Mao and Chou represented a society with the longest uninterrupted experience in the art of government, a nation that had always been culturally preeminent in its region. China had absorbed conquerors and had proved its inward strength by imposing its social and intellectual style on them. Its leaders were aloof, self-assured, composed. Brezhnev represented a nation that had survived not by civilizing its conquerors but by outlasting them, a people suspended between Europe and Asia and not wholly of either, with a culture that had destroyed its traditions without yet entirely replacing them. He sought to obscure his lack of assurance by boisterousness, and his sense of latent inadequacy by occasional bullying.


To be sure, no one reached the top of a Communist hierarchy except by ruthlessness. Yet the charm of the Chinese leaders obscured that quality, while Brezhnev’s gruff heavy-handedness tended to emphasize it. The Chinese even amid the greatest cordiality kept their distance. Brezhnev, who had physical magnetism, crowded his interlocutor. He changed moods rapidly and wore his emotions openly. These contrasting styles seemed also to be reflected in Chinese and Russian food. Chinese cuisine is delicate, meticulous, and infinitely varied. Russian meals are heavy, straightforward, predictable. One eats Chinese food gracefully with chopsticks; one could eat most Russian food with one’s hands. One walks away from a Chinese meal satisfied but not satiated, and looking forward to the next experience. After a Russian meal one is stuffed; one can barely face the prospect of the next round.


As yet as his hour of triumph approached, Nixon withdrew ever more, even from some of his close advisers. His resentments, usually so well controlled, came increasingly to the surface. It was as if victory was not an occasion for reconciliation but an opportunity to settle the scores of a lifetime.


I was struck by how restless Nixon was, now that he had achieved the overwhelming electoral approval which had been the ambition of a lifetime. It was almost as if it had been sought for its own sake; as if, standing on the pinnacle, Nixon no longer had any purpose left to his life.


It is fear that keeps people closed. They can’t hear you — they are afraid to hear. And their anger is really their fear upside down. It is only a person who is full of fear who becomes immediately angry. If he does not become angry then you will be able to see his fear. Anger is a cover-up. By being angry he is trying to make you afraid: before you get any idea of his fear, he is trying to make you afraid.


I reached high office unexpectedly at a particularly complex period of our national life. In the life of nations, as of human beings, a point is often reached when the seemingly limitless possibilities of youth suddenly narrow and one must come to grips with the fact that not every option is open any longer. This insight can inspire a new creative impetus, less innocent perhaps than the naive exuberance of earlier years, but more complex and ultimately more permanent. The process of coming to grips with one’s limit is never easy. It can end in despair or in rebellion; it can produce a self-hatred that turns inevitable compromises into a sense of inadequacy.


It’s not the actual violence that scares us. It is the uncertainty and possibility for disaster that emotionally drives us absolutely bonkers.

The need for a stable and predictable environment is a core human need. What frightens us or gives us anxiety is not when bad things happen - it’s when we’re not sure whether a bad thing will happen or not. When something goes wrong, at least we have the power to fix it. We’re still in control. But when life becomes unpredictable - when the house is dark and there’s a mysterious sound upstairs - we feel as though we’ve lost control.


One reason people are reluctant to admit mistakes is that they fear being seen as weak or incompetent. Yet often, generally competent people who take the possibility of mistakes in stride are seen as confident, secure, and “big enough” not to have to be perfect, whereas those who resist acknowledging even the possibility of a mistake are seen as insecure and lacking confidence. No one is fooled.


The attempts to behave in a friendly manner were so studied and took so much exertion that they created their own tension; the slightest disagreement tended to bring to the fore the underlying suspicion and resentment.


Stress is a feeling of emotional strain and pressure. Stress is a type of psychological pain. Small amounts of stress may be desired, beneficial, and even healthy. Positive stress may be desired, beneficial, and even healthy. Positive stress helps improve athletic performance. It also plays a factor in motivation, adaptation, and reaction to the environment.


Brezhnev could not hear often enough my avowal that we were proceeding on the premise of equality — an attitude inconceivable in Peking, whose leaders thought of themselves as culturally superior whatever the statistics showed about relative material strength.


Most rudeness, meanness, and cruelty are a mask for deep-seated weakness. Kindness in these situations is only possible for people of great strength.


But spending beyond a pretty low level of materialism is mostly a reflection of ego approaching income, a way to spend money to show people that you have (or had) money.

Think of it like this, and one of the most powerful ways to increase your savings isn’t to raise your income. It’s to raise your humility.

When you define savings as the gap between your ego and your income you realize why many people with decent incomes save so little.


