Notes

The mind seeks, finds, and solves problems.

That's its nature. It's all it knows how to do.

If you ever find yourself at the summit of the mountain you've always coveted; the view, light, and temperature are perfect; it's the accomplishment of a lifetime. Your mind will whisper "Great... now what?"

It will find the flaw in your success. Make you covet the next peak that will be better. Already, you feel the anxiety of lack, dissatisfaction, desire.

You can't blame it: that's its nature, I tell you! Analyze the situation, find the flaws, devise a plan... That's its job! That's why it exists!

Which makes it a terrible foundation for finding peace.

Don't get me wrong: thinking is a wonderful tool—one I'm using right now to write these lines. We put it to work to create, communicate, survive.

But if your goal is to be present and at peace: it's absolutely not the right tool.

Do you know how to set it down when you no longer need it?

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Related:

• Two ways to solve problems

When I started writing a blog again, I never imagined it would turn into such a "personal development" thing.

It's a phase.

I write down as advice to the reader the things I tell myself.

I write them in my journal, I repeat them to myself in the morning, and as a last resort, I end up preaching them as if I actually followed them. It's the "Coué method" (French thing).

For those waiting for the sex, drugs & rock'n'roll phase: it's coming. I'm waiting for it as much as you are.

It needs this stage to materialize.

When I have a problem, I have two ways to solve it:

1. Intellectually: I look for a solution. I weigh the pros and cons, I make lists, I devise an action plan to implement in the future in order to calm the anxiety in the present.
    
2. In presence: I look for the physical manifestation of this anxiety in my body. The knot in the stomach, the obsessive image, the vague obligation. Without chasing it away or holding onto it, I observe it transform until it disappears.

Problems are a function of who we are.

By changing our inner dispositions, we transform our relationship to external circumstances. The problem that seemed insurmountable the second before vanishes.

The intellectual solution, on the other hand, often only shifts the difficulty. Once the first situation is resolved, a second one arises, identical, because it springs from the same source.

That's the trap of thinking: it solves problems, sometimes. But nine times out of ten, it also creates them.

Which often makes it the wrong tool for growth.

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En lien :

• What meditation changed for me
• The Elephant and Dragon Paradox (archive)

"I'm going to post a video and a note every day."

That's the external contract: what can be verified and enforced by observers.

But how I fulfill that contract, the creative tools I use, and the results it produces—those elements are entirely under my control.

That's my internal freedom.

And sometimes, I'll only post a few lines.

If you catch yourself listing anything at all, you're probably heading down the wrong path.

I see it in every field:

• In improv theater, we pile on jokes when we can't find the one that really lands.
• In sales, we pile on benefits when we haven't found the killer argument that convinces everyone.
• In interior design, we pile on trinkets when we haven't found the centerpiece that commands attention.

I could go on and on.

What puts an end to this flight forward? Stopping. Refocusing. Starting over from taste, from instinct.

All it takes is one strong idea, one genuine direction, one carefully chosen piece to stop the mediocrity machine and find your way back.

Just one. Take the time to find it.

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Related:

• What I learned from running an improv workshop (ChezFilms)

As I revamp the offering of ChezFilms, I'm taking the opportunity to revisit copywriting best practices (a personal compilation):

1. Problem
   What is your client's pain point? What attempts have failed in the past? If you accurately describe their problem, you capture their attention.
    
2. Philosophy
   Why don't the usual solutions (or those offered by competitors) work? What paradigm shift do you propose?
    
3. New Approach
   How is this philosophy implemented in practice? What is your plan and its main steps?
    
4. Social Proof
   Show how this approach has worked in the past: testimonials, case studies, etc. Here, your clients' words carry infinitely more weight than your own.
    
5. Guarantee
   Make the decision less daunting: if the client commits and it doesn't work out, what guarantees are there to mitigate the risk?
    
6. Call to Action
   If the prospect is interested in your approach, what is the next simple, concrete step?
    
7. Urgency
   What are the compelling reasons to act now rather than in two weeks or two months?

This isn't a cookbook recipe; these are the answers to our natural questions before making a decision. If you analyze your last new product purchase, you'll see that you went through the same steps.

