After having spared my brain cells as much as possible in the previous weeks, it was time to get them a bit more activated. I wanted to feel enthusiastic, to learn and to feel a sense of wonder again.
Thanks to modern technology, you don’t even need to leave your house to achieve this. One of my favourite sites to visit when I want to expand my horizon, is TED.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with TED, it’s a non-profit devoted to spreading ideas, mostly through short and powerful talks. On their site you can find different talks on a broad range of subjects. Whenever you feel bored, this is an excellent site to visit, to just watch some videos and getting new ideas.
Rather than mindlessly watching series, this week I watched different inspiring talks. They got me excited enough that I wanted to share three of them, that motivated me the most. Hopefully, it being summer, means that you can watch them, while lying on a lounge chair, in a hammock or on the couch at home.
Three talks to get inspired again
1. Susan Robinson – How I fail at being disabled
Susan Robinson gives an inspiring and funny talk, with five tips to fail at being disabled. As the label of a handicap or disability can make you feel (sometimes as a result of the reactions of others) like you’re ‘less’. At times I catch myself making this mistake as well.
This video got me really inspired to change the way I see myself. Two tips, I took away from it. The first is to try and find whatever power you’ve developed. Which strength or power have I learned or developed as a result of living with brain injury? What is my superpower?
To second tip I’ll work on, is to pursue audacious goals. To not be confined by limitation, but to dare, try and do.
On the subject of daring and doing, this next talk can come in handy.
2. Tim Ferris – Why you should define your fears instead of your goals
You might know Tim Ferris as the bestseller author of ‘ The 4-hour workweek’. In this talk he explains that you can overcome your fears by defining them. To take action, rather than giving in to self-doubt and anxiety. He explains the exercise he uses to deal with high-stress environments and how you can separate the things you can and the things you can’t control.
I’ll definitely try this exercise. Far too often I find myself worrying about things that have yet to take place or even worse, worrying about things I can’t change. This talk really inspired me to try and use a different approach.
3. Suzanne Simard – How trees talk to each other
The title already gives it away. This talk isn’t about an inspiring idea to try and use in your own life. However, this talk did awaken my sense of wonder again. Maybe I should tell that I’ve studied Biology, so these kind of findings always lift my green hart.
I rediscovered how cool nature is and how much we still can learn. This talk is about the research Suzanne has done on forests. Or better yet, on the interconnectedness of trees in a forest. It turned out that trees communicate with one another through the root- and fungal network in the soil. They exchange nutrients, hormones and warning signals. This exchange even happens between species. Better yet, if one species has no leaves in the winter, it’ll give extra nutrients to the species that does have leaves. How cool is this! Trees even know which trees are their offspring and will give them something extra, making them more resilient to outside disturbances.
On top of the actual findings it’s also quite a funny talk, so check it out. After watching it, ‘walking through the woods’ made it to my ‘want-to-do-list’ for my vacation. 🙂
I hope you can find some inspiration in these talks, or on the TED site.
As I will be going on vacation in the coming week, the next blog post will take a little longer. I plan to have a new post online somewhere around the 20th of august. (Accountability will hopefully provide a little discipline to get it online by then. ;))
If you’re going away as well, I hope you can enjoy it and recharge yourself!
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