The Ted Talk “Why you will fail to have a great career?” by Larry Smith addresses those who pile up the excuses as to why they didn’t pursue their passion. Smith is a professor of economics at the University of Waterloo in Canada. He encourages his students to go after the careers they truly love. Smith believes that in order to become successful in a career one must be passionate about it. He disregards hard work and interest in defining a successful career. Smith mentions that the people who are seeking great jobs mostly fail due to the lack of effort. Larry Smith shows us evidence of this by mentioning that when the workload gets hard and stressful the people become lazy. Also another excuse is that people base their career on luck. If they are not born a genius they blame it on luck and give up. Smith implies that people downgrade themselves and convince themselves that they are not as genius as another individual who is more likely to obtain that great job. They give up instead of working even harder to reach their passion. Then people realize that the great jobs are too far out of their reach and decide to fall back on good jobs. Except the demand for good jobs is decreasing. It is either a great job or a high workload job. These examples show that hard work does not lead to successful careers; there is always some excuse to fall back on. Unless you are passionate about a specific topic and are willing to go to the highest heights you will fail to have a great career. Smith suggests that one must choose about 20 interests and out of those 20 pick the one they connect with the most. Smith wants people to understand that hard work and interests do not matter until you have found what you are truly passionate about. Something you don’t look at as a job but a hobby, and that is what will lead you to a successful career. This Ted Talk ties into the novel “The Death of a Salesman” because the character Biff Lowman fails to pursue a successful career because he gets dragged into a career he is not passionate about. “I realized what a ridiculous lie my whole life has been” (Miller Act 2). Biff realizes that his fathers idea of success for him were simply his fathers dreams not his. Biff tried to live up to his father’s expectations and created a false life for himself. Willy Lowman’s selfish wish upon his son to obtain a career of his choice caused Biff to throw away his passion and instead lead him into a failed career. I agree with Larry Smith without passion there is nothing that ties an individual to his or her job besides force. The idea of getting into a career without desire contradicts the American Dream because it eventually leads to a regretful life. The American Dream sheds light on a happy working individual and without passion for work the American Dream is ultimately corrupt.