ted演讲观后感中文

ted演讲观后感中文（共7篇）（共7篇）

1.ted演讲观后感中文 篇一

今天看了一个很喜欢的TED《美妙生活的三个秘诀》，虽然鸡汤味很浓。没办法，总会遇上很多不顺心的事情，常常怀疑自己怀疑人生，这时喝一碗鸡汤正好，冲淡口里苦苦的味道。不提供勺子也不要紧，拿起碗直接喝岂不是更畅快。

演讲者提出的三个秘诀就是attitude、awareness、authentic。Attitude态度：我们都快乐过得意过，但在这些快乐中总会有一些令人不快乐的插曲，生活总要过下去的何不乐观点。Awareness知觉：演讲者喜欢和三岁的孩子玩，欣赏他们眼中的世界，因为他们眼里望去一切都是崭新的。拥抱知觉就是拥抱内心中三岁的自己，去感知就是去记住眼中的世界也曾是崭新的。Authentic本真：要流露真性情，做真实的自己。举了美国一个著名棒球手的例子，他热刺刺绣，退役后还出了一本专门讲刺绣的书。自己喜欢就好，也不在乎是否会遭到别人的嘲笑。

他思考这些秘诀，是因为他在某段时间里遭遇了太多不顺心的事，于是他开了一个博客1000awesomething.com“一千个美妙的时刻”，讲述生活中许多细小的快乐时刻，比如得到免费续杯、闻到刚出炉的面包香味、婚礼上坐在可以首先去选餐的那桌等。最让我共鸣的就是在超市正好碰到刚上工的收银员开了一条新的付款通道，本来排最后的现在冲到第一了，每次遇到这样的事都特别开心。生活中有许多这样的随处可见的的简单的小快乐，只是我们很少谈起这些快乐。

他能这么积极地面对生活，也是受了他父母的影响吧。他父母刚来到加拿大时面对的是一个陌生的崭新的世界，他们必须感知周围，欣赏给人惊喜的新鲜事物，创造更多的幸福。他们去超市买了产自摩洛哥的枣椰，回去查了地图找到摩洛哥的地址，觉得这是一件多么神奇的事情，有人爬到树上采了枣椰，装到卡车上，运到码头，跨越了大西洋，再装上卡车，最后运到他家附近的超市。他父亲感慨：生活真是太奇妙了，充满了令人惊喜的事物。仔细想想，一个简单的水果翻山涉水，最后再被我们吃掉，确实是很神奇的事。在科技日新月异的今天，每天都在发生各种神奇的事，只是我们习惯性地忽略了。或者，是我们的知觉太迟钝，来不及体会到种种神奇的事。

一万年太久，只争朝夕，何况我们仅有一百年而已，更是要享受每一刻的生活。“生命之所以伟大，是因为我们仅有如此短暂的时间去体味那些细小而又美味无比的时刻，那美妙的瞬间就是现在。时间一直在飞走，你永远不会比现在的自己更年轻”。

2.ted演讲观后感中文 篇二

“Change the world with new words.”————Feedback From the speaker, although English is a kind of wonderful language in the world, there are still many holes in it.To improve this, the speaker once created a dictionary as a supplementary to these holes.Accordingly, it received a great deal of positive reactions.Whereas, not merely language, other parts of the world also need one quality.That is innovation.We all need the passion for innovation.Innovation, namely creativity, is necessary whatever you do.We cannot ignore its significance unless human civilization fades away.Innovation process our society and keep humanity more lively than before.Just like the speaker’s dictionary, these new items are expected to be put into daily life so that people gradually receive and accept it.Most of us are searching for the meaning of life with creativity, which can lead our society to a apparent change.Finally, end up with a saying: “Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement.To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed, and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble.”

3.ted演讲观后感中文 篇三

No more stereotypical education!—— Feedback Education has always been a complicated subject.A great number of renowned educators have spent their lifetime on it.But it didn’t work for long.Just like the attractive old man suggested, the education system has been stuck to a stiffness.Many kids went to school to study, and they just graduated from schools.If someone ask what they learned, they can seldom say something.It’s still worth thinking although the speech was for American education.As the lecturer said, all kids should be provided with fair education.We need to see the justice between rich kids and poor kids so that all of them can receive good education.And the most significant problem is innovation.Just like the speaker experienced, our education similarly changed nothing.Students went to school year after year, but how many succeeded in their fields? A tiny bit of them.I think this phenomenon really means something.So, what we are studying for? More than one educationists mentioned about this, but there won’t be any changes even for a while.The dilemma of education is the inner power against the innovation, which is tough to break through but we have to.Despite we might face huge challenges and failures happen, it shouldn’t stop us from making the next attempt.The other thing is that educational innovation should imitate the science innovation, innovation is expected to be processed scientifically in order to avoid unnecessary troubles.As the saying goes, education is the foundation lasting for generations.These kids nowadays are going to play important roles in our country’s rise.I believe we will witness prosperity in reality as long as our kids suffer no more from education.

