TED Talks Daily - A practical guide to taking control of your life | Cate Hall

Episode Date: August 14, 2025

The real lever of a meaningful life isn’t intelligence or hustle — it’s personal agency, says Cate Hall, former Supreme Court attorney and once the world’s top-ranked female poker player. Sharing her journey from the throes of addiction to leading a multibillion-dollar foundation, Hall shares tactical wisdom for increasing your ability to see and act on life's hidden degrees of freedom, showing how even the most trapped among us can discover a path to fulfillment.For a chance to give your own TED Talk, fill out the Idea Search Application: ted.com/ideasearch.Interested in learning more about upcoming TED events? Follow these links:TEDNext: ted.com/futureyouTEDSports: ted.com/sportsTEDAI Vienna: ted.com/ai-viennaTEDAI San Francisco: ted.com/ai-sf Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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In this deeply personal talk, entrepreneur Kate Hall shares her own journey from her battle with addiction to CEO and how the gift of desperation, as she calls it, led her to finding once inconceivable kinds of freedom and purpose in her life. She reminds us, no matter what you're struggling with, if you can learn to locate the hidden doors within, you can unlock incredible happiness and freedom. Five years ago, I was a prisoner in my own life. I was hopelessly addicted to drugs. Every morning I would get up, go buy drugs, and then spend the rest of the day using,

barely conscious, until I passed out again at the end of the night. I spent months at a time. I don't have a lot of memories from that time, but one thing I do remember very clearly is this incredible sense of awe and resentment I felt, just watching normal people do normal things. I would see somebody meeting a friend for lunch, and it would seem inconceivable to me

that anybody could be that free, that they could just decide what to do with an afternoon. This talk isn't about addiction, per se. But I'm telling you this because I really need you to understand where I'm coming from, how trapped I was, before I tell you that my life is amazing now. I'm clean, first and foremost. I'm married to an incredible man,

and I get to do all sorts of fun projects together, and I'm CEO of Astaire Institute. a multi-billion-dollar private foundation that's pioneering a new approach to supporting innovative science and technology. What I do want to talk about today is how I got from point A to point B. What changed?

It's not that I got smarter or that I started trying harder. I think what changed was even more fundamental. It was developing a sense of personal agency, which I think about as the capacity to both see and act on all of the degrees of freedom we actually have. It's about being able to find the hidden doors in the walls of life. I want to argue that when it comes to living a satisfying and meaningful life,

agency is actually much more important than the things we usually think about as critical to success, like intelligence and hard work, both of which are next to useless if misapplied and which are becoming less and less important as we increasingly outsource them to machines. I saw a quote recently from Gary Tan, the CEO of Y Combinator that I really liked.

He said, intelligence is on top now, so agency is even more important. For all of the freedom that addiction took from me, I think it actually gave me an unnatural advantage when it came to cultivating agency. And that's because, while agency has many mothers, one of them is certainly desperation.

Addicts call this the gift of desperation, actually, the willingness to do whatever it takes to change your life, to embarrass yourself by standing up in front of a room full of strangers and say, my name is Kate and I'm a drug addict, or to lock yourself away for months, or to take medications that will put you in the ER if you drink. By the time I went to rehab, I definitely had the gift of desperation.

I'd lost my job, most of my friends. For a time, I'd basically lost the ability to walk. And so when I left, I walked into a halfway house and a complete mess of a life. But in a way, I think that was actually good, because I felt like I had nothing left to lose. And that made me fearless. and hungry.

I started saying yes to everything, every connection someone was willing to make in hopes it might lead to something that would help me get back on my feet. I remember just going for volume. It didn't matter if I could tell how something would benefit me. That's how I ended up meeting most of the people I've worked with in the last four years. Losing my sense of pride also helped me learn really fast.

I had brain damage, which meant that I didn't always understand things, And I couldn't pretend that I did either. So I got good at saying, I don't understand what you just said. Can you explain it to me? In situations where before, I might have just nodded along. Side note, people love to explain things.

