Speaker 1: Imagine this. You spend your entire life trying to fit in.
Speaker 1: You mold your speech, your clothes, your choices, all in
Speaker 1: pursuit of approval. You bend to expectations that aren't even yours,
Speaker 1: and little by little you drift away from who you
Speaker 1: really are. You fear being judged, You seek validation in
Speaker 1: glances that change with every season, and you cling to
Speaker 1: the idea that your worth depends on how the world
Speaker 1: sees you. But what if everything you've been taught about
Speaker 1: caring too much is actually what's keeping you from living.
Speaker 1: What if the key to confidence, to freedom, and even
Speaker 1: to success isn't in control, but precisely in letting go
Speaker 1: of control. Michel de Montaigne, a sixteenth century thinker, deeply
Speaker 1: explored this paradox. Montaigne was a French aristocrat who lived
Speaker 1: between fifteen thirty three and fifteen ninety two, during a
Speaker 1: time of religious wars and brutal uncertainties. He could have
Speaker 1: become just another nobleman forgotten by history, But twenty eight
Speaker 1: years old after his father's death and tired of public life,
Speaker 1: he did something radical. He withdrew to the tower of
Speaker 1: his castle, surrounded himself with books, and began to write
Speaker 1: about himself, not to glorify himself, but to understand himself.
Speaker 1: He invented the essay as a literary form a word
Speaker 1: that comes from essayer to try to experiment, and for
Speaker 1: years he wrote about everything from friendship to thumbs, from
Speaker 1: death to fear, always with brutal honesty and a willingness
Speaker 1: to admit his own contradictions, his own mistakes, his own
Speaker 1: fallible humanity. He didn't want to teach absolute truths. He
Speaker 1: wanted to explore what it means to be human, and
Speaker 1: in this he was ruthless with himself and liberating for
Speaker 1: anyone who reads him. Have you ever stopped to think
Speaker 1: about how many decisions you make each day thinking about
Speaker 1: what others will think. How many times do you bite
Speaker 1: your tongue, hide what you feel, adjust your tie of voice,
Speaker 1: change your opinion. The need to please is an invisible prison.
Speaker 1: It lives inside you, in the way you respond to
Speaker 1: a message, in the clothes you choose to wear, in
Speaker 1: how you behave on social media, in that constant fear
Speaker 1: of making mistakes, of saying too much, of saying too little,
Speaker 1: of being too much or too little. And the worst
Speaker 1: part is that This prison was built over years, brick
Speaker 1: by brick. Every time someone told you that you were
Speaker 1: too sensitive, too dramatic, too weird, every time you were
Speaker 1: punished for being authentic and rewarded for being convenient. Life
Speaker 1: keeps teaching you that safety comes from molding yourself, from adjusting,
Speaker 1: from never standing out too much or too little. You
Speaker 1: became your own jailer, watching every step, analyzing every word,
Speaker 1: living in a mental courtroom where you're simultaneously the defendant,
Speaker 1: the prosecutor, and the judge, and the sentence is always
Speaker 1: the same. You're not enough. You need to do more,
Speaker 1: be more more. This internal surveillance is often crueler than
Speaker 1: any external judgment could be, because it's relentless. It never
Speaker 1: gives you a break. It's there all the time, commenting, criticizing,
Speaker 1: pointing out everything you did wrong, everything you could have
Speaker 1: done better, everything people might be thinking about you. You
Speaker 1: spend the whole day in an exhausting mental conversation about
Speaker 1: how you're being perceived, about whether you're doing enough, about
Speaker 1: whether you measure up. We learn early on that acceptance
Speaker 1: comes with a price, and that price is giving up
Speaker 1: parts of yourself. You start monitoring every word before speaking,
Speaker 1: calculating every gesture, measuring every reaction to make sure you're safe,
Speaker 1: that you won't be seen badly, that you won't lose
Speaker 1: that approval that seems so essential. And at first this
Speaker 1: seems smart, seems prudent, seems like a way to navigate
Speaker 1: the world without getting hurt. But over time you realize
Speaker 1: you're living a life that isn't yours, that you're following
Speaker 1: a script written by other people, playing a role you
Speaker 1: never wanted but don't know how to exit anymore. You
Speaker 1: wake up in the morning and you're already thinking about
Speaker 1: how you'll present yourself, what version of you you'll use today,
Speaker 1: how you'll manage the impressions you'll make. And this is exhausting.
