TED Talks - آموزش زبان

🔴How COVID 19 human challenge trials work and why I volunteered? #Coronavirus #Virus #Science #Vaccines #Medicine #Health #Pandemic #Disease 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜ 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜

This is how the Internet works. This is that great big secret. The Internet provides a level playing field. Your link is as good as your link, which is as good as my link. With a browser, anyone can get to any website no matter your budget. That is, as long as you can keep net neutrality in place. Another important thing is it costs nothing to get content online. There are so many publishing tools available, it only takes a few minutes to produce something. and the cost of iteration is so cheap, you might as well. If you do, be genuine. Be honest, up-front. One of the great lessons Greenpeace learned is that it's OK to lose control, OK to take yourself a little less seriously, given that, even though it's a very serious cause, you could ultimately achieve your goal. That's the final message I want to share: you can do well online. But no longer is the message coming from just the top down. If you want to succeed you've got to be OK to lose control. Thank you. #Internet #Animals #Business #Culture #Entertainment #Entrepreneur #Ocean 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜ 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜

🔴How to make a splash in social media? There are a lot of web 2.0 consultants who make a lot of money. In fact, they make their living on this stuff. I'm going to try to save you all the time and money and go through it in the next three minutes, so bear with me. Started a website in 2005 with a few friends, called Reddit.com. It's what you'd call a social news website; basically, the democratic front page of the best stuff on the web. You find some interesting content -- say, a TED Talk -- submit it to Reddit, and a community of your peers votes up if they like it, down if they don't. That creates the front page. It's always rising, falling; a half million people visit every day. But this isn't about Reddit. It's about discovering new things that pop up on the web. In the last four years, we've seen all kinds of memes, all kinds of trends get born right on our front page. This isn't about Reddit itself, it's actually about humpback whales. Well, technically, it's about Greenpeace, an environmental organization that wanted to stop the Japanese government's whaling campaign. The whales were getting killed; they wanted to put an end to it. One of the ways they wanted to do it was to put a tracking chip inside one of the whales. But to personify the movement, they wanted to name it. So in true web fashion, they put together a poll, where they had a bunch of very erudite, very thoughtful, cultured names. I believe this is the Farsi word for "immortal." I think this means "divine power of the ocean" in a Polynesian language. And then there was this: "Mister Splashy Pants." And this was a special name. Mister Pants, or "Splashy" to his friends, was very popular on the Internet. In fact, someone on Reddit thought, "What a great thing, we should all vote this up." And Redditors responded and all agreed. So the voting started. We got behind it ourselves; we changed our logo for the day, from the alien to Splashy, to help the cause. And it wasn't long before other sites like Fark and Boing Boing and the rest of the Internet started saying, "We love Splashy Pants!" So it went from about five percent, which was when this meme started, to 70 percent at the end of voting. Pretty impressive, right? We won! Mister Splashy Pants was chosen. Just kidding -- Greenpeace actually wasn't that crazy about it, because they wanted one of the more thoughtful names to win. They said, "No, just kidding. We'll give it another week of voting." Well, that got us a little angry, so we changed it to Fightin' Splashy. And the Reddit community -- really, the rest of the Internet, really got behind this. Facebook groups were created. Facebook applications were created. The idea was, "Vote your conscience, vote for Mister Splashy Pants." People were putting up signs in the real world about this whale. This was the final vote: 78 percent of the votes. To give you an idea of the landslide, the next highest name pulled in three. There was a clear lesson: the Internet loves Mister Splashy Pants. Which is obvious. It's a great name. Everyone wants to hear their news anchor say, "Mister Splashy Pants." I think that's what helped drive this. What was cool were the repercussions. Greenpeace created an entire marketing campaign around it -- Mister Splashy Pants shirts and pins, an e-card so you could send your friend a dancing Splashy. But even more important was that they accomplished their mission. The Japanese government called off their whaling expedition. Mission accomplished: Greenpeace was thrilled, the whales were happy -- that's a quote. And actually, Redditors in the Internet community were happy to participate, but they weren't whale lovers. A few, certainly, but we're talking about a lot of people, really interested and caught up in this meme. Greenpeace came back to the site and thanked Reddit for its participation. But this wasn't really altruism; just interest in doing something cool.

