From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
One of the greatest myths in the lives of the people I coach is, 'I will be happy when…' as if there is some place to go to. There's only one book that ends with the phrase happily ever after, that's a fairy-tale.
Poverty is like treading in a pool of quicksand- if you're standing on the outside looking in, it's easy for you to pontificate about what the person in the quicksand should do, how they should behave, what risks they should be able to take- but anyone who's been in the proverbial quicksand knows that the biggest risk is that they make one move in the wrong direction, and submerge deeper.
Despite being a perpetrator, Holmes began with a noble objective: to create a technology that would benefit society. We're well aware that her venture veered off course, but her initial intention was rooted in altruism. Perhaps the adage 'fake it 'til you make it' took on a life of its own in her case.
We humans are a musical species no less than a linguistic one. We integrate all of these and 'construct' music in our minds using many different parts of the brain. And to this largely unconscious structural appreciation of music is added an often intense and profound emotional reaction to music.
99.9% of the time, you are not in a burning building- and that is precisely the time to think about what you would do in that 0.1% of time when it is on fire.
You have to step back and focus on the merits of the offer- not the person who brought the offer to you. That's how you defend yourself. You recognise that there's something that goes on first as important as the message itself inclining you towards purchase or agreement.
Humans can be parasitized by actual brain worms, but also by idea pathogens that cause them to behave in profoundly maladaptive ways.
Let me be clear: 90% of what people like I do is about failure. I embrace failure every single day. It's not bad. In the pursuit of excellence, clearly every day is going to involve failure.
I do this thing- I say something out-loud–announce it to the public–and then I'm forced to do it because people are excited and I don't want to let them down.
Purpose and meaning are inextricably tied to suffering and difficulty. If you tell me a pursuit that you view as meaningful and important, I can guarantee it won't be easy. If it was easy, it wouldn't be meaningful or important. We reserve the notion of meaning for things that have difficulty.
Those cycles don't exist – that's not what history is like. Disasters keep coming along at random intervals, they are not normally distributed... That's hard for our brains to deal with… we don't like the idea that history is just a lot of random shocks without any predictable features.
What makes him dangerous is an unwavering determination; those who suggest potential exit strategies are overlooking a key aspect of his character. Any off-ramp simply provides an opportunity for him to seek the next on-ramp.