It's a total win-win. Now, I have great news, which is that you don't need to ruin your life and then rebuild it in order to learn to be more agentic. I do think it helps to be some kind of desk, but there's always something to be desperate for. I felt that during COVID, as friends and I watched low-income countries

struggle with vaccinations because they lacked adequate cold chain storage. So we created a company that created a shelf-stable vaccine, and we let that desperation drive us into clinical trials in under six months, faster than any startup in history. I felt another kind of desperation early on in my marriage when it seemed like there was an invisible wall between the two of us.

So in desperation, I learned how to resolve the emotional barriers that made it difficult for me to connect with people. I don't think agency is innate. But I do think most people learn it through sheer luck.

If it's not the luck of desperation, then maybe it's just the luck of seeing somebody highly agentic operating up close. I also think though, that it can be learned systematically and by many more people. I want to share some of the tactics I've learned for becoming more agentic. First, assume everything is learnable. I gave the example of learning to connect with my husband,

but I could have just as easily spoken from personal experience about learning to be more optimistic or curious. I think most traits that people treat as fixed are actually quite learnable. if you both believe that they are and put the same kind of effort into learning them that you would anything else. Second, court rejection.

We spend our lives carefully avoiding it, but if you're only aiming for things you get, you're doing yourself a disservice. In fact, sometimes you have to aim the things that feel unreasonable to make sure your instinct about what's reasonable is right. Last time I was applying for a job, I told a couple people,

I'm thinking about starting an organization much like your own. Can I run yours instead? A little delusional, maybe. But the thing is, sometimes delusional works. Third, seek real feedback. Pretty much every one of us

has something holding us back that we're completely blind to and that's obvious to other people. Don't you want to know what that is? The single best way to find is to give people a way to tell you anonymously. I know that might sound scary, it was to me at first, but it can also be exhilarating.

I have an anonymous feedback box linked to my Twitter profile, and it has honestly been life-changing, not just in terms of the specific feedback I've gotten, but in knowing that I'm not trying to hide things from myself anymore. if I could go back in time five years and talk to the person that I was then and tell her that I would one day experience that kind of freedom to not have to hide things,

to do whatever I feel like with my afternoons, to be basically happy. I would not have believed. But that is the power of personal agency. No matter how stuck you are, if you can learn to locate the doors hidden within you, you can unlock inconceivable kinds of freedom. Thank you.

That was Kate Hall speaking at TED 2025. If you're curious about Ted's curation, find out more at TED.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today's show. Ted Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Lucy Little, Alejandra Salazar and tonsica Sarmar Niven. It was mixed by Christopher Faisi Bogan, additional support

from Emma Tobner and Daniela Belaruso. I'm Elise Hugh. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening. This episode is sponsored by Colgate Periogard. You know, when we get a paper cut or nick a finger while prepping dinner,

We don't hesitate to grab a bandage or clean it up right away. But when it comes to our gums, a little tenderness or bleeding when we brush, we tend to ignore it. Why is that? Especially when the fix can be so simple. Use Colgate Periogard to significantly reduce gum bleeding and inflammation. It helps fight bacteria that can cause early gum disease and improves gum health with daily use. Our mouths are trying to tell us something, and it's worth listening. So next time your gums feel sensitive, don't shrug it off.

Help take care of it with Colgate Periogard. Healthy gums, confident smile. This episode is sponsored by Airbnb. It's finally summer, the season of road trips, lake swims, and making memories with the people we love. I have been thinking about exploring Canada for a while. And for a trip like that, staying in an Airbnb just feels right. Whether it's a getaway with extended family or a few close friends,

I'd want a place that feels like home, but with better views and more space to unwind. Airbnb has some incredible spots across Canada that go way beyond the basics. Cottages with hammocks, fire pits, even canoes. Imagine staying somewhere with enough room for everyone, including the dog, where bedtime for the kids doesn't have to mean bedtime for you. It's just a different experience, relaxing in a cozy living room instead of a hotel lobby. This summer, my aim is to check out some of Canada's most loved homes from lakeside cabins in Bruce Peninsula to breathtaking escapes in Banff or

Cape Breton because some trips in Canada are just better in an Airbnb. What matters most to you? Is it unforgettable adventures, connections with lifelong friends, peaceful moments of reflection, feelings of joy and freedom you can't wait to experience again and again, Or is it the vehicles that help you make all those special moments possible? Whatever your answer is, Toyota is here to bring you closer to the things that matter to you. Because they matter to us too. Toyota, for what matters most.