The TED Talks lectures are infinitely invaluable resources that motivate you to becoming your best, purest self. What you’ll find below are profound lectures that are pivotal to my work.


 

The Power of Vulnerability: BRENE BROWN

Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work. She has spent the past ten years studying vulnerability, courage, authenticity, and shame. She spent the first five years of her decade-long study focusing on shame and empathy, and is now using that work to explore a concept that she calls Wholeheartedness. She poses the questions:

How do we learn to embrace our vulnerabilities and imperfections so that we can engage in our lives from a place of authenticity and worthiness? How do we cultivate the courage, compassion, and connection that we need to recognize that we are enough – that we are worthy of love, belonging, and joy?

 


 

 

Listening to Shame: BRENE BROWN

 

 

 

 


 

The Space Between Self Esteem & Self Compassion: KRISTIN NEFF

The relentless search for high self-esteem has become a virtual religion; and a tyrannical one at that. Our competitive culture tells us we need to be special and above average to feel good about ourselves, but we can’t all be above average at the same time. There is always someone richer, more attractive, or successful than we are. And even when we do manage to feel self-esteem for one golden moment, we can’t hold on to it. Our sense of self-worth bounces around like a ping-pong ball, rising and falling in lock-step with our latest success or failure.

Fortunately, there is an alternative to self-esteem that many psychologists believe is a better and more effective path to happiness: self-compassion.

 

 


 

When You Change The Way You Look At Things: WAYNE DYER 

 

 


 

The Power of Introverts: SUSAN CAIN

 

Susan Cain is a former corporate lawyer and negotiations consultant — and a self-described introvert. At least one-third of the people we know are introverts, notes Cain in her new bookQuiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. Although our culture undervalues them dramatically, introverts have made some of the great contributions to society – from Chopin’s nocturnes to the invention of the personal computer to Gandhi’s transformative leadership. Cain argues that we design our schools, workplaces, and religious institutions for extroverts, and that this bias creates a waste of talent, energy, and happiness. Based on intensive research in psychology and neurobiology and on prolific interviews, she also explainswhy introverts are capable of great love and great achievement, not in spite of their temperaments — but because of them.

 

 


 

Stroke of Insight: JILL BOLTE TAYLOR

One morning, a blood vessel in Jill Bolte Taylor’s brain exploded. As a brain scientist, she realized she had a ringside seat to her own stroke. She watched as her brain functions shut down one by one: motion, speech, memory, self-awareness … and how she awoke into the experience of total consciousness, nirvana…

 

 


 

 

Abundance Is Our Future: PETER DIAMANDIS

Onstage at TED2012, Peter Diamandis makes a case for optimism — that we’ll invent, innovate and create ways to solve the challenges that loom over us. “I’m not saying we don’t have our set of problems; we surely do. But ultimately, we knock them down.”