I'm doing for ChezFilms the same thing as for the Boulengerie:
A daily video from Monday to Friday to give experts advice on my key topics: narrative strategy, public speaking, and content production.
I was supposed to start this week but I'm wrestling with the workflow: how to make videos that adapt easily across all platforms (Youtube, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and the website).
It'll be a bit more serious than my personal videos. But not much more.
This idea may be harder to grasp for those unfamiliar with the concept of "emptiness."
But I think about it more and more often. I found it in Robert Burbea's book Seeing that frees.
Here it is: what we call the ego is not a fixed property of a person.
Throughout a lifetime, a week, a day, the ego moves along a spectrum: it manifests more strongly or almost completely disappears depending on the situation.
What governs these variations?
As always: attachment.
When I want or refuse something, when I harbor desire or aversion for an object, that object and my ego appear at the same time. Buddhists call this "dependent arising."
The moment before, I might be in the flow of the present, moving freely from sensation to sensation with complete lightness: no center, no subject, no ego. I'm floating.
Then I attach to a thought. Suddenly, I want, I refuse, I ruminate. The ego is nothing other than this relationship that has just been created between this idea of myself (which was nowhere to be found the second before) and the idea of this object (which doesn't really exist).
Far from being a flaw, the ego is therefore a relationship.
A relationship between two objects that we choose to create ourselves.
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Related:
Today, no connection and no time so parking picture:
Probably one of my most sincere post.
That's the key question and the trick question.
We feel like we're acting for others, to be kind, to help out, but we're secretly working for ourselves, for our image, for our personal satisfaction.
For example: I'm often suspicious of people who are overly nice to cashiers.
Saying "thank you, have a nice day," sure. But some people overdo it: "Thank you, have a wonderful day, ma'am. And above all, hang in there! Hang in there." The cashier nods politely; she didn't ask for all that. And I find it hard to imagine that the customer, on their way out, doesn't think to themselves "I'm a wonderful person. Look at how I understand and support the little workers."
My theory is that, secretly, this person is doing it for themselves. For their self-esteem.
And that the interaction, by its eminently artificial nature, hasn't lightened the cashier's burden one bit.
I realize I do this too, of course.
Under the guise of being helpful, participating, informing, I'm actually running PR campaigns to prove that I'm a good guy. That people think well of me.
Am I trying to understand this person to help them, or to show them that I understand? Am I telling this story to inform them, or because it makes me look good?
As usual, the goal isn't to change but to notice. Once brought to light, these flaws fade away.
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Related:
If I had to sum up what I've learned that matters most over the past few years, I'd say this:
1. To stand out, you need to set up a system.
Succeeding at something once, even brilliantly, isn't enough. It's the repetition of an action—even a simple one—that brings the transformation we're looking for—within ourselves or in the world.
This holds true in spirituality (nothing more repetitive and simple than meditation), in music (we even call it "practice"), in work, in communication, in relationships, in health...
Persistence in one direction matters more than intelligence, willpower, or talent. But...
2. No system without alignment.
Discipline, willpower, good resolutions (...) will never be enough to stay the course. A few days, a few months, maybe. But soon enough, we burn out, we break down.
The only way to set up a long-term system is to be perfectly aligned.
To be entirely yourself. To do what's 100% natural. To blindly follow your instinct and let everything else fall away.
Except that... Very few people truly know who they are and what they want. Their self-knowledge is obscured by intellectual ideas and decades of conditioning. Hence...
3. No alignment without self-knowledge.
This is the cornerstone of the whole structure: learning to know yourself.
Doing the inner work to deconstruct the preconceptions we hold about ourselves and the world in order to reach our truth.
This truth is the real source of action. The one that will last. And therefore change things.
"Know thyself." - Socrates
"Become who you are." - Nietzsche
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Related:
My film Construire (The Builders) made for the École des Ponts was screened at SETEC last night, followed by a discussion and a cocktail reception.
It was a wonderful evening. The technical issues I had noticed during the first visit had been brilliantly fixed and the screening quality was excellent. I met people who share the same doubts as I do. Also: many viewers enjoyed the film, even on their second or third viewing.
It was rejuvenating.
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Related links:
You can optimize the wrong things.
You can speed up in the wrong direction.
You can be overwhelmed by work that leads nowhere.
Remember: every step taken in the wrong direction will have to be retraced. These efforts won't just have been in vain—they'll have taken you further from your goal.
So don't throw yourself into action right away.
Sit down. Feel which way the wind blows. The strength of the current.
See what desire drives you. What direction calls to you.
Because once you're on your way, how easy or hard each step feels will depend entirely on that first impulse.
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Related:
Thanks to Guillaume Cloux for these photos from the Migrul shoot.
ChezFilms is moving into Télé Bocal's premises in Belleville!
Really happy with this new place. Especially since I've also changed my pied-Ă -terre in Paris and I'm not sleeping far from here. (I realized this morning when I walked over and arrived way, way earlier than I'd expected.)
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Related:
"What if I took a 25-minute power nap to recharge?"
Opening my eyes two and a half hours later:
"Who am I? What year is this?"