From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
Few have the boldness to assert, 'Not my circus, not my monkeys,' choosing to focus on select issues rather than superficially ticking off an extensive list.
Life is not a race against other people. Life is a competition with yourself. One of the greatest achievements in life is to outperform yourself and live your greatest life possible. Greatness lives in all of us, but we must all find what it is that ignites our souls.
I often tell students we work with that there will be moments when they, as newcomers, propose ideas or approaches that are innovative and correct simply because they bring a fresh perspective, uninfluenced by established norms or the supposed limits of what's possible.
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.
Winning is good, losing is bad! Do you want to be in the winner's locker room celebrating or in the losers with your head down and a towel around your neck? If you're winning, you can give back — to your family, institutions of your choice, and your local communities... If you're losing, your pockets are empty.
This is certainly something that is not without risk. We are pursuing an audacious goal, and we very well might fail. When NASA set the Moon landing challenge, it created a whole series of capabilities and technologies that we previously could not have imagined.
One of the simplest but hardest things to do is to be honest with ourselves. We are works-in-progress from the day we're born, till the day we die. You should never, ever, stop working on yourself.
Most people we have worked with who have accomplished great things have an other-centred purpose, and that's never just 'make a lot of money…' – it could be to make women's lives easier, to close the inequality gap, to change the world, it's something which isn't strictly personal and selfish.
We cannot focus only on the material aspects of poverty- we must address the poverty of spirit that's present in every one of our broken institutions: health systems, economic systems, criminal justice systems, and food systems. If we are going to solve the toughest problems we face as a world right now, we're going to need new operating principles that are compatible with a deeply interconnected world.
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.
I'm fortunate that I can make a change that in a very positive way affects a better way of life for many humans as well as all living creatures and our planet.
Don't make the mistake of confusing net worth and self-worth.