From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
To overcome extreme obstacles, to do the impossible, you have to create another human being inside yourself. I had to create an image of how I wanted to look, how I wanted to act, how I wanted to believe, how hard I wanted to push. I trained that image in my mind, and then I had to become an artist to create it.
We compensate for our failure to exercise actual control over events by creating a generalized, subjective sense of control by undertaking acts the effect of which on the environment is illusory.
As soon as you get close to this thing we need to heal, the anxiety comes up to try to pull us away as it did when we were a child, and that's why anxiety is so hard to heal. Because as soon as you get close to it, you want to pull away.
There's a moment when you look at good art when time changes… It's as if time no longer exists, becomes longer, or is suspended. There's a moment of reverie when you're fully immersed in something apart from yourself. One experiences this sometimes in meditation. These inexplicable, wonderful and mysterious experiences we have never leave us.
Surgery, like many other disciplines, is primarily about facts, your relationship with the facts, how you manage, handle, interpret and use those facts. This is something we all begin to do very early in life, in our childhood.
We have to live in the world as it is, not the world as we wish it would be, is something that we misunderstand. If we are realistic those ideals are usually out of reach, and in fact thinking about them and dreaming about them is a way to punish ourselves for the fact our lives are never going to match up to those ideals.
Starting a business is an exciting venture, often filled with enthusiasm, borrowed money, and a fair share of ignorance. In fact, a certain level of ignorance can be beneficial for an entrepreneur. If you were fully aware of the potential obstacles ahead, you might hesitate to start.
I was comfortable, but miserable. I wanted to be out on my own, vulnerable, suffering, and in pain, but with the beauty of me versus the distance.
Tapping into these forgotten parts of the brain can be transformational for bipolar, for anxiety, fear, depression, PTSD and trauma. This is the part of the brain that is normally stimulated by opioids and cannabinoids; but imagine being able to consciously activate this part of your brain- to create euphoria whenever you need.
We must not only use the emotional part of exploration, but also the state of mind of exploration which encourages us to get out of our bad habits, beliefs, everything we know, our comfort zone, and even our way of thinking. The mindset of exploration encourages us to find new solutions.
Growth is like an elixir. It's exciting, it creates more and more growth, and it's a helluva lot of fun. Business is fun, it's a game. You're playing against others, and you want to win!
Performance is a mental construction. You have to be present in your own body and mind, and when you achieve that presence, you can transcend physical and mental limitations.