Believe it or not, graduate, but college may not have prepared you for everything you’ll encounter in the next 50+ years of your life. As your professional life revs up, listen to some advice for graduates from older and wiser professionals who know a thing or two about achieving goals, overcoming adversity, how your personality traits affect you, and success. Learn how to navigate the adult world better and balance your professional and personal goals with these 5 TED talks.
You can also take their transferable advice into your internship to better prepare yourself for your career and life post-study. Taking these tips into consideration as you begin your internship can give you a healthy mind-set to ensure you're getting the most from your career and you can grow professionally into a valuable employee.
1. Derek Sivers: Keep your goals to yourself
Psychologists say you shouldn't tell other people your goals. When we're congratulated for having an ambitious and awesome goal, we feel this happy sense of satisfaction for announcing the goal, making us less likely to work hard to achieve it because we've already gotten the praise. Recent graduates can't miss Derek Sivers’ short but important advice on achieving your goals.
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2. Leila Hoteit: 3 lessons on success from an Arab businesswoman
If you think you’ve got a busy day, check out Ms. Hoteit’s schedule. In this next piece of advice for the graduate, Arab businessperson and women’s advocate Leila Hoteit shares her secrets to being a successful professional and mother in Abu Dhabi. Her advice is geared towards recent graduates, rising professionals, or established business leaders looking to realize their potential.
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3. Brian Little: Who are you, really? The puzzle of personality
Personality psychologist Brian Little will help you understand why you are the way you are by shedding light on important components of human personalities and their role in our lives. Little’s advice for graduates is based on the argument that having a solid understanding of how you interact with the world helps you achieve your personal and professional goals at once. Learn about what it means to be an introvert or extrovert and how that affects how you move through the world.
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4. David Brooks: Should you live for your résumé … or your eulogy?
As you work to boost your professional life, don’t lose sight of the other side of you that matters. New York Times columnist David Brooks offers some advice on the struggle to have great professional success and also live a fulfilling, thoughtful, compassionate, and loving life outside of work. Borrowing from the philosophical essay The Lonely Man of Faith, Brooks talks about the importance of confronting our inner selves in a society that tends to value the resume over the eulogy. Recent graduates will benefit greatly from his unique insight.
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5. Alain de Botton: A kinder, gentler philosophy of success
Living in a success-crazed meritocracy puts an unbelievable amount of pressure on us to achieve professional success. In his talk, Alain de Botton offers a counteroffer to the cut-throat, competitive idea of success and begs you to not let societal ideals shape how you define success. According to de Botton, you shouldn’t be crushed by unattainable ideas of what you can achieve. There isn’t one definition of success, so you should live your life based on your unique definition of the concept to feel valued in more than one aspect of your life and career.
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