In 2011, at 26, I had a tattoo.
I’ll show it to you so you can understand what I’m talking about.
Here he is, he is right there in real life.
So this tattoo is a code, it’s a secret.
Apart from my mother and a few friends,
I never meant what he represents.
But tonight I’ll tell you all what it means.
This code is the date of my thirtieth birthday.
October 20, 2014.
The date I promised myself to have accomplished
a whole list of specific goals in my career,
and the date on which I promised myself that I had fulfilled some of my dreams.
Only, here, the closer I got to my thirties
and that I began to realize my dreams,
the more I felt lost and I began to doubt.
The day of my thirtieth birthday, I was completely lost.
So now, with a little bit of distance,
I realize that everything on this list does not interest me,
even saddens me,
and above all, I have new desires and a new vision of ambition.
So my mother asked me if I regretted obviously,
and there, I realized to have the chance to have the biggest lesson of my life
printed on me until my death.
So, it’s practical,
in the mornings, when I’m doing deo, I know why I’m here.
So, has it ever happened to you to want something at all costs,
give everything to get there, dream day and night,
achieve your goals, have it
and then feeling dissatisfied and wanting something else.
What if our dreams were not quite ours?
And if our ambitions and our expectations
away from what makes us really happy?
And if the present society conditioned us from childhood
to a certain vision of success and ambition?
So, I’ve always loved theater.
Small, at recess, I preferred to stay in the classroom
to make small sketches with a girlfriend.
I liked to disguise myself, to repeat,
but from there to make a career, I’m less sure.
Okay, so now
I realize that what I liked was communicating and sharing.
Besides, that’s why I’m here tonight.
My goals and ambitions have been influenced like everyone else,
by one, my social and cultural conditioning,
and two, my personal story.
So, for my part,
I grew up feeling that I was not respected,
protected and heard.
So, I took refuge in what I saw on TV and in magazines.
And then, I quickly understood
that more people had success and possessions
and the more they were considered.
So obviously, I needed to be reassured and seen,
I tried to copy what society imposed on us as success.
And since artists are admired and I sing like a pan
and that I was already doing theater, I thought, “I’m going to do that”.
I will show the world what I can do.
I chose my dreams to soothe my childhood wounds.
So for over 10 years, I was an actress.
I made TV series for TF1 and France 2,
and then at 26, I went to Los Angeles to realize my dreams,
those of the tattoo,
and I said, “I want to be an actress in Hollywood. “
So there, I started living the lifestyle I had always dreamed of.
I even got roles in American movies.
So, I did not finish at the top of the poster anyway,
but, I shot with actors I admired.
But to tell you the truth, the more I shot, the more bored I was.
I could see the difference between me
and then the actors who were there by pure passion.
It was completely different.
So, I was frustrated and I had other desires
and most importantly, I was ashamed.
I was ashamed because I was afraid my entourage would judge me
and see that as a failure.
I still sacrificed 10 years of my life for that,
I was not going to change my mind now.
So, I started acting
at the same time as the arrival of social networks.
Around 20 years old
I’m part of the millennials generation,
I became an adult with internet,
mobile phones and social networks.
It affected me a lot more than I thought.
So be careful, tonight, I’m not here to criticize the internet,
it’s an incredible way to bring together, create and evolve our societies.
But are we really aware
what is unfolding before our eyes right now and its impact?
Instagram and Facebook walls, Google searches,
News on news sites with ads –
and all that is to mention a few –
are all filtered by algorithms.
So, everything we see and everything we hear all day,
was indirectly programmed for us.
Facebook, which is about two billion members,
was recently charged by former employees
to manipulate our emotions and our decisions.
A former Facebook executive even said in the press not long ago:
“Your behavior, you do not realize, are programmed. “
They want to stay on their platform.
Social networks cause addictions
comparable to alcohol, tobacco and drugs.
And what are we doing during this time?
Well, we post pictures and we write every day.
We stage our lives.
Not only must we face our ego,
but in addition, we have to deal with the ego of everyone, all the time.
Society pushes us to idealize the lives of others
and to believe that we are not enough …
We are not young enough, not old enough, not rich enough, not poor enough,
not enough zen, not enough brown, not enough unicorn,
me, all that it did, is that I lost completely confidence in myself.
I started wanting to do things that did not fit me
and which were the opposite of my values.
I admired, I judged, I compared myself and then I liked, I liked.
So when it was wrong, I was posting a selfie.
A few hours later, I felt better
because there was the rush of all the likes.
And of course, the evening arrived, I felt badly
and there, I had to re-post. So, it did not stop.
The problem when I posted a tampered selfie,
it was that I sent the message to my entourage and to the young people,
that the only way to be considered,
it is to rely on superficial values.
I will show you an example.
Here.
This first photo,
I posted it three years ago at the last photoshoot I did.
Last professional photoshoot.
She had 461 likes.
So, in this picture, everything is wrong.
