From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
Abraham Maslow (a famous psychologist) once commented, 'if all you have is a hammer, everything is a nail'. Investors currently have a hammer, and that hammer is economics.
For those feeling threatened or inclined to see the world's workings as a conspiracy, it's conveniently easy to blame these perceived machinations on a Jewish elite, given the long and deep-seated history of such allegations.
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.
The number one thing is misread intentions. You assume someone has ill intent toward you—maybe to hurt you, harm you, or make you feel uncomfortable—and you don't check in on those intentions. Then a narrative forms in your head, and that's when you start spiralling. You can apply this to your children, to relationships, and it happens constantly at work.
You cannot fully realize your own self in isolation. It's a collective effort; your uniqueness is essentially shaped by everyone else in the world. Everyone else plays a role in sculpting your distinct identity. Individuality is essentially a community project.
Success is really a portal into the next stage that we're possibly capable of doing, and we have to decide how we're going to face that tsunami of emotions that then comes flying at us when we thought all we were going to have was happiness.
Throughout the years, I've engaged in numerous conversations, yet the topic of languages has never surfaced. It's fascinating, truly. Reflecting on my childhood, growing up in an environment devoid of electricity and illuminated by candlelight, I didn't perceive it negatively. Such circumstances become the norm for a child, and the experience is shaped significantly by the parents' reaction.
In my experience, great advisors are the ones who give you the scaffolding to observe your gut-instinct from every angle and arrive at decisions which allow you to flourish.
Nuclear weapons continue to be built for basically two reasons: power and prestige. In almost every case where a country has decided to acquire a nuclear weapon they have done it either for power—the power to protect their country from external threats or a desire to project their power in the region.
It’s more like a you problem than a them problem. You have a problem with their behaviour, but they don’t have the same level of empathy or concern for others. So why would they care about it?
People who learn fast and who have some level of 'natural' talent may go home from practice early because they don't have to work as hard as others to get to their target level of achievement, but when you study super-achievers, you find that instead of going home early, they work late, and really pull-away from the crowd.
Uncertainty and fear are enemies of economic growth. To change motivation, it is important to give hope and make people believe. But also to give concrete results. It is important to value the positive instead of only highlighting the worst.