🔴How to make a splash in social media? #Internet #Animals #Business #Culture #Entertainment #Entrepreneur #Ocean 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜ 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜

🔴How to be an upstander instead of a bystander? Let me tell you a story, where you'll meet the characters who I'll call Bilal and Brenda. I was working in a most remarkable part of the world. And one unremarkable morning, a colleague came to see me. She told me that Bilal, one of our senior executives, had been telling everyone I was being removed because I'd been messing with the wrong people. And now, I was going to face the consequences. I wasn't alarmed, because I knew I had done what I'd been hired to do: my job, dealing with thorny issues head on and leaving no stone unturned. In fact, in the months prior to this, we'd overturned more than just a few stones. Those details are for another time. I called my husband, James, to tell him about this bizarre conversation, and with what proved to be great foresight, he said, "Angélique, pack your things and call Brenda, in that order." I called Brenda. I'd worked with her for a number of years, and I trusted her. She was the person who'd recommended me for that job. I cut to the chase, because my husband's reaction made me realize this was more than just the usual stuff I'd encountered before. And I say usual, but in that moment of clarity, it dawned on me what James had already recognized: none of this was usual. These irregularities, part of a pattern I'd failed to notice, were what I now know as open secrets living beneath those proverbial stones I'd had the audacity to overturn. To my shock, I learned that this was happening because I hadn't tried hard enough to operate in the "gray space." I didn't seem to know when to kick things into the long grass. And I didn't understand that this was how the system worked. The message, the implied threat, was clear. Over the next few weeks, I was replaced by a convenient yes-man while I was still there. I suffered from terrible gastritis, and I pretended to our two young daughters that I still had that job. Leaving home every morning, dressed up as if for work, to drop them to school, for six months. I did not submit, but I won't pretend that it was easy to speak up or beneficial in any way to me, to my family or to my career. When we speak up in the workplace despite policies to the contrary, whilst we may not lose our jobs, we are likely to lose the camaraderie of our coworkers. Disbelieved, ostracized, faced with under-the-radar bullying. You know the kind when you walk into a room and everyone stops talking? We think: It's not my responsibility to say anything. So why did I choose to act despite the risks to my family and to me? The sin of omission is a failure to do what you know is right. When you stay quiet, even though you're not guilty of wrongdoing yourself, what will you have to live with if you don't take action? So who are you in this lineup of actors? The bad actor, the wrongdoer? The bad stander who benefits directly or indirectly and acts as a puppet for the bad actor? The bystander, aware of the open secrets but not actually doing anything wrong or the upstander? This is the person we want to see when we look in the mirror. I've learned three things: One, don't second guess yourself. When you see something amiss, ask questions, because it is okay to challenge those in authority. Two, don't be complicit. You always have the power to say no in the face of wrongdoing. And three, be an upstander. Speaking up is not about being brave. It's not about not feeling scared. But when you do what you know is right, you can be at peace with yourself. Yes, it is hard to say what you feel in the moment. Do it anyway. Be fearless. Martin Luther King said, "In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." So when you look in the mirror, who will you see? A bystander, keeper of open secrets? Or will the person looking back at you be an upstander? I know who I see. I know who my daughters see. The choice is yours. #Social_Change #Self #Work #Bullying #Corruption #Ethics 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜ 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜

🔴How to be an upstander instead of a bystander? #Social_Change #Self #Work #Bullying #Corruption #Ethics 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜ 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜

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The third and final trick that I use to assess a founder's adaptability is to look for people who infuse exploration into their life and their business. There's a sort of natural tension between exploration and exploitation. And collectively, all of us tend to overvalue exploitation. Here's what I mean. In the year 2000, a man finagled his way into a meeting with John Antioco, the CEO of Blockbuster, and proposed a partnership to manage Blockbuster's fledgling online business. The CEO John laughed him out of the room, saying, "I have millions of existing customers and thousands of successful retail stores. I really need to focus on the money." The other man in the meeting, however, turned out to be Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix. In 2018, Netflix brought in 15.8 billion dollars, while Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy in 2010, directly 10 years after that meeting. The Blockbuster CEO was too focused on exploiting his already successful business model, so much so that he couldn't see around the next corner. In that way, his previous success became the enemy of his adaptability potential. For the founders that I work with, I frame exploration as a state of constant seeking. To never fall too far in love with your wins but rather continue to proactively seek out what might kill you next. When I first started exploring adaptability, the thing I found most exciting is that we can improve it. Each of us has the capacity to become more adaptable. But think of it like a muscle: it's got to be exercised. And don't get discouraged if it takes a while. Remember Destin Sandlin? It took him eight months just to learn how to ride a bike. Over time, using the tricks that I use on founders -- asking "what if" questions, actively unlearning and prioritizing exploration over exploitation can put you in the driver's seat -- so that the next time something big changes, you're already prepared. We're entering a future where IQ and EQ both matter way less than how fast you're able to adapt. So I hope that these tools help you to raise your own AQ. Thank you. #Leadership #Business #Entrepreneur #Personal_Growth #Investing 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜ 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜

