From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
I should be just as excited to find out I was wrong as to prove I am right. Perhaps I should be even more excited about being wrong, because if I am always proving myself right, I'm just affirming my beliefs and not evolving them… and that's not learning at all, is it?
As a team captain, you have to figure out how people work, you have to make sure you say the right thing to the right person… you have to know when to shout, when to listen, when to be tough and when to be kind. You have to realise that being captain does not give you a license to order people around; if people follow you, they follow you because they've decided to, not because they have to.
Unlike the common societal and professional desire to dismiss these responses as merely negative—viewing depression, anxiety, or suicidal thoughts as things to eliminate—I believe we should examine them more closely. How is drinking serving you? When we shift from judging to listening, people start to understand.
It's about finding the right balance between being bold, patient, and persistent. For me, it's about not thinking it's crazy to reach out to an Oscar winner or a billionaire, but realizing it takes patience and time.
How would one expect society to develop 'actualisation' and 'esteem' driving characteristics (economic growth and spending) when the basic 'physiological' and 'safety' needs (food security, employment, health, property) are not met.
Power is relational; we talk about seizing power but ultimately – at least in democratic societies – you need the followers to be powerful, and it's important therefore for us to understand the cognitive biases that mean that we keep gravitating towards people who are clearly unfit for the job.
During the day, we strive for efficiency. The brain forms habits to avoid wasting energy on unnecessary tasks, like finding a new route to work daily. It automates routes, like driving on autopilot, sometimes arriving home without recalling the journey. This efficiency undoubtedly has its benefits in a resource-limited environment shaped by evolutionary pressures.
War teaches you that there are many different types of people, good and bad, and you have to understand that good and evil co-exist, and it's up to you to calculate your way through the world, understanding where people are rooted.
My approach is always to redirect their focus from this nebulous concept of confidence to the concrete tasks at hand. These are tasks they have successfully completed numerous times. Whether they feel confident or not is irrelevant; the real key is maintaining focus in the moment.
In our sport, we're constantly wrestling, punching, kicking, often ending up with black eyes. It's this constant, intense physical contact that sets our sport apart, making the mental toughness required quite unique compared to others.
Why does this matter? Because when you're mindless—assuming 1+1 is always 2—you don't notice context, and you don't have choices. But when you're mindful, you do. If someone asks you how much 1+1 is, you get to decide: do I answer 1, 2, 10, or something else? You become aware, engaged, and flexible.
Social synchrony is a big feature of human behaviour—it's a weird thing if you think about it, but we do things like marching in time and parading and singing in choirs in ways that are highly coordinated and synchronised.