It is easy to underestimate what a 30% decline does to your psyche. Your confidence may become shot at the very moment opportunity is at its highest. You — or your spouse — may decide it’s time for a new plan, or new career. I know several investors who quit after losses because they were exhausted. Physically exhausted.


But do you know how hard it is to maintain a long-term outlook when stocks are collapsing?

Like everything else worthwhile, successful investing demands a price. But its currency is not dollars and cents. It’s volatility, fear, doubt, uncertainty, and regret — all of which are easy to overlook until you’re dealing with them in real time.

The inability to recognize that investing has a price can tempt us to try to get something for nothing. Which, like shoplifting, rarely ends well.


What most annoyed Kissinger was the manner in which Obama talked about some other world leaders. “A puzzling aspect about Obama is how someone so intelligent could treat his peers with the disdain he did in your article,” he said. “Someone of that stature usually develops a sense of humility.”


What we resent reveals what it is we value, and what we have come to expect (or hope) from others; it may also reveal to what we see ourselves as entitled to: that is, how our expectations or our surroundings are organized or measured. Only an amoral person (a person who didn’t have values or concern for the well-being of self or others) could not experience resentment.

Resentment can also function to warn against further, future, harmful and unfair situations from occurring again.


I discovered a long time ago the things about people I don’t like are the same things I don’t like about myself. It’s like a constant reminder of how imperfect I am as a person.


Maslow described an insecure person as a person who “perceives the world as a threatening jungle and most human beings as dangerous and selfish; feels a rejected and isolated person, anxious and hostile; is generally pessimistic and unhappy; show signs of tension and conflict, tens to turn inward; is troubled by guilt-feelings, has one or another disturbance of self-esteem; tends to be neurotic; and is generally selfish and egocentric. He viewed in every insecure person a continual, never dying, longing for security.

A person who is insecure lacks confidence in his or her own value, and one or more of his or her capabilities, lacks in trust in himself or herself or others, or has fears that a present positive state is temporary, and will let him or her down and cause him or her loss or distress by “going wrong” in the future. This is a common trait, which only differs in degree between people.

Insecurity may contribute to the development of shyness, paranoia or social withdrawal, or alternatively it may encourage compensatory behaviors such as arrogance, aggression, or bullying, in some cases.

The fact that the majority of human beings are emotionally vulnerable, and have the capacity to be hurt, implies that emotional insecurity could merely be a difference in awareness.

Insecurity has many effects in a person’s life. There are several levels of it. It nearly always causes some degree of isolation as a typically insecure person withdraws from people to some extent. The greater the insecurity, the higher the degree of isolation becomes. Insecurity is often rooted in a person’s childhood years. Like offense and bitterness, it grows in layered fashion, often becoming an immobilizing force that sets a limiting factor in the person’s life. Insecurity robs by degrees; the degree to which it is entrenched equals the degree of power it has in the person’s life.


Every murder is a form of self-hate.


There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else.


This is about power and feeling important. It’s rooted in low self-esteem but presents as hyper-confidence and “standing up for what’s right.” Sit down and ask her what is going on in her life where her self-esteem is so low that she has to yell at store clerks to feel good about herself.


Yelling at sales people is when you see a lot of people who feels nobody cares about their voice finally have a recognized voice.


A lot of the more violent/aggressive things people do are out of fear of something happening to themselves. Think about it: Why would anyone who is secure in their life need to attack another human being? Sure, the obvious argument is that there is some kind of moral imperative, like to help others in the future or set some high ethical standard, but this is usually coming from people who are and actions that are inherently unethical in it of themselves. When people fear something, this fear manifests. It’s kinda like fight or flight.


I only accepted that treatment from her because I didn’t value myself.


You wrote, “Who you are comes out at the poker table.” Who were you when you first sat down at the poker table?

I was a girl! I say that disparagingly to myself. I was really upset with myself, to be perfectly honest. I didn’t realize I had internalized so many gender stereotypes and so much socialization from my environment. I study gender stereotypes. I have a Ph.D in psychology. I thought of myself as a good model for women, someone who stands up for myself. How can this be me? I’d be passive. I’d let people bully me. I’d fold. I would know I was making a mistake but couldn’t get the nerve or desire to do anything about it because I didn’t want tension. I didn’t want people to think, “Oh, she’s that bitch who’s been raising me all the time.” I wanted people to like me. Even when I had really good cards, I didn’t make nearly as much money as I should’ve with them because I’d end up folding or not raising. I didn’t want to upset people. I realized this is a big problem and something I have to work on. And not just in poker. I told myself, “You better get your shit together in real-life situations. You’re probably a doormat a lot of the time and don’t realize it.”


