The Truth about the French Way of Life

There's subtlety that's at the core of many French people's lives, and it's something you'd never notice at first glance. You might not see it when you visit Paris briefly on vacation, but when you live here, when you really get to know the French locals, the subtlety becomes apparent. It's a missing piece that I don't often see talked about, and I want to share this more hidden side of French culture with you. Here is the truth about the French way of life. How many of us are actually doing something that we love? So many of us immediately join the rat race of going to school, getting that internship, getting the staple job, and so forth. And one thing that I've observed in a lot of my interactions with the French people is passion. Specifically, a love and care that goes into a particular craft. The presentation. The creative way of expressing yourself. And none of it is in an attempt to be seen or acquire fame. They don't do it with the intent of taking the spotlight. Making quality creations is at the heart of many of the French people that I've met, and their desire to be makers of some kind. They're really satisfied when they've made and presented something well and of quality. I live on a quiet island in the Mediterranean called Corsica, just south of the French mainland. During my time here living in France, I've befriended a myriad of characters, all of whom inspired me to create quality work. There was the jewelry maker who hand bent brass wires to form delicate bracelets and necklaces for the locals in town. There was the painter who swirled colors with his brush when he was inspired by the surrounding seaside and cliffs. There's the tanner crafting leather belts in her small mountain village surrounded by trees. And then there's another friend who uses his hands every day to fold and roll bread in a local boulangerie. These are just a few of the people that I've met while living in Corsica, and they're all people who spend their spare time making things with their hands in their free time. Every once in a while, I am inspired by someone, enough so that I want to grab my camera and share their story. I find one of the most important ways to understand a culture and a country is to speak with the locals and to learn from them about their own experience living in their country. This is Virginie's. And then I think I find creativity everywhere on the island. But then I have other horizons, which are because I'm passionate about art history, I have several strings to my bow, so I also have this source of inspiration. I feed myself with art, cinema. So it's not just the cheese world. Maybe that's why my cheeses are not the presentation of cheeses when I put them on a tray, they don't look like something academic or traditional. It's a job that is so masculine at first, which is reserved for men more than for women, which is a job where you have to be normally strong, because you have to lift mills, cut cheese. It's not necessarily a feminine universe, and I really wanted to bring something new. So it's something that, instead of suffocating me, on the contrary, satisfies me. And it's always a challenge to say, here, I'm going to make feminine cheese, and we're going to want to eat it like we want to eat a piece of cake. In fact, that's it. It's to make the cheese appetizing, especially the cliché in other countries. It's always, we're told, the cheese that stinks. But in the end, it's just to say at the beginning, a cheese that may not be visually very attractive, to make it as glamorous as possible. So I like that, it's a challenge, but I like it. My friend represents an ideal that I think is very common in France. The French care immensely about quality and creating quality and beauty in their life. And it's often expressed through food. The French are very talented at creating presentations. You can see this in the flamboyant array of pastries, or how the food types are geolocalized and types of food are really dependent on the region. Specific foods are region-specific. Cider from Normandy, lavender from Provence. Even though lavender can grow in other places, it's best in one specific region. And the French place importance on that. There's this strong love of craft. I once read a quote by Tim Ferriss that said, gain a language and you gain a second lens through which to question and understand the world. I believe that language learning is one of the best ways to have mental clarity and to connect and relate with people in different cultures and in different countries around the world. Acquiring a new language is truly one of the most profound ways to gain a new awareness into another culture. One way that I've found really helps me learn French is Lingoda, the sponsor of this video, which is an online language learning platform where you can take live classes with native speaking teachers. It's actually the biggest online language school in Europe, currently offering courses in English, French, German, and Spanish. These classes are structured and taught by qualified teachers, either one-on-one or in a small group setting of a maximum of five students. So you really get that one-on-one attention and improve your pronunciation. Personally, I really need flexibility in my schedule, and so I love Lingoda because classes take place 24-7, making language learning super flexible, and you can peruse the class topics, skill level, and availability on your dashboard and join a class at any time. The teachers are highly skilled at teaching, and I have my favorite teachers that I love taking French lessons from. Perhaps the coolest thing about Lingoda is their sprints. How this works is you attend 15 classes per month, and you get 50% cashback. Or if you attend 30 classes a month or one class every day for a month, you get 100% cashback, which is completely free classes. These are very popular among many, most of the students, and it really gives you that motivation to stay committed to your language goals while also getting free language lessons. Language learning is very hard for me. It's not something I'm naturally gifted at, and so I've taken so many different in-person classes, tutors, and Lingoda is by far my favorite way to improve my French. So if you're like me and you find learning languages really challenging, I highly, highly recommend Lingoda. It's my favorite way to learn French, and their flexible schedule, French teachers, and their class format has been very helpful for me on my journey toward improving my French. I'll include a link down below in the description box and in a comment with a voucher code if you'd like to sign up and begin classes. I hope you love Lingoda as much as I have been loving it. The French show their passion by expressing themselves in their craft. It's a love of what they do, and they care immensely about how it looks and how it is presented. She glamorizes it. Making it her own and expressing herself through cheese preparation. One of the things that this very talented and inspiring woman said that really stuck with me was how she uses Instagram to inspire and uplift other people. Because when she's inspired by nature, she wants to share and extend that inspiration to others. Not because she wants to brag or show off her surroundings, but because she finds beauty in her days. And she wants other people to appreciate the simple, ordinary beauties in their days as well. From the moment you passionately live what you do, it's no longer a job. There's no longer this pejorative connotation of work. It's become something else. And it has to stay that way. So the hardest part is maybe to maintain the passion, but it's very important to say to yourself that anything is possible as long as you're passionate. Don't do this job because it's a fashionable job or just a little desire. It has to be something thoughtful and you have to be sure of a minimum. But if you're passionate, people are looking for authenticity more and more too, I think. So that's it. To be authentic. That's it. A lot of my passion for sharing about slow living is rooted and inspired by the French way of life. One can live a creative, passionate life of quality and craft anywhere in the world. But this is just one story. I encourage you to think of the ways that you can incorporate a creative spin in your life. How can you dance with life more? How can you extend and express yourself in a way that is true to you in the simple, small ways that you work? It could be as simple as finding creative ways to collaborate with people or to teach your students or to share on Instagram or social media in a way that's fun and expressive and in a way that you take pride in the process. How can you dance with life more? How can you make the everyday beautiful?