From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
We end up living in the world virtually through the ideas that we conceive.
Without understanding the rules of the game, you might assume that your outcomes are determined mostly by luck. People who end up unhappy about what they get conclude that they were unlucky or that the system was rigged against them. After enough of these experiences, they believe that's just how the world works.
I recall a moment when my dad and I, lacking presents, salvaged chairs from a community dumpster, a testament to our determination to make the best of our situation without any sense of pride or entitlement. His willingness to do whatever was necessary for us taught me resilience.
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.
My interest is not whether something could dematerialize in my hand, but how people can be misled. You can this very dangerous thing- lying- and make it safe to play around with.
We only make progress by getting up from getting kicked to the ground. How does a baby learn to walk? It falls, gets back up… falls, gets back up, and one day its running. Here's the thing about life. You will fall, stumble and fail- that's inevitable. You need to analyse it when it happens, learn from those mistakes, and move on.
Just as you wouldn't want a surgeon to go from one operating theater to the next without having washed their hands, you don't want a manager to go from one context to the next without being in a position where they can actually do some good—or at least do no harm.
Robustness is being in a good place and having a plan, resilience is being able to implement that plan and stay in a good place.
Music is something that affects your senses in a way that nothing else really can- it's like a time-travel portal! You can listen to something and it transports back to that place… that bar… that nightclub… that time with your friends….
The way I prefer to think of perception is as a processor of active construction, a controlled hallucination. Sensory signals don't come with labels attached. Everything we perceive is a kind of inference, a burst guess about what's out there.
Your brain has an agenda: to make you feel good about you. So if you're the CEO, and you decided to launch a product two weeks ago, your brain assumes, 'Well, that must have been the right decision.' It starts scanning the environment for proof — cherry-picking anything that confirms you were right.
There is a popular belief that poverty is characterised by social factors – low wages, addiction, and violence. These things all exist, but what really characterises the experience of poverty is emotional stress.