4.ted演讲文稿 篇四

When we think about the dreams we have, and the dent we want to leave in the universe.it is striking to see how big of an overlap there is.between the dreams that we have and projects that never happen.so I’m here to talk you today about five ways how not to follow your dreams.

One :Believe in overnight success.you know the story, rightThe tech guy built a mobie app and sold it very fast for a lot of money.You know ,the story may seem real,but I bet it’s incomplete.If you go investigate further,the guy has done 30 apps before,and he has done a master’s on the topic,a Ph.D.He has been working on the topic for 20 years.your overnight success story is always a result of everything you’ve done in your life through that moment.

Two:Believe someone else has the answers for you.Constantly,people want to help out,rightAll sort of people:your family ,your friends,your business partners,they all have opinions on which path you should take.And let me tell you,go through this pipe.But whenever you go inside,there are other ways you have to pick as well.And you need to make those decisions yourself.No one else has the perfect answers for your life.And you need to keep picking those decisions,rightThe pipes are infinite and you’re going to bump your head,and it’s a part of the process.

Three,and it’s very subtle but very important:Decide to settle when growth is guaranteed.So your life is going great,you have put together a great team,and you have growing revenue,and everything is set,time to settle.Even if I did little, sales would be okay. But okay is never okay. When you’re growing towards a peak, you need to work harder than ever and find yourself another peak.Maybe if I did little, a couple hundred thousand people would read it, and that’s great already. But if I work harder than ever, I can bring this number up to millions. And I can already see a higher peak.there’s no time to settle down.

Fourth tip, and that’s really important:Believe the fault is someone else’s. I constantly see people saying, “yes, I had this great idea, but no investor had the vision to invest.” “oh, I created this great product, but the market is so bad,the sales didn’t go well.” Or, I can’t find good talent;my team is so below expectations.” If you have dreams, it’s your responsibility to make them happen. Yes ,it may be hard to find talent. Yes the market may be bad. But if no one invested in your idea,if no one bought your product, for sure,there is something that is your fault. You need to get your dreams and make them happen. And no one achieved their goals alone. But if you didn’t make them happen, it’s your fault and no one else’s. be responsible for your dreams.

And one last tip, and this one is really important as well: Believe that the only things that matter are the dreams themselves. Once I saw an ad , and it was a lot of friends , they were going up a mountain, it was a very high mountain, and it was a lot of work. You could see that they were sweating and this was tough. And they were going up, and they finally made it to the peak. Of course, they decided to celebrate, rightI’m going to celebrate, “yes we made it ,we’re at the top!” two seconds later, one looks at the other and says, “okay let’s go down.” Life is never about the goals themselves. Life is about the journey. Yes, you should enjoy the goals themselves, but people think that you have dreams, and whenever you get to reaching one of those dreams, it’s magical place

where happiness will be all around. But achieving a dream is a momentary sensation, and you life is not. The only way to really achieve all of your dreams is to fully enjoy step of your journey. That’s the best way. And your journey is simple it’s made of step. Some steps will be right on. Sometimes you will trip. If it’s right on, celebrate, because some people wait a lot to celebrate. And if you tripped, turn that into something to learn. If every step becomes something to learn or something to celebrate, you will for sure enjoy the journey.