I was makeup and combed for two hours,
my skin is retouched,
I look safe and sexy while I’m cold.
And the only reason I accepted this photoshoot,
it was because I knew I would get lathered
and it was going to boost my confidence.
The second, I posted it six months later.
I posted it with a text that accompanied him
to explain what was happening.
I met this man
during a visit to a program against illiteracy in Nepal.
So, we were all together
with a group of women participating in the program.
And then, this man was all alone in the back of the class.
After a while, he approached, he was in front of the painting
and he began to write a word very softly.
There, he turned around and he said to us: “All my life, I felt stupid.
But today, I can read and write. “
So obviously, he was asked what he preferred.
And there, he told us, “I can write my name. “
In five words, this man taught me
what was determination, courage and humility.
This post had 68 likes.
The appearance, the perfection, the competition are intensified
at the expense of compassion, acceptance and reality.
According to Facebook, 100 million videos
are watched every day on their platform.
Common Sense Media showed that teenagers spent on average
nine hours a day to consume media.
And Pew Research Center shows that 24% of teens
are constantly on their cell phones connected to the internet.
So, how can a teenager discover who he is,
develop your personality, feel free to choose,
if he is constantly under the influence of social networks and the media?
The world wants us to believe
that success is like superficial values, money and power.
And the problem with that,
is that some of us, and me first,
we forget the impact of this vision on the environment and our societies.
So, our ambitions are to produce more and more,
to sell more and more, to consume more and more.
The success of a company
is only based on his financial success
and the human and environmental impact is no longer part of the balance.
This is obviously not sustainable.
So, do you also want more sense?
Do you also want to make a revolution?
One, all together, we could limit and prevent
to reduce our dissatisfactions, our depressions
and also conditioning.
We could reduce our access to media and social networks.
So, it seems easy, but for all you admit,
I am right in it.
It was my resolution of 2018, it is the 12th of January
and I’ve already cracked about 372 times.
So, do not take example on me.
Tristan Harris, former Google Ethics Designer,
advise to set very precise schedules to go on the internet.
And the most important thing is not to look at our laptops, our emails,
social networks and news, the morning when waking up.
So it sounds innocuous, and yet it increases our sense of lack.
Because unconsciously,
it feels like you’ve missed everything during the night.
Two, second step: love.
Maybe we could reconnect to ourselves,
to others and to the environment.
The time we have gained in reducing our consumption of the media,
one could pass it to practice self-reflection and mindfulness.
What helped me a lot was meditation.
Take time for me and walk in nature.
Nature, we often forget, is a very good guide.
It humbly reminds us of our place in this world.
It soothes us, it inspires us.
And also, what we could do is have a drink at the local coffee shop
with his neighbor instead of talking to him for 30 minutes on Messenger.
All these little techniques and tools,
it allows us to rediscover who we are and especially to remove the mask.
So self-reflection, it allowed me to face my fears
and most importantly, stop fleeing.
I started to accept my imperfection,
my vulnerability and especially my lack of love.
And love has become my act of rebellion against the system.
The third step.
Redefining success in a world that more than ever needs us.
We could perhaps use our buttons like, I like and play
conscientiously.
We could highlight the people who put all their energy
to preserve the environment and to bring our societies together,
instead of admiring the stars of a day on Instagram and Twitter.
Do you know that the Dalai Lama has less than a million followers
and that a reality star has more than 104 million on Instagram?
So maybe we could put our technologies and social networks
a little more in the service of values.
Serving service, innovations, science, well-being.
And then we could create the society in which we want to live
and not the one that the consumer society imposes on us.
And if success was to be honest,
to have ethics, to find meaning?
What if success was to move from our values to action?
And if success was to protect our planet
rather than destroy it?
And then give up each other rather than being in competition.
And if success, it was not ultimately to be happy,
to love and do the least harm possible?
So from the selfie to the service, from the ecosystem to the ecosystem,
from competition to altruism,
Future note appears when you decide to create it.
Two years ago, I had an idea,
I thought, I’m going to do a documentary.
I asked a friend, Marine Billet, to co-direct it with me.
This documentary is a quest on four continents
about love and its impact in the world.
We want to try to show which society could emerge
if we reconnected with love.
This documentary is called “I Love Therefore I Am”.
Since then, my life is a great adventure.
So I dream a lot less, but I live much more.
I accepted myself.
I went to the realization, I write,
I fight for causes that make me vibrate,
and for that, I stopped everything, I let everything go.
I dropped my career, my house, I found myself without a thune.
I did not have enough to pay rent.
So, I put all my life in 17 boxes in a furniture storage
and I went from sofa to couch for 18 months
with two suitcases and my dog.
Two years later, we are still producing documentaries.
I always have a dog, I do not sleep on sofas,
but I am really happy.
So now, I have two questions for you:
what are your dreams, the real ones?
And are you ready to make your revolution?
(Applause)
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