Speaker 1: This keeps you always performing, never really present. It's like
Speaker 1: you're constantly on stage, always on, always alert, always measuring
Speaker 1: the effect of every word, every gesture. You have one
Speaker 1: version for work, another for family, another for friends, another
Speaker 1: for social media, and in none of these places are
Speaker 1: you really whole. You're just representing what you think each
Speaker 1: context demands of you. Eventually, there comes a point where
Speaker 1: you look in the mirror and don't recognize the person
Speaker 1: looking back anymore. You've built so many edited versions of
Speaker 1: yourself that you've lost contact with the original, and now
Speaker 1: you don't know who you are anymore when no one's watching.
Speaker 1: But here's the cruel paradox. By trying to avoid judgment,
Speaker 1: you end up creating a life so small, so safe,
Speaker 1: that deep down your judging yourself all the time, condemning
Speaker 1: yourself for not having courage, for not having dared. You
Speaker 1: avoided others judgment, but created an even harsher internal judgment.
Speaker 1: And now you're stuck between two pains, the pain of
Speaker 1: risking and possibly being judged, and the pain of not
Speaker 1: risking and having to live with the weight of what
Speaker 1: you didn't do. And of the two, perhaps the second
Speaker 1: is heavier, because it's a pain that accumulates over time,
Speaker 1: until one day you look back and realize you spent
Speaker 1: your whole life afraid to live. We're taught from an
Speaker 1: early age that controlling things is a sign of intelligence, maturity, responsibility.
Speaker 1: If you plan well, if you try hard enough, if
Speaker 1: you do everything right, then the results will come and
Speaker 1: life will be exactly as you imagined. That's the big
Speaker 1: lie they sell us, the idea that there's total control
Speaker 1: over existence, that you're the director of your life's movie,
Speaker 1: and if you just follow the right script, everything will
Speaker 1: turn out perfect. And so you live trying to control everything,
Speaker 1: what people think of you, what will happen tomorrow, how
Speaker 1: others will react to your choices, whether that project will
Speaker 1: work out, whether that person will love you, whether you'll
Speaker 1: manage to avoid suffering. But the truth is that life
Speaker 1: doesn't work that way. Life is absurdly unpredictable. It doesn't
Speaker 1: obey your plans. It doesn't care how much you worried
Speaker 1: or planned. It just happens, with all its randomness, with
Speaker 1: all its cruelty and beauty. Simultaneously, you can do everything
Speaker 1: right and things can still go wrong. You can prepare
Speaker 1: for everything and still be surprised. You can build perfect plans,
Speaker 1: and life can come with something you never imagined and
Speaker 1: dismantle everything in seconds. And the more you try to control,
Speaker 1: the more anxious you get, because deep down you know
Speaker 1: it's not working. You know you're spending brutal energy trying
Speaker 1: to hold onto something that slips through your fingers, trying
Speaker 1: to tame something that by nature is tameable. And the
Speaker 1: more you try to control, the more anxious you get,
Speaker 1: because deep down. You know it's not working. You know
Speaker 1: you're spending brutal energy trying to hold on to something
Speaker 1: that slips through your fingers, trying to tame something that
Speaker 1: by nature is untameable. You're in a perpetual state of alert,
Speaker 1: always trying to anticipate the next problem, always trying to
Speaker 1: prepare for the next threat, always trying to ensure nothing
Speaker 1: goes off the script you created in your head. It's
Speaker 1: like living in a war that never ends, where you're
Speaker 1: both the soldier and the enemy, where you're constantly defending
Speaker 1: yourself against threats that often don't even exist. And this
Speaker 1: isn't living, this is just surviving. It's always being in
Speaker 1: defense mode, always tense, always worried, never really present, because
Speaker 1: you're too busy trying to control a future that hasn't
Speaker 1: even arrived yet. You wake up already planning how you'll
Speaker 1: deal with a thousand possible scenarios. You go to sleep
Speaker 1: reviewing what went wrong and what you could have done differently.
Speaker 1: And between these two moments, you live in constant tension,
Speaker 1: in a perpetual attempt to keep everything under control, to
Speaker 1: be sure you're safe, that nothing will fall apart, but
Speaker 1: that security you seek never comes because it's conditioned on
Speaker 1: something impossible, controlling the uncontrollable. But let's go deeper with
Speaker 1: Montaigne himself. He wasn't a philosopher who built grand systems
Speaker 1: or promised absolute truths. He was simply a man who
Speaker 1: observed life with brutal honesty and tried to understand what
Speaker 1: it means to be human. He withdrew to his tower,
Speaker 1: surrounded by books and began to write essays, a word
Speaker 1: that comes from the French essayer, which means to try
Speaker 1: to experiment. He wasn't trying to teach, He was trying
Speaker 1: to understand. He wasn't preaching truths. He was exploring doubts.
