You're listening to TED Talks Daily. I'm Elise Hugh. You're about to hear from writer and activist Lovie Ajay Jones, who prefers to call herself a professional troublemaker. In her conversation with Ted Current Affairs curator Whitney Pennington Rogers, she talks about what making good trouble means to her, how effective it can be, and to be a troublemaker yourself to better your team, your community, or your situation.

This conversation is from a TED membership exclusive event in 2021.

To learn more about TED membership, go to TED.com slash membership.

Each of us, no matter who we are, have dreams for ourselves. And all of us also have fears.

Lovie Ajai Jones has spent lots of time thinking about the intersection of these two things,

namely how you can overcome your fears to accomplish your dreams.

Here to break this all down for us is Lovie Ajai Jones. Welcome, Lovie. Hi. Hi, Lovie. How are you doing?

Doing well. Doing well. Why do you use the term professional troublemaker, I guess, to describe yourself. Why is that

the term that you've landed on to define what you are, who you are? Yeah. You know, some of us have been called troublemakers growing up

when you are too loud in the class or, you know, your mom tells you to eat the vegetables and you say

no, and you're like, you're a troublemaker. I want to reclaim what that means. I think about the late

great John Lewis who said, we have to be ready to make necessary trouble, good trouble.

And really it was the lens of we are going to have to do things that is going to disrupt

the status quo in this world. If we're going to do anything of impact and of note and make any

type of positive change, we are going to have to make trouble. And making trouble is not about

being a contrarian randomly. It's not about being a troll. It's not just simply because you want to make trouble. And making trouble is not about being a contrarian randomly.

It's not about being a troll. It's not just simply because you want to make people uncomfortable.

It's that often when you are the person who thinks different from everybody else in the room,

it does feel like trouble. You know, when you are not going along with the group, it feels like trouble. But

sometimes it's actually what you need to do to not just honor yourself, but honor the world and

honor who you want to be. So if making trouble looks like we actually end up being better off

for it, then we have to make trouble. I think it's an obligation

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