From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
You have to step back and focus on the merits of the offer- not the person who brought the offer to you. That's how you defend yourself. You recognise that there's something that goes on first as important as the message itself inclining you towards purchase or agreement.
I look at every negotiation as an opportunity to solve a problem between me and the other negotiator. They are not my adversary – I need them – and they need me.
When I was a door to door salesman, I learned a very valuable lesson. 1 in 10 people would talk to you, 9 out of 10 would slam the door in your face. Sometimes you would get 30 doors in a row slammed in your face, but that means that there are 3 yes' coming your way.
The Ancient Greeks believed philosophy was a medicine for the soul. Socrates said 'I teach my student how to take care of their souls', which is where the word psychotherapy comes from. Cicero said, 'there's a medical art for the soul, and its name is philosophy'.
Rationality applies whether you believe in it or not. One idea follows from another – or it doesn't – and if you want some of your beliefs to lead to other beliefs, you have no choice but to be rational. We're committed to it by the very act of discussing, arguing, debating, persuading and convincing.
You should try and copy everything you possibly can! It's just that if you run out of alternatives, if you run out of options to copy, you will realise that your entire life has conditioned you to not only be a great copier, but to hesitate when copying is no longer an option.
In a highly emotive and risk-averse market, rationality seems to fall by the wayside, with investors trigger-happy to pull immense volumes of liquidity out of assets at the earliest risk warning.
What excites me the most is offering something tangible that people can apply immediately to enhance their performance—not something that will start showing results a year down the line. There's a common misconception that improvement is complex and time-consuming. My goal is to change this mindset, guiding people to focus on specific, actionable steps they can take today.
If your judgement is hijacked by emotions such as rage, fear, neediness, loneliness, or anger, you will act out of impulse – not out of value. This can be incredibly harmful – when the dust settles, you may realise you've messed-up.
Power is not the sense we think of in politics, or great leaders doing dastardly things for political advantage. I think of power at an individual level- people want a degree of control over their lives. You want to shake-off the deeply unsettling feeling that you cannot influence your children, spouse, colleagues, and boss.
it is our knowledge that we have to die that makes us human
If you lose your ego, you lose the thread of that narrative you call your Self…humans, however, can't live very long without some sense of a continuing story.