Speaker 1: He wrote essays about everything, about friendship, about death, about habits,
Speaker 1: about vanity, about cruelty, about drunkenness, about thumbs, about everything
Speaker 1: a human being can experience or think, And in all
Speaker 1: of them there's a lucidity that unsettles because it doesn't
Speaker 1: allow you to hide behind pretty narratives about yourself. Montaigne
Speaker 1: looks you in the eyes and says, you're not as
Speaker 1: rational as you think. You don't have as much control
Speaker 1: as you imagine. You're not special in the way you'd
Speaker 1: like to be, and at the same time you're completely unique,
Speaker 1: completely worthy of compassion, completely human with everything that implies.
Speaker 1: He strips you of illusions, but not to humiliate you,
Speaker 1: but to free you. Because when you stop pretending to
Speaker 1: be something you're not, when you accept the human condition,
Speaker 1: in all its imperfection, something changes. You. Breathe differently, you
Speaker 1: live differently. You stop demanding that you be a god
Speaker 1: and start living as the fallible human you always were.
Speaker 1: Now a real story that changed everything for him, Montaigne
Speaker 1: had a horse accident that almost killed him, and he
Speaker 1: described this experience in detail in the essay called of Practice.
Speaker 1: He tells how he was thrown from the horse, how
Speaker 1: he fell violently, how he lost consciousness, vomited blood, and
Speaker 1: thought he was dying, But upon regaining consciousness, he realized
Speaker 1: something surprising. The approach of death was gentle, almost pleasurable,
Speaker 1: nothing like the terror he imagined in that moment. His
Speaker 1: life literally hung by a thread, depending on factors completely
Speaker 1: out of his control. A frightened horse, a misstep, and
Speaker 1: everything can change. Everything can end without any preparation, without
Speaker 1: any farewell ritual, without any chance to say the things
Speaker 1: you always wanted to say that accident dismantled any fantasy
Speaker 1: of absolute control he might have had. He saw in
Speaker 1: practice how fragile life is, how powerful chances, how we're
Speaker 1: not really in charge of anything. Montaigne wrote, to philosophize
Speaker 1: is to learn to die, But in practice death surprises
Speaker 1: us without the drama we imagine. And this wasn't a
Speaker 1: desperate revelation for him. It was liberating, because when you
Speaker 1: understand that you don't control everything, you stop torturing yourself
Speaker 1: trying to control, You stop spending energy on impossible battles.
Speaker 1: You start living with more lightness, more presence, more acceptance
Speaker 1: of what is. Life's fragility isn't a defect to be corrected.
Speaker 1: It's the very nature of existence. And when you accept that,
Speaker 1: when you look at it without running away, something inside
Speaker 1: you calms down. You stop resisting the inevitable and start
Speaker 1: embracing what's here. Now, most of the disasters you fear
Speaker 1: will never happen. Let that sink in slowly, because it's
Speaker 1: a truth we constantly ignore. You spend most of your
Speaker 1: life suffering over things that don't exist, over scenarios you invented,
Speaker 1: over conversations that never happened over rejections you imagined. Montaigne
Speaker 1: himself wrote something that echoes through the centuries. The man
Speaker 1: who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.
Speaker 1: He realized that most human suffering doesn't come from things
Speaker 1: that actually happen, but from things we imagine will happen.
Speaker 1: You create a movie in your head where everything goes wrong,
Speaker 1: where you're humiliated, where you lose everything, and then you
Speaker 1: live that movie as if it were real. You feel
Speaker 1: the pain of it, you despair over it when it
Speaker 1: never existed outside your mind. How many times have you
Speaker 1: already spent weeks worrying about something that, in the end
Speaker 1: wasn't anything like what you imagined. How many nights of
Speaker 1: sleep have you lost creating catastrophic scenarios in your head
Speaker 1: that never materialized. How many times have you not done
Speaker 1: something you wanted because you were convinced it would go
Speaker 1: wrong and later saw that fear was unfounded, that you
Speaker 1: created a giant obstacle out of nothing. The human mind
Speaker 1: has this impressive ability to take a remote possibility and
Speaker 1: turn it into a terrifying certainty. You feel a pain
Speaker 1: in your body, and you're already imagining yourself with a
Speaker 1: terminal disease. You send a message and the person doesn't respond,
Speaker 1: and you're already creating a thousand stories about why they
Speaker 1: hate you. You have an important meeting, and you spend
Speaker 1: days imagining everything that can go wrong, all the ways
Speaker 1: you can humiliate yourself, all the ways people will judge you,
Speaker 1: And even when something really does go wrong, often it's
Speaker 1: nowhere near as terrible as you imagined. You survive, You adapt,
Speaker 1: you move on because human capacity to deal with adversity
Speaker 1: is much greater than you usually give yourself credit for.
