From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
The lucky person walks down the street, sees the £5 note, picks it up, goes into the coffee shop, and sits next to the businessperson, they have a conversation, exchange cards, and leave thinking they've potentially had a great opportunity. The unlucky person ignores the money, and sits next to the person without making conversation.
When I have a bad day, that has nothing to do with the market! But how I respond to that bad day may be a reflection of a general level of discomfort about how the economy is doing and so forth. It's an out-of-bounds signal. In that sense, it's pretty unique!
My interest is not whether something could dematerialize in my hand, but how people can be misled. You can this very dangerous thing- lying- and make it safe to play around with.
The reason we can't be happy, and not worry about other people's opinions, is that we're sharing our minds with a machine that does worry about other people's opinions and which does get anxious. If we can dissociate from that, and learn to manage it, it can improve our lives significantly.
We have the ability to push much further than we think is possible, but the brain wants us to rest to allow the body to recover. With practice and training we can overcome almost any discomfort.
Being able to trust is actually what makes us human. It's a very innate thing. And often, distrust and mistrust are learned behaviours that start to set in around the age of four.
The issue you're worried about, the one you're likely spending most of your time discussing, isn't the only problem in the world. We tend to lose sight of this because we often perceive our immediate tasks as the most crucial. Given the multitude of issues we need to address, the goal shouldn't be to resolve a single problem in an exhaustive and expensive way.
I give all of you permission whereby, if I change the way I behave, my beliefs, the way we are going, I give you permission to hit me in my face, you need to bring me back to reality.
There are things in our lives that aren't ideal, but because we've habituated to them, we're not as motivated to change them. This also applies to societal issues like racism or sexism—because they've been present for so long, we might not notice them as much and therefore feel less motivated to address them.
Selling is about creating agency in the people that you are talking to so that they feel like they are part of the decision-making process. Selling is wanting to ask questions that you really want to know the answers to. Not ones that you have to ask.
I don't want my success to define me. I want people to see me without all that – success comes and goes, without it, I am still who I am.
I think social media is a great example of this. It feels a little bit like social connection, but I often joke that it's the 'NutraSweet' version—it seems good but doesn't deliver the psychological benefit we expect.