From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
Poverty is like treading in a pool of quicksand- if you're standing on the outside looking in, it's easy for you to pontificate about what the person in the quicksand should do, how they should behave, what risks they should be able to take- but anyone who's been in the proverbial quicksand knows that the biggest risk is that they make one move in the wrong direction, and submerge deeper.
Be a curious explorer of other people's emotions. Don't approach people as if you know how they're feeling. We often make mistakes when reading other people's emotions because we bring in our own cultural values and belief systems.
There is a certain kind of X factor that is really hard to define, but it is the thing that makes a person stand out when they walk into a room or makes you magnetically drawn to walk towards them at a party or a gathering. It is often about authenticity and being true to themselves, because I think most people are very good at reading what is and what is not authentic.
A lot of people in society understandably want to feel important, and one of the ways you do this is to show people how busy you are… and one of the ways you show people how busy you are is to describe how little time you have for sleep.
When I have a bad day, that has nothing to do with the market! But how I respond to that bad day may be a reflection of a general level of discomfort about how the economy is doing and so forth. It's an out-of-bounds signal. In that sense, it's pretty unique!
My drive to excel comes from a desire to be the best I can, not just for myself but also for those around me. I aim to perform at my peak every time I play.
We often project our 'superhero' aspirations onto our leaders and vulnerability, and other more human traits, are not always encouraged. Organisational leaders often experience loneliness, and the 'truth' within their company is often illusive to them because subordinates will often tell them what they want to hear.
Purpose and meaning are inextricably tied to suffering and difficulty. If you tell me a pursuit that you view as meaningful and important, I can guarantee it won't be easy. If it was easy, it wouldn't be meaningful or important. We reserve the notion of meaning for things that have difficulty.
Most fundamentally- we respond emotionally to music- sound is communicative, it affects us, it causes feelings and connections. Sound making and listening are communal activities, they're communicative activities… music moves us, and when we listen to it, we feel transported.
Built into her edict, is not to feel any guilt if you find happiness or joy after her death. That is an extraordinarily generous piece of advice.
What's going to happen is that you just get busier and busier and move faster and faster! We treat productivity tools as if they're going to lead to our salvation, they're absolutely not going to.
It might feel—if you haven't yet learned the rules of these hidden markets—that the outcomes are based on luck, chance, or things beyond your control, but you actually have a lot more agency in them than you think.