The brain doesn’t like uncertainty. We want to know. We want answers. We want a clean story.


The moment we’re on tilt, the moment emotion seeps into our decision process, we’re no longer thinking rationally. We’re no longer making probabilistic calculations, reading people, paying attention. You’re angry at someone, they got under your skin, so you make a decision because you’re angry. You say, “I should raise him because he’s an asshole.” But that’s not your good self, that’s not your clear-thinking self. That’s the version of you that didn’t know better.


The more you focus on what you think you lack, the more you begin to doubt your self-worth, and the more you turn people off. People aren’t dumb. They can see your insecurities blatantly.


I think ever since CN and EU teams became good, KR teams became more cocky and are not afraid to call themselves the best. You look at S7 and before, KR teams always compliment foreign teams and say they could win Worlds but in the end KR teams just stomp. I think it’s human nature to call someone else good if you are 100% sure you are better, but if it’s more close you call yourself the best.


Student from Western cultures tend to procrastinate in order to avoid doing worse than they have done before or from failing to learn as much as they should have, whereas student from non-Western cultures tend to procrastinate in order to avoid looking incompetent, or to avoid demonstrating a lack of ability in front of their peers.


A defense mechanism is an unconscious psychological mechanism that reduces anxiety arising from unacceptable or potentially harmful stimuli.


Sarkozy said that being abandoned by his father shaped much of who he is today. He also has said that, in his early years, he felt inferior in relation to his wealthier and taller classmates. “What made me who I am now is the sum of all the humiliations suffered during childhood,” he said later.


A man who has been the indisputable favorite of his mother keeps for life the feeling of a conqueror.


Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces.


The great corrupter of public men is the ego — corrupter because distracter. Wealth, sensuality, power cannot hold a candle to it. Looking in the mirror distracts one’s attention from the problem.


If and when an individual makes an attempt to see his shadow, he becomes aware of (and often ashamed of) those qualities and impulses he denies in himself but can plainly see in others — such things as egotism, mental laziness, and sloppiness; unreal fantasies, schemes, and plots; carelessness and cowardice; inordinate love of money and possessions.


Don’t take it personally. How people treat you has less to do with your actual mistakes, and almost all to do with how they treat themselves. I’ve found that the harshest criticizers are people who are constantly criticizing themselves, and often in complete denial of it, too. Imagine that they are yelling those things at themselves, not at you.


This breaks down to the power of belief. When you believe in yourself, you will have to confidence to do things that you would normally shy away from. When you believe in yourself, you become a different being entirely.

With that being said, it is important for you to recognize the difference between exuding confidence and arrogance. Arrogance comes when you overly push your ideals and force your personality onto others. Confidence comes when you are sure of who you are and you no longer need the validation from others to enforce that.


All serious mountaineers have big egos. You cannot take on the risks and constant suffering of big mountains without one. We may talk like Buddhists, but don’t be fooled, we’re actually hard-driving narcissists.


When he talks to Ned about Lyanna, he has this idealized image of her but that was truly not Lyanna’s personality. Even Ned says that Robert does not see the wolf blood that she has. In the end, Robert truly does not know who Lyanna really was. He loved her beauty and this image he had of her but didn’t love the real person.

Robert puts Lyanna up on a pedestal because she was the only thing Robert could not have. He won the seven kingdoms, he gets drop dead gorgeous Cersei, but he still fantasizes about a woman he never really knew.


If that country can make this kind of thing, films about itself, oh, that country must have a pride and must have an inner strength, and must be strong enough and must be free.


Another source of anti-Americanism is structural. The US is the big kid on the block and the disproportion in power engenders a mixture of admiration, envy, and resentment.


Brent Scowcroft warned that “ad hoc coalitions of the willing can give us the image of arrogance, and if you get to the point where everyone hopes that the US gets a black eye because we’re so obnoxious, then we’ll be totally hamstrung.” A century ago Teddy Roosevelt noted, when you have a big stick, it is wise to speak softly. Otherwise you undercut your soft power.


65% of Americans found Japan “admirable” and only 27% thought the Japanese “arrogant,” a mere 34% of South Korean found Japan admirable and 59% considered Japanese arrogant.


Myths are rich sources of psychological insights. Great literature, like all great art, records and portrays the human condition with indelible accuracy. Myths are a special kind of literature not written or created by a single individual, but produced by the imagination and experience of an entire age and culture and can be seen as the distillation of the dreams and experiences of a whole culture. They seem to develop gradually as certain motifs emerge, are elaborated, and finally are rounded out as people tell and retell stories that catch and hold their interest. Thus themes that are accurate and universal are kept alive, while those elements peculiar to single individuals or a particular era drop away. Myths, therefore, portray a collective image; they tell us about things that are true for all people.