5.TED演讲稿 篇五

第一大严重的健康问题，根据murray schafer的话说，就是“幻听”。这是一种错乱，使你看到的和听到的并不一致。所以，我们的生活中，就多了一些不在我们身边的人发出的声音。我认为时时处于“幻听”中对健康十分不利。与滥用耳机相伴而来的第二个问题是压缩音乐。我们压缩音乐，以便能装进口袋，然而也付出了代价。听听这个，是一段没有压缩的音乐。同样的一段音乐，但却少了98%的信息。我希望至少有一部分人能听出其中的差别。这就是压缩音乐的代价。为了补上丢失的信息，你很容易变得疲劳、烦躁。你需要通过想象来弥补这个空白。长期下去，会对健康不利。滥用耳机带来的第三个问题是耳聋。

不谈噪音了，我们来谈谈一些你应该去寻求的好朋友。风水鸟：风声、水声、鸟声，大自然的声音。它们都由各种不同的细节组成，对健康十分有好处，因为它们都是我们进化过程中我们陪伴我们的声音。寻求这些声音吧，对你们有好处。还有这个。安静是美好的。古人曾把语言比作修饰过的安静。我建议你们刻意地远离安静，去设计像艺术品一样有画面感的声音。有前景，有背景，并且比例协调。设计声音是很有趣的，如果自己不会做的话，可以找专业人士帮忙。声音设计就是未来，也是一种让世界变得好听的方法。

and four modalities where you need to take some action and get involved.first of all, listen consciously.i hope that after this talk youll be doing that.its a whole new dimension to your life and its wonderful to have that dimension.secondly, get in touch with making some sound.create sound.the voiceis the instrument we all play, and yet how many of us are trained in using our voice? get trained.learn to sing.learn to play an instrument.musicians have bigger brains.its true.you can do this in groups as well.its a fantastic antidote to schizophonia.to make music and sound in a group of people, whichever style you enjoy particularly.and lets take a stewarding role for the sound around us.protect your ears? yes, absolutely.design soundscapes to be beautiful around you at home and at work.and lets start to speak up when people are assailing us with the noise that i played you early on.还有四种方法需要你采取行动参与其中。首先专心地听。我希望在我的讲话过后你们就能去这样做。这会是你们人生全新的、美好的一面。第二试着自己弄出点声响。创造声音。声音是我们都会使用的乐器，但多少人接受训练学会利用我们自己的声音？尝试训练一下吧。学着歌唱。学习演奏一种乐器。音乐家都有更发达的大脑，这话不假。也可以尝试和大家一起这样做。这是缓解幻听的非常好的办法。和一大群人创造音乐是，任何你喜欢的方式都是不错的。让我们主宰周围的声音。保护听力？这是当然的。不管在家里，还是工作中，设计并创作出好听的声音。当有人用我之前播过的噪音来攻击我们的时候，让我们大声地给予它们还击。篇二：拥抱他人,拥抱自己 ted 演讲稿

embracing otherness.when i first heard this theme, i thought, well embracing otherness is embracing myself.and the journey to that i grew up on the coast of england in the 70s.my dad is white from cornwall, and my mom is black from zimbabwe.even the idea of us as a family was challenging to most people.but nature had its wicked way, and brown babies were born.but from about the age of five, i was aware that i didnt fit.i was the black atheist kid in the all-white catholic school run by nuns.i was an anomaly.and my self was rooting around for definition and trying to plug in.because the self likes to fit, to see itself replicated, to belong.that confirms its existence and itsimportance.and it is important.it has an extremely important function.without it, we literally cant interface with others.we cant hatch plans and climb that stairway of popularity, of success.but my skin color wasnt right.my hair wasnt right.my history wasnt right.my self became defined by otherness, which meant that, in that social world, i didnt really exist.and i was other before being anything else--even before being a girl.i was a noticeable nobody.我于上世纪七十年代生长在英格兰的海岸边。我父亲是来自康沃尔的白人，我母亲是来自津巴布韦的黑人。对于许多人来说，是无论如何也想不到我们是一家人。但大自然自有意想不到的一面，棕色的孩子出生了。但自从五岁开始，我就察觉出我的格格不入。我是一个信奉无神论的黑人孩子，在一个由修女运转的白人天主学校，我是一个另类。我的自我在不断寻找一个定义，并试图将自己套入定义。因为自我都是愿意去融入，看到自己被复制，有归属感。那能确认自我的存在感和重要性，这很重要。这有一个极端重要的功能。没有一个对自我的定义，我们简直不能和其他人交流。我们无法制定计划，无法爬上潮流和成功的阶梯。但我的肤色不对。我的发色不对。我的来历不对。我的自我被他人定义，这意味着在社会上 我并不存在。我首先被定义为一个另类，甚至先于被定义为一个女孩。我是一个引人注意的没有人。weve created entire value systems and a physical reality to support the worth of self.look at the industry for self-image and the jobs it creates, the revenue it turns over.wed be right in assuming that the self is an actual living thing.but its not;its a projection, which our clever brains create in order to cheat ourselves from the reality of death.but there is something that can give the self ultimate and infinite connection--and that thing is oneness, our essence.the selfs struggle for authenticity and definition will never end unless its connected to its creator--to you and to me.and that can happen with awareness--awareness of the reality of oneness and the projection of self-hood.for a start, we can think about all the times when we do lose ourselves.it happens when i dance, when im acting.im earthed in my essence, and my self is suspended.in those moments, im connected to everything--the ground, the air, the sounds, the energy from the audience.all my senses are alert and alive in much the same way as an infant might feel--that feeling of oneness.我们创造了整个价值系统，以及一个客观的现实，用以支持自我的价值。看看由个人形象带动的产业，还有它提供的工作，以及它创造的价值。我们可能会假设，这个自我是真实存在的。但我们错了；这只是一个投影，是由我们聪明的大脑创造出来的，来欺骗我们自己无需面对死亡的现实。但总有一些事，能赋予自我终极无尽的联系，那就是同一性，我们的本源。自我对于真实性和定义的挣扎永远不会停止，除非自我能够与创造者相连——与你，与我。这和意识的觉醒一同存在，意识到同一性的现实，以及自我的投影。一开始，我们可以想想那些我们失去自我的时候，当我跳舞时，表演时。我根植于我的本源，我的自我被抑制了。在那些时刻，我与万物相连——大地，空气 声音，观众的能量。我的所有感官都是警觉和鲜活的，如同一个婴儿感受到的一般——那种同一性的感觉。

