Ideas worth spreading

Why doesn't success bring happiness?

1,453,639 views | Laura Gassner Otting • TEDxReno

Success is energizing. But it's also anxiety-provoking and exhausting. Each time we achieve it, we often tend to immediately seek out the next step upward. Drawing on a two-decade career in executive search, interviewing thousands of the most successful people in the world, Laura Gassner Otting explains why success doesn't bring happiness, and how we can instead harness the volatile mix of emotions it does present.

Success is energizing. But it's also anxiety-provoking and exhausting. Each time we achieve it, we often tend to immediately seek out the next step upward. Drawing on a two-decade career in executive search, interviewing thousands of the most successful people in the world, Laura Gassner Otting explains why success doesn't bring happiness, and how we can instead harness the volatile mix of emotions it does present.

This talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxReno, an independent event.

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About the speaker

Laura Gassner Otting

Confidence Catalyst

Laura Gassner Otting has spent 25 years studying leaders and stewarding them through massive moments of career and life shift, whether as a political appointee in Bill Clinton’s White House, the founder and president of an international executive search firm, or in her current role as an author and keynote speaker. Her last book “Limitless: How to Ignore Everybody, Carve Your Own Path, and Live Your Best Life” was a Washington Post bestseller and was named by Robin Roberts as one of Good Morning America’s Favorite Books of the Year. She is a regular contributor to The TODAY Show, Good Morning America, and Harvard Business Review.

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This talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxReno, an independent event.

Read more about TEDx.