Hello, dear friends! Thank you for joining me for this new episode of Walk With Johan. It's a pleasure to spend this time with you, it's a pleasure that you join me. Thank you. We are walking on forest paths or at the edge of the forest.
And we're going to talk, once again, about a personal development topic in order to provide you with authentic content, so, content offered by a French person who speaks as if he were speaking to his French friends with the same vocabulary, the same rhythm, the same idiomatic expressions, etc. and I try to make things interesting by linking them to personal development topics, things that I read, that I learn without... as they say in French, without getting worked up, that is to say without having any pressure, neither me when I prepare the episode nor you when you listen to it. The idea is really to discuss among friends and to move forward together and to improve together. That's a little bit of the promise of this podcast.
And the promise is all the more important today because we're going to talk about one of the meanings of my life, because I've often asked myself: "OK. What is the real meaning of my life? Why am I here? How can I contribute?" Contributing means bringing value, helping, bringing something more to others. Obviously, I'm not here asking myself this question every day, but I've had phases, many phases in which I asked myself this question, I've had phases in which I didn't necessarily find the answers and these phases are often the most stressful in our lives when we have trouble finding meaning, when we have trouble seeing how we can bring value. So, it's very important to do it.
And besides, there is a little selfish side, because japan whatsapp number data we say to ourselves: "I am trying to have meaning, I am trying to help others, to contribute, to have value". So, that is good, but there is a little selfish side, because we also do it for ourselves in fact. I was reading a book some time ago by Viktor Frankl or Frankl. He was a... I think he was an Austrian, I think, Viktor Frankl, I think, who wrote the very very famous book Man's Search for Meaning, so, where he relates part of his stay in concentration camps and in particular Auschwitz and in fact in which he tells us that to have a happy life, you need meaning, that's basically it.
Of course, there is a whole current of psychology that he set up, that he developed. He did some very beautiful work. And this book is a real masterpiece. But there is also this side that is quite easy to summarize. If we want to be happy, we have to have a meaning. And if the meaning is to contribute, well we contribute, we help others, because we are happy to do it but also for ourselves, that's it.
And a good way that I found to help others, to contribute, is to mentor. And that came to me in one of the… So, I've been doing it for a very long time, but in any case putting the word on it and trying to broaden it, it came to me a little less long ago when I was reading a book by John Wooden, who was an American basketball coach, a truly exceptional personality who lived to be almost 100 years old and who helped a lot of people, who had, it seems… obviously, I can't speak about him as if I knew him, but in any case I've only read positive things about him.
So, he was apparently someone who had a positive attitude, who always looked for the best, who didn't criticize others, who didn't get angry, so, a really, really inspiring personality and who, so, in one of his books, talked about the people who mentored him and the people he mentored himself. So mentoring, again, means trying to... in any case, mentoring is when a person who has a little more experience tries to help or guide someone. And he explained that he had several mentors, so, people who mentored him, who guided him, and he was the mentor, he mentored other people. So, you see, we can use the verb in the active form or the passive form, the verb "mentor".