and when im acting a role, i inhabit another self, and i give it life for a while.because when the self is suspended so is divisiveness and practice, ive tried to live more and more from my essence.and if you can do that, incredible things happen.当我表演一个角色时，我进入了另一个自我，我在一段时间内赋予其生命。当自我被抑制时，它的多样性和判断也会一同被抑制。我出演过许多角色，从奴隶时代想要复仇的鬼魂到2004年的国务卿。无论这些角色是多么的不同，他们全都与我相连。我诚恳地认为，我作为一个演员能够成功的关键，以及作为一个不断进步的人，是因为自我的缺失让我觉得非常焦虑和不安。我总是在想，为什么我能如此深切地感受到他人的痛苦，为什么我能辨认出一个被忽视的人。那是因为我没有一个自我挡在中间。我想我缺少一种介质，我能够感受他人这个事实说明我感受不到我自己。这曾经导致了我的羞愧，其实是给我启蒙的源头。crucially, we havent been figuring out how to live in oneness with the earth and every other living thing.weve just been insanely trying to figure out how to live with each other--billions of each other.only were not living with each other;our crazy selves are living with each other and perpetuating an epidemic of disconnection.lets live with each other and take it a breath at a time.if we can get under that heavy self, light a torch of awareness, and find our essence, our connection to the infinite and every other living thing.we knew it from the day we were born.lets not be freaked out by our bountiful nothingness.its more a reality than the ones ourselves have created.imagine what kind of existence we can have if we honor inevitable death of self, 关键在于，我们尚未找出怎样与地球和万物一起，生活在同一性中。我们一直在疯狂地寻找怎样和数十亿的其他人一起生活。我们并非只是和其他人一起生活。我们疯狂的自我们在一起生活，与他人的隔断也如同传染病一般蔓延。让我们生活在一起，歇一口气，慢慢来。如果我们能进入那沉重的自我，点燃一支觉察的火炬，寻找我们的本源，我们和永恒以及万物的联系，我们从出生那天就知道的联系。我们无须因为大量的空虚而慌张。相比于我们创造出的那些，这空虚更加真实。想像我们能有怎样的存在方式，当我们正视自我不可避免的死亡，感恩生命的权利，惊异于即将到来的事物。这些都来自于简单的觉察。篇三：李世默ted演讲稿(中英文)李世默ted：

6.TED英语演讲稿 篇六

When you are a kid, you get asked this one particular question a lot, it really gets kind of annoying. What do you want to be when you grow up? Now, adults are hoping for answers like, I want to be an astronaut or I want to be a neurosurgeon, you’re adults in your imaginations.

Kids, they’re most likely to answer with pro-skateboarder, surfer or minecraft player. I asked my little brother, and he said, seriously dude, I’m 10, I have no idea, probably a pro-skier, let’s go get some ice cream.

