When failure strikes, our defenses go up, and all we think about is saving face. Yet these natural reactions prevent us from adapting and learning to turn failure into success. If your life or career has become derailed because of failure or simply life’s ups and downs, then these five TED Talks will lift you to a better place and help inspire you to start anew.

• Why not share your comments or join us in our Facebook Group.
• We’d love to know what you think of our Facebook Page.

Further Reading

Disclosure: this section contains affiliate links. Please see disclosure for more information.

• Alain de Botton, FRSL, is a Swiss writer, philosopher, and television presenter who currently lives in the United Kingdom. His books and television programs discuss various contemporary subjects and themes, emphasizing philosophy’s relevance to everyday life. His latest book “The Consolations of Philosophy” presents the wisdom of some of the greatest thinkers of the ages as advice for our day to day struggles.
• Angela Lee Duckworth is an American psychologist who won a 2013 MacArthur Fellowship  and is associated with the study of the psychological trait known as grit. Author Paul Tough examines grit in depth in his book “How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character” and argues that success is about more than test scores — it’s about skills like perseverance, curiosity, optimism, and self-control. And they can all be learned and nurtured.
• Neil Pasricha is an author and speaker characterized by his advocacy of positivity and simple pleasures. He is best known for his book, “The Book of Awesome“, which is a New York Times best seller. In it he shares wise and witty observations of life’s little moments and the simple things that make us happy.
• Shawn Achor is the winner of over a dozen distinguished teaching awards at Harvard University, where he delivered lectures on positive psychology in the most popular class at Harvard. In “The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work“, he uses stories and case studies from his work with thousands of Fortune 500 executives in 42 countries to explain how we can reprogram our brains to become more positive and gain a competitive edge at work.
• Elizabeth Gilbert is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of “Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia“, as well as the short story collection, Pilgrims–a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, and winner of the 1999 John C. Zacharis First Book Award from Ploughshares. Her latest book The Signature of All Things: A Novel is an enthralling story of love, adventure and discovery spanning much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.