Need a break from writing your own TEDx Talk? Below are 10 of my Favorite TED Talks. Watch them, and you’ll feel inspired & energized!

It was hard enough to choose 10 favorites, let alone rank them – eventually, I gave up, and just organized them alphabetically by speaker name. Enjoy!

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The surprising habits of original thinkers – Adam Grant

“Originals are nonconformists, people who not only have new ideas but take action to champion them. They are people who stand out and speak up. Originals drive creativity and change in the world. They’re the people you want to bet on.”

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Love, no matter what – Andrew Solomon

“I decided to have children while I was working on this project. And many people were astonished and said, “But how can you decide to have children in the midst of studying everything that can go wrong?” And I said, “I’m not studying everything that can go wrong. What I’m studying is how much love there can be, even when everything appears to be going wrong.”

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12 truths I learned from life & writing – Anne Lamott

“There is almost nothing outside of you that will help in any kind of lasting way, unless you’re waiting for an organ. You can’t buy, achieve or date serenity and peace of mind.”

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The way we think about charity is dead wrong – Dan Pallotta

“You want to make 50 million dollars selling violent video games to kids? Go for it. We’ll put you on the cover of Wired magazine. But you want to make half a million dollars trying to cure kids of malaria, and you’re considered a parasite yourself.”

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Your elusive creative genius – Elizabeth Gilbert

“For the first time in history, you start to hear people referring to this or that artist as being a genius, rather than having a genius. And I got to tell you, I think that was a huge error.”

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How we need to remake the internet – Jaron Lanier

“We cannot have a society in which, if two people wish to communicate, the only way that can happen is if it’s financed by a third person who wishes to manipulate them.”

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Do schools kill creativity? – Ken Robinson

“Our education system has mined our minds in the way that we strip-mine the earth: for a particular commodity. And for the future, it won’t serve us. We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we’re educating our children.”

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Strange answers to the psychopath test – Jon Ronson

“And then I realized that becoming a psychopath spotter had kind of turned me a little bit psychopathic. Because I was desperate to shove him in a box marked ‘Psychopath.’ I was desperate to define him by his maddest edges.”

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Can we build AI without losing control over it? – Sam Harris

“At a certain point, we will build machines that are smarter than we are, and once we have machines that are smarter than we are, they will begin to improve themselves. And then we risk what the mathematician IJ Good called an “intelligence explosion,” that the process could get away from us.”

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How to make hard choices – Ruth Chang

“So when we face hard choices, we shouldn’t beat our head against a wall trying to figure out which alternative is better. There is no best alternative. Instead of looking for reasons out there, we should be looking for reasons in here: Who am I to be?”