See, us kids are going to answer something we’re stoked on, what we think is cool, what we have experience with, and that’s typically the opposite of what adults want to hear.

But if you ask a little kid, sometimes you’ll get the best answer, something so simple, so obvious and really profound. When I grow up, I want to be happy.

For me, when I grow up, I want to continue to be happy like I am now. I’m stoked to be here at TedEx, I mean, I’ve been watching Ted videos for as long as I can remember, but I never thought I’d make it on the stage here so soon. I mean, I just became a teenager, and like most teenage boys, I spend most of my time wondering, how did my room get so messy all on its own.

Did I take a shower today? And the most perplexing of all, how do I get girls to like me? Neurosciences say that the teenage brain is pretty weird, our prefrontal cortex is underdeveloped, but we actually have more neurons than adults, which is why we can be so creative, and impulsive and moody and get bummed out.

But what bums me out is to know that, a lot of kids today are just wishing to be happy, to be healthy, to be safe, not bullied, and be loved for who they are. So it seems to me when adults say, what do you want to be when you grow up? They just assume that you’ll automatically be happy and healthy.

Well, maybe that’s not the case, go to school, go to college, get a job, get married, boom, then you’ll be happy, right? You don’t seem to make learning how to be happy and healthy a priority in our schools, it’s separate from schools. And for some kids, it doesn’t exists at all? But what if we didn’t make it separate? What if we based education on the study and practice of being happy and healthy, because that’s what it is, a practice, and a simple practice at that?

Education is important, but why is being happy and healthy not considered education, I just don’t get it. So I’ve been studying the science of being happy and healthy. It really comes down to practicing these eight things. Exercise, diet and nutrition, time in nature, contribution, service to others, relationships, recreation, relaxation and stress management, and religious or spiritual involvement, yes, got that one.

So these eight things come from Dr. Roger Walsh, he calls them Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes or TLCs for short. He is a scientist that studies how to be happy and healthy. In researching this talk, I got a chance to ask him a few questions like; do you think that our schools today are making these eight TLCs a priority? His response was no surprise, it was essentially no. But he did say that many people do try to get this kind of education outside of the traditional arena, through reading and practices such as meditation or yoga.

But what I thought was his best response was that, much of education is oriented for better or worse towards making a living rather than making a life.

In 2006, Sir Ken Robinson gave the most popular Ted talk of all time. Schools kill creativity. His message is that creativity is as important as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.

A lot of parents watched those videos, some of those parents like mine counted it as one of the reasons they felt confident to pull their kids from traditional school to try something different. I realized I’m part of this small, but growing revolution of kids who are going about their education differently, and you know what? It freaks a lot of people out.

Even though I was only nine, when my parents pulled me out of the school system, I can still remember my mom being in tears when some of her friends told her she was crazy and it was a stupid idea.

Looking back, I’m thankful she didn’t cave to peer pressure, and I think she is too. So, out of the 200 million people that have watched Sir Ken Robinson’s talk, why aren’t there more kids like me out there?

Shane McConkey is my hero. I loved him because he was the world’s best skier. But then, one day I realized what I really loved about Shane, he was a hacker. Not a computer hacker, he hacked skiing. His creativity and inventions made skiing what it is today, and why I love to ski. A lot of people think of hackers as geeky computer nerds who live in their parent’s basement and spread computer viruses, but I don’t see it that way.

Hackers are innovators, hackers are people who challenge and change the systems to make them work differently, to make them work better, it’s just how they think, it’s a mindset.

I’m growing up in a world that needs more people with the hacker mindset, and not just for technology, everything is up for being hacked, even skiing, even education. So whether it’s Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg or Shane McConkey having the hacker mindset can change the world.

Healthy, happy, creativity in the hacker mindset are all a large part of my education. I call it Hackschooling, I don’t use any one particular curriculum, and I’m not dedicated to any one particular approach, I hack my education.

I take advantage of opportunities in my community, and through a network of my friends and family. I take advantage of opportunities to experience what I’m learning, and I’m not afraid to look for shortcuts or hacks to get a better faster result. It’s like a remix or a mash-up of learning. It’s flexible, opportunistic, and it never loses sight of making happy, healthy and creativity a priority.

