I would like to share the commencement addresses and Ted Talks that have most profoundly influenced my journey of personal growth.
I make an effort to watch these videos multiple times a year. These videos encourage me to learn new skills, embrace my fears, and become less selfish.
I hope that they have as much of an impact on you as they have had on me!
1. How to Achieve Your Most Ambitious Goals - Stephen Duneier
In Stephen Dunier’s Ted Talk, he discusses how breaking our biggest goals into smaller, more manageable tasks improves the odds of our success.
Pursuing ambitious goals is frightening because the process seems so overwhelming and time-consuming. We also believe that accomplishing impressive goals is reserved for people with more inherent ability. Dunier's prescription for overcoming these fears is to break our goals into smaller tasks:
“You take these big concepts, these complex ideas, these big assignments, you break them down to much more manageable tasks, and then along the way, you make a marginal improvement to the process that ups the odds of success in your favor." - Stephen Duneier
2. Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address
In Steve Jobs commencement address, he advises students to have the courage and faith to take risks in the pursuit of their passions. It is passion and passion alone that will help us sustain the shame and imminent failures that accompany the pursuit of our most cherished dreams. Jobs also encourages the students to maintain a healthy dose of perspective through their journey:
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well worn path and that will make all the difference.” - Steve Jobs
Perhaps most poignantly, Jobs prompts the students to consider their imminent death. It is by embracing the fear of this universal certainty that we can become less afraid of taking risks. For realizing that we will die soon helps us avoid the fallacy that we still have a lot of time to pursue our dreams.
3. The Power of Vulnerability - Brené Brown
Researcher, professor, and author Brené Brown specializes in understanding and improving the experience of human connection. In her Ted Talk, she shares how embracing vulnerability improves our ability to form meaningful relationships with others.
Connection with other people is the purpose of human existence. More often than not, the thing that prevents us from connecting with others is a feeling of unworthiness. Our insecurities make us feel incapable of giving or receiving love. Brown advises us to lean into this discomfort. It is only when we embrace our shame and allow ourselves to be vulnerable that we can be our authentic selves. Brown shares why vulnerability is so powerful:
"...Vulnerability is the core of shame and fear and our struggle for worthiness, but it appears that it’s also the birthplace of joy, of creativity, of belonging, of love" - Brené Brown
4. This Is Water - David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace was a famous novelist and professor of English and creative writing. In Wallace's commencement address, he shares the importance of practicing mindfulness, compassion, and empathy throughout the experience of our daily lives.
No challenge could be more difficult for us humans, as we are biologically and psychologically wired to consider our own self-interest at all times. Education's purpose, then, is to free us from the default setting of selfishness and to help us practice virtue in each moment of our existence. The value of our education gives us the choice to worship kindness rather than vain pursuits.
I think about Wallace's speech every day. The snippet that perenially rings in the forefront of my consciousness is the following:
"Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed." - David Foster Wallace
5. If You Want to Change the World, Start Off by Making Your Bed - William McRaven, US Navy Admiral
In US Naval Admiral's William H. McRaven's commencement speech, he shares the 10 lessons he learned during Navy SEAL training. The most powerful lesson is the importance of making your bed each morning. While this may seem small and insignificant, completing repetitive acts of discipline brings large personal growth in our personal and professional lives.
“If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day, it will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task, and another, and another. And by the end of the day that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed.” - William H. McRaven
Conclusion
I hope that you enjoyed watching these videos. I would love to hear which one is your favorite and why!
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