From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
We all inhabit distinctive inner universes. We all see and experience the world in a slightly different way. Understanding perception has a lot of consequences for understanding who we are.
I look at every negotiation as an opportunity to solve a problem between me and the other negotiator. They are not my adversary – I need them – and they need me.
Status is kinetic. Those who have it can give it to those who don't. Anointment refers to these ritualistic events that can be major: in a biblical sense, you're anointed by a king and all sorts of good things follow. In modern life, you're anointed if you're admitted to and graduate from a prestigious university. But anointment also happens on a much smaller scale, many times a day.
There's this wonderful intersection where I've personally felt successful for quite some time. I truly believe I'm living out my purpose. It reminds me of the saying, 'remember the time you wished for the things you have now.' I'm living that dream.
High performance is- truly- a checklist. It's waking up, understanding how many things you can do that day to the best of your ability, getting those things done, allowing yourself time to exercise, eat, rest, engage in active recovery, get some social support, have some mindfulness and gratitude time.
What analysts mean by 'game changing' is, in fact, the level of naturalisation of technology. This is the degree to which a technology becomes an intuitive part of human life.
I believe success and fame, especially fame, can instigate fundamental shifts within us at a cellular level. The very nature of fame is peculiar; it's akin to an insatiable flame that ceaselessly yearns for more, compelling you to endlessly seek something, despite its ultimate emptiness. To set fame as an objective can be likened to voluntarily stepping into a fire, with the inevitable outcome of being consumed.
People work for technical ability and wish for happiness. That's a mistake. You need to treat your happiness the way you treat all your skills - you need to work for your happiness - not just wish for it.
The hardest part of the job is telling those players that they are not playing, I remember from my playing days how that felt. This is when compassion is an important tool as well.
Ernest Becker proposed that we still worship, it's just that we worship money and political leaders or become members of cults, conspiracy groups or yoga! These are just different ways of dealing with death and anxiety.
I often joke that social media is the 'NutraSweet' version—it seems good but doesn't deliver the psychological benefit we expect. In fact, our use of technology can be a big opportunity cost on a lot of the stuff that truly matters for happiness.
We can be sexually aroused by a mere text message, tapping into a primal sensory system in a bizarre way. We can feel empathy for someone on the other side of the globe. We can perpetrate violence, like dropping a bomb from 30,000 feet, without ever seeing the victim's face.