Speaker 1: You're much more resilient than you think. You've already been
Speaker 1: through things that at the time you thought you wouldn't handle,
Speaker 1: And look at you here, still alive, still trying, still
Speaker 1: capable of feeling and loving and starting over. Anticipatory suffering
Speaker 1: is one of the most destructive habits we have because
Speaker 1: it robs us of the only time that really exists,
Speaker 1: which is now, and traps us in hypothetical futures that
Speaker 1: most of the time never materialize. Your sacrif vicing the
Speaker 1: present because of a future that probably won't even happen
Speaker 1: the way you imagine. Trying to control everything has a
Speaker 1: brutal energy cost that we rarely stop to calculate. Think
Speaker 1: about the amount of mental and emotional energy you spend
Speaker 1: trying to control what people think of you, trying to
Speaker 1: anticipate all possible scenarios, trying to ensure everything turns out
Speaker 1: exactly as you planned. Its energy that could be being
Speaker 1: used to create, to be present, to truly connect, to
Speaker 1: do things that really matter, but that instead is being
Speaker 1: wasted in an impossible battle against the unpredictable nature of existence.
Speaker 1: You constantly monitor did I say it right? Did the
Speaker 1: person misunderstand? Am I doing enough? Will I succeed? Will
Speaker 1: they like me? Am I measuring up? And this constant surveillance,
Speaker 1: this perpetual effort to keep everything under control, silently wears
Speaker 1: you down, drains your vital energy, transforms you into a
Speaker 1: tired and anxious version of yourself that no longer has
Speaker 1: strength to really live because you're too busy trying to
Speaker 1: manage life, trying to predict life, trying to control life
Speaker 1: instead of simply living it. You spend more time planning
Speaker 1: than doing, more time worrying than enjoying, more time trying
Speaker 1: to avoid suffering than actually experiencing joy. The obsession with
Speaker 1: acceptance is one of the most subtle ways to lose yourself.
Speaker 1: When you live to please, when you mold every part
Speaker 1: of yourself to fit others' expectations, you start wearing masks,
Speaker 1: and eventually you have so many different masks that you
Speaker 1: don't know what your real face is anymore. With this
Speaker 1: person you act one way, With that other person, you
Speaker 1: act another way. On social media, you're a still different version,
Speaker 1: and in each context you're representing what you think that
Speaker 1: environment expects of you. You've lost contact with what's authentic.
Speaker 1: You've adapted so much, adjusted so much that you don't
Speaker 1: know anymore what's true desire and what's desire to be accepted,
Speaker 1: what you really want, and what you want because others
Speaker 1: want it. You start liking things because other people like them,
Speaker 1: wanting things because other people want them, living a life
Speaker 1: that looks like everyone else's but isn't yours. You go
Speaker 1: to the trendy restaurant not because you want to, but
Speaker 1: because it's part of the social game. You read the
Speaker 1: book everyone's talking about, not because it interests you, but
Speaker 1: because it keeps you relevant. You watch the show everyone's watching,
Speaker 1: not because you want to, but because it gives you
Speaker 1: something to talk about, because it makes you belong, because
Speaker 1: it keeps you inside the circle. And then you catch
Speaker 1: yourself in a moment of solitude when you're alone with yourself,
Speaker 1: when there's no one watching you, when you don't need
Speaker 1: to perform for anyone, and you ask yourself, who am
Speaker 1: I when I'm not performing? What do I really want
Speaker 1: when I'm not trying to impress anyone? What life would
Speaker 1: I live if no one were watching? What choices would
Speaker 1: I make if I weren't afraid of judgment? And often
Speaker 1: the answer doesn't come easily because you've spent so much
Speaker 1: time being what others expected, that you've distanced yourself from
Speaker 1: your own center, from your own essence, from your own desires.
