Q&A

Browse our live chat with Neil Pasricha, or join in — until 2016

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Neil Pasricha at the TED Office

TEDTalks star Neil Pasricha, the author of “The Book of Awesome” and the new “Even More Awesome,” came by the TED office on Tuesday to be part of a one-hour live chat with TEDsters. He asked people to chime in on this question: “What do you do to make your life awesome?” Some lovely and surprising answers …

Luis Eduardo Dejo: a letter and a family picture I got from my mom and a painting from my friends before coming to the US give me that sense of being home. And that is AWESOME

Sherif Ibrahim: A girl I know, more of a friend, is saving money every week off of the paychecks she receives into a special bank account she made specifically for building an orphanage in Egypt… The look in her eyes and the passion she holds for it tells me she’s going to get it done. Doing something for others in this sense is, well, beautiful.

Nicholas Hirsch: I read to kids at the library on Saturday mornings, take long walks outside just to remind myself that the sky is still there, and find ways to surround myself with interesting and happy people. :)

Toni Smith: Awesome = waking up at 4am in New Zealand because you can’t sleep and finding an AWESOME Ted talk which just happens to have a link to an active conversation on the other side of the world about awesome things in many peoples’ lives!

RUSHABH SANGHAVI
Awesomeness:
Parking your car exactly between the lines in one shot.
Placing your legs within the block on a chequered floor.
Watching an aeroplane from in-between your fingers.
The first O-ring you blew in your life in cold.
When you helped an elderly and got replied ‘Thank you, son’ in a shaky voice.

Gary Burnett: Arriving home and your dog bounds over to you, knocks you down and licks your face frantically. Welcome home – awesome!

Amber Kearney: the beach makes me happy. mostly surfing, but really anything about the beach. i know there’s been some research done to show that salt water is a natural therapy, I just put it into practice!

As you can tell by the photo above, we had a good time with Neil on this chat — which was meant to run for exactly one hour. He asked to extend it 10 more minutes … then 10 more minutes … then 10 more. Finally we realized we’d better just leave it open for a while. What’s the maximum our system allows? 2068 days, 23 hours, and 27 minutes:

Neil Pasricha screenshot

In photo above, that’s Neil in the orange sweater, with, from left around the table: TED.com editor Emily McManus, TEDx postproduction specialist David Webber, TED’s customer support rep Will True, media specialist Angela Cheng, film + video editor Kari Mulholland, Neil Pasricha, Neil’s rep Sarah Burningham, TED’s community catalyst Corvida Raven, and TED writer/editor Ben Lillie . Photo: Mike Femia.