From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
Habituation is a very basic mechanism. It's something we find in every neuron and every system of our brain, including our fundamental abilities like perception. Essentially, we stop responding to and perceiving things that are not changing or are changing very gradually.
I don't think I ever would have had the confidence in myself to even pick up the pen. I would have continued to believe that this wasn't something that could ever be real for me. That one small bit of encouragement had such a huge impact on my life. It made me realize how sometimes it really is the little stuff that's most important, and we never know how significant our encouragement can be in someone else's life.
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!
Magic is this incredibly weird bondage and discipline you make where you say to someone, 'do this thing to me that's morally wrong… you have my consent…' – once you give your consent, the morality changes.
What feels similar is the pursuit — by artists and entrepreneurs — of the actualization of an idea borne in their minds; and then pursuing bringing this vision to reality. Especially at the beginning, it takes just the right amount of delusion to dedicate yourself to something ambitious. The reality is you're more likely to fail than succeed and so you need strong belief to commit your heart and soul to an idea; as well as a bit of over-optimism (delusion) to make the sacrifices they are often called for to bring anything to life.
Music is often better than speech at conveying and understanding emotion, because music has a kind of openness and ambiguity to it. Words, on the other hand, tend to put things into boxes.
Without their encouragement though, I don't think I ever would have had the confidence in myself to even pick up the pen. That one small bit of encouragement had such a huge impact on my life. It made me realize how sometimes it really is the little stuff that's most important, and we never know how significant our encouragement can be in someone else's life.
We've got the most powerful tool in the world sitting in our head, yet no manual of instructions on how to use it. Everything else comes with instructions, a blender, a point and shoot camera. Even to drive a car, you need a licence.
Status is kinetic. Those who have it can give it to those who don't. Anointment refers to these ritualistic events that can be major: in a biblical sense, you're anointed by a king and all sorts of good things follow. In modern life, you're anointed if you're admitted to and graduate from a prestigious university. But anointment also happens on a much smaller scale, many times a day.
The happier I become with myself, the less I buy… the better my bank account becomes, because I'm not buying nonsense that I never needed.
When we mask, conform, and hide aspects of who we are, it actually hurts and damages us in the end. But no one can be authentic 100% of the time because we are tribal, very social.
One of my Zen mentors, Barry Magid, authored a book entitled 'Ending the Pursuit of Happiness'. In it, he criticises the concept of chasing happiness as a curative fantasy – the mistaken belief that happiness is an attainable, sustainable, and permanent state. The reality is, no one is in a state of perpetual happiness.