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When I was growing up in New Jersey

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I dreamed of having a passport to everywhere.

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That was my code for the opportunity

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to see new lands and meet new people

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and to take in especially the extremes,

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the ends of every spectrum, so that you could

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understand where everything else falls in between.

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I got that passport as a foreign correspondent

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for ABC News and Bloomberg Television.

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It's taken me to see life in the Islamic Republic.

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It's taken me to hunt for pirates[br]off the coast of Somalia.

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It's taken me to the heart of the revolution

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in Tahrir Square.

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And like Garman said, wherever I go

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I try to take snapshots of culture.

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In the news reports, but also for myself,

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I write them down in a notebook like this.

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This one's come with me from London to Kathmandu.

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And this is a snapshot of what's inside.

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In the middle there جعل أحلامك الحقيقية، [br] Literally, make your dreams real.

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It's from a home mortgage ad in Tunisia.

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And than on the right there,[br]"Ridha Allah Al-Walidain"

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my friend Sulaf in Jordan wrote that

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in memory of her father.

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It's an Arabic Muslim concept of the special

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karma you get, a blessing from parents,

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passed from mother or father to child.

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A colleague from Turkey wrote this one:

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"Deliye hergun bayram" [br] If you're mad everyday is a feast.

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In other words, if you are just crazy enough,

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you can have everything you want.

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That's Arabic for .الاندفاع يأتي من الشيطان.

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"anything too rush, probably comes from the devil."

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This one is kind of blurry, "Partzratzeer Partzratzoor".

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Rise up and bring others with you.

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An below that:

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"Voneh jeeshtek, voruh perceeh an guh leenee."

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Have faith that what's true and what's right [br] is gonna work out in the end.

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I learned that from our TEDx organizer Kristine.

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And the last one: "Satyameva Jayate".

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It's an Indian proverb:

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"Truth should win no matter who else losses."

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So traveling around you fill a lot of notebooks,

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and you learn a lot and even just

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the act of doing journalism evolves you,

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gives you lessons for life,

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and I am so grateful for all of them that

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I wanted to share some of them with you today.

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So here are five things I've learned

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as a foreign correspondent that you can too.

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No. 1: Perception can count as much as intention.

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It's not just what you intend, it's what you project

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that can get you in or out of trouble.

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I learned that traveling to Saudi Arabia.

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I landed in the middle of the night,

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I was making my way to Riyadh on my own,

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and I realized that because of how I look

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I have to be extra careful.

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If you are a western women and[br]you look foreign in Saudi Arabia

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for the most part people won't mess with you.

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Because of my dark features I have this mix

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of an eastern face and western attitude.

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And I had to be aware of how that could be interpreted.

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I had to be situationally aware.

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I might have to talk a little softer or keep a low profile.

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And I just thought of it as putting my hand on

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a volume of me-ness and adjusting slightly

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just to make sure you stay safe.

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No. 2: Fear is amplified with distance.

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The further away you are from something,

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the scarier it seems.

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And I learned that over time traveling to Lebanon,

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a country that is routinely on the brink of civil war.

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Everything is calm, then all of the sudden,

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a bombing in Beirut or a shootout on the border.

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And everyday different parties at each other's throats,[br] armed to the teeth.

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And from afar it can seem pretty scary,

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especially when it's just this big bubble of fear,

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and the airport's shut down,

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and you need to drive your way into Beirut.

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But as you get closer you can localize the fear.

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Figure out what's real and what's hype.

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Call people who know the terrain.

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Figure out how to keep yourself safe.

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And just generally, get a sense of

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the objective volume, not the subjective fear.

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And that applies for a lot of things in your life.

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At home, at work, a lot of things that seem threatening,

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seem more threatening from far away,

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because fear is amplified with distance.

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If you get up close, you can get a sense

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of what's real and what's hype.

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You can localize the threat,

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attack what you need and keep yourself safe.

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No. 3: It's not who you know or what you know.

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It's how you work. How hard and how smart.

