From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
The power of regret is that it clarifies what we value and instructs on how to do better. When people tell you what they regret they most, they are telling you what they value the most.
Running is beautiful and simple – you just put one foot in front of the other at an accelerated pace. There's something primordial about it though – something within us – it's like we're born to run... in this modern era, people choose to run we don't have to run – we're not being pursued by Saber-Toothed Tigers anymore, but we still choose to run. It's something to do which is hard, it connects us to something – and when life gets easy, to feel alive, we need to do something hard.
Entrepreneurs that do it for greed of money fail. Entrepreneurship isn't about greed, it has nothing to do with that; what matters is personal freedom.
I can't advertise chewing gum to my children because it's unethical, but I can feed them all sorts of narratives that will have a profound impact on their personal trajectories. It's quite an extraordinarily hypocritical position.
Our ethics are not static, they evolve over time and that gives me tremendous hope. If we had remained static, the progress we have made would have been impossible. The evolution of ethics is essential to our survival.
The level of preparation before fighters' step into the octagon is huge – at minimum fighters will train for 6-8 week, non-stop at camp, just for this 3 or 5, 5 minute-a-round battle. It is the loneliest sport in the world when it comes to it…. you are training with your team, but once you enter the octagon and that gate closes? It is you alone.
You can think of the human mind as a measuring instrument. We're making judgements all the time and studies show that on a day-to-day basis, when presented with the same evidence, our judgements may be different.
I have shown that anything is possible. I always tell people not to limit themselves. Find out what you are good at or interested in and work hard to be successful in that.
In my opinion, the seeds of cruelty are in nature. We are animals and so we participate in animal behavior. Aggression is part of the natural world and we derive our origins from the natural world in which there are priorities that drive existence such as the need to eat, to reproduce and to defend.
You have to make decisions throughout your life and be prepared to accept responsibility for those decisions. There is also confidence that comes from learning a set of skills – and that confidence allows you to challenge the status quo.
Trust is a confident relationship with the unknown. And the reason this is so important is that trust isn't, at its essence, an asset or an attribute or a currency. It's a belief. It's what we believe about someone or something. That definition is slightly counterintuitive because, often, when people think about trust, they talk about knowing what to expect from someone or knowing what the outcomes will be. So, they're actually thinking about trust through the language of risk, thinking about it in terms of certainty. And that's not what trust is.
Risk naturally triggers fear—fear of a bad outcome. But using reason to manage risk means applying a more analytical approach, almost like a mathematical assessment of risk and reward. If the odds are against you, how bad is the downside really?