Speaker 1: You've built an identity based on external approval, and now
Speaker 1: when you try to find who you are without it,
Speaker 1: there's emptiness, there's confusion, There's a feeling of not knowing
Speaker 1: where to start. External validation never truly satisfies. When you
Speaker 1: finally receive the approval you were seeking so much, When
Speaker 1: someone compliments you, when you get the acceptance you wanted,
Speaker 1: there's a momentary relief, a good feeling that lasts a
Speaker 1: few minutes, maybe a few hours, but that soon fades
Speaker 1: and leaves you exactly where you were, or even worse,
Speaker 1: because now you need to maintain that You need to
Speaker 1: keep pleasing, You need to ensure that approval doesn't disappear.
Speaker 1: And the reason is simple. It's being directed at the mask,
Speaker 1: not at you. People are approving the edited version you presented,
Speaker 1: the performance you gave, not the person you really are.
Speaker 1: You become hostage to that validation. You need it to
Speaker 1: feel minimally good, but it never completely satisfies you because
Speaker 1: it doesn't reach the true core of who you are.
Speaker 1: It doesn't touch the right place. It doesn't fill the
Speaker 1: real void that exists when you don't know yourself, when
Speaker 1: you don't accept yourself. Detachment isn't indifference, and this distinction
Speaker 1: is fundamental to understanding what Montaigne was really saying when
Speaker 1: he talks about detachment. He's not saying for you not
Speaker 1: to care about anything, for you to become an apathetic
Speaker 1: being that doesn't connect with life, for you to become
Speaker 1: cold or distant or uninterested in what happens around you.
Speaker 1: He's talking about clarity, about wisdom, about knowing where to
Speaker 1: place your energy and where to let go about understanding
Speaker 1: what really deserves your attention and what you're pursuing only
Speaker 1: out of fear, out of insecurity, out of neurotic need
Speaker 1: for control. Montaigne reminds us in his essays with a
Speaker 1: phrase that cross the centuries, we lose nothing truly while
Speaker 1: we have ourselves. Detachment isn't in difference. It's wisdom. It's
Speaker 1: understanding that you can make an effort, you can dedicate yourself,
Speaker 1: you can love deeply, you can care intensely, but without
Speaker 1: clinging to results, without making your peace dependent on things
Speaker 1: you don't control, without putting all your identity and all
Speaker 1: your worth in external factors that can change at any moment.
Speaker 1: It's the difference between doing your best because you care
Speaker 1: because it has meaning for you, and doing your best
Speaker 1: because you need a specific result to feel valid, to
Speaker 1: prove your worth, something to justify your existence. It's the
Speaker 1: difference between loving someone because you choose to be near
Speaker 1: because you like who that person is, and loving someone
Speaker 1: because you're afraid of being alone because you need someone
Speaker 1: to feel complete. It's the difference between creating something because
Speaker 1: it moves you because you have something to say, and
Speaker 1: creating something because you need the validation it can bring
Speaker 1: because you want to prove you're talented, that you're special.
Speaker 1: Detachment is freedom. It's acting from what's true for you
Speaker 1: without being trapped by the need for things to be
Speaker 1: a specific way. You can want something, you can work
Speaker 1: for something, you can give your all for something. But
Speaker 1: if it doesn't come, if life takes another direction, if
Speaker 1: things change, you don't fall apart because your peace wasn't
Speaker 1: deposited in that because you didn't put all your identity
Speaker 1: and all your worth in that specific result. You were
Speaker 1: present in the process. You were alive in the journey.
Speaker 1: You weren't just waiting to arrive somewhere to finally allow
Speaker 1: yourself to be okay. And this completely changes how you
Speaker 1: live because you stop postponing life, stop putting your happiness
Speaker 1: in the conditional future, in the I'll be okay when
Speaker 1: I achieve this. I'll allow myself to relax when I
Speaker 1: reach that, And you start being okay now with what
Speaker 1: you have, with who you are, while still working for
Speaker 1: what you want, while still moving toward your goals. There's
Speaker 1: a way of living that's engaged but not compulsive, that's
Speaker 1: intense but not rigid, that's committed but not desperate. It's
Speaker 1: what happens when you act without obsession, when you dedicate
Speaker 1: yourself to things without needing them to be perfect, without
Speaker 1: needing to control every detail, without needing everything to turn
Speaker 1: out exactly as you imagined. You do what needs to
Speaker 1: be done, You give your best, You get completely involved
Speaker 1: with what you're doing, but you don't turn it into
Speaker 1: a matter of life or death. You don't put your
Speaker 1: entire identity at stake with every result. You don't define
Speaker 1: yourself by the success or failure of each endeavor. And
Speaker 1: this doesn't mean you don't care. Quite the contrary. It
Speaker 1: means you're not being consumed by the need to prove something,
Speaker 1: by the need to be recognized, by the need to
Speaker 1: be sure you're doing everything right. You act from an
Speaker 1: internal place, from a true desire, from genuine interest, not
Speaker 1: from external fear, not from a need for validation, not
Speaker 1: from a compulsion for control. And when you live like this,
Speaker 1: something changes profoundly. Life becomes lighter, more fluid, more yours,
Speaker 1: more true. There's a strange paradox you've probably already experienced
Speaker 1: but may be never named. Many of the good things
Speaker 1: that happened in your life came precisely when you stopped forcing.