I started meditating in 2018 and it transformed my life:

The way I eat, the way I sleep, the way I create. I no longer have the same friends, the same habits, the same goals. My anxieties have changed too.

The main breakthrough:

I realized that many aspects of my life that I took for immutable realities were actually... thoughts.

As if I had lived forty years inside my head and meditation was the first moment I glimpsed the world without filters. (Or let's say: with fewer filters.)

You realize that identity, problems, the future (...) are mental constructions that you can choose to nurture or let go of.

You understand that the external world reflects the internal world and that's where it all happens.

You learn to turn down the volume of that little voice in your head that criticizes everything. Sometimes you can even turn it off completely.

And I promise you, it takes a weight off your shoulders.

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Related links in the archives:

• Emptiness and Creation
• The Present and Action
• What Shines in the Future

Not a fan of cocktail parties / social events / meetups? Terrible at networking? Perfect.

Whether it's finding love, friends, or a collaborator, I now always apply the same technique that transformed my relationship with groups:

Start by talking to the first person next to you.

Right away. Whoever it is. About anything.

Don't scan the room for the ideal conversation partner. Don't filter by attraction or compatibility. Don't wait for a particular topic or common interests.

Dive into the conversation, then naturally continue with the "next first person" – if they haven't already joined the conversation. And so on.

Before you know it, the person you were looking for (sometimes unconsciously) will be right beside you. And you won't have to figure out what to say because, when you realize it's them, you'll already be in the middle of a conversation.

You're welcome.

I had already done this three years ago: publishing one video per day.

Back then, I had gotten into the habit of publishing ten minutes of improvisation every evening "to loosen up". To see if I could speak in front of the camera without writing or hiding behind technique.

At the beginning of the year, I started again by publishing one humorous video per day. Then I stopped.

Now, I've decided to do this for 10 years. Yeah.

I'm going to talk about anything, by any means. Sometimes it will be funny. Sometimes I'm going to bore you with my beatnik ideas. We'll see.

You can follow me on Instagram (where I also post stories), YouTube or TikTok.

I talk about it in this video.

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Related links in the archives:

• How I broke TikTok

We often feel that to advance, especially professionally, we have to pretend. Say the right words. Put on the right smiles. Hide our true thoughts.

That's the wrong approach.

Your personal and professional success depends entirely on your ability to integrate who you really are into every aspect of your life.

It's the source of your inner peace. But also the source of your productivity, your value, and therefore your usefulness to others. No one will pay you very much for being just like everyone else.

The good news is that this can be learned. All the people you admire have at some point gone through these stages in one form or another:

1. Discovering who you are on your own. Identifying what external gazes weigh on you. Exploring and embracing your vision, your taste, your ambitions.
    
2. Learning to maintain this identity in public and under pressure. Developing strategies and safeguards to avoid conforming and preserve your value.

"Being yourself in a freakish environment, that's the real skill." – Conan O'Brien

If you're wondering where all the professional content went (offers, services, etc.), I've transferred everything to chezfilms.fr – which will itself be transferred to chezfilms.com.

And if you're wondering where the funny blog went, it's gone. But we're going to create a new one quickly since I'm going to post here every day. So come back soon. And you can go check out the old blog in the meantime.

So soon, everything will be very clear.

But for now, not so much.

You've reached the end of this blog!

To read older posts from my old site, go here:

archive.boulengerie.com/blog.html

It's a static archive so not everything works: sometimes videos don't display and links may be outdated. But the text and images are all there.

I'm coming to think that only presence matters. That there is, ultimately, no right or wrong action, no right or wrong decision: only good or bad reasons to act.

But what does it mean, exactly, to "be in the present"?

Physically, of course, we can't be anywhere else. No one has yet set foot in the past or the future. So technically, we're all "in the present." But we can be in the present without being "in the flow" of the present.

Being in the flow of the present means receiving and allowing ourselves to be transformed by what happens at each moment.

When all goes well, events, sensations, and thoughts arise, run their course, then disappear. This short cycle allows us to be constantly open to what arrives here and now. We can receive the next ray of sunshine, the next idea, or the next conversation because we haven't remained stuck on the previous content. Everything constantly renews itself in interaction with the context.

Yet often, we get stuck.

