How to discover your authentic self -- at any age (w/ Bevy Smith)

How to Be a Better Human

TED

Self-improvement, Education

4.2 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 5 February 2024

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Wanting to “find yourself” isn’t something that only happens in coming-of-age movies – anyone, at any age, can wonder what it’d be like to have a different life. Bevy Smith knows this. A self-described late bloomer, Bevy shares what she’s learned from changing careers at the age of 38, and retells the story of how she completely uprooted her life to pursue her wildest dreams. Bevy also gives tips on how to stop second-guessing your desires – and names the one quality everyone needs to be their happiest selves. For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts

Transcript

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0:00.0	Ted Audio Collective.
0:02.0	Audio Collective.
0:04.0	You're listening to how to be a better human.
0:10.0	You're listening to how to be a better human.
0:12.0	I am your host Chris Duffy.
0:14.0	When I was a little kid, I was positive that I was going to grow up to be a marine biologist.
0:19.0	I was obsessed. I even had these printed out color maps of the ocean currents that I got from the Woods
0:24.1	Whole Oceanographic Institution, and I would study those maps and think, this is going to be so useful
0:29.2	when I'm a grown-up? Well, that turned out to not be the case. I have never once in my adult life
0:35.3	needed to be able to draw the ocean currents from memory. It's not something that
0:38.7	comes up very often. Later on, I thought I was going to be a doctor and then I thought I was going to be a neuroscientist and then I thought I was going to be a journalist.
0:47.0	And when I think back on each of those dreams and on my younger self, I love how passionate I would get each time.
0:52.0	And I laugh at how very, far I am currently from being a doctor
0:57.2	and that's not in the cards at the moment. I think sometimes as we get older we feel like we no longer have permission to dream big or to imagine new exciting life paths and different versions of ourselves.
1:10.0	But that doesn't have to be the case as As today's guest, the incredible Bevy Smith makes very clear in her TED Talk.
1:16.7	Here's a clip. I am a late bloomer. In fact, a friend of mine you may have heard of, Chris Rock, he once called me
1:27.0	the most late blooming mofo he'd ever met. Now some people might consider that snide but I revel in it. I'm 55 and I'm
1:39.2	here in this curvy body as someone who has done the work. Now coming to this realization wasn't easy. At the age of 38
1:46.7	I was a very successful fashion advertising executive and I was really living what most people
1:52.0	considered a dream life.
1:53.5	I was jet-setting the fashion shows, I was receiving free designer clothes.
1:57.8	I was double kissing my way across the globe.
	...

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