3 Ways To Encourage You To Try New Things

These talks will help you explore out of your comfort zone and feel proud of your beautiful self.

Be an Opportunity Maker

Writer Kare Anderson spoke about the process to discover one's talents from her perspective as a shy person. She found the meaning of her life in helping other people use their own talents and passions. She invites her audience to think of the questions: “What kind of opportunity makers we might become?" 

While being a trends reporter she had to have loads of contacts and she had to put herself in the reader's shoes to try to understand how different tendencies could affect their lives. In terms of those she defines as opportunity makers, she believes “they are people actively seeking situations with people unlike them.” Anderson believes opportunity makers are not outraged or insulted by differences, but they are fascinated by them.

Finally, she summarized three main traits of opportunity makers. The first one is that they become pattern seekers. The next is that they get involved in different worlds than their own. Finally, Anderson believes opportunity makers communicate to connect around hubs with people with shared interests.

Also read: WHAT IS BODYFULNESS ABOUT?

Embracing Otherness, Embracing Myself

The famous actress Thandiwe Newton gave a TED Talk about her otherness. Both her childhood as a multicultural kid and her work as an actress in which she impersonates different selves, have taken her to reflect on the concept of self, and if it is actually our real expression to the world or a projection based on other people's projections. 

Newton felt like she never fit since she was five. With British-Zimbabwean roots, she was constantly told her color, hair and history weren't right, so her self became defined by what she calls “otherness.” This produced her anxiety, shame, and hopelessness. Now she defines race as an illegitimate concept humanity has created based on fear and ignorance.

When she discovered acting at 16 she felt at peace as her "dysfunctional self" plugged into another self. Newton says she thought that because she could feel others she had nothing of herself to feel. However, with time came respect, she stopped shaming that self and started living more from her essence. 

She believes the solution is oneness, which means connections with the world and others. According to her, “We haven't figured out how to live in oneness with the earth and every other living thing, we've just been insanely trying to figure out how to live with each other. Only we are not living with each other, our crazy selves are living with each other and perpetuating an epidemic of disconnection.”

My Year Reading a Book From Every Country in the World

Ann Morgan found a massive "cultural blind spot" in her reading and felt shame. “I decided to prescribe myself an intensive course of global reading, I was a clueless literary xenophobe.” She started reading a book per country in a year but struggled to find translations and choose the books. Four days after asking for book recommendations she got a message from a woman in Kuala Lumpur who sent her a Malaysian and a Singaporean book.

This repeated, “It turns out if you want to read the world, if you want to encounter it with an open mind, the world will help you.” She even found Portuguese-speaking collaborators from around the world that translated a book from Sao Tome and Principe Island. This taught her about the strength in vulnerability “My not knowing and being open about my limitations brought together people on a creative project.”

She humbly reflects, “I don't want to suggest that it's at all possible to get a rounded picture of a country simply by reading one book. But cumulatively, the stories I read that year made me more alive than never before to the richness, diversity, and complexity of our remarkable planet.” Through her literary journey, she discovered the power books have to connect people across political, geographical, cultural, and religious divides. She aims to encourage editors to translate more texts from all around the world.