From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
We always have this mix in each area, but people tend to categorise creativity by discipline rather than by the individuals within those disciplines.
In higher states of consciousness, we also lose our fear of death. The transcendent you is not in time. Only thought exists in time… only perception exists in time…
I went to see a psychiatrists and was like 'I think there's something wrong with my brain'. He diagnosed me fairly quickly as being a born overachiever. Born overachievement complex was my issue, and he said we can work on that. I said overachievement? That's a feature, not a bug. He's like yeah but it's not tenable. And I said no, no, I'm fine, I'm totally fine and he countered with the checkmate of 'but you're here'.
Your attention hasn't collapsed, it's been stolen from you by big forces. Once we understand those forces, we can begin to build meaningful solutions.
Organizations fail when leaders fail to write-down their own depreciating intellectual capital, and bureaucracies exaggerate that problem by vesting so much power in so few people. Most change management programs are in-fact catch-up programs.
I do this thing- I say something out-loud–announce it to the public–and then I'm forced to do it because people are excited and I don't want to let them down.
The human mind, once the pinnacle of intelligence, is now overshadowed by computational intelligence in many domains. Algorithms understand and can guide me better than I can guide myself. The real game-changer is data. I'm willing to yield control to an algorithm that proves to be superior.
Social anxiety stems from the fear of being judged, criticised, or scrutinised. However, adopting a mindset of curiosity—deciding to learn and ask questions—can make those fears dissipate. When you shift your focus from worrying about judgment to engaging in learning and exploration, the anxiety naturally begins to fade away.
Music is often better than speech at conveying and understanding emotion, because music has a kind of openness and ambiguity to it. Words, on the other hand, tend to put things into boxes.
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.
They talk about Steve Jobs having a reality distortion field…. but all the entrepreneurs I met who achieved great things had that. They all had a wilful denial of reality… against all evidence to the contrary they had to believe they would succeed.. that's ultimately what entrepreneurs do.
Soldiers don't get post-traumatic stress on the battlefield, they get it when they get return. When you're there, on the battlefield, life is simple. You have a mission, a purpose, a direction, and you're trying to survive. When you come home, that's when you have to reconcile your humanity with who you are.