Don't give away a majority shareholding the way I had to with HomeServe. I ended up giving away 52% of the shares with my partner for a £500,000 investment we took when we'd run out of money—a terrible time to raise capital.

I believe the most effective strategy for maintaining resilience is mastering the art of self-soothing. The ability to calm oneself instantly, at any moment, stands out as a pivotal skill. It enables you to recover from setbacks and face adversity more effectively.

Excellence is almost a tactile feeling – and it starts with a vision… sometimes a vision that shows you a path that's so good that it cannot not succeed.

All three of these causal forces manifest to such a degree of intensity as they do today. They have always been present but have not had this degree of intensity and not all at once. That's what makes this a particularly dangerous moment.

I was working in Russia from 1998-2002... You also had this extraordinary episode where Putin is on record being asked a question, 'President Putin, do you think Russia could ever join NATO?' to which he replied, 'Why not?!' – what he actually said was 'why not…' provided that Russia could be a fully-fledged partner in NATO.

You can't control what happens to you, you can only control how you react to it. So, focusing on what's in your control and accepting for the time being what's beyond your control is a really useful therapeutic idea.

The brain's adaptability is astounding. The brain is continuously rewiring; it's different now than it was just 30 seconds ago. That is fascinating and offers great promise.

To break the silence around sexual abuse, more people need to speak about it… normalise it… and by doing so, hopefully we can start to get our children talking, and make some real progress to eliminate these acts from our society.

Our number one instinct is survival, followed by reproduction. People started to realise that if they took care of themselves, they would live longer, have better sex and have healthier children.

Performance is a mental construction. You have to be present in your own body and mind, and when you achieve that presence, you can transcend physical and mental limitations.

Money gets inside us; it creates our perceptions and changes the way we operate. It changes the people among whom we are, and who we are. When we're not in touch with that reality, it can change us in heinous ways.

We have to shift the focus of our discussions on Europe to trying to deal with the citizens' concerns. And I mean simple things, like 'I can't buy an iTunes record for someone living in a different country because of the geolocation requirements and copyright'.