Speaker 1: That opportunity that appeared when you had given up desperately
Speaker 1: searching that person who arrived, when you had accepted being
Speaker 1: alone and had stopped looking for someone to fill a void.
Speaker 1: That result that came when you had released the need
Speaker 1: to control everything and had simply done what needed to
Speaker 1: be done without all that tension. It's not magic, it's
Speaker 1: not the law of attraction. It's not some mystical secret
Speaker 1: of the universe. It's something simpler and deeper. When you
Speaker 1: stop forcing, when you release that neurotic tension, you stop
Speaker 1: acting from desperation, from neediness, from the compulsive need to
Speaker 1: prove something, and you start acting from a more whole place,
Speaker 1: more authentic, more aligned with who you really are. And
Speaker 1: people feel this. Life responds to this in ways you
Speaker 1: can't even imagine. There's a huge difference, a difference that
Speaker 1: anyone can perceive, even if they can't explain it, between
Speaker 1: someone who's desperate for a job, who needs it to
Speaker 1: feel valid, and someone who's confident in their value, who
Speaker 1: knows what they have to offer and is open to
Speaker 1: opportunities without clinging to them. There's a huge difference between
Speaker 1: someone who's needy for love, who needs someone to feel complete,
Speaker 1: and someone whose whole, who's okay with themselves and is
Speaker 1: available to truly connect with another person Without this burden
Speaker 1: of desperation and dependency, the energy is completely different, The
Speaker 1: way of carrying yourself is completely different. The results are
Speaker 1: also completely different. When you stop clinging, when you release
Speaker 1: all that tension, all that need, you create space for
Speaker 1: things to flow more naturally, more organically, more truly. It's
Speaker 1: like sailing a boat. The more you fight against the wind,
Speaker 1: the more you try to force the boat to go
Speaker 1: in a direction the wind doesn't allow, the more the
Speaker 1: boat tips, the more you get tired. The more you
Speaker 1: fight against forces that are much bigger than you. But
Speaker 1: when you understand the wind's direction, when you set the
Speaker 1: right sails and allow the sea to carry you, when
Speaker 1: you work with the forces instead of against them, suddenly
Speaker 1: you're sailing. You're moving, You're arriving at places you didn't
Speaker 1: even imagine when you were fighting against everything. You stop
Speaker 1: blocking your own path with excessive effort, with tension disguised
Speaker 1: as productivity, and you start allowing life to surprise you,
Speaker 1: allowing things to happen in ways you didn't plan, but
Speaker 1: that might be even better than you had imagined. Authenticity
Speaker 1: is probably one of the most silent and most powerful
Speaker 1: forces that exists. It's not something you perform, it's not
Speaker 1: something you add to your personality like an accessory. It's
Speaker 1: not something you force or try to be. Simply what
Speaker 1: happens when you stop trying to be something else, when
Speaker 1: you give up that exhausting battle of trying to fit in,
Speaker 1: of trying to be what others want, of trying to
Speaker 1: maintain an image that isn't true. When you're no longer
Speaker 1: begging for acceptance, when you're no longer contorting yourself to
Speaker 1: fit into spaces that weren't made for you, when you're
Speaker 1: no longer editing every word before saying it for fear
Speaker 1: of being misinterpreted, You develop a presence that's hard to
Speaker 1: explain but impossible to ignore. People feel when someone is real,
Speaker 1: when someone isn't performing, when someone is comfortable with who
Speaker 1: they are, even if who that person is isn't perfect,
Speaker 1: even if they have flaws, even if they don't fit
Speaker 1: perfectly into expectations, and this attracts, This creates true connections.
Speaker 1: This generates a type of respect that doesn't come from
Speaker 1: fear or hierarchy, but from recognition, from the feeling that
Speaker 1: this person is whole, is coherent, is living according to
Speaker 1: what they believe. And the interesting thing, the paradoxical thing,
Speaker 1: is that you don't need to be perfect to be authentic.
