Failure isn’t fun, but it is an opportunity to learn, reflect and regroup. These insightful talks can help you pick yourself up after a setback and grow toward success.

What defines success -- and what is a failure, exactly? Readjust your expectations with these novel, refreshing perspectives on what it means to “win” and “lose”.

Why it's best to celebrate the little wins and imperfect moments alongside the big successes to combat our fear of failure.

In his research for NASA, clinical psychologist Raphael Rose discovered that failure is key to creating resilience. He explains how leaning into trials and setbacks builds the emotional callouses that help us value what's good in life.

At her Harvard commencement speech, "Harry Potter" author JK Rowling offers some powerful, heartening advice to dreamers and overachievers, including one hard-won lesson that she deems "worth more than any qualification I ever earned."

Art historian and critic Sarah Lewis celebrates creativity and shows how it can lead us through fear and failure to ultimate success.

"Great dreams aren't just visions," says Astro Teller, "They're visions coupled to strategies for making them real." The head of X (formerly Google X), Teller takes us inside the "moonshot factory," as it's called, where his team seeks to solve the world's biggest problems through experimental projects like balloon-powered Internet and wind turb...

International aid groups make the same mistakes over and over again. David Damberger analyzes his own engineering failure in India -- and calls for his friends in the development sector to publicly admit, scrutinize and learn from their missteps.

The world is changing much more rapidly than most people realize, says business educator Eddie Obeng -- and creative output cannot keep up. In this spirited talk, he highlights three important changes we should understand for better productivity, and calls for a stronger culture of “smart failure."

Elizabeth Gilbert was once an "unpublished diner waitress," devastated by rejection letters. And yet, in the wake of the success of 'Eat, Pray, Love,' she found herself identifying strongly with her former self. With beautiful insight, Gilbert reflects on why success can be as disorienting as failure and offers a simple -- though hard -- way to ...

Alain de Botton examines our ideas of success and failure -- and questions the assumptions underlying these two judgments. Is success always earned? Is failure? He makes an eloquent, witty case to move beyond snobbery to find true pleasure in our work.

Sometimes trying your best isn't enough; when the situation demands it, you need to be perfect. For Jon Bowers, who runs a training facility for professional delivery drivers, the stakes are high -- 100 people in the US die every day in car accidents -- and it's perfection, or "a willingness to do what is difficult to achieve what is right," tha...

What's the antidote to rising nationalism, polarization and hate? In this inspiring, poetic talk, Valarie Kaur asks us to reclaim love as a revolutionary act. As she journeys from the birthing room to tragic sites of bloodshed, Kaur shows us how the choice to love can be a force for justice.

Which of the following is risky behavior: a person taking cholesterol medicine with grapefruit juice? Or a person taking Acetaminophen before going out for drinks? Or a person on blood thinners who takes an aspirin? Turns out, all of them are risky. Each has inadvertently created a drug interaction that could lead to serious complications. Célin...

Have you ever wondered what happens to a painkiller, like ibuprofen, after you swallow it? Medicine that slides down your throat can help treat a headache, a sore back, or a throbbing sprained ankle. But how does it get where it needs to go in the first place? Céline Valéry explains how your body processes medicine. [Directed by Daniel Gray, nar...

"If we take care of the land, the land takes care of us," says Indigenous leader Valérie Courtois. As climate change continues to devastate the planet, Indigenous guardians are helping to honor our responsibility to the land, monitoring water quality, conducting research and working to restore key species. Courtois invites us all to support the ...

The wheat, corn and rice we grow today may not thrive in a future threatened by climate change. Cary Fowler takes us inside the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a vast treasury buried within a frozen mountain in Norway, that stores a diverse group of food-crop seeds ... for whatever tomorrow may bring.

With warmth and respect, Gonzalo Vilariño tells the captivating story of Argentina's blind soccer team -- and how a sincere belief in themselves and their capabilities transformed the players from humble beginnings into two-time World Champions. "You have to get out there and play every game in this beautiful tournament that we call life," Vilar...

Diagnosed with cancer, Bruce Feiler worried first about his young family. So -- as he shares in this funny, rambling and ultimately thoughtful talk -- he asked his closest friends to become a "council of dads," bringing their own lifetimes of wisdom to advise his twin daughters as they grow.

How do you navigate life's growing number of transitions with meaning, purpose and skill? Writer Bruce Feiler offers a powerful way to handle uncertain, painful and confusing times -- or "lifequakes", as he calls them. Learn how to equip yourself with the essential tools and mindset to ride out (and rewrite) the toughest chapters of your life st...

A professor of economics at the University of Waterloo in Canada, Larry Smith coaches his students to find the careers that they will truly love.

Singer-songwriter Valerie June delivers an uplifting, ethereal performance of "Astral Plane" as part of TED's Countdown Global Livestream on October 30, 2021.

Bruce Feiler has a radical idea: To deal with the stress of modern family life, go agile. Inspired by agile software programming, Feiler introduces family practices which encourage flexibility, bottom-up idea flow, constant feedback and accountability. One surprising feature: Kids pick their own punishments.

Look at the letters around you: on street signs, stores, restaurant menus, the covers of books. Whether you realize it or not, the letters are speaking to you, telling you something beyond the literal text -- that whatever they represent is modern or finely crafted or fantastical or zany. Learn to decode this secret language with lettering desig...

Susan Robinson is a business leader, inspirational speaker, blogger, entrepreneur and TED Resident. And she is legally blind.

¡Ideas en nuestro idioma! TED Talks in Spanish, with subtitles in English and other languages.

In a wildly entertaining discussion with Richard Saul Wurman, architect Frank Gehry gives TEDsters his take on the power of failure, his recent buildings, and the all-important "Then what?" factor.

During the peak of the Ebola crisis, the recovery process in Africa was not going according to plan. Failure after sobering failure forced health consultant Shalini Unnikrishnan to recognize that they had approached the crisis from the wrong direction. In this impassioned talk, she urges the response to the next pandemic to be centered on the pe...

One of Adam Grant’s guiding principles is to argue like he's right and listen like he's wrong.

How do we look forward without knowing where we come from? These talks emphasize the importance of historical truths, nuanced observations and preserving cultural heritage.