From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
When I look at my own life- the things that I'm most embarrassed about are the moments where I acted, or didn't act, because of fear. The moments I'm most proud of are those where I acted with some semblance of courage.
Morality represents the way we would like the world to work, and economics represents how it actually does work.
I've done the show with a blown-out back, with one leg, coming off laryngitis, coming off or having a 103 degree fever. The bottom line is this… I go in there to do my job – the men and women fighting are actually putting their lives on the line – I'm just announcing! They're taking punches in the face, I'm just holding a microphone! I have nothing to complain about or make excuses for, the show must go on!
I fell in love with the process first – they sometimes call it the grind. I fell in love with movement, with training, with everything between the competitions – and falling in love with that was instrumental to me because now, when things don't go right, and I feel vulnerable or emotional, I can dip into that state.
We are under an existential threat now as humankind. Even a simple two-cell yeast has a survival instinct and evolves fast enough to try and survive. I don't understand why humans who are supposed to be these very complex creatures can see that we're heading towards a very, very dangerous future which could be irreversible, and why we're not doing absolutely everything possible now.
The world lacks creative imagination when it comes to mother nature- we believe that we have the power to bend nature to our desires and forget that we're vulnerable. Nature is a combination of biology, physics and chemistry- they are collectively much stronger at bending the world than we are.
For all of us, greatness is there from the off, it's right there in your headspace and mindset. It's sabotaged either by yourself or by what's going on around you. Society restricts us in a way that doesn't allow us to operate at our full potential.
Who you are, how you perceive yourself, and how others perceive you, all are enmeshed within this tapestry, which consists of billions of neuronal connections. Alzheimer's, in essence, pulls this tapestry apart, thread by thread.
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.
I never started off with money, I started off with love. The love of being an entrepreneur. The love of being a lawyer. The love of being an athlete. When you start off with love, people will love and respect you and you will always be monetarily rewarded.
Success is different for everyone, but for me success has always been about finding meaning and personal fulfillment. If I can wake up every day, feel engaged in my work and know that I tried my best to help others feel the same as me, then I feel successful.
People do confuse pleasure for happiness, but as Mortimer J. Adler put it, there is a big difference between a having a good time and having a good life. Pleasure is best understood not as the very good itself, but as a by-product of pursuing the things that really are good.