Every December, the same promises resurface. We tell ourselves that next year will be different, that this time we’ll follow through.
Most of us already know how that story ends. By February, the promise has slipped away—not through lack of willpower, but because it was never built to hold on its own.
In his TEDxAtlanta talk, Why You Keep Breaking Promises to Yourself (and How to Stop), Walt Brown offers an insight that lands especially hard this time of year: promises don’t work well in isolation.
Walt was a self-professed serial promise breaker. Diets, health goals, and commitments tied to serious moments in his life—all made with good intentions, all eventually broken.
Over time, those broken promises did more than slow progress. They quietly eroded his trust in himself.
What helped him make sense of that wasn’t a productivity system or a mindset shift, but philosophy. Drawing on the work of Yale professor Stephen Darwall, Walt points to a simple idea: a promise only carries real force when it’s made between people and explicitly accepted.A promise made to yourself doesn’t quite meet that standard. There’s no second person to receive it, no shared moment of acknowledgment and no relationship holding it in place.
Seen this way, the problem isn’t discipline; it’s design. Promises weren’t built to work alone.
What Changed When Someone Else Was Involved
The turning point in Walt’s story didn’t come from stricter habits or renewed determination. It came when someone else was involved.
When his wife committed to supporting him, the effort became shared. Accountability stopped feeling abstract, and progress was no longer driven by self-imposed pressure. Trust—mutual and visible—did the work instead.
That same dynamic shows up in Walt’s work with organizations. Companies make promises constantly, whether through job descriptions, values statements or the way meetings are run. When those promises are vague or quietly broken, trust thins out. When they’re clear and consistently honored, something steadier takes hold.
Teams perform better not because culture slogans suddenly work, but because expectations are actually upheld.
A Different Way to Think About the New Year
Atlanta is a city shaped by connection. Progress happens because people show up for one another across neighborhoods, networks and communities.
Walt’s talk suggests that personal change works much the same way.
So instead of asking, What promise will I finally keep this year? it may be more useful to ask, Who needs to be part of it?
As the New Year approaches, that shift matters. It’s not about more willpower or a better resolution. It’s about recognizing that promises—like communities—tend to hold when they’re shared.
Every year, millions of people tune in to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. It’s one of the biggest communal spectacles in the country—a reminder that art and play have the power to bring strangers together, even if only for a moment.
The Macy’s Parade is a national tradition, but the impulse behind it—sharing joy in public space—isn’t tied to a holiday. Atlanta reflects that same instinct through a year-round parade culture built by the people who live here.
One of the leaders shaping that culture is TEDxAtlanta 2025 speaker and parade artist Chantelle Rytter. Her talk, “How parades can build community,” is a reminder that joy is public and that neighborhoods become stronger when we step outside and build something together.
This talk was also selected as a TEDx Editor’s Pick, a distinction given to roughly 500 talks out of more than 4,000+ TEDx events and tens of thousands of talks worldwide.
How Parades Shift the Way We See Each Other
In an age where loneliness is on the rise, Chantelle makes the case that parades offer far more than entertainment—they’re a civic wellness program.
She describes illuminated creatures gliding through the Atlanta night, thousands of handmade lanterns drifting along the BeltLine, and strangers cheering for people they’ve never met. In her words, “Parades create a space above and away from the fray where we come together simply to delight one another.”
And something shifts in that space. For an hour, the city becomes a place of possibility; a reminder that playfulness isn’t frivolous at all, but something that restores us.
The Journey That Brought Parade Magic to Atlanta
Chantelle spent a decade in New Orleans, where parading is woven into the rhythm of the city. When she moved to Atlanta, she immediately felt the absence of that ritual. Not the spectacle, but the shared joy, the sense of belonging that happens when people gather in public to create something together.
So she decided to build it.
What started as longing became one of Atlanta’s most beloved cultural traditions: the Atlanta BeltLine Lantern Parade. Over the past 15 years, her work has invited more than half a million people into the streets to create, march, dance, and witness one another in a way that feels both ancient and entirely new.
What We Learn When We Celebrate Together
Atlanta traffic and the daily headlines may test our optimism, but parade nights show something different—the version of ourselves that’s kind, creative, and willing to show up for each other.
You see it in the way someone lights up when a cheering crowd calls out their lantern or costume. You see it when newcomers realize they don’t need to be “born into” parade culture to claim it; it grows simply because people build it together.
As the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade captures national attention, it’s a good prompt to look at what makes parade culture meaningful. These gatherings don’t rely on tradition alone—they take shape because people commit time and creativity to them.