We "cling" to an idea, a thought, or an anxiety that, consciously or unconsciously, we loop endlessly. This vortex occupies all mental space: the rays of sunshine and the next conversations are blocked outside. The present continues to unfold but we no longer take it into account; we no longer allow ourselves to be transformed by what arrives. We are "stuck" at the point in the past where the thought we're maintaining was formed.

Buddhists call this an attachment.

I am "attached" to mental content like a boat would be tied to the shore. The result is the same: I am no longer carried by the flow of the current.

A few examples of attachment. One: I need to get to a certain place for a certain reason. The journey is just an unimportant transition period between me and my goal. Any event that delays me is an obstacle. I'm too attached to the destination to be open to what's happening. Two: I've decided to say something specific to someone. The conversation is just a necessary passage to trigger the reaction I want. I'm too attached to the outcome of the exchange to be open to the human being in front of me. Three: I've decided that a certain event must happen in a certain way. Any deviation from my predictions is a failure. I'm too attached to my vision to be open to what's actually happening—including the good surprises.

In each case, I favor the idea over reality; I'm too attached to my mental construction to receive—and therefore compose with and benefit from—what actually occurs.

Now, I'm coming to think that nothing is more important than being in this flow of the present. It's surely more important than the action itself.

By that, I mean it's impossible to judge the quality of an action without real presence. If I'm stuck in a mental space that isn't being updated, all the indicators I look at to make my decisions are outdated. I'm reacting to a vision of the world constructed in the past rather than the one manifesting before me.

Conversely, when I'm in the flow, there's no longer a decision to make. The gesture, like a reflex, adapts to the situation. There's no longer a right or wrong decision. Only action.

Thus, my role is not to think intellectually about what should be done, nor to seek the ideal solution. It doesn't exist. My role is to gently untie, one by one, each attachment I encounter. Then let the current do its work.

UPDATE: If you have doubts, here's a nice confirmation by Francis Sanzaro in this New York Times article. For English speakers.

First, let's be clear: I'm not religious in the slightest.

Despite being baptized, having received communion, and then confirmation, I dropped it all around the age of twelve and the years have only consolidated my rejection of all organized religion.

When asked, I answer that I'm agnostic and atheist—which may seem contradictory. Agnostic because I haven't toured the universe and there could well be something, for all I know. A meaning, an equation, a metaphysics that we might choose to personalize and call God. Why not. But fundamentally, I think we cannot know and we might as well not worry about it—which constitutes the strong version of agnosticism.

But—and here's my atheist side—even if there is indeed something up there, I'm convinced it has nothing to do with what religions, past or present, have been trying to sell us for centuries. For me, the Bible, Torah, Quran and their ilk are bad fiction used to maintain a form of control.

That's where we're starting from.

Yet, in recent years, I've discovered a certain spirituality in myself.

Spirituality would be for me the connection with something greater than oneself—without it necessarily being a god.

It could be a connection with nature, for example.

I'm speaking of nature in the extended sense: that great whole that has existed since the big bang, probably before, which gave birth to galaxies, stars, planets, which allowed the emergence of life in all its forms: bacteria, plants, animals. This gigantic soup in perpetual transformation which, through laws we're only beginning to understand, is at the origin of everything we know. That certain parts of this whole develop their own consciousness and are capable of experiencing themselves and the world, that this physico-chemical-biological complexity gives birth to such simplicity of experience ("I am") which allows each being to unroll the thread of its life without needing to understand the underlying mechanisms, I find there's a magic in that. A mystery, at the very least. A beauty, certainly.

But above all: this small bit of spirituality is enough to define a boundary between the profane and the sacred.

The profane vision of the world would be to see down here only an accumulation of matter and physical laws from which we should seize to make our fortune. There would be no mystery anywhere, no question, no wonder and from there, no respect to cultivate toward anything. Only resources to exploit. Life would then be just another fuel in service of our vision of comfort and progress.

The antithesis of this idea, so well defended by Bernard Stiegler in this video I recently discovered, also brings me back to what Alan Watts said on the subject.

Namely that humanity's relationship to nature is built on a double misconception. The first: that our role would be to dominate nature. Fight and master the elements to impose our will. The second: that we would be in a position to save it. That the planet—or certain parts of the planet—would need us to continue to be. These two options, far from being equivalent in their effects, stem at their source from the omission of the same fundamental truth:

We are nature.

