Two TEDxBeverlyGrove 2026 talks approach crisis from different lives and disciplines, yet both ask what remains possible when people stop confusing what happened with what it has to mean
WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. They did not plan it this way.
Eron Zehavi and Ryan Garney arrived at TEDxBeverlyGrove 2026 from different lives, different disciplines, and different kinds of loss. But with both talks now available on the TEDx Talks YouTube channel, the pairing reveals one of the clearest through-lines of the TEDxBeverlyGrove 2026 speaker series.
Neither talk is about avoiding crisis.
Both are about what happens after it arrives.
And both ask why so many people lose themselves in the space between an event and their reaction to it.
Zehavi, an entrepreneur and transformational coach, opened his TEDxBeverlyGrove 2026 talk by telling the audience he was paralyzed. Then he told them they probably were too.
He was not being dramatic. Zehavi sustained a spinal cord injury at 38, with two young children at home. His talk, “Paralysis Is a State of Mind,” is not a recovery story. It is an argument that a fact and the story someone tells about that fact are not the same thing, and that the confusion between them is where most people get stuck, wheelchair or not.
“Massive impostor syndrome, fear of rejection, self doubt, limiting beliefs, low self worth,” Zehavi told the audience. “All of them types of paralysis. No wheelchair required.”
Zehavi introduced the ART Process, Acknowledge, Reframe, Transform, a framework for separating what actually happened from what the mind decides it means, and for choosing a story that is both logically plausible and emotionally survivable.
Delivered the same day at the Marilyn Monroe Theatre in West Hollywood, Ryan Garney’s talk approached a related question from an entirely different discipline.
Garney, a creative operations leader and Toastmasters World Championship competitor, opened with a piece of maritime history most people do not know. Everyone remembers the Titanic. Far fewer remember the Olympic, her nearly identical sister ship, which survived a devastating collision and returned to harbor without losing a single life.
The difference, Garney argued, was not the severity of the damage.
It was containment.
His talk, “Mental Bulkheads,” draws on Garney’s own experience managing his father’s death while simultaneously building an animation studio inside a major entertainment company. What he believed for years was compartmentalization, he came to understand was something else entirely.
Suppression.
“The difference between survival and collapse isn’t strength or preparation,” Garney said. “It’s containment. We can’t stop life from hitting us like an iceberg, but we can stop it from consuming us.”
The Olympic, Garney noted in closing, sailed for 24 more years after her collision. She became known as Old Reliable, not because she was never hit, but because she knew which doors to close.
Zehavi and Garney did not know what the other was building. What connects a spinal cord injury and a ship that stayed afloat is the same distinction, made twice, in two different vocabularies: what happens to a person is not the same as what a person decides it means.
Garney gives language to containment.
Zehavi gives language to authorship.
One asks where the damage belongs so it does not flood the whole system. The other asks what meaning has been attached to the damage, and whether that meaning still deserves to lead.
Together, the talks form a larger argument about surviving crisis without surrendering the self to it. The event may be outside a person’s control. The first impact may not be chosen. But the doors we close, the stories we keep, and the meanings we accept can still shape what remains possible.
Both talks are now available on the TEDx Talks YouTube channel as part of the TEDxBeverlyGrove 2026 speaker series.
About Ryan Garney
Ryan Garney is a creative operations leader who has spent over a decade managing teams through high-pressure production environments in entertainment and media. A Triple Crown Award recipient from Toastmasters International, he has competed in the World Championship of Public Speaking and served as Immediate Past President of the West Hollywood Toastmasters Chapter, leading the club to President’s Distinguished status and recognition as one of the top clubs in District 1. Known for blending history, neuroscience, and lived experience, Garney’s work invites people to lead with clarity and humanity without burning out.
About Eron Zehavi
Eron Zehavi is an entrepreneur, speaker, and transformational coach who helps individuals and organizations break through limitation and activate their full potential. A former co-founder of a billion-dollar startup and the founder of Soultivation, a global education and community platform, Zehavi bridges high-level leadership with deep personal transformation. Drawing from lived experience and decades of inquiry, his work explores how meaning, perception, and authorship shape both life and business.
About TEDxBeverlyGrove
TEDxBeverlyGrove is an independently organized TED event devoted to ideas that transform culture, leadership, and human potential. The 2026 theme, “Reimagining the Possible,” invited leaders across disciplines to rethink how we navigate uncertainty, rebuild from loss, and discover what becomes possible when endurance replaces inspiration.
About Marvin V. Acuna
Marvin V. Acuna is a TEDx Organizer and Producer. In that role, he curates speakers, ideas, and the architecture of a high-trust live stage. Separate from his work as a TEDx producer, Acuna advises leaders, founders, attorneys, and public figures as a speaking coach and talk architect. He helps clients uncover the idea inside their story, sharpen their message, and deliver it with clarity, authority, and impact. He also serves as Head of Business Strategy for The Lawyers Roundtable and is the founder of MoBal Systems.
About TED
TED is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to discovering, debating and spreading ideas that spark conversation, deepen understanding and drive meaningful change. Our organization is devoted to curiosity, reason, wonder and the pursuit of knowledge, without an agenda. We welcome people from every discipline and culture who seek a deeper understanding of the world and connection with others, and we invite everyone to engage with ideas and activate them in your community.
TED began in 1984 as a conference where Technology, Entertainment and Design converged, but today it spans a multitude of worldwide communities and initiatives exploring everything from science and business to education, arts and global issues. In addition to the TED Talks curated from our annual conferences and published on TED.com, we produce original podcasts, short video series, animated educational lessons (TED-Ed) and TV programs that are translated into more than 100 languages. Through The Audacious Project, TED has helped catalyze $6.6 billion in funding for projects that support bold solutions to the world’s most urgent challenges. Follow TED on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and X.
About TEDx, x = independently organized event
In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TED Talks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.