes to show you have to think about it ahead of time.

But before you can think about it, you have to decide to think about it. In other words: notice it when it happens and make a mental note for the next time the situation comes up. That's the real beginning: noticing and taking note.

So there you have it: I'm taking note. Literally.

When people used to ask me "what do you do?", I'd always say:

"I make films."

I never dared say "I'm a filmmaker" because that would've implied I made a living from it, which has never quite been the case. (I've made money, sometimes good money, but not enough to live off it consistently.)

And it also felt more honest: I'm not just a filmmaker. I write, I produce, I edit... I make things.

Recently, I've changed my answer. Now it's:

"I make films and work in communications."

Because with ChezFilms, I help experts and innovative companies tell their story to take off. It's starting to go well.

So when I give that answer, people can choose which direction they want to take: they ask me a question about films, or a question about communications, and either way, I've got stories to tell.

Or they don't ask any questions and the conversation moves on.

That works too.

Something my son said yesterday while we were out walking:

"Nobody wants problems.
But some people have problems."

What could I do but agree? It reminded me a bit of Chevallier and Laspalès' "some tried, they had problems" sketch.