Speaker 1: In fact, authenticity requires that you not be perfect, that
Speaker 1: you show the contradictions, the doubts, the fragilities, that you
Speaker 1: be human in all your imperfection. And here Montaigne left
Speaker 1: us one of the most powerful phrases in philosophy, coursage
Speaker 1: what do I know? It's his most famous phrase, an
Speaker 1: invitation to humble skepticism, a recognition that wisdom begins when
Speaker 1: you accept that you don't know everything, that you'll never
Speaker 1: know everything, and that this is perfectly fine. He looked
Speaker 1: at his own contradictions, at his own changes of opinion,
Speaker 1: at his own fragilities, and didn't see this as weakness.
Speaker 1: He saw it as honesty. We change, we contradict ourselves,
Speaker 1: We think one thing today and another tomorrow. And this
Speaker 1: isn't a defect, it's the condition. Try to be perfect
Speaker 1: is trying to be something that doesn't exist. It's living
Speaker 1: in a fantasy that only generates frustration, but accepting that
Speaker 1: you're imperfect, that you'll make mistakes, that you'll change your mind.
Speaker 1: That is real, and it's in this reality that the
Speaker 1: possibility exists to live with less weight, less demands, less
Speaker 1: self condemnation. Detachment in human relationships is one of the
Speaker 1: most misunderstood and at the same time most necessary concepts
Speaker 1: that exists because attachment, in the way we usually live
Speaker 1: it isn't love. It's fear. It's the fear of losing,
Speaker 1: the fear of being abandoned, the fear of being alone,
Speaker 1: the fear of not being enough. And this fear generates demands,
Speaker 1: generates control, generates a neurotic need to know where the
Speaker 1: person is at every moment, what they're doing, what they're thinking,
Speaker 1: who they're talking to, if they still love you, if
Speaker 1: you're still enough for them, if they won't leave you.
Speaker 1: This isn't connection, This isn't true intimacy. It's prison, both
Speaker 1: for you and for the other person. You live anxious,
Speaker 1: always monitoring, always checking, always needing proof of love, always insecure,
Speaker 1: and they live suffocated, always having to prove, always having
Speaker 1: to reassure, always feeling they don't have space to breathe,
Speaker 1: to be who they are without it being interpreted as
Speaker 1: lack of love. And in the middle of this, the
Speaker 1: relationship loses lightness, loses spontaneity, loses grace, loses everything that
Speaker 1: made it good in the beginning. It becomes a dynamic
Speaker 1: of control and resistance, of need and suffocation, of anxiety
Speaker 1: and guilt. Detachment, on the other hand, doesn't mean you
Speaker 1: don't care. Doesn't mean you're cold or distant, or that
Speaker 1: the person isn't important to you. Detachment means you love
Speaker 1: the person but don't cling to them. You're present but
Speaker 1: not trapped. You choose to be together not because you
Speaker 1: need it to feel complete, but because you want to
Speaker 1: because you genuinely enjoy being with that person, because life
Speaker 1: gets better when they're around. And this creates a completely
Speaker 1: different type of relationship, a relationship based on freedom, on choice,
Speaker 1: renewed each day, on true presence, and not on obligation
Speaker 1: or dependency or fear. You stop demanding that the person
Speaker 1: be what you need them to be to save you
Speaker 1: from emptiness, and you start loving the person for what
Speaker 1: they really are. You stop trying to control the relationship's
Speaker 1: future to guarantee it will last forever, and you start
Speaker 1: living its present, enjoying what's here now without this constant
Speaker 1: anxiety about what will happen next. And paradoxically, when you
Speaker 1: let go, when you detach from all this need, often
Speaker 1: the relationship becomes stronger, truer, deeper, because now it's not
Speaker 1: being maintained by fear, it's being maintained by real love,
Speaker 1: by genuine desare to be together, by conscious choice, renewed
Speaker 1: each day. But how to start releasing this attachment in practice?
Speaker 1: Inspired by Montaigne and the stoics he so admired, here
Speaker 1: are three simple exercises you can do today. First, the
Speaker 1: premeditation of evils. Imagine the worst possible scenario for something
Speaker 1: that worries you, Ask what if it happens, do I survive?
Speaker 1: Montaigne did this constantly to domesticate fear, to take power
Speaker 1: away from the unknown. When you look fear in the
Speaker 1: eyes and realize that even in the worst case, you'd
Speaker 1: still be here, still have resources, still could start over,
Speaker 1: fear loses its strength. It stops being this giant monster
Speaker 1: and becomes something manageable, something human. Second, the honest journal.
