Ideas worth spreading: that is what founders, Richard Saul Wurman and Harry Marks, envisioned when they founded the Technology, Entertainment, and Design conference 31 years ago in 1984. Since then, TED has become a global set of conferences run by the non-profit organization, Sapling Foundation, with the intention to inspire, motivate, and educate people all over the world with the ideas of others.
TED has gained more and more popularity with its energizing speeches and tidbits of information. While all TED talks are creative and have merit in their own right, there have been keystones paving new ideas and inspiring watchers to look at the world with a whole new perspective.
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1. “How Great Leaders Inspire Action” Simon Sinek.
“Why do you get out of bed in the morning? And why should anyone care?” Leadership expert, Simon Sinek, speaks about inspiration, and what motivates success and innovation in the world, from Apple to the Wright Brothers, and it all boils down to a simple, yet extremely powerful model composed of two circles, and the startling (but legitimate) question of “why?”. While most organizations work from the outside of the circle in, innovative and groundbreaking organizations work from the inside out, starting with “why”.
2. “Tales of Passion” Isabel Allende.
“However, what matters most -- more than training or luck -- is the heart. Only a fearless and determined heart will get the gold medal. It is all about passion.” Novelist Isabel Allende ("House of Spirits, "City of Beasts") writes fictional tales of passion. Both a successful writer and a feminist, her inspiration comes from inspirational people in the world, successful because of their passion for what they do. Passion, Allende argues, is the central most factor to success. Inspirational women, such as Rose Mapendo -- a Tutsi refugee survivor in Congo -- are Allende’s muse for her great novels.
3. “The Power of Vulnerability” Brené Brown.
“[People who have a strong sense of love] had, very simply, the courage to be imperfect…they were willing to let go of who they thought they should be in order to be who they were… and they fully embraced vulnerability.”
Brené Brown, a vulnerability researcher, discusses the power of taking control of your vulnerability in order to be happy and loved. With the willingness to do something when there are no guarantees comes the chance for love and admiration from one another. Brown ultimately discusses how vulnerability cannot only lead to shame, but also joy and creativity.
These three TED talks have been the basis of how I seek to drive my life. And the more we watch inspirational conferences of videos like these, the more we come to the realization that they’re all connected.
Sinek says that success is a result of us asking ourselves why we do things, but isn’t the reason we do things that succeed, a result of passion? It is, because if it weren’t, Allende’s heroes -- such as Rose Mapendo and other human rights activists -- would not have survived their ordeals. Furthermore, successful people such as Mapendo needed to make themselves vulnerable in order to succeed, the needed to throw themselves at something, unsure of the outcome.
In retrospect, these are three stunning and vital TED talks to teach us all a little something about how we strive to live. But they’re not the only ones, head over to TED’s website and watch some more of the thousands of people that work to inspire every day!
