From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
The small things are what make the biggest impact sometimes – and that starts with how you treat people. My 90 seconds with Picabo changed my life. You'd be surprised how many kids have parents and peers around there who tell them they can't, I want to tell them they can.
Some call it resilience, but it's likely just escapism. When you keep moving, the wind moves behind you, and you leave behind who you once were and move towards something new.
Gender identity drives self-socialization. People think adults socialise their children, but children socialise themselves. We see the same process in the Great Apes. Self-socialisation we see, is not limited just to humans! That's why I talk about the idea of gender in apes, not just sex.
We behave like an entire culture suffering from a severe right-hemisphere brain injury or stroke. It's almost as if our culture has pulled us into the left hemisphere, where anxiety lives, and refuses to let us return.
Our news outlets could report the fact that 137,000 people escaped from extreme poverty yesterday, every day for the past 30 years – but they never ran that headline, with the result that over a billion people escaped poverty and nobody knows about it.
Don't make the mistake of confusing net worth and self-worth.
Our brains actively construct a model of the world, which is our actual experience. Incoming sensory data serves mainly to verify and correct this internal model.
I looked at her and said, 'that's impossible! If I had stolen these pears from you… you would never have seen me!'
I do feel that there is less hope now than there has ever been during my lifetime and- it would appear- for centuries. When you speak to most young people, they don't have an articulate sense of the future, of what they're looking forward to.
Initially, my goal wasn't to become an entrepreneur; I was simply aiming to earn some money. Given my dyslexia, the academic path was not an option for me; there were no A-Levels or university in my future. My choices were stark: acquire a skill or venture into entrepreneurship. Naturally, I gravitated towards entrepreneurship.
When we talk of economic confidence, business confidence, or even confidence in global markets, we are talking of the mindset of the majority of participants in that market. In a 'booming' market, participants feel happy, with little sense of risk- so they are happy to invest in their businesses, create jobs, buy property, and drive strong economic figures.
We've got the most powerful tool in the world sitting in our head, yet no manual of instructions on how to use it. Everything else comes with instructions, a blender, a point and shoot camera. Even to drive a car, you need a licence.