If I may return to the biology analogy too; human beings get a lot of benefit from walking erect, but our backs and our feet are sometimes sore because we are made of parts that were put together before we could walk erect.

My job is to help people recognise the origins and intentions behind these responses. Unlike the common societal and professional desire to dismiss these responses as merely negative, I believe we should examine them more closely. How is drinking serving you?

I believe it's crucial, especially in social settings, to be both interesting and interested. Being well-informed and keeping up with current events make you more engaging, but showing genuine interest in others is key.

As you move forward... there is the potential that the government can make a wrong-move but more importantly, now that the infrastructure has been built.. you have to question how long that growth model can last... Once you've built your motorways and railways, you're not going to build anymore!

When I ask people to note down their desired earnings for the next week or year, about 95% choose figures they deem 'realistic'. They won't even dare to jot down their dream figures, held back by their internal reservations.

My wife quipped that we're all going to die and it just happened to be her turn. Her pragmatic and humorous attitude was a guide as to how to accept what is unchangeable and inevitable.

There's a great quote that is 'political correctness is tyranny with manners'.

Just being curious about yourself. You and I could read the same book on leadership or how to run a good team meeting, and we might take away the same five lessons, but we'd still apply them differently — even if we were trying to do exactly the same thing. That's because of our different personalities.

We often have this flawed, broken principle of perfection put on us from a very young age that we must be perfect as people. No-one is perfect. In fact, we are perfectly imperfect.

There is a famous Iraqi idiom which states that if you think your opponents can eat you for dinner, then you'd better eat them for lunch. If your opponent is too big and powerful to eat you right-now, you'd better eat them for lunch before they eat you. Commitment problems from our opponents lead us to act, and that's another reason why rational man can go to war.

Film is a reflection of society, both present and past. I think the film and it's innovations sometimes has to catch up to society but sometimes it leads society too. Movies are stories, movies are people who come out with ideas about something they want to say, something they want to tell someone.

People underestimate their personal probability of encountering negative events. It is not so much that individuals believe that negative events will not happen, but rather that these events are relatively unlikely to happen to them.