We, human beings, are as much nature as cows, trees, ants, or dolphins. We're made of the same matter, born from the same evolution—physical and biological—and are destined to disappear under similar conditions. (For example: by transforming our ecosystem beyond the limits of our own survival—which, in the history of species, is nothing new.)

This doesn't mean there's no difference between humans and other species. Of course there is. But when we return to the fundamentals—living, surviving, finding meaning—it seems to me that our belonging to life is a better analytical lens than what separates us from it.

Because if we are nature, nothing we do can be against nature.

We are part of the great whole. The difficulties we encounter are part of the great game. And the mystery and magic at work in the universe are also expressed through us.

Two pillars of Buddhism recently explored through reading the wonderful Seeing that Frees by (the late) Rob Burbea, listening to lectures by James Low whom I discovered recently, and, tirelessly, through recordings of Alan Watts who never ceases to amaze me.

Emptiness doesn't mean there's nothing.

For good reason: we see, we hear, we feel. We imagine. Whatever the origin of these perceptions and the nature of the reality that produces them, we can agree on this: we do experience something. So no: there isn't nothing.

However, as soon as we focus on any particular subject—a tree, a chair, a passerby—we discover that it's extremely difficult to define anything independently of everything else.

The tree, for example. What makes a tree a tree?

Easy! Let's see... A trunk. Branches. Leaves. Roots... And there you have it?

Question: is the soil around the roots part of the tree? Answer: no! The soil is the soil; the tree is the tree—they're two separate things. Fair enough. However, have we ever seen a tree without soil? And if there's no tree without soil, is it really reasonable to exclude one from the definition of the other? Along the same lines, is the air part of the tree? Before answering, remember that wood comes from carbon in the air trapped through photosynthesis. ("Trees don't grow out of the ground, Feynman said, they grow out of the air.") And, to take the reasoning to its conclusion, since there's no tree without photosynthesis, and no photosynthesis without the sun, shouldn't the sun be integrated into the definition as well?

And the form itself, the color of the leaves, the smells of wood and chlorophyll, the roughness of the trunk—would any of this make sense if there weren't, in the same world, beings endowed with sight, smell, and touch to experience it? Therefore, are these characteristics inherent to the tree or inherent to those who perceive them? Is green a property of the leaves or a property of our visual cortex when we look at a leaf? And in that case, is it really reasonable to exclude ourselves from the definition?

tree (n.): A piece of universe made of soil, air, and sun whose leaves are green when certain animals look at them.

That's why for Buddhists, particularly in the Dzogchen tradition, nothing exists independently of everything else.

To think of the tree without soil, the object without context, the part without the whole, is to create concepts that mask the true nature of things. Of course, sometimes it's quite practical. Our brains not being infinitely expandable, we need to simplify. When I choose my socks in the morning, I don't think every day about the cosmic connection linking each fiber of the fabric to the rest of the universe. I take the striped ones because they smell less.

The problem arises when we forget that concepts are concepts.

My sock, like the tree, has no inherent essence, no cardinal characteristic that could be isolated from the rest, no "sockness" that exists independently of the world and observers. That's what Buddhists call "emptiness": the absence of inherent essence.

So when, for the sake of convenience, I consider my sock as a separate entity, I create a concept. And why not: if it makes my life easier, so much the better. But when I mistake this concept for reality, that's when things go south. I forget that the word "sock" is only an internal representation of a piece of the whole which, on all levels—physically, biologically, historically—cannot be separated from the rest. In doing so, I create an object that doesn't exist. Out of nothing, I've populated my reality with a new element that impacts my worldview and my actions. That's what "fabrication" is.

The problem with fabrication? It isolates.

By conceptualizing each phenomenon as a separate entity, everything seems disconnected from everything. Objects from each other. People from each other. Oneself from others. The world from oneself. We forget that this separation between each thing is only an idea we've manufactured ourselves to smooth over daily life. From it spring a certain loneliness, competition, a desire for control.

The goal of meditation, particularly in the practice of non-duality, is to deconstruct these concepts one by one in order to perceive the world again as it is: Whole. Singular. Present. And of which, just like trees and socks, we are an integral part.

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Related:

• My sources