And here is the cool part, because it’s a mindset, not a system. Hackschooling can be used anyone, even traditional schools. Soo what does my school look like? Well, it looks like Starbucks a lot of the time, but like most kids I study lot of math, science, history and writing. I didn’t used to like to write because my teachers made me write about butterflies and rainbows, and I wanted to write about skiing.

It was a relief for my good friend’s mom, started the Squaw Valley Kids Institute, where I got to write through my experiences and my interests, while, connecting with great speakers from around the nation, and that sparked my love of writing.

I realized that once you’re motivated to learn something, you can get a lot done in a short amount of time, and on your own, Starbucks is pretty great for that. Hacking physics was fun, we learned all about Newton and Galileo, and we experienced some basic physics concepts like kinetic energy through experimenting and making mistakes.

My favorite was the giant Newton’s cradle that we made out of bowling balls, no bocce balls. We experimented with lot of other things like bowling balls and event giant jawbreakers.

Project Discovery’s ropes course is awesome, and slightly stressful. When you’re 60 feet off the ground, you have to learn how to handle your fears, communicate clearly, and most importantly, trust each other.

Community organizations play a big part in my education, High Fives Foundation’s Basics Program being aware and safe in critical situations. We spent a day with the Squaw Valley Ski Patrol to learn more about mountain safety, then the next day we switched to science of snow, weather and avalanches.

But most importantly, we learned that making bad decisions puts you and your friends at risk. Young should talk, well brings history to life. You study a famous character in history, and so that you can stand on stage and perform as that character, and answer any question about their lifetime.

In this photo, you see Al Capone and Bob Marley getting grilled with questions at the historical Piper’s Opera House in Virginia City, the same stage where Harry Houdini got his start.

Time and nature is really important to me, it’s calm, quiet and I get to just log out of reality. I spend one day a week, outside all day. At my Fox Walkers classes, our goal is to be able to survive in the wilderness with just a knife. We learn to listen to nature, we learn to sense our surroundings, and I’ve gained a spiritual connection to nature that, I never knew existed.

But the best part is that we get to make spears, bows and arrows, fires with just a bow drill and survival shelters for the snowy nights when we camp out. Hanging out at the Moment Factory where they hand make skis and design clothes, has really inspired me to one day have my own business. The guys at the factory showed me why I need to be good at math, be creative and get good at selling.

So I got an internship at Big Shark Print to get better at design and selling. Between fetching lunch, scrubbing toilets and breaking their vacuum cleaner, I’m getting to contribute to clothing design, customizing hats and selling them. The people who work there are happy, healthy, creative, and stoked to be doing what they are doing, this is by far my favorite class.

So, this is why I’m really happy, powder days, and it’s a good metaphor for my life, my education, my hackschooling. If everyone ski this mountain, like most people think of education, everyone will be skiing the same line, probably the safest and most of the powder would go untouched.

I look at this, and see a thousand possibilities, dropping the corners, shredding the spine, looking for a churning from cliff-to-cliff. Skiing to me is freedom, and so is my education, it’s about being creative; doing things differently, it’s about community and helping each other. It’s about being happy and healthy among my very best friends.

7.TED演讲——内向性格的力量 篇七

about camp spirit and said we should all work very hard to be outgoing.And so I put my books away, back in their suitcase, and I put them under my bed, and there they stayed for the rest of the summer.And I felt kind of guilty about this.I felt as if the books needed me somehow, and they are calling out to me and I was forsaking them, but I did forsake them and I didn‟t open that suitcase again until I was back home with my family at the end of the summer.Now, I tell you this story about summer camp.I could have told you 50 other just like it, all the time that I got the message that somehow my quiet and introverted style of being was not necessarily the right way to go, that I should be trying to pass as more of an extrovert.And I always sensed deep down that this was wrong and that introverts were pretty excellent just as they were, but for years I denied this intuition, and so I become a Wall Street lawyer, of all things, instead of the writer that I had always longed to be, partly because I needed to prove myself that I could be bold and assertive too.And I was always going off to crowded bars when I really would have preferred to just have a nice dinner with friends.And I made these self-negating choices so reflexively, that I wasn‟t even aware that I was making them.Now this is what many introverts do, and it‟s our loss for sure, but it is also our colleagues‟ loss and our communities‟ loss.And at the risk of sounding grandiose, it is the

