From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
It makes you respect money more when it comes from something you create, rather than just trading back and forth with someone else's cash.
Brands work on the principle that if you break down people's confidence, they will be much more vulnerable to advertising, and much more likely to go out and consume… much more likely to buy things to fix problems they didn't even know they had if it weren't for brands breaking their confidence in the first place.
Whether it's doodling with a pencil, or painting, the practice of art – in any shape or form – is hugely liberating and gets us into the sense, and state, of flow. Art helps us navigate our place in the world, and offers us a place of stillness – much needed in today's digital world.
We have to recognise that if we ignore or downplay the human side, we could lose. That, I think, is really the key insight for why and how things should be done differently.
It's not success we should be seeking but consonance, alignment, flow. When what we do actually matters to us. We are being called upon to solve a problem at hand, to use what we do best in the world, and in turn being rewarded for in a way that is meaningful to us.
When life gets easy, to feel alive, we need to do something hard.
It forces you to confront the fact that we know almost nothing about the true nature of reality. Whatever image you have of what's real or possible is obliterated in an instant. You're faced with a world that isn't just strange, but so utterly incomprehensible that it transcends imagination.
LGBT+ identity came into existence as a defence mechanism against those who were attacking us. We were being targeted because of our sexual behavior and our love. We had to defend ourselves – that is why we claimed, and asserted our LGBT+ identity.
We are hard wired through our biology to understand: what there is, what to do about what there is, that there is a difference between knowing what there is and knowing what to do about what there is and what the difference is.
I genuinely believe that you can train yourself to see trouble as opportunity and realise that the best time to make money is when other people are most fearful.
I want you to not deny your shadow, your darkest impulses, but to find ways to use them and turn them into something productive. We ought to take that ambition, those aggressive impulses, and channel them into our work, into great causes, into justice.
I think it's that dynamic of information coming from your trusted peer. This has always been the source of the most trusted information. Your reinforcement is coming from people that you like, people that you trust. And you're shaping and having that discussion amongst yourselves.