From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
Entrepreneurship means a constant willingness to keep learning. It's about maintaining that start-up spirit—where you're forever young, and forever in crisis. It's about always having your mind on the business.
The Stoic concept of courage is about letting reason prevail over emotion. Risk naturally triggers fear—fear of a bad outcome. But using reason to manage risk means applying a more analytical approach, almost like a mathematical assessment of risk and reward.
Loneliness is thought to be as bad for our health as smoking 15 cigarettes per day. If you're lonely, you have a 32% higher chance of getting a stroke, a 29% higher chance of having heart disease and 30% higher chance of dying prematurely.
Your mission in life is where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet. When we're being useful and doing what we love, there's a sense of bliss. It's that moment where you say, 'This is why I'm alive. This is reason enough to be alive, right here.'
Growing up, I was a speech and debate kid – and I realised that anytime I made the judges laugh, I would automatically get 10-15 points higher on my final score! Comedy, and making people laugh, has the power to engender empathy and to make people like you.
We know from the availability heuristic that people overestimate the likelihood of an event based on their ability to envision it—the risk of plane crash versus car crash is the best example of this. Holding that big check is easy to conjure up, but rare, deep stock market corrections not so much most of the time.
For me, our sophisticated way of communicating- with words- is that crucial difference. It meant that for the first time, we could teach another about something that wasn't present… whereas young chimps just learn by observing. We can read books about the distant past, and plan the distant future.
We have a blind spot about the ways in which the things we innocently buy and use actually are decaying the environment we depend on, the global systems that support life on the planet. We are super-monkeys- super because of the technology, and our monkeys because our brains haven't kept up with the change.
When we crafted that phrase, it was because we saw a similarity with physical fitness. If you work out today, you don't return home and declare, 'Great, I'm finished, I never have to exercise again.' Those with the strongest social bonds diligently nurture them throughout their lives.
We do not operate like cameras, capturing a 1:1 replica of the external world. Our sensory faculties are not conduits of raw data; they are gateways to a world laden with meaning.
You have to know who you are, be open-minded, and be ready to collaborate. You have to have thick-skin and be prepared to get your idea ripped apart.
We found that those who enjoyed the best health, and not just the greatest happiness, were the individuals who had nurtured stronger relationships with others. From this, we deduced that those who put considerable effort into maintaining their relationships navigated life's challenges with greater ease.