Your TED Talk

There’s a growing fascinating with TED talks and with becoming a part of the club of TED speakers. Lately, I’ve been hearing more and more people say that they dream of one day being invited to give one of the talks.

Is that just ego? That our egos love the idea of a representative of the committee calling to say, “You are brilliant! The world simply must hear what you have to say” ?

There’s ego in it, but there’s also, I think, something more soulful in our attraction to the idea of giving a TED talk. It’s the notion that individuals — maybe ourselves included — have unique, important, revolutionary messages to share. It’s that each of us has a glory and brilliance inside.

I’m asking myself, and asking you too: If you were called to give a TED talk tomorrow, what would you say? What vision of the future would you want to evoke? What radical ideas would you stand for?

Sorry to make the adrenalin course through your veins! And so soon after the holiday weekend, too. I don’t mean to attack.

But it strikes me as ironic that many of us (myself included) love the *idea* of being invited to give a TED talk, but we aren’t exactly walking through life boldly sharing our own unique ideas. (Yes I mean the radical, “is that crazy?” ones). We’d write the talk once the TED committee called, but we don’t quite grasp that life is actually calling on us to give the talk – in some way – every day.

In her new (fabulous, by the way) book The Gifts of Imperfection, Brene Brown speaks about “owning your own story.” Brene writes that “owning our own stories and loving yourself through that process is the bravest thing you will ever do.” Bravest, I agree, and I also think the most important. Nothing is more powerful in allowing us to connect to others and to have an impact on the world.

How remarkable that even in the “ooh let’s be brainy” context of TED, the talks that have made the greatest impact — like Jill Bolte Taylor’s and Elizabeth Gilbert’s and Brene Brown’s — have stemmed from some fusion of the speaker’s professional life and their personal, messy, lived experiences.

It seems more and more to me that the most precious gifts we have to offer the world come not from the fancy stuff we learned in school or at work, but from the truth of lived experiences – and particularly those painful, difficult, struggling, alienated junctures and what we do with them. The fancy stuff we learn in school and work is important – but mainly because it gives us some tools to understand and tell our personal truths in a more sophisticated, effective, credible way.

It’s scary to own and share our own stories. It’s scary to share your real voice and vulnerability with the world, to claim your authority, to share ideas that you know won’t be well-received by all.

But I know you are strong and courageous, so here’s my ask: could you be uber-brave, and try, sometime this week, to write your TED talk? One of your many TED talks, perhaps, but an important one? What is your primary, tender, authentic, so-close-to-home-it’s-scary message?

Bring your voice to the stage, please. We need it.

Love,

Tara