From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
An uneducated unconscious is a perilous entity. The intuition of a seasoned doctor with 30 years spent diagnosing ailments is immensely beneficial. Conversely, the intuition of a teenager is not only unfruitful, but potentially hazardous.
You can't get addicted to drugs unless you're exposed to them. You have to be exposed in situation where you can determine the dose. If you take the drug long enough and in a high-enough dose… most drugs which are addictive, will give you withdrawal symptom… making you feel rotten, and giving you another reason to take more.
Public health goes everywhere. Winslow defined it as 'the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life, and promoting health through the organised efforts of society'. I think that's a good start, but we have to see the culture and ecosystem of public health in the context of the community. Not only is happiness important to public health, but so is GDP and the environment. It's an immensely broad subject.
They used two wires hooked up to a car battery to give me electric shocks. They used electric stun-guns on my genitals twice. I thought I would never see my family again.
I think when you have early trauma that gets disrupted, your mind gets separated from your body. Your mind becomes this sort of distracted, dissociated place to go when this alarm in your body—if your parents are screaming at each other or your dad's an alcoholic—there's only so much a child can take.
Your body was built to handle stress, making it one of your most high-performing functions. However, it's not always productive to view stress as something that needs to be mitigated.
You must free yourself from the fear of losing something such that you can enjoy that something. If you're afraid of a relationship ending, you'll never be able to enjoy the relationship.
The last thing we want is to live like machines. Our research over the past 45+ years shows that when you're actively noticing, your neurons are firing, and that's literally and figuratively enlivening. And what do we do when we're having fun? We notice, we engage. So mindfulness is not just beneficial—it's enjoyable.
The average person works more than five days a week… they're burned out by the weekend, they end up drinking too much alcohol, too much caffeine, they don't look after themselves, they're reacting to how they feel instead of preparing for the tasks ahead.
The more you do it – the more you build a mental scar tissue that you can lean on – That's the 'stuff' that lets you pick up the pieces and go again.
The people who do better are somehow better connected. In other words, there is an inherent logic in the idea that the more connections individuals make within their communities the better off they will be emotionally, socially, physically and economically.
In the future, these blood tests will allow us to offer treatments for Alzheimer's disease 10, 20, or even 30 years before symptoms start to manifest, much like how we currently handle cholesterol. This early detection and intervention will be our strategy for combating Alzheimer's.