5 Best TED Talks for Your Career Inspiration [Must Follow]

Ted Talks, It can easily be perceived what it aims at from its tagline: ‘’Ideas worth spreading’’.

Ted is a nonprofit organization that aims to reach people around the globe and share ideas worldwide. It provides us with an easy way to surround ourselves with the ideas and lessons of experts in different fields.

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design. Ted talks have also inspired many from the perspective of career and entrepreneurship. So, out of hundreds of TED talks we have analyzed and found the top 5 Ted Talks that will inspire you for a better career ahead.

1. Simon Sinek: How Great Leaders Inspire Action

There are both bosses and leaders around us. Simon Sinek explores how encouragement creates action — all by using a circle.

Utilizing the idea of the “Golden Circle,” Sinek, a professor at Columbia University and author of Start With Why, believes that the key is to discover not only what people and organizations do or how they do it — but most importantly, why. As Sinek summarizes: “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.”

In this talk, he gives us a blueprint of finding a drive and building a movement around our dreams.

2. Steve Jobs: How to live before you die

This one is Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address. This is not originally a TED talk but now it is one of their top videos for career and inspiration. This speech was featured on the TED site around the time of Steve Jobs’ death. He tells three stories from his life and draws three lessons – lessons that we’ve all heard before, but are somehow transformed when spoken by Jobs.

1. The winding pathways of your life only make sense looking backward, not forwards. “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,” he says.

2. Love keeps you going during the hard times. “Sometimes life’s going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did,” says Jobs, talking about being fired from Apple in the 80s.

3. Death gives us the motivation to truly live. Every morning, Jobs would look at himself in the mirror and think, “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” If the answer was no too many days in a row, he knew something had to change.

“Stay hungry. Stay foolish,” he urges the crowd.

3. Mike Rowe: Learning from Dirty Jobs

Mike Rowe is the host of Discovery Channel’s hit show Dirty Jobs. He speaks in-depth about how he’s witnessed first-hand that people who have “dirty jobs” are happier, more balanced individuals who whistle while they work — and pick up road kill as they do it. Rowe makes the point that any job is a respectable job, and why following your passion might be the worst thing you can do for your career.

4. Meg Jay: Why 30 is not the new 20

Here clinical psychologist Meg Jay talks about a troubling paradox that she encountered. On one hand, researchers have found that your 20s are crucial: you are determining your lifetime earning potential, meeting the person who will probably be your future partner, finishing your brain growth and most of your transformative life experiences, and shaping your personality. Yet experts seem to trivialize the 20s: they have coined terms like “kidults” and claimed that 30 is the new 20.

She tells us three things:

• Get identity capital: Do something that adds value to who you are.
• Branch out of your social network: That’s where jobs and new opportunities will come from.
• Choose your partners wisely: If not, you may end up at 29 and settling down with whomever you’re dating at the moment.

5. Amy Cuddy – Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are

How to create confidence and influence out of thin air

We have always heard the quote, ‘‘Fake it until you make it’’. Well according to Amy it is a huge part of our ‘connect with anyone’ course. Whether landing a dream job or attracting the hottest guy or girl at the bar, Amy’s ideas are gold in this case.