🔴3 ways to measure your adaptability and how to improve it I met 273 start-up founders last year. And each one was looking for money. As a tech investor, my goal was to sort through everyone that I met and make a quick determination about which ones had the potential to make something really big. But what makes a great founder? This is a question I ask myself daily. Some venture capitalists place bets based on a founder's previous background. Did they go to an Ivy League school? Have they worked at a blue-chip company? Have they built out a big vision before? Effectively, how smart is this person? Other VCs asses a founder's emotional quotient, or EQ. How well will this person build teams and build rapport across customers and clients? I have a different methodology to assess start-up founders, though, and it's not complicated. I look for signs of one specific trait. Not IQ, not EQ. It's adaptability: how well a person reacts to the inevitability of change, and lots of it. That's the single most important determinant for me. I subscribe to the belief that adaptability itself is a form of intelligence, and our adaptability quotient, or AQ, is something that can be measured, tested and improved. AQ isn't just useful for start-up founders, however. I think it's increasingly important for all of us. Because the world is speeding up. We know that the rate of technological change is accelerating, which is forcing our brains to react. Whether you're navigating changing job conditions brought on by automation, shifting geopolitics in a more globalized world, or simply changing family dynamics and personal relationships. Each of us, as individuals, groups, corporations and even governments are being forced to grapple with more change than ever before in human history. So, how do we assess our adaptability? I use three tricks when meeting with founders. Here's the first. Think back to your most recent job interview. What kind of questions were you asked? Probably some variation of, "Tell me about a time when," right? Instead, to interview for adaptability, I like to ask "what if" questions. What if your main revenue stream were to dry up overnight? What if a heat wave prevented every single customer from being able to visit your store? Asking "what if," instead of asking about the past, forces the brain to simulate. To picture multiple possible versions of the future. The strength of that vision, as well as how many distinct scenarios someone can conjure, tells me a lot. Practicing simulations is a sort of safe testing ground for improving adaptability. Instead of testing how you take in and retain information, like an IQ test might, it tests how you manipulate information, given a constraint, in order to achieve a specific goal. The second trick that I use to assess adaptability in founders is to look for signs of unlearning. Active unlearners seek to challenge what they presume to already know, and instead, override that data with new information. Kind of like a computer running a disk cleanup. Take the example of Destin Sandlin, who programed his bicycle to turn left when he steered it right and vice versa. He called this his Backwards Brain Bike, and it took him nearly eight months just to learn how to ride it kind of, sort of normally. The fact that Destin was able to unlearn his regular bike in favor of a new one, though, signals something awesome about our adaptability. It's not fixed. Instead, each of us has the capacity to improve it, through dedication and hard work. On the last page of Gandhi's autobiography, he wrote, "I must reduce myself to zero." At many points in his very full life, he was still seeking to return to a beginner's mindset, to zero. To unlearn. In this way, I think it's pretty safe to say Gandhi had a high AQ score.

