From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
You create change in other people when you're totally honest, transparent, and authentic. When you show people who you really are, with all your flaws, with all your vulnerabilities…it moves them.
You should try and copy everything you possibly can! It's just that if you run out of alternatives, if you run out of options to copy, you will realise that your entire life has conditioned you to not only be a great copier, but to hesitate when copying is no longer an option.
The Stoic concept of courage is about letting reason prevail over emotion. Risk naturally triggers fear—fear of a bad outcome. But using reason to manage risk means applying a more analytical approach, almost like a mathematical assessment of risk and reward.
I actually find the training much more mentally challenging that the competitions.
it is our knowledge that we have to die that makes us human
Great entrepreneurs are people with tremendous passion. Without passion you cannot go on a journey that requires such huge personal sacrifices, looks bleak, risky and impossible in the beginning…
They took a relative view of risk… They had an understanding of the risks of something going wrong, but balanced that against missing an opportunity. When that opportunity exceeded the risk of going wrong? That's when they jumped…
If you fall flat on your face, at least you're moving forward. All you have to do is get back up and try again!
On the night of my 30th birthday, I was at a bar in San Francisco... I walked out of that bar at midnight, drunk. I didn't even own running gear, I had some comfortable silk boxer shorts on – took off my pants – and took off down an alleyway stumbling south without knowing that a town called Half Moon Bay was nearly 30 miles away. When the alcohol wore off, I had this epiphany. I looked up and saw heaven – I saw the stars – it was the first moment of clarity I had since I'd given up running. It made me realise that perhaps I was on this earth to be a runner – I wasn't happy being a business guy, it was making me miserable. I was comfortable, but miserable.
Start doing things not for the end product, but for the impact on your heart, your brain, your life, and your health. Recognize that you've been conditioned to hate yourself and your creativity for the sake of a culture that does not care about you.
It's conceivable that survival odds were higher for ancestors who embraced false information endorsed by their tribe, compared to those who acknowledged empirically accurate information but were thereby alienated from their group.
You achieve your best performance by doing the best you can without having your mind clouded by drifting thoughts of what could happen when something goes wrong. That's what you train for, and your training gives you the ability to build the mental tools and programmes of action to make good decisions.