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

If you can't do it perfectly, why do it at all? Recovering perfectionist Charly Haversat challenges our obsession with perfection in our personal lives, workplaces and beyond. Can we fight the crippling fear of failure and the unwillingness to compromise that it creates?

Social psychologist Thomas Curran explores how the pressure to be perfect -- in our social media feeds, in school, at work -- is driving a rise in mental illness, especially among young people. Learn more about the causes of this phenomenon and how we can create a culture that celebrates the joys of imperfection.

Thomas Curran studies the personality characteristic of perfectionism, how it develops and its impact on mental health.

What if one person could change the world? What if we could harness our collective talent, insight and wisdom? And what if, together, we could spark a movement with positive impact far into the future? For a third year, UPS has partnered with TED to bring experts in business, logistics, design and technology to the stage to share ideas fr...

About this event: You are cordially invited to the next TEDxTheHague salon! Our April edition — themed Isms Cause Schisms — is curated by TEDxTheHague: "Dogmatism, perfectionism, sensationalism... isms have the power to take over our lives — if we let them. But what’s behind these isms? Sometimes it’s a role we play, a mask we wear, to get the approval we crav...

Procrastination isn't shameful or a character flaw. Instead it's rooted in a very human need: the need to feel competent and worthy, says educator Nic Voge. This post is part of TED’s “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from someone in the TED community; browse through all the posts here. “It's...

About this event: Failure can be devastating, but it can also make us stronger and more resilient. What if we accepted that failure is part of success and embraced it instead? Entrepreneur and director of the Failure Institute Leticia Gasca calls us to move beyond shame and humiliation in her talk ‘Don’t fail fast- fail mindfully’ business educator Eddie Obeng ca...

About this event: The archetypal, clichéd world of today has become a garden of remembrance for many a fallen martyr overwhelmed by the enduring idea of perfectionism. The strong alliance to the sense of being perfect has been so deeply incorporated into civilization, that striking equilibrium is now considered old-school. Quitting this dangerously inherent cult ...

Thoughts like these are completely normal, but many new moms feel ashamed of having them. Here’s how to let go of self-judgment and too-high expectations, from reproductive psychiatrists Alexandra Sacks and Catherine Birndorf. I’ve have been working in women’s mental health for the past decade and my mission has been to educate people about the...

You might not realize how much perfection is getting in the way of your freedom and your joy, says Reshma Saujani, founder and CEO of Girls Who Code. Take this quiz to find out.  

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...

We can see the power of distributed, crowd-sourced business models every day — witness Uber, Kickstarter, Airbnb. But veteran online activist Jeremy Heimans asks: When does that kind of "new power" start to work in politics? His surprising answer: Sooner than you think. It’s a bold argument about the future of politics and power; watch and see i...

About this event: Our speakers this year include (note that time of talks is tbd): 1. Miryam Z. Wahrman, Ph.D. BIO: MIRYAM Z. WAHRMAN is Professor of Biology at William Paterson University of New Jersey, where she directs a research laboratory in microbiology, studying bacteria on environmental surfaces. An expert in Bioethics, Professor Wahrman has developed ...