Why doesn't success bring happiness?

Have you ever accomplished something you weren’t quite sure you could do?
It’s energizing, it’s exciting, it’s amazing.
Success feels kind of wonderful, right?
The work you did opened more doors than you ever thought possible.
And yet that work also teased the opportunity of even more doors
that you’d never thought possible.
And maybe, just maybe,
as you peeked through the doors at what could be,
you thought to yourself, “I think I want more.”
Instead of success handing you happiness,
it gave you a faster pace, an increased hunger, bigger goals.
And in that faster pace, increased hunger and bigger goals, you also found
uncertainty, self-doubt, anxiety,
and stress.
Success is wonderful,
but it’s also kind of hell.
It just might be that success is kind of a Wonderhell.
(Laughter)

Over the course of a 20-year career in executive search,

I was hired by my clients to go out and find for them,
and recruit away on their behalf,
some of the most successful people in the world.
Now, that sounds like a hard job,
except I was helped by the fact that despite all this success,
which is why I was calling them,
they weren’t all that happy,
which is why they were calling me back.
Now, we think once we’ve achieved success, everything gets easier.
So why doesn’t it ever get easier?
Why doesn’t it feel better?
Why doesn’t success equal happiness, and why does it all too often
feel like Wonderhell?
I had my own Wonderhell moment shortly after my last book came out.
I'd spent the previous few weeks existing on airplanes.
I had gone to sleep in 20 different hotel beds.
I had woken up in 10 different time zones.
At the moment of this realization, I was 35,000 feet in the air;
I had 1,200 miles behind me and 1,200 more to go.
The only thing I knew for certain was that somewhere between the blur
that would be the past
and the blur that would be the future was the space I was in at present.
And the space I was in at present
was upright and locked in a center seat on a red-eye,
and I was completely and utterly fried.
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Now, launching my book well meant I had to be bold.

I had no idea what I was doing, but I set these crazy goals for myself anyway.
I let my mouth write a whole lot of checks that my hustle had to cash.
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I’d spent those weeks existing on nothing but coffee and protein bars
and the rush of adrenaline, that bowel-shaking terror,
offered by the fistful.
But it worked.
This thing that I created, I grew, I birthed,
I pursued so very hard for those weeks, and months, and years leading up to it.
It worked.
I was pushing towards success and my mentor GPS announced,
“You’ve arrived.”
And I was like, “I know, right?”
(Laughter)
But I was also pushing towards burnout.
I was tired, so very tired,
and somewhere in the alchemy of achievement and exhaustion,
the part of my brain that normally governs my humility disappeared,
and all I was left with was a tiny little voice whispering,
“This thing has legs.”
This thing has legs.

00:00
Now you might recognize this moment as the moment that the burden of
potential
walks into your psyche, unpacks its backpack and asks,
“Hey, whatcha got for me, huh?”
The burden of your potential plunks its weight on your shoulders
and demands that you carry it around with you at all times.
It’s your Wonderhell.
And it starts the moment that you realize that your idea has promise,
that it can be bigger, that you were meant for more.
Ego has entered the chat.
(Laughter)
Now what comes next is a sea of turbulent emotions -
these “necessary” evils that we’ve been told
are just part of going after everything we’ve ever wanted.

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And we think we need to just struggle through and get by all the time,
wrestling with this never-ending, flip-flopping dialogue:
“I can handle this. I can’t handle this.”
We think of success as a final destination, but it’s not.
We think once we’ve achieved it, we’ve arrived, but we haven’t.
We think once there it’s easy money, smooth sailing, but it’s not.
Because Wonderhell teaches us
that success is not a final destination at all,
but merely an inflection point along the way.
So once I realized I wasn’t at the end of my journey, merely in the middle,
I set about to do some homework.
I read all the books.
I read the books telling me to crush it, to lean in, to 10x.
(Laughter)
And I read their polar opposites,
the ones telling me to stop apologizing and wash my face.
(Laughter)
00:00

And what was on offer on social media was not much better.
There were the slicked-back bros, the hustle porn dudes
jetting off to ink their next deal, yeah.
And then there were the boho chic instafluencers
telling me to follow my passion,
telling me I’d find happiness
if only I’d breathe into the right energy crystals.
(Laughter)
What even is an energy crystal, anyway?
Neither worked for me.
I'm guessing neither of these work for you either.
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They didn’t work for thousands of leaders I stewarded

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through massive moments of career and life shift

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during those 20 years in executive search.

