reverse thinking

It seems odd to look at achievement through this lens, not as the thing the newspapers tell us it is, but – very often – as a species of mental illness. Those who put up the skyscrapers, write the bestselling books, perform on stage, or make partner may, in fact, be the unwell ones. Whereas the characters who – without agony – can bear an ordinary ... See more

"So much advantage in life comes from being willing to look like a failure in the short term."

If you're small, you're in a position where it's to your advantage to be weird—you can have a point of view that the big tech companies never could. In the world of chairs—you're not going to build a cheaper chair than Ikea. Why not build something they couldn't—like a more interesting one?

" You never change things by fighting the existing reality. T o change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."

Buckminster Fuller

"The ‘safe path’ is not actually safe. In fact it’s dangerous. It’s dangerous to your dreams. Safety murders your ambition. Murders your sense of adventure. Safety is a serial killer. But it operates in a slow, boring fashion. Like a pillow suffocating an old-man on a hospital bed."

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So, if talking to strangers seems daunting to you, it might help to think that by doing so, you could give someone the gift of being seen.