🔴3 ways to measure your adaptability and how to improve it #Leadership #Business #Entrepreneur #Personal_Growth #Investing 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜ 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜

One of the reasons NEOWISE is so valuable is that it sees the sky in the thermal infrared. That means that instead of seeing the sunlight that asteroids reflect, NEOWISE sees the heat that they emit. This is a vital capability since some asteroids are as dark as coal and can be difficult or impossible to spot with other telescopes. But all asteroids, light or dark, shine brightly for NEOWISE. Astronomers are using every technique at their disposal to discover and study asteroids. In 2010, a historic milestone was reached. The community, together, discovered over 90 percent of asteroids bigger than one kilometer across -- objects capable of massive destruction to Earth. But the job's not done yet. An object 140 meters or bigger could decimate a medium-sized country. So far, we've only found 25 percent of those. We must keep searching the sky for near-Earth asteroids. We are the only species able to understand calculus or build telescopes. We know how to find these objects. This is our responsibility. If we found a hazardous asteroid with significant early warning, we could nudge it out of the way. Unlike earthquakes, hurricanes or volcanic eruptions, an asteroid impact can be precisely predicted and prevented. What we need to do now is map near-Earth space. We must keep searching the sky. Thank you. #Astronomy #Asteroid #Discovery #Exploration #Collaboration #Global_Issues #Nature #Physics #Science #Technology #Solar_System #TED_Fellows #Universe #Space #TED_Books 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜ 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜

🔴Adventures of an asteroid hunter I am holding something remarkably old. It is older than any human artifact, older than life on Earth, older than the continents and the oceans between them. This was formed over four billion years ago in the earliest days of the solar system while the planets were still forming. This rusty lump of nickel and iron may not appear special, but when it is cut open ... you can see that it is different from earthly metals. This pattern reveals metallic crystals that can only form out in space where molten metal can cool extremely slowly, a few degrees every million years. This was once part of a much larger object, one of millions left over after the planets formed. We call these objects asteroids. Asteroids are our oldest and most numerous cosmic neighbors. This graphic shows near-Earth asteroids orbiting around the Sun, shown in yellow, and swinging close to the Earth's orbit, shown in blue. The sizes of the Earth, Sun and asteroids have been greatly exaggerated so you can see them clearly. Teams of scientists across the globe are searching for these objects, discovering new ones every day, steadily mapping near-Earth space. Much of this work is funded by NASA. I think of the search for these asteroids as a giant public works project, but instead of building a highway, we're charting outer space, building an archive that will last for generations. These are the 1,556 near-Earth asteroids discovered just last year. And these are all of the known near-Earth asteroids, which at last count was 13,733. Each one has been imaged, cataloged and had its path around the Sun determined. Although it varies from asteroid to asteroid, the paths of most asteroids can be predicted for dozens of years. And the paths of some asteroids can be predicted with incredible precision. For example, scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory predicted where the asteroid Toutatis was going to be four years in advance to within 30 kilometers. In those four years, Toutatis traveled 8.5 billion kilometers. That's a fractional precision of 0.000000004. Now, the reason I have this beautiful asteroid fragment is because, like all neighbors, asteroids sometimes drop by unexpectedly. Three years ago today, a small asteroid exploded over the city of Chelyabinsk, Russia. That object was about 19 meters across, or about as big as a convenience store. Objects of this size hit the Earth every 50 years or so. 66 million years ago, a much larger object hit the Earth, causing a massive extinction. 75 percent of plant and animal species were lost, including, sadly, the dinosaurs. That object was about 10 kilometers across, and 10 kilometers is roughly the cruising altitude of a 747 jet. So the next time you're in an airplane, snag a window seat, look out and imagine a rock so enormous that resting on the ground, it just grazes your wingtip. It's so wide that it takes your plane one full minute to fly past it. That's the size of the asteroid that hit the Earth. It has only been within my lifetime that asteroids have been considered a credible threat to our planet. And since then, there's been a focused effort underway to discover and catalog these objects. I am lucky enough to be part of this effort. I'm part of a team of scientists that use NASA's NEOWISE telescope. Now, NEOWISE was not designed to find asteroids. It was designed to orbit the earth and look far beyond our solar system to seek out the coldest stars and the most luminous galaxies. And it did that very well for its designed lifetime of seven months. But today, six years later, it's still going. We've repurposed it to discover and study asteroids. And although it's a wonderful little space robot, these days it's kind of like a used car. The cryogen that used to refrigerate its sensors is long gone, so we joke that its air-conditioning is broken. It's got 920 million miles on the odometer, but it still runs great and reliably takes a photograph of the sky every 11 seconds. It's taken 23 photos since I began speaking to you.