And they certainly didn’t work for nearly 100 glass-ceiling shatterers,
Olympic medalists, start-up unicorns,
and everyday people like me and like you,
who I sought out to interview to find a way out of Wonderhell.
Each one of them told me how they did things they never thought possible.
And each one of them also told me that, at every phase and at every stage,
they experienced crushing imposter syndrome,
doubt, vulnerability, uncertainty, envy, exhaustion, and burnout.
But each one of them made it to the other side and the better for it.
So, how did they do it?

Three ways:
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First, they came to terms with their ambition.
Do you know why internal candidates always leave if they don’t get the job?
It’s because the very process of interviewing for that bigger job
means that they literally had to, even just for a moment,
answer questions in that role, speak in the voice of that role,

00:00
wear the clothes of that role,
and once they saw part of themselves in this new way,
they couldn't unsee themselves in this new way.
And just like these internal candidates, you can’t unsee this new you either.
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Each time we envision success, even before we achieve it,

we see a version of ourselves we never thought real,
a potential we never thought possible,
a promise of everything we can be and all that we can embody.
There is the you before this realization,
and then there is the you after.
Second, the mixed emotions surrounding this realization -
the good, the bad, and the ugly -
aren’t limitations but invitations.
For each of the people I spoke to who had a track record of thriving in
Wonderhell,
they understood that these uncomfortable feelings weren’t just part of the
process.
They were actually incredibly helpful allies.
So, they’re able to stop, reflect on these emotions,
listen to these emotions,
renegotiate the relationship with these emotions,
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because we think about these chaotic reactions as slings and arrows

to be absorbed in silence and pushed down and muscled through,
but that’s a lie.
And that lie is stopping us from capitalizing on our Wonderhell,
because Wonderhell is the excitement and the fear.
It’s the joy and the uncertainty.
It's the possibility and the chaos.
And it is the promise and the potential that you feel when you see this new you,
and you realize the only one who gets to choose which you to become is, well,
you.
00:00

And that means changing the voice inside your head, warning,
“You haven’t done this before!”
and warning you to run away from your potential into a cheerleader,
yelling, “You haven’t done this before!”
and encouraging you to run towards it.
Wonderhell is the sign that you were on the right track
to new opportunity and new growth.
And third, Wonderhell loves itself a repeat visitor.
We think things will settle down after, it’ll get easier.
All we need to do is get through this one stomach-churning, butt-clenching,
fight-or-flight moment, as if it was a single,
00:00

one-time temporary hurdle.

But for everyone I spoke to,
what was on the other side of this Wonderhell
was the next one, and the next one,
and if they were lucky, the next one after that.
Our journeys are a series of successes
punctuated by lessons and losses in life.
It’s an ongoing cycle.
There isn’t one big finish line. There are a million different little ones.
So listen, I’m not telling you to suck it up
and I’m not telling you to get hard.
What I am telling you is that to define success as a finite destination
would mean that you’re accepting that there’s only a finite limit
to your growth.
And all that does is steal away all the wonder
and leave us only in the hell.

