From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
When I was 15, I rearranged the sales floor in the boutique I was working in and was the best salesperson in the store. At 25, when my boss Anne Klein died, I took over designing and changed the look of the collection to make it younger and sexier, and also changed how it was shown and sold in the showroom – not to mention just having had a baby while all this was happening.
If you want to grow, you need to go through something uncomfortable and come out the other end. If you want to grow, you have to go forward in progressive steps. It should always be a little bit uncomfortable because otherwise there's no growth. And that's the secret. It's like playing chess but while getting punched in the face.
Self-confidence is about believing in your capabilities, while self-esteem is loving yourself irrespective of outcomes. Both are crucial.
You may have gone to the best business in the world and learned that the three most important things in real estate are location, location, location- but it's just not true! It's relationship, relationship, relationship.
I want to set an example for this generation of war reporters, and for my generation as a whole, that you don't have to rely on drugs or alcohol to cope with traumatic experiences.
If you fail many times in life, it can be frustrating, but, if you look differently at that, you can see that if you fail many times, you get up many times. If you didn't get up after the first fall, you could never have fought. Failure just means you got knocked down.
When I set a goal for myself, and achieve that goal, that's what winning is to me. When you set out on that yellow-brick-road of life to fulfil your goals, just be the best you can be – and whether that means you finish as champion, first, second, tenth, whatever… if you've done your best? You're winning.
I've done a few very-right things in my life that I'm proud of, and one of them was getting to know Joey and bringing him into the business. Joey was a gift, and we knew we shouldn't miss out on him.
We need to challenge the notion that if you don't feel like a superhero, then you must not be the right person for the job. Today's most important challenges are met by teams of people, as opposed to a single superhero.
I had to remain in war mode. I had to continue confronting my captors, not accept what was happening to me. The relationship I had with my captors was based on suspicion.
You have to be clear about the purpose of what you're making. If you're making a film that's going to cost a lot of money- inevitably it will be a commercial endeavor by a studio or financier- and you have a responsibility to make that investment worthwhile; certainly, if you don't, you won't be working in the industry for very long.
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.