🔴Adventures of an asteroid hunter #Astronomy #Asteroid #Discovery #Exploration #Collaboration #Global_Issues #Nature #Physics #Science #Technology #Solar_System #TED_Fellows #Universe #Space #TED_Books 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜ 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜

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Nothing is worse in a crisis than feeling like there's nothing you can do to help. We follow this new kind of leader through upheaval, because we have confidence not in their map but in their compass. We believe they've chosen the right direction given the current information, and that they will keep updating. Most of all, we trust them and we want to help them in finding and refinding the path forward. #Work #Leadership #Business #Communication 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜ 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜

🔴How to lead in a crisis? We think of a great leader as the unwavering captain who guides us forward through challenge and complexity. Confident, unwavering leaders, armed with data and past experience have long been celebrated in business and politics alike. But sometimes and certainly now, a crisis comes along that is so new and so urgent that it upends everything we thought we knew. [The Way We Work] [Made possible with the support of Dropbox] One thing we know for sure is that more upheavals are coming. In a completely interconnected world a single political uprising, a viral video, a distant tsunami, or a tiny virus can send shock waves around the world. Upheaval creates fear, and in the midst of it people crave security, which can incline leaders toward the usual tropes of strength, confidence, constancy, but it won't work. We have to flip the leadership playbook. First, this type of leadership requires communicating with transparency, communicating often. So how can leaders lead when there is so little certainty, so little clarity? Whether you are a CEO, a prime minister, a middle manager or even a head of school, upheaval means you have to ramp up the humility. When what you know is limited, pretending that you have the answers isn't helpful. Amidst upheaval, leaders must share what they know and admit what they don't know. Paradoxically, that honesty creates more psychological safety for people, not less. For example when the pandemic devastated the airline industry virtually overnight, CEO of Delta Airlines Ed Bastian ramped up employee communication despite having so little clarity about the path ahead, facing truly dire results. At one point in 2020, losing over a hundred million dollars a day, it would have been far easier for Bastian to wait for more information before taking action, but effective leaders during upheaval don't hide in the shadows. In fact, as Bastian put it, it is far more important to communicate when you don't have the answers than when you do. Second, act with urgency despite incomplete information. Admitting you don't have the answers does not mean avoiding action. While it's natural to want more information, fast action is often the only way to get more information. Worse, inaction leaves people feeling lost and unstable. When New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern laid out a four level alert system very early in the COVID-19 crisis, she lacked information with which to set the level. Despite lacking answers, she did not wait to communicate about the threat with the nation. At first she set the level at two, only to change it to four two days later as cases rose. That triggered a national lockdown, which no doubt saved countless lives. Later, when cases began to dissipate, she made subsequent decisions reflecting that new information. Third, leaders must hold purpose and values steady, even as goals and situations change. Values can be your guiding light when everything else is up in the air. If you care about customer experience, don't let go of that in times of upheaval. If a core value is health and safety, put that at the center of every decision you make. Now doing this requires being very transparent about what your values are, and in this way, your steadfastness shows not in your plans but in your values. Prime Minister Ardern's clear purpose all along was protecting human life. Even as the immediate goal shifted from preventing illness to preparing health systems and ultimately to bolstering the economy. And finally, give power away. Our instincts are to hold even more tightly to control in times of upheaval, but it backfires. One of the most effective ways to show leadership, if counterintuitive, is to share power with those around you. Doing this requires asking for help, being clear that you can't do it alone. This also provokes innovation while giving people a sense of meaning.

🔴How to lead in a crisis? #Work #Leadership #Business #Communication 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜ 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜

🔴Why are stolen African artifacts still in Western museums? #Art #Culture #Museums #Africa #History #TED_Fellows 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜ 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜

When I got to New York, I didn't want to play by the rules of the art world. I continued my practice as an outsider. I kept drawing. Curiosity became the ink for my pen, and I continued to dive deeper. Over time, I began to create a bold, confident space for myself, a space that was all my own. Initially, it was just my bedroom. But that bedroom ended up in "The New York Times," and suddenly, I was being seen and known for this world I had created. Since then, I've created and collaborated with some of the most unique artists, institutions and spaces, from the screens of Times Square, to the New York City Ballet for their incredible artist series, where I interviewed a number of dancers. Their stories and words became the foundation of over 30 drawings and artworks, which took over the promenade walls, windows and floors. For a long time, I wanted to create a space for contemplation and poetry. And in 2019, I was given the opportunity to do just that by the Trust of Governor's Island. They provided me with the perfect canvas in the form of a former military chapel. Meet "The May Room." With drawings on the exterior inspired by the history of the island, you walk inside, you take your shoes off, and there's a drawing on the floor in the form of a maze that brings you back to you. It's an invitation to become calm. And this allows you to see phrases on the wall. "May you be wise." "May you sleep soundly at night." "May we save trees." "May you," "may you," "may we." And these phrases seem like they're rising from you or falling into you. I've let my lines become much like a language, a language that has unfolded much like life. And when there has been silence, I've sought connection through conversation, asking questions to push through the discomfort. Drawing has taught me how to create my own rules. It has taught me to open my eyes to see not only what is, but what can be. And where there are broken systems, we can create new ones that actually function and benefit all, instead of just a select few. Drawing has taught me how to fully engage with the world. And what I've come to realize through this language of lines is not the importance of being seen, but rather the gift of seeing that we give to others and how true freedom is the ability to see. And I don't mean that literally, because sight is only one way in which one can see. But what I mean is to experience the world in its entirety, maybe even more so during the most challenging moments like the one we face today. I'm Shantell Martin. I draw. And I invite you to pick up a pen and see where it takes you. #Self #Art #Identity #Humanity #Personal_Growth #Mental_Health 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜ 🎙Join ➣ @TEDTalksLearning ☜

🔴How drawing can set you free? So here we are. I'm at home, as I'm sure many of you are, too. And we've all begun to understand how our relationship with ourselves, with each other and the spaces we exist in can deeply impact our sense of identity and purpose. So much has dramatically changed. There's a sense of distance now unlike ever before. But what if I told you that you could find a way from your heart to your hand to reconnect again, and that through this practice and embracing this cause, I could help you to recalibrate your mind so that you could explore this new reality with joy, enthusiasm, imagination and hope? And all it would take is a simple pen. To get you there, let's go back to the beginning. As a kid growing up in a council estate in Southeast London, I was an outsider. I'm the oldest of six kids, and all of my siblings look very English: blond hair, blue eyes, very cute. And then there was me: half Nigerian, brown, with an Afro. So what happens when you look different and you feel different, and in many ways, start to think differently from everyone and everything around you? How do you find your way out of a dark, racist, homophobic and very lonely place? This is where the pen comes in. I started to draw. So as you can see, I've got this pen, and it knows where it's going. And I've learned very well how to follow it. And the first thing I did is I followed this line, and I drew myself out of a culture that was only telling me what I couldn't do. I trusted my pen, and it led me to Central Saint Martin's, a very fancy art school in London, where I graduated top of my year. However, I soon realized there wasn't a place for me in London, because whether you wish to believe it or not, England is still a country that is rooted and functions within the class system. And as a young, black, gay female artist from a working-class family, I didn't stand a chance. So I left London and I moved to Japan, where I didn't experience people asking me where I was really from. I was just another gaijin, which, ironically, means "outsider." I was immersed in a culture that honors both making and craft, where people perfect their craft over generations. It's a culture that masters both time and space, so that artists can truly create with freedom. And what I discovered was a place I wasn't angry with. Tokyo hadn't wronged me in any way. I could no longer create with anger or out of pain. I had to bravely allow myself to create from a different place. And what I found is this incredible tool transcended a line on paper. I found this thing that connected my head to my heart and my hand to everything. I could see the world in new ways. I found connections in corners and the solutions to problems I never knew existed. It's like the world with all its positive and negative spaces could now be seen. And just by seeing it, there was no longer any fear. It's like my pen was a flashlight, and the unknown was still there, but it wasn't scary. After five years of living in Japan and focusing on my craft, I felt like I needed a new challenge. So I moved to New York, because that's what you do as an artist, right? You move to the greatest city in the world that has the ability to make you feel completely and utterly invisible. This is when I began to truly ask myself, "Who are you?" I would wake up in the morning, and before I began my day, I would meditate on this. And with this question in mind, I kept drawing. I followed the line. I let it lead the way. The process of picking up a pen, something everyone has access to, the act of giving myself permission to let go of all thoughts, all fears, insecurities -- anything that would get in the way of allowing myself to be completely me -- that became my way of experiencing freedom.