world‟s loss, because when it comes to creativity and to leadership, we need introverts doing what they do best.A third to a half of the population is introverts, a third to a half.So that‟s one out of every two or three people you know.So even if you‟re an extrovert yourself, you know I‟ talking about your coworkers and your spouses and your children and the person sitting next to you right now, all of them subject to this bias that is pretty deep and real in our society.We all internalize it from a very early age without even having a language for what we‟re doing.Now to see the bias clearly you need to understand what introversion is.And it‟s different from being shy.Shyness is about fear of social judgment.Introversion is more about, how do you respond to stimulation, including social stimulation.So extroverts really crave large amounts of stimulation, whereas introverts feel at their most alive and their most switched on and their most capable when they‟re in quiet, more low-key environments.Not all the time, you know these things aren‟t absolute, but a lot of the time.So the key then to maximizing our talents is for us all to put ourselves in the zone of stimulation that is right for us.But now here‟s where the bias comes in.Our most important institutions, our schools and our workplaces, they are designed mostly for extroverts, and for extroverts‟ need for lots of stimulation.And also we are living through this belief system.We have this belief system right now that I call the new groupthink, which

holds that all creativity and all productivity come from a very oddly gregarious place.So if you picture the typical classroom nowadays: When I was going to school, we sat in rows.You know, we sat in rows of desks like this, and we did most of our work pretty autonomously, but nowadays, your typical classroom has pods of desks, four or five or six or seven kids all facing each other.And kids are working in countless group assignments.Even in subjects like math and creative writing, which you think, would depend on solo flights of thought.Kids are now expected to act as committee members.And for the kids who prefer to go off by themselves or just to work alone, those kids are seen as outliers often, or worse, as problem cases.And the vast majority of teachers‟ reports believing that the ideal student is an extrovert as opposed to an introvert, even though introverts actually get better grades and are more knowledgeable, according to research.Okay, same thing is true in our workplaces.We now, most of us work in open plan offices, without walls, where we are subject to the constant noise and gaze of our coworkers.And when it comes to leadership, introverts are routinely passed over for leadership positions, even though introverts tend to be very careful, much less likely to take outsize risks, which is something we might all favor nowadays.And interesting research by Adam Grant at the Wharton School has found that introverted leaders often deliver better outcomes than extroverts do, because when they are managing proactive employees, they‟re much more

likely to let those employees run with their ideas, whereas an extrovert can, quite unwittingly, get so excited about things that they‟re putting their own stamp on things, and other people‟s ideas might not as easily then bubble up to the surface.Now in fact, some of our transformative leaders in history have been introverts.I‟ll give you some examples.Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosa Parks, Gandhi, all these people described themselves as quiet and soft-spoken and even shy.And they all took the spotlight, even though every bone in their bodies was telling them not to.And this turns out to have a special power all its own, because people could feel these leaders were at the helm, not because they enjoyed directing others and not out of the pleasure of being looked at.They were there because they had no choice;because they were driven to do what they thought was right.Now I think at this point it‟s important for me to say that I actually love extroverts.I always like to say some of my best friends are extrovert including my beloved husband.And we all fall at different points, of course, along the introvert/extrovert spectrum.Even Carl Jung, the psychologist who first popularized these terms, said that there‟s no such thing as a pure introvert or a pure extrovert.He said that such a man would be in a lunatic asylum, if he existed at all.And some people fall smack in the middle of the introvert/extrovert spectrum, and we call these people ambiverts.And I often think that they have the best of all worlds, but many of us do recognize

ourselves as one type or the other.And what I‟m saying is that culturally we need a much better balance.We need more of a yin and yang between these two types.This is especially important when it comes to creativity and to productivity, because when psychologists look at the lives of the most creative people, what they find are people who are very good at exchanging ideas and advancing ideas, but also have a serious streak of introversion in them.And this is because solitude is a crucial ingredient often to creativity.So Darwin, he took long walks alone in the woods and emphatically turned down dinner party invitations.Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr.Seuss, he dreamed up many of his amazing creations in a lonely bell tower office that he had in the back of his house in La Jolla, California.And he was actually afraid to meet the young children who read his books for fear that they were expecting him this kind of jolly Santa Claus-like figure and would be disappointed with his more reserved persona.Steve Wozniak invented the first Apple computer sitting alone in his cubical in Hewlett-Packard where he was working at the time.And he says that he never would have become such an expert in the first place had he not been too introverted to leave the house when he was growing up.Now of course, this does not mean that we should all stop collaborating, and case in