Speaker 1: Exactly as Montaigne did with his essays, every day, write
Speaker 1: three lines about yourself, without filter, without editing, without trying
Speaker 1: to impress anyone, what you've felt, where you made mistakes,
Speaker 1: where you changed your mind, where you contradicted yourself, where
Speaker 1: you were authentic, and where you performed. Montaigne said that
Speaker 1: contradicting yourself is being human, and he used his essays
Speaker 1: as a mirror to know himself better, not to judge himself,
Speaker 1: but to understand himself with compassion. Writing forces you to
Speaker 1: slow down, to process what you're living, to name things
Speaker 1: you feel but that often remain nebulous, undefined, and over
Speaker 1: time you start noticing patterns, start seeing where you're betraying yourself,
Speaker 1: where you're performing, where you're being true, where fear dominates you,
Speaker 1: and where you act with freedom. Third, the authenticity question
Speaker 1: before an important decision, before making a choice that will
Speaker 1: affect you, ask if no one knew about this, would
Speaker 1: I still do it? This simple question cuts through all performance,
Speaker 1: all theater, and connect you with true desire. If the
Speaker 1: answer is no, if you'd only do it to impress
Speaker 1: someone or to avoid judgment, then you know it's not
Speaker 1: an authentic choice. It's a choice driven by fear. And
Speaker 1: when you realize this, you have the chance to choose differently,
Speaker 1: to choose from what's real for you, not from what
Speaker 1: you think you should want. Start small. Detachment isn't an event,
Speaker 1: It's a habit. It's a daily practice of letting go,
Speaker 1: of breathing, of trusting, of accepting. When you release attachment
Speaker 1: to what doesn't matter, When you stop clinging to the
Speaker 1: need to control, to please, to be perfect, to be
Speaker 1: accepted by everyone, something essential inside you reorganizes. It's as
Speaker 1: if you had spent your whole life carrying an invisible weight,
Speaker 1: and suddenly you realize you can simply put it down,
Speaker 1: that no one is forcing you to carry it, that
Speaker 1: you always had the option to let go, but were
Speaker 1: so used to the weight you didn't even notice it
Speaker 1: was there anymore. And when you let go, an explosion
Speaker 1: of in distant happiness doesn't happen. It's nothing dramatic. It's
Speaker 1: something more subtle, more profound. It's a clarity that starts
Speaker 1: to emerge gradually, a piece that doesn't depend on external circumstances,
Speaker 1: a freedom that comes from within and that no one
Speaker 1: can take from you because it wasn't anyone who gave
Speaker 1: it to you. It's something you discover was always there
Speaker 1: waiting for you to stop looking in all the wrong places.
Speaker 1: You start living from a different place, a place where
Speaker 1: you're no longer trying to prove anything, where you're no
Speaker 1: longer chasing validation. You're simply here, present, whole, living the
Speaker 1: life you have, not the life that looks good on Instagram,
Speaker 1: not the life your parents dreamed for you. But your life,
Speaker 1: with all its imperfections and all its uniqueness and the essential,
Speaker 1: begins to flourish, not because you've forced it, but because
Speaker 1: you created space, clarity about what really matters, freedom to
Speaker 1: make true choices, peace with who you are. You stop
Speaker 1: spending energy on what doesn't matter, and energy remains for
Speaker 1: what really matters. You stop living based on others judgment
Speaker 1: and start living based on your own values. You stop
Speaker 1: postponing life and start living it now, with everything that implies,
Speaker 1: with all the uncertainty and all the beauty that carries.
Speaker 1: And maybe that's what Montaigne tried to say all along
Speaker 1: through his essays, through his honest observations about the human condition,
Speaker 1: that life gets lighter when you stop fighting against it,
Speaker 1: when you accept your humanity with all its imperfections, when
Speaker 1: you understand that you don't need to be extraordinary to
Speaker 1: deserve to be here. You just need to be you, honestly, vulnerably,
Speaker 1: authentically you. That freedom isn't in controlling everything. It's in
Speaker 1: accepting that you don't control anything and living anyway with
Speaker 1: courage and presence. That detachment isn't coldness, it's wisdom. It's
Speaker 1: knowing where to invest your heart and where to let go,
Speaker 1: and that in the end, when all is said and done,
Speaker 1: what really matters isn't how many achievements you accumulated or
Speaker 1: how many people approved of you, but whether you had
Speaker 1: the courage to live your own life, to be who
Speaker 1: you really are, to let go of what doesn't matter
Speaker 1: and embrace what does, to live with truth and authenticity
Speaker 1: until the end.