From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
Before you succeed, you must first learn to fail. If you keep repeating the same thing, you're always going to fail, you need to adjust. We have to look at failures and use them as an educational tool.
People need to see that their responses are attempts to help themselves. The problem often lies in focusing only on the negative effects of these responses, not their intentions. By appreciating the reasons behind their actions, there's a much greater chance for positive change.
The only way to engineer virality and make a product work is to understand the consumer, and that changes from city to city, from country to country.
I have this feeling that everyone should run a marathon once in their life- like a rite-of-passage. Most people think, 'that's not me, I could never run a marathon!' That's precisely why you should do it – a marathon is a way of proving to yourself that you're better than you think- that you can go further- and endure more.
Having a plan, feeling confident and being competent are the greatest antidotes to fear. If you're just trying to deal with the unknown by crossing your fingers and hoping, you will be utterly helpless when a situation finally manifests. In reality, you're rarely (if ever) completely helpless, you allow yourself to be helpless.
These individuals were extremely well-read, very curious and very disciplined… In a world where so many of us multi-task, when we met with these individuals, they were very focussed on the interview, free of interruptions. That's very unusual nowadays.
There is a popular belief that poverty is characterised by social factors – low wages, addiction, and violence. These things all exist, but what really characterises the experience of poverty is emotional stress.
Music can reveal the nature that lies within us, the part of us we cannot hide. When you hear a single note, a C, it's not a single sound, it's the result of many harmonies. It's like God hiding in plain sight.
It's not just the hostage who suffers, but their entire family. In some cases, families endure greater agony, living in uncertainty about their loved one's fate. For example, during my captivity, my wife was unaware of my survival for three and a half years.
There was a significant psychological barrier; people were afraid of making mistakes and ruining their work. But when they saw this engaging, simple game on the screen, they understood what to do and felt successful. It broke down that fear and made people more comfortable with computers.
A lot of people in society understandably want to feel important, and one of the ways you do this is to show people how busy you are… and one of the ways you show people how busy you are is to describe how little time you have for sleep.
Music is definitely a form of communication, and it gives me a good feeling. If I'm hungry and sit at the piano to play, I'm not hungry anymore. I'll forget everything when I make music. I think when we listen to music, it allows us to feel things.