Getting Motivated In College: 7 TED Talks That Inspire

By Uloop Guest Writer on July 28, 2014

By: JT Ripton, Uloop Guest Writer

Image via http://socialrhythms.files.wordpress.com

You may think you’re ready for college with your class schedule and new clothes, but there is one more thing you need to be fully prepared.

TED Talks (Technology, Entertainment and Design, Ideas Worth Spreading) are what you need now. The following motivational messages will help you prepare for the mental challenges that await you in the next phase of your education.

1. Steve Jobs: Living Before Dying

This TED Talk features Steve Jobs speaking perhaps the most famous commencement speech ever. He shares with the students how to live before dying, how to move forward in the face of something as troubling as a cancer diagnosis in a bold deliberate fashion.

Success should be treated as a “bonus,” not as the end result of a person’s life. His words give hope and direction to how to survive, succeed and make it through life’s challenges.

2. JK Rowling: The Benefits of Failure and Need for Imagination

JK Rowling, renowned for the “Harry Potter” franchise, shares with graduating Harvard students how she wasn’t always successful. She offers powerful, heartening advice to those who are dreamers in a real world, and the hard-won lesson from her life that she deems “worth more than any qualification I ever earned.”

It wasn’t until after she’d landed at rock bottom that she learned to build it up from there. She also explained that imagination allows us to imagine ourselves into the lives of others. This unique ability gives us the opportunity to experience things we’ve never actually gone through, to empathize with others.

3. Angela Lee Duckworth: The Key to Success? Grit.

If you need a motivational pick-up, you’ll want to listen to this quick and inspiring talk by Angela Lee Duckworth. The former seventh grade teacher describes how she realized that the best indicator of future success was not her student’s IQ.

The real indicator was the level of “grit” that each student had – determination and persistence were the only factors that really made a difference.

4. Matt Cutts: Try Something New For 30 Days

Google engineer and Internet Marketing Pioneer, Matt Cutts shares the reasons why it’s important to break out of the mold and try something new. Ever want to write a novel? Well, go try it for 30 days.

It is actually a great way to achieve goals while incorporating new dimensions into your life. He drives home the point that to be successful it is necessary to push yourself in life, develop new habits – and try new things.

This short 3-minute video clip is excellent, but unless you have a generous data plan for your tablet, you may want to wait until you’re on wi-fi to watch it. Save the link and watch it when you have spare time.

5. Shukla Bose: One at a Time

In our society of mass production, we’ve taken the concept so far that we even mass-produce pupils in our schools. This is Shukla Bose’s point as she discusses the benefits of breaking the so-called “assembly line” format and teaching one child at a time.

It is providing this individual attention that will ultimately lead to academic success as well as personal growth – the two need not be mutually exclusive; you can have both.

6. Dan Gilbert: The Surprising Science of Happiness 

This TED Talk is by Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert, who discusses how often our ideas about what will make us happy and what will make us miserable couldn’t be more mixed up.

As it turns out human beings have an amazing capacity to create our own happiness, and that “synthetic happiness” is “every bit as real and enduring as the kind of happiness you stumble upon when you get exactly what you were aiming for.”

This is a fascinating concept that might just change your life (for the better!)

7. Larry Smith: Why You Will Fail To Have A Great Career

Larry Smith, professor of economics at the University of Waterloo in Canada explains our unique human ability to create excuses for ourselves. He also tells us why most of us will fail at having the career of our dreams.

But he offers us a way out, and that is to take the initiative to pursue our passions.

These motivating talks will help you stay centered as you face the challenges of school, and ultimately the challenges life will throw your way.

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