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Life, like journalism, is not a perfect meritocracy,

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but effort counts.

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When I started in media in New York City,

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I would often hear people say,

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"It's who you know, it's not what you know."

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And I just didn't believe it[br]because I didn't know anybody.

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My parents were immigrants,[br]we all started from scratch.

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And I just had to believe that that wasn't true.

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And then a producer friend of mine, David Katz,

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in a miraculous moment of conversation[br]turns to me and says,

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"Lara, it's not who you know or what you know,

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it's how you work. How hard, how smart.

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Because if you do it right,[br]you'll learn what you need to know.

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And you'll meet who you should along the way.

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In the Middle East there's a word for all the influence,

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all the benefits you get from knowing the right people

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and being able to pull strings.

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That word is: wasta.

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It gets used a lot.

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How did that guy get a visa? Wasta.

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How did that girl get into collage? Wasta.

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How did those guys build a factory on the beach? Wasta.

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Everybody hates it, everybody wants it.

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But the truth is, if you work hard and you work smart,

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you can build your network, work your wasta,

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use your wasta for good and not for evil.

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But if you just through your hands up

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because you weren't born into the wastocracy,

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that's giving up way too soon.

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No. 4: You miss 100% of the shots you don't take,

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and some of the ones you do.

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That's borrowing some of the Wayne Gretzky's,

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but the idea is that you have to try with abandon

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and bounce back unscared and unscarred

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when it doesn't work out.

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I have to remind myself that every time

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I try for a high profile interview.

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I wanted to interview the president of Somalia.

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That meant putting in a request, finding his people,

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contact who knew his people,

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getting to the Horn of Africa with cameramen,

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and then sitting around and waiting.

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And when you're in the middle of trying

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and you not sure if it's going to workout,

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it can feel pretty bad.

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And it can feel much worse if it doesn't work out.

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That time it did. But other times it doesn't.

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And the key is to bounce back.

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Treat the wins like the losses.

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Just figure that you getting some of lifes'

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necessary fails out of the way.

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You can't weaken and you can't stop trying.

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No. 5, my favorite: People are better than you think.

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They're not angels, they're not perfect,

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but they're better than you think.

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And that's because most of the time

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we tend to fill in the blanks

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of what we don't know with the negative.

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All of us sitting in the audience here,

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we could see someone who's well-dressed

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and assume she's a snob,

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or see someone who is super-busy

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and assume he's self-obsessed,

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because we fill the blanks with a negative

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when we don't have to.

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For decades under Hosni Mubarak in Egypt,

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the Coptic Christian minority and Muslim majority

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were at each other's throats.

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There was a lot of distrust, escalating violence,

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bombings, shootings and whoever was

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responsible for it, whoever was behind it,

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was dropping that blanket of distrust

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and negative assumption

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across those two communities.

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Then the most beautiful moments of the revolution

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in Tahrir Square: they were up close.

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You had Christians circling the square,

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protecting the core,

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while the Muslims bowed to the ground in prayer.

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And then for Sunday mass it was the reverse.

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You had the Muslims protecting the core,

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while the Christians were bowing in prayer.

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Once they were up-close and on the same side,

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they stopped making those negative assumptions.

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The word for optimist in Armenian

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is lavades - seer of good.

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Look for the good in people,

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for your sake and for theirs.

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I am not saying be naive.

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I am not saying don't be careful.

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I'm just saying there is no point seeing darkness

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and shadows when you don't have to.

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Especially when they are not there.

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So in conclusion, how do I interpret reality?

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Turn truth into television or at least try?

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By absorbing everything I can about the people

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and the places around me and then doing

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everything I can to convey their essence.

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And you do that by flexing

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your empathy, sincerity,[br]hustle, humility and respect.

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By knowing when to ask for help,

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when you're out of your depth,

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and how to ask for help graciously and gratefully

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and with the readiness to be proven wrong.

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That's what I've learned in my work.

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I've taken it through my life

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and it's made me so much richer.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)