From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
We can use the pain of our past as a catapult propelling us forward. As the saying goes, 'the best revenge is a life well-lived.' So, the most gratifying way to spite all those who tried to harm me during my childhood is to say, 'Look at me now; I'm speaking to Vikas Shah, 50 years later.'
The most common mistake is to stop challenging when things are going well. I recognise failure as not having made a business better than when you were first involved.
We can expand our circle of sympathy – we can employ the logic of impartiality, and the emotional prompts of human contact and vicarious experience, and expand our fellow-feeling from our family to our clan, our nation, tribe, and from there to all of humanity and even other sentient beings.
Humans began to create and believe things that exist only in their own imagination. Things such as gods, nations, money and human rights. This enabled humans to start cooperating on an unprecedented scale.
The scientist mindset says, I will not let my ideas become an ideology. When I start to form an opinion, I should treat it as a hypothesis before doing some observations or experiments to test it. I should be just as excited to find out I was wrong as to prove I am right.
When I talk about happiness, envision yourself at the ripe age of 85, comfortably seated on that metaphorical porch, reflecting upon your life. You're thinking, 'Good heavens, I've genuinely led a fulfilling life. I've established a loving family, spent my life with an extraordinary partner, and devoted myself to a profession that's injected an immense sense of purpose into my existence. I have minimal regrets and have maintained a light-hearted, playful approach to life.' This, to me, is what I would categorise as a profound sense of existential happiness.
On a personal level, the best defense against materialism and greed is to give money away. You need to be charitable, engage in philanthropy.
Humankind has become a force in the biosphere as powerful as many natural forces of change, stronger than some, and sometimes as mindless as any.
Entrepreneurship is a way of thinking, a way of acting, that enables you to realise your dreams. It allows ideas to thrive and become reality and success to be born from hard work, good intention, taking risks and believing in something that others may deem to be impossible.
Status, I believe, is intrinsic to our very being it's at the core of who we are. This quest for status isn't a novel aspect of human behaviour—it's a pursuit that predates our very existence as humans. This pursuit isn't just a facet of our lives; it essentially narrates the story of human existence.
Success is really a portal into the next stage that we're possibly capable of doing, and we have to decide how we're going to face that tsunami of emotions that then comes flying at us when we thought all we were going to have was happiness.
The idea of dialogue is overrated- sometimes you have to fight. There are certain issues we mustn't depoliticise, sometimes we must fight, and sometimes that fight is physical… that's just reality. As for 'building bridges' with fascists, sometimes there are no bridges, you cannot befriend someone who is trying to kill you.