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So what if we redefined success not as an endpoint,
but as a waypoint, and allowed ourselves to sit in that deep discomfort
that is the only path to growth?
What if we saw success not as a final destination,
but as a portal,
one that expanded our understanding of what is possible?
What if we stopped dreading Wonderhell and racing to survive it?
And instead learn to look forward to it, to plan for it, to learn from it,
to grow from it, and thrive in it instead.
What if Wonderhell wasn’t our breakdown,
but our breakthrough?
Because Wonderhell invites us to dive into that discomfort.
Wonderhell compels us to expand our boundaries.
Wonderhell urges us to embrace our newfound potential.
So what will you do with the gift that is the burden of your potential?
What will you do next time you find yourself in Wonderhell?
Thank you.
(Applause)
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How did ancient civilizations make ice
cream?

On a hot spring afternoon in 1963,

two men, sent by the American CIA,
snuck into the cafeteria of the Havana Libre Hotel.
Their directive was to retrieve a poison pill from the freezer
and slip it into the chocolate milkshake of Fidel Castro,
the Cuban leader who was known to devour up to 18 scoops of ice cream after
lunch.
While exact details of the story are contested, it's rumored that the pill,
however, froze to the freezer coils and broke,
foiling the CIA’s plan and granting Castro many more days to satiate his sweet
tooth.

00:43
Ice cream has held a unique role in our world’s history, culture, and
cravings—
but where did it come from?

00:51
The first accounts of cold desserts and iced drinks date back
as early as the first century.
In civilizations including ancient Rome, Mughal India, and Tang dynasty
China,
these icy treats were mainly enjoyed by the royal elites.
And finding the means to freeze these delicacies wasn’t always easy.
Wealthy Mediterranean nobility sent laborers to trek up high mountains
to harvest glacial ice and snow.
Meanwhile, ancient Persians built shallow insulated pools of water
and utilized a technique known as sky cooling.
At night, the shallow pools would naturally radiate heat
into the dry desert skies,
causing them to dip below the ambient temperature and freeze.

01:35
Yet the cream-based treat we know today made a much later debut.
It was originally inspired by sherbet, or sharbat in Arabic,
an icy drink believed to have originated in Persia,
and subsequently gained popularity in the Middle Ages.
European travelers brought sharbat recipes home,
and began creating their own chocolate, pinecone,
and even eggplant flavored takes on the refreshment.
In 1692, Antonio Latini, a Neapolitan chef,
recorded a recipe for a unique milk-based version,
which some historians dub the first ice cream.
02:14
In the 18th century, ice cream expanded its reach
as these recipes set sail alongside European settlers to North America.
Yet it was still mainly enjoyed by the upper classes
as the process to make it was quite laborious,
and its main ingredients— sugar, salt, and cream— were expensive.
George Washington is said to have spent the equivalent of $6,600
in today’s dollars on ice cream in one summer alone.
It was on American soil that the frozen dessert entered its golden age,
as inventors and entrepreneurs began to engineer ways to bring it to the
masses.
In Philadelphia in 1843, Nancy Johnson patented
a revolutionary ice cream-making machine featuring a crank and beater,
which made the process easier for any home cook.
And storing ice cream was no longer an obstacle, as by the mid-1830s,
New England businessman “Ice King” Frederic Tudor
had greatly improved the ice trade,
shipping thousands of tons of ice to households across the globe.

03:21
Soon, ice cream was on every street corner.
In the late 1880s, political turmoil brought Italian immigrants to cities
like London, Glasgow, and New York,
where many took up jobs as street vendors selling licks of ice cream
for roughly a penny each.
Meanwhile, American druggists discovered the appeal of combining soda,
a drink thought to have therapeutic properties at the time,
with ice cream,
and a new social spot was born: the soda fountain.
When the sale of alcohol was banned in 1920,
many American saloons reinvented themselves as soda fountains,
and breweries like Anheuser-Busch and Yuengling
pivoted to producing ice cream.

04:05
At the same time, refrigeration technology was improving rapidly.
By the end of World War II,
the average American home had a freezer that could house a quart of ice
cream.
Even trucks could be equipped with freezers full of frozen treats.
04:21

Today, ice cream continues to take on new forms.

And while some of its mysteries may never be solved,
one thing is certain: our love for ice cream will never thaw.
Why do we eat popcorn at the movies?

