Alain de Botton is an exceptional author. His recent book is The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work.
Alain is a fine writer and speaker. In this talk he weaves a quick pace, wit, and humor to look at our outlook on success and failure. I encourage you to watch his TED Talk on A kinder, gentler philosophy of success.
On this video he encourage us to:
- Be cautious of our views of failure.
- Stop judging others based on their work role.
- Be wary of self-help that tells us we can do anything and that we suffer from low self-esteem. One sets the other up.
- Reexamine our ideas of success and failure.
- Remember we can’t be successful at everything and there will be loss with any success.
- Be cautious of sucking in other people’s ideas of what success is for us.
- Make sure we own our own measure, method, and meaning of success.
- Remember there is haphazard in all we do.
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This is one of the most meaningful TED talks I’ve ever watched. I love de Botton’s humility and wisdom, and David’s superb consolidation of the messages of this speech. Thank you DAvid for bringing it to me. This will be useful to me in some of my own work.
Kirsten,
Thank you for you comments. Botton has an authentic message mixed with humor and self-deprecation that touches me.
David