Parades connect people to people, and people to their place. They’re open invitations to bring your imagination, your effort, and your presence to create a moment that belongs to everyone.
In a season defined by gratitude and gathering, Chantelle’s talk is a reminder that community doesn’t happen on its own.
We create it—lantern by lantern and moment by moment.
TEDxAtlanta speakers share fresh perspectives on sustainability, innovation and action.
Every year, the world produces more than 400 million tons of plastic. Half of it is designed to be used once. Only 10% gets recycled. And about 11 million tons end up in our water—rivers, lakes, seas and oceans—every single year.
To put that in perspective, that’s the weight of 2,200 Eiffel Towers.
Plastic pollution is more than a waste problem. It’s a global challenge that affects our health, our communities and our climate. That’s why June 5—World Environment Day—is a reminder to not only understand the impact of plastic waste, but to advocate for solutions that help build a more sustainable future.
Here are just a few ideas from creators and inventors from the TEDx and TED stage who are taking action on the waste problem:
TEDxAtlanta 2021 speaker alum Aurora Robson is an award-winning debris artist known for her meditative work intercepting the plastic waste stream. She creates art that explores issues related to the culture of disposability and consumerism.
In this TEDxMtHood talk, Morgan Vague describes her research with microbiologist Jay Mellies on the wild world of microbes that eat plastic. With more plastic than fish projected in our oceans by 2050, this groundbreaking research could offer a surprisingly natural (and tiny) hero in the fight against pollution.
TED Fellow Suzanne Lee delivers a boundary-pushing idea that opens a window into the world of biofabrication—where living cells, not factories, are the future of material production. From replacing plastic to rethinking cement, she explores how biology can help us redesign some of the most wasteful parts of modern life. It’s not science fiction. It’s sustainable innovation, and it’s happening now.
This World Environment Day, join us in reflecting on the future you want to help create—and take one small step to protect it.
TEDx Skoll Conversations is a partnership of TEDx, the Skoll Foundation and The Wellbeing Project. Over the course of 2022, the partnership sought to surface new ideas on mental and physical wellness from TEDx groups across the globe.
Continuing the high standard of curation, three TEDxAtlantaWomen speaker alumnae were among the 15 showcased. The other TEDx groups selected to participate include Brazil’s TEDxSãoPaulo, TEDxKapiti located in the Southern Hemisphere, Denver’s TEDxMileHigh and TEDxUTAustin of Austin, Texas.
Check this for more about TEDx Skoll Conversations and the complete compendium of TEDx ideas on wellbeing.
Congratulations to TEDxAtlanta 2019 speaker alum Sara Valencia Botto! Her talk unveiling the initial results of an early childhood development study conducted at Emory University’s Infant and Child Lab was featured by TED on TED.com.
Since appearing on the TEDxAtlanta stage, Sara successfully graduated with her doctorate from Emory University and joined the university’s Psychology Department as a faculty member in 2020. Her publication on sensitivity to evaluation in toddlers has been featured in various outlets, including ABC News, the Huffington Post and other major international newspapers.
Her research on the developmental origins of reputation investigates when, how and why we care about what other people think. Her goal is to understand why we care about our reputation as well as the factors that contribute to inter-individual differences.
Anniversaries create space for reflection, and the 10-year anniversary of TEDxPeachtree is no different. An army of volunteers, speakers, exhibitors, and attendees came together for nine years in a row to celebrate ideas worth sharing. We’ve made a lot of friends, created happy memories, and engaged in valuable dialogue.
In a city known for reinventing itself, we recognized an opportunity for renewal. We wanted to honor our past and raise the bar for the next 10 years of conferences, to become more inclusive and more inspirational, while staying true to Atlanta.
So we reached out to our friends at TEDxAtlanta and discussed the possibility of uniting two major TEDx communities in Atlanta by joining forces to create a bigger, better TEDx experience for Atlanta. We were absolutely thrilled when they accepted.
In that light, we are beyond excited to announce that TEDxPeachtree and TEDxAtlanta are moving forward together under the banner of TEDxAtlanta. Our 10-year anniversary conference will be held on March 15, 2019.
We will also be hosting TEDxAtlanta Adventures to keep the curiosity and dialogue going during a time when good ideas need sharing more than ever, so be on the lookout for invitations in the near future.
In the meantime you can still nominate speakers, and we’d love to have you as part of our all-volunteer team as we ramp up for our biggest conference ever.
Thank you for all your support and hard work over the last 10 years, and we very much look forward to the next 10.