Soft percussion and a toasty scent mark the violent transformation

of tough seeds into cloud-like puffs.
This is the almost magical process of popcorn-making.
But how did we actually end up with this whimsical food?

00:24
All the corn eaten today is derived from a tall grass called teosinte,
which Indigenous people in what is now southern Mexico
began selectively breeding about 9,000 years ago.
An ear of teosinte originally yielded somewhere between 5 and 12 small
kernels,
each with a hard shell called a pericarp.
And some varieties had a fantastic feature:
if they reached a certain temperature, their kernels exploded.

00:56
Popcorn kernels pop because water and starch
are sealed tightly within the pericarp.
When heated, the moisture inside becomes steam.
As it expands, it increases the internal pressure
and the solid starch transforms into a gel-like substance.
The pressure finally overcomes the pericarp’s resistance and it bursts—
the steam and starch expanding to form a foam
that quickly cools and dries in the air.
From this small-scale explosion also rush forth the compounds
that give popcorn its powerful aroma.

01:34
Ancient Indigenous American people cultivated other maize varieties
with larger, more flavorful kernels and thinner pericarps.
But the hard-shelled, poppable variety also persisted
and spread through parts of the Americas.

01:50
By the time European colonizers arrived in the late 1400s,
Indigenous American people were preparing and eating corn in myriad
manners.
Popcorn wasn’t a major part of their diets.
But it popped up in European accounts,
which described the preparation of “toasted” or “parched” corn
and its use in some Aztec feasts and celebrations.

02:13
Despite initial reluctance,
colonizers eventually began cultivating— and popping— corn.
The methods they used at first were inconsistent and messy.
But with the invention of “wire over the fire” baskets around 1837,
the process got easier.
Soon, popcorn picked up steam
and exploded with a reputation as a low-cost, entertaining snack.
Over the following decades,
it became a mainstay at events and hundreds of recipes materialized,
mixing popcorn with sweet and savory ingredients.

02:47
But popcorn hadn't yet reached its height.
At the 1893 World’s Fair, an inventor showcased the first popcorn machine:
a wagon that tossed popcorn in seasoning as it cooked.
Soon enough, vendors could be seen roving US city streets with similar
machines.

03:06
Interestingly, movie theaters were some of the only American venues
where you wouldn’t find popcorn at the time.
Many cinema operators saw their establishments
as part of a grand theater tradition at odds with popcorn—
what they considered a messy, low-brow street food.
However, when the Great Depression hit in 1929,
movies provided the public with a welcome distraction.
And they had recently gone from being silent and subtitled to acquiring sound,
making them accessible to a wider audience,
including non-literate people.
At about five or ten cents a bag,
popcorn proved an inexpensive luxury for moviegoers,
so theater operators pounced on the money-making opportunity.
Today, a medium bag of popcorn might cost about 60 cents to make,
but retail for around $6— a 1,000% markup.
Popcorn sales generate nearly 40% of all movie theater profits,
helping to offset the high prices that theaters pay film studios.
Over the last century, people throughout the Americas continued popping
corn,
and different preparations took hold in markets worldwide.
When microwavable popcorn was launched in the 1980s,
popcorn popped off yet again.

04:28
Dozens of kinds of popcorn are now grown in the US.
Different strains assume distinctive shapes when their kernels explode,
most commonly taking so-called “mushroom” and “butterfly” forms.
And they’ve been bred for supreme poppability.
Over the last century, the amount that popcorn expands has doubled:
now, kernels can reach up to 50 times their original size upon popping.
Not to be corny, but popcorn’s come a long way.

05:00
This video was made possible with support from Marriott Hotels.
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Marriott Hotels celebrates the curiosity that propels us to travel.
Check out some of the exciting ways TED-Ed and Marriott are working
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What Earth in 2050 could look like

While we’re already feeling the devastating effects
of human-caused climate change,
governments continue to fall short on making and executing emissions
pledges
that would help thwart further warming.
So, what will our world look like in the next 30 to 80 years,
if we continue on the current path?

