From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
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.
I genuinely don't care about scrutiny – it's a zero on a scale of 1 to 10 for me. If the table goes cold, I'll walk out of the casino. I'm good… I've got my nest-egg… I'm happy. I do this every day because I like it and want to accomplish my goals.
The danger is that when we jump too quickly to the solution, not only is the floor littered with the inventions that never worked, but we risk designing solutions that never fit the problem.
Why would anybody at all invest in an economy where the three leaders said the country was bankrupt?! That's what's killed off confidence and investment in the economy.
Success is different for everyone, but for me success has always been about finding meaning and personal fulfillment. While that may have meant different things at different times in my life, learning, making meaningful connections with people and helping others achieve this same level of satisfaction has been a sign of success for me.
I have shown that anything is possible. I always tell people not to limit themselves. Find out what you are good at or interested in and work hard to be successful in that. Have fun when you are doing it and life is better.
I nearly died several times. I shared everything openly with everyone. I shared how my whole thought process and character had completely changed in that expedition, but also how my own purpose had completely changed.
What really matters is how well you know yourself — because every aspect of your leadership is expressed through your personality. I think that single trait — self-awareness — or rather, that skillset, outweighs all the others put together.
I think in the past, it was more of a zero sum game, and now I think we can play in a positive sum game, which really plays into the whole greenhouse concept, because we can all actually grow together and not feel like we are needing to take in order to achieve.
We need to be more nuanced about how we define integrity. For me, it's not about sticking to opinions, but about sticking to values. I'm very flexible about the best way to live those values.
The American general felt that if we confronted the Russians with a determined show of force, they would probably back down. And you know what? He was probably right; but what does probably mean? If it's 90% then there was a 10% chance he was wrong.
Legacy is not for us to decide, it's not for us to chase, it's not for us to get, it's not for us to enjoy. I don't think about it much.