#6 Podcast

I listened to two 2014 audios in Podcast from the Ted Talks Audio: Ideas Worth Spreading. The two audios were Success, Failure, and the Drive to keep Creating by Elizabeth Gilbert and How to make hard choices by Ruth Chang. Both presentations were presented by grit women who found happiness with their career choice and presented ideas to help others find happiness. Elizabeth Gilbert began talking about how she always wanted to become a writer and how she was approached by two women who recognized her as the author of Eat Pray Love. This was her first successful published book after about six years of failure. Gilbert talked about the drive of not given in to failure by giving up on your dream because of rejection. She urges her audience to find the inspiration to pursue what you love just as she did regardless of failure or success.

 

Ruth Chang, the author of the second audio began asking the audience to think of a hard choice they will face in the near future. Chang states the fear of the unknown is a common default in dealing with hard choices. Early on in her career she contemplated what she wanted to be, a lawyer or a philosopher, so she took the safest option, something we all have done one time or another.  Fear and the expectations of others led her to be a lawyer and she was unhappy in this field. Chang states that people who don’t exercise their normative power in hard choices are drifters. And drifters allow the world to write the story of their lives; they let mechanisms of rewards and punishment, pats on the head, fear, and the easiness of an option to determine what they do. Chang mentioned that hard choices are not a curse but a Godsend and in the space of hard choices is where we become the person who we are.

So according to both presenters, the best alternative to finding happiness in a future career choice and who we are is to look inside of ourselves for the answer, never give up on what we love regardless of failure or success from another career, and continue to push through.