00:23
While it’s impossible to know exactly how the next decade will unfold,
scientists and climate experts have made projections,
factoring in the current state of affairs.
This future we’re about to describe is bleak,
but remember there’s still time to ensure it doesn’t become our reality.

00:40
It’s 2050.
We’ve blown past the 1.5 degree target that world leaders promised to stick
to.
The Earth has warmed 2 degrees since the 1800s,
when the world first started burning fossil fuels in mass scale.

00:52
Reports on heatwaves and wildfires regularly fill the evening news.
Summer days exceed 40 degrees in London and 45 degrees in Delhi,
as extreme heat waves are now 8 to 9 times more common.
These high temperatures prompt widespread blackouts,
as power grids struggle to keep up with the energy demands
needed to properly cool homes.
Ambulance sirens blare through the night,
carrying patients suffering from heatstroke, dehydration, and exhaustion.

01:19
The southwestern United States, southern Africa, and eastern Australia
experience longer, more frequent, and more severe droughts.
Meanwhile, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Japan
face more frequent heavy rainfall
as rising temperatures cause water to evaporate faster,
and trap more water in the atmosphere.
As the weather becomes more erratic,
some communities are unable to keep pace with rebuilding
what’s constantly destroyed.
Many move to cities,
where they face housing shortages and a lack of jobs.

01:48
A resource squeeze is felt in newborn intensive care wards,
as the rising temperature and air pollution
cause higher rates of premature and underweight births.
More children develop asthma and respiratory disease,
and rates balloon in communities regularly exposed to forest fire smoke.
The global emissions added to the atmosphere each year
finally start to level off, thanks to government action,
but it’s decades too late.
We fail to reach net zero in time.

02:13
As a result, by 2100 the Earth has warmed another 0.5 to 1.5 degrees.
Over half of our remaining glaciers have melted.
As the sea heats up, its volume increases due to thermal expansion.
Together, this elevates sea level by well over a meter.
Entire nations, like the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu, are uninhabitable
as large swaths of their islands are submerged.
Some islands, like the Maldives,
spend billions building interconnected rafts
that house apartments, schools, and restaurants
that float above its drowned cities.
Resettled climate migrants in Jakarta, Mumbai, and Lagos
are forced to abandon their homes once again,
as rising tides and extreme storms flood buildings and crumble infrastructure.
Overall, 250 million people are displaced.

03:00
Some affluent cities like New York and Shanghai attempt to adapt,
elevating buildings and roadways.
Ten-meter-tall seawalls line the cities’ coasts.
Children learn about extinct sea life which once inhabited the ocean’s reefs,
all of which have vanished thanks to rising surface water temperatures.

03:18
Grocery prices skyrocket,
as food and water scarcity touch all communities.
Fruits and products long grown in the tropics and subtropics
rarely show up on shelves,
as intense heat waves paired with increasing humidity
make it deadly for farmers to work outdoors.
Unpredictable heatwaves, droughts, and floods
cripple small-scale farmers in Africa, Asia, and South America,
who previously produced one-third of the world’s food.
Hundreds of millions of people are pushed into hunger and famine.

03:47
Climate predictions can feel overwhelming and terrifying.
Yet many of the experts responsible for these assessments remain optimistic.
Since countries have first begun taking steps to lower their emissions,
warming projections have shifted downwards.
In less than a decade, we’ve reduced our projected emission rates
so that we’re no longer on track to hit nearly 4 degrees of warming.

04:08
Policies that invest in renewable energy sources,
cut fossil fuel production, support electric transportation,
protect our forests, and regulate industry
can help mitigate the worst effects of climate change.

04:20
But climate experts have also stressed that current policies and pledges
don’t go far enough— in speed or scale.
Enacting real change will require bold solutions,
innovations, and collective action.
There’s still time to rewrite our future, and every tenth of a degree counts.