From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
You must call yourself out for who you're not, and that's where you start to grow. That's where you can really fix the problems in your life when you recognise that.
The perspective of seeing the Earth from space has rewired our brain. We used to have a 2-dimensional view for hundreds of thousands of years. Now with space telescopes we have a 4-dimensional view of our universe.
I recall a moment when my dad and I, lacking presents, salvaged chairs from a community dumpster, a testament to our determination to make the best of our situation without any sense of pride or entitlement. His willingness to do whatever was necessary for us taught me resilience.
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.
Once released, former hostages encounter a myriad of practical issues—closed bank accounts, lapsed insurance, and the need for specialised medical and dental care that isn't readily available. They might also require physical therapy among other medical treatments. It's not just the hostage who suffers, but their entire family. In some cases, families endure greater agony, living in uncertainty about their loved one's fate.
Fear depends on your context, and how much you think you have to lose. You may be young or broke and have nothing to lose. In that case? Either you figure out a way to get something, or you don't get it. Simple.
Play is a mock version of these activities, allowing us to experiment and understand how they work and interconnect. Questions like 'What if I did it this way?' arise in play, exploring different possibilities.
Fundamentally, it's really hard to work on intellectual and complex projects collaboratively. Complexity is underestimated, even by the people who are in the thick of it. There's a lot of anxiety or even resentment towards the tools and process of business that manifests in satire with shows like 'The Office', the movie 'Office Space' or the cartoon 'Dilbert'.
Don't base your identity on your opinions. This can be a perilous path because it makes it challenging to change your mind. Instead, it's preferable to root your identity in your values and character.
The tendency is to avoid the need for more options because anything that's unfamiliar, as human beings we tend to flee uncertainty. We naturally go towards what we already know because we know how to deal with something we have done before.
Music ties into memory in two ways. First, music itself can be tremendously impactful, so we remember it — and we also remember everything happening around us when we heard it.
Ultimately, you have to fail at some stage with whatever you do, to get the successes that you need in the end.