Hello, very very dear friends! Thank you for joining me for this new episode of Walk With Johan. It is a great pleasure to have you with me for this walk. Today, like every Wednesday, we are going to talk about a subject of personal development. We are going to talk about our biggest mistake, for all or almost all of us. Many of us make this mistake, I think. And you will tell me if this is your case.
Before that, I really invite you, at the end of the year, to join the waiting list of the Authentic French Academy . And if you are not yet a member, I wonder: What are you waiting for? What are you waiting for to join us? Many members join us and say: "Ah, I waited too long and I say to myself now that I am a member: why didn't I join the academy months ago?" So, don't make this mistake, join us as soon as registration opens. For the moment, it is closed, but you can join us by following the... or you can in any case join the waiting list by following the link in the description. It is simply www.francaisauthentique.com/academie . It will be a pleasure to meet you in person.
There's a bit of wind picking up for this episode. Luckily, I'm well equipped with my microphone, but I think, I'll choose another path anyway. I'm in the forest and, at the end of the year, it's very windy.
Today I would like to talk to you about a quote that I really liked, and it is from Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was an American essayist, philosopher, poet and even lecturer. He lived in the 19th iran whatsapp number data century. He is very well-known, very renowned. He influenced a lot of great thinkers, both American and other nationalities. And in fact, the quote that I am going to talk to you about, it makes us aware of a big mistake that we tend to make.
So, the quote, I'll quote it from memory. So, it may not be perfect, but in any case, translated quotes are never perfect. At worst, it would be a paraphrase. So, he says that being yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you someone else is the greatest accomplishment. I repeat: "Being yourself, therefore, being ourselves, in a world that is constantly trying to make you someone else is the greatest accomplishment."
So what does he mean by that? Well, quite simply, the world we live in is trying directly or indirectly to influence us, to change our way of being, to change our way of thinking, to change what we like, to change what we don't like. So, we are constantly trying to influence ourselves. Besides, the term didn't exist at his time at Emerson, this term, but the term "influencers", today, on social networks, that's actually what it is. It's that we have people who influence, that is to say who tell us what to think on social networks or who tell us what to buy.
That's why they make a lot of money, because brands say to themselves: "OK, you're an influencer, you have people who follow you, who admire you, so you're going to promote my product, because people will say to themselves: If you buy it, well they're going to buy it." So, that's what influencers are, they influence.
So we are constantly trying to influence and influence ourselves to be someone else. And that's what Emerson says: "The world is always trying to make us someone else. And the greatest accomplishment is to be yourself."
I had spoken of a very famous… I think he was a poet, a Latin poet writer, Pindar… who said: “Become who you are”. That’s great. That sums up Emerson’s thinking. “Become who you are”. That means, in fact, you are someone, you have a way of being, of thinking, well become that person or remain that person in any case.
And one of our biggest mistakes, beyond being influenced, is to succumb to what we call the shiny object. The shiny object is to say to ourselves: "Ah, if I had this, if I had this object, if I had this thing, then my life would be better". Or: "Ah, if I used this tool, then my life would be better". Or: "Ah, if I did this thing, this activity on a daily basis, then my life would be better". You see, that's what the shiny object syndrome is, it's seeing something, it can be an object in the literal sense, a physical, material object, but it can also be a concept, a philosophy, a tool on the Internet, whatever, well we say to ourselves: "Ah, that, that shines, I see it, and I know that that, that's going to change my life, that's going to improve my life, quite simply".
We have a French proverb, and quite often, you know, proverbs or little... little... yes, proverbs, idiomatic expressions are much deeper than we think. In French, we say: "The grass is always greener elsewhere." That means that we tend to always think that it's better elsewhere. If we live in France, we'll say: "In such and such a country, it's better." If we live in another country, we'll say: "In France, it's better." So, we have this proverb: "The grass is greener elsewhere," because green grass, well, it nourishes better, so, it's better. And we've all, at some point, come across it.