point is Steve Wozniak famously coming together with Steve Jobs to start Apple Computer, but it does mean that solitude matters and that for some people it is the air that they breathe.And in the fact, we have known for centuries about the transcendent power of solitude.It‟s only recently that we‟ve strangely begun to forget it.If you look at most of the world‟s major religions, you will find seekers, Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, seeders who are going off by themselves alone to the wilderness where they then have profound epiphanies and revelations that they then bring back to the rest of the community.So no wildness, no revelations.This is no surprise though if you look at the insights of contemporary psychology.It turns out that we can‟t even be in a group of people without instinctively mirroring, mimicking their opinions.Even about seemingly personal and visceral things like which you‟re attracted to, you will start aping the beliefs of the people around you without even realizing that that‟s what you‟re doing.And groups famously follow the opinions of the most dominant or charismatic person in the room, even though there‟s zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas, I mean zero.So……

You might be following the person with the best ideas, but you might not.And do you really want to leave it up to chance? Much better for everybody to go off by themselves, generate their own ideas freed from the distortions of group dynamics, and then come

together as a team to talk them through in a well-managed environment and take it from there.Now if all this is true, then why are we getting it so wrong? Why are we setting up our schools this way and our workplaces? And why are we making these introverts feel so guilty about wanting to just go off by themselves some of the time?

One answer lies deep in our cultural history.Western societies, and in particular the U.S., have always favored the man of action over the man of contemplation and “man” of contemplation, but in America‟s early days, we lived in what historians call a culture of character, where we still, at that point, valued people for their inner selves and their moral rectitude.And if you look at the self-help books from this era, they all had titles with things like “Character, the Grandest Thing in the World.” And they featured role models like Abraham Lincoln who was praised for being modest and unassuming.Ralph Waldo Emerson called him” A man who does not offend by superiority.”

But then we hit the 20th century and we entered a new culture that historians call the culture of personality.What happened is we had evolved an agricultural economy to a world of big business.And so suddenly people are moving from small towns to the cities.And instead of working alongside people they‟ve known all their lives, now they are having to prove themselves in a crowd of strangers.So, quite understandably, qualities like magnetism

and charisma suddenly come to seem really important.And sure enough, the self-help books change to meet these new needs and they start to have names like “how to win friends and influence people”.And they feature as their role models really great salesmen.So that‟s the world we„re living in today.That‟s our cultural inheritance.Now none of this is to say that social skills are unimportant, and I‟m also not calling for the abolishing of teamwork at all.The same religions who send their sages off to lonely mountain tops also teach us love and trust.And the problems that we are facing today in fields like science and in economics are so vast and so complex that we are going to need armies of people coming together to solve them working together.But I am saying that the more freedom that we give introverts to be themselves, the more likely that they are to come up with their own unique solutions to these problems.So now I‟d like to share with you what‟s in my suitcase today.Guess what? Books.I have a suitcase full of books.Here‟s Margaret Atwood, “Cat‟s Eye.” Here‟s a novel by Milan Kundera.And here‟s” the guide for the perplexed” by Maimonides.But these are not exactly my books.I brought these books with me because they were written by my grandfather‟s favorite authors.My grandfather was a rabbi and he was a widower, who lived alone in a small apartment in Brooklyn that was my favorite place in the world when I was growing up，partly because it was filled with his very gentle, very courtly presence and partly because it was filled with books.I mean literally every table;every chair in his apartment had yielded its original function to now serve as a surface for swaying stacks of books.Just like the rest of my family, my grandfather‟s favorite thing to do in the whole world was to read.But he also loved his congregation, and you could feel this love in the sermons that he gave every week for the 62 years that he was a rabbi.He would take the fruits of each week‟s reading and he would weave these intricate tapestries of ancient and humanist thought.And people would come from all over to hear him speak.But here‟s the thing about my grandfather.Underneath this ceremonial role, he was really modest and really introverted, so much so that when he delivered these sermons, he had trouble making eye contact with the very same congregation that he had been speaking to for 62 years.And even away from the podium, when you called him to say hello, he would often end the conversation prematurely for fear that he was taking up too much of your time.But when he died at the age of 94, the police had to close down the streets of his neighborhood to accommodate the crowd of people who came out to mourn him.And so these days I try to learn from my grand father‟s example in my own way.So I just published a book about introversion, and it took me about 7 years to write.And for me, that seven years was like total bliss, because I was reading, I was writing, I was