From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
I have argued, along with Nassim Taleb, that one of the sources of overconfidence in our ability to forecast the future is the great ease with which we find explanations for the past. That's a very significant mechanism that produces overconfidence.
The real 'a-ha!' moment of my experience was realising that resilience is not a muscle we're born with, it's something we have to build and believe in over time. We should never ask ourselves how much resilience we have, but rather how much we can build.
Comedy delivers the cerebral and the hyperbole, it can be funny and serious. Comedy is built on the idea of building pressure…. Building tension and then breaking it… a great punchline cuts after a ton of pressure you build up on a premise, and you know what? That's just how life works.
Money can't solve many of the problems that truly plague people. It can't solve the problems in a relationship between a husband and wife, beyond the narrow economic front. It can't straighten out the relationships you have with your children—in fact, it can make them worse.
People are not born homophobic – or racist or misogynist. That's learned behaviour. This is why the current bid for LGBT-inclusive education in schools is so important.
An actor who isn't acting becomes a sort of non-person. If you're not acting, what are you?
When you observe chimpanzees and other apes, you see how extremely humanlike they are in almost everything they do. We have been so indoctrinated to think we are special (as a species) that when you see an ape up close and see they are- in essence- us, you don't know what to do with those feelings.
Women need to be their own cheerleaders and remind themselves of the amazing things they've achieved.
When you close your eyes and imagine the person you're going to be in 10 years, this area of your brain is totally deactivated – it's treating the person you are going to become as a stranger. This is why people have such a hard time getting prostate exams, staying on a diet, quitting smoking, because the person who is going to benefit the most from these things is literally not you.
Tuning into these feeling tones reveals their powerful influence – they often control our lives in ways we're completely unaware of.
I'm also very conscious that my life was saved, and I decided, very early on, to make mine a life worth saving. I don't fritter my days away. I try to do something worthwhile each day, and with that I've become a very happy person.
I define authenticity as the consistent practice of choosing to know who we are and embracing who we are. For a lot of us, we come to know who we are, but then we rail against our identities.