From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
The biggest challenge is a lack of confidence. Confidence is preventing businesses from investing significant amounts of their balance sheet strength, they simply do not feel they will get returns on that investment, and so they're holding cash.
We never have direct access to the world in itself; we only have access to the model our brain is constructing. It works as a sort of 'best guess.' The brain isn't trying to find the absolute truth or create a perfect replica of the outside world's structure.
The key component of bravery is integrity. What I saw growing up was the reality that people would often give their integrity to make life more comfortable in the short term; but guess what, that leads to your integrity being chipped away until you are left with nothing.
Nature has evolved the human race for individuals to be very different from each other. Half of us are thinkers, and we proceed according to the facts. The other half of us are feelers. Nature says you need both kinds of people to push humanity forward.
Hedge funds give less transparency than almost anything that people invest money in... Since investors have accepted much less transparency and much less attractive terms in liquidity and information rights, they have not been able to pick apart the sources of return.
I mean, people ask me, 'Should I do a startup?' And I say, 'Well, how important is work-life balance to you?' And if they say anything other than 'It's not important,' I say, 'You shouldn't do it.' Because it's a killing field.
We spend a huge amount of our lives away from the immediacy of our existence, lost in reflections on the past or anxieties of the future. This misadventure in episodic memory takes a huge toll on us, leading to stress, anxiety, depression and exacerbating a range of complex medical and psychological conditions we may have.
Only one second in time you can find peace – now. There's only one second you can be happy – now. There's only one place you can find peace and happiness. Where you are. This is it, it's not out there somewhere, it's in you.
Enough conspiracy theories are true, it pays to believe more of them are true than actually are, make a type 1 error, false positive, you thought something was real when it wasn't, as opposed to a type 2 error where you failed to recognise a real conspiracy which could be costly.
Every time we achieve some version of success, whether you've sold that first company or maybe you've just sold your first tube of lipstick or your first consulting contract, every time we achieve some version of success we see another version of ourselves that we didn't even know was possible. We as humans wonder what else potential we have to explore.
To the striver, that addiction is success. It activates the same neurobiology and dopamine pathways as alcohol or drugs. When the business collapses, their life ends not just in terms of work, but their whole sense of self is removed. All addicts are the same.
Trust is a confident relationship with the unknown. 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.