If a woman is beautiful, the problem is compounded. Marilyn Monroe is a touching example; she was worshipped far and wide and yet had great difficulty relating closely to any one person. Finally she found life intolerable. Such a woman is the carrier of a goddess-like quality, an almost unapproachable perfection that finds no place in the ordinary human realm of relationship.


One of Aphrodite’s characteristics is that she is constantly regressive. She wants things to go back where they were; she wants evolution to go backward. She is the voice of tradition, and ironically, it is this very tendency that carries our story forward in its evolution.


Eros comes to Psyche, and even beautiful as he is, he is death to her. All husbands are death to their wives in that they destroy them as maidens and force them into an evolution toward mature womanhood. It is paradoxical, but you can feel both gratitude and resentment toward the person who forces you to begin down your own path of growth. 


Most men get their deepest conviction of self-worth from a woman, wife, mother, or if they are highly conscious, from their own anima.


A man depends largely on woman for the light in the family as he is not well equipped at finding meaning for himself. Life is often dry and barren for him unless someone bestows meaning on life for him. With a few words, a woman can give meaning to a whole day’s struggle and a man will be so grateful. A man knows and wants this; he will edge up to it, initiate little occasions so that a woman can shed some light for him. When he comes home and recounts the events of the day, he is asking her to bestow meaning on them. This is the light-bearing quality of a woman.

The touch of light or consciousness is a fiery experience and often stings a man into awareness; this is partly why he fears the feminine so much. A huge proportion of man’s bantam rooster behavior is a futile effort to hide his fear of the feminine. It is mostly the woman’s task to lead a man to new consciousness in relationship. It is almost always the woman who says, “Let’s sit down and talk about where we are.” The woman is the carrier of growth in most relationships. A man fears this but he fears, even more, the loss of it.


Personality characteristics, such as being less flexible and more authoritarian, are associated with prejudice, which may help to explain why two people who have had similar experiences can have differing levels of prejudice, and why those who show one prejudice are more likely to have other prejudices too. Prejudice can also arise from a general need to see oneself positively: people come to see any groups to which they belong more positively than other groups and then develop positive prejudices about their own groups and negative prejudices about others.


There’s nothing more insufferable than people who boast about their own humility.


We’ve been to Anfield with some of our very best teams, but the crowd - who are merciless towards visiting teams and refereeing decisions of which they don’t approve - whips up such an atmosphere that it erodes players’ confidence and make them lose their concentration. It only takes a momentary lapse to upset hours of dedicated preparation, and there’s very little you can do to help players with that. While there are elements of chess to a game of football, wingers, goalkeepers and centre-backs - unlike rooks, bishops and knights -are made of flesh and blood and emotions.


When the crowd at Old Trafford are chanting, “Attack! Attack! Attack!”, it is easy to think that we automatically threw caution to the wind. I never thought about it like this because part of a leader’s job is to eliminate as many risks as possible. We tried to leave nothing to chance. I cannot tell you how many half-time talks centred on the need to be patient and wait for the right opportunity to occur, rather than to be daredevils. I would only want to take risk during the last 15 minutes of a game if we were trailing by a goal.


I was always sparing in my use of the younger players to make sure we didn’t play them too much during their first two or three seasons. They were always raring to go but, at that stage, were still developing both physically and mentally. I also did not want them taking it for granted that they had earned a permanent place in the first team. It was good to keep them hungry.


Complacency is a disease, especially for individuals and organizations that have enjoyed success. I like to think that United’s ability to avoid lapsing towards complacency was one of the characteristics that distinguished the club. We were not always successful at doing so, but I was always eager to stamp out the slightest trace of complacency. Whenever we played a game I never thought victory was in the bag. In the hotel in Moscow in 2008, after we had just won the Champions League and Premier League, I talked to the players about the 2008-09 season and emphasized the need to be prepared for a tough, fresh series of campaigns where nothing was guaranteed.


At Medinah you could see uncertainty start too creep into Team USA after they gave up one point. Then, after the next one went out of the window, confusion started to set in. It wasn’t long before they were panicking, and by then the jig was up. Players forget what they are supposed to do, are incapable of calming themselves down and commit mistakes they don’t usually make. Eventually they capitulate.

I’ve seen this happen a million times. It begins with uncertainty which leads to confusion. Then panic starts to set in, and before you know it, the team has capitulated and defeat becomes inevitable. Meanwhile, the behaviour of their opponents starts to change: their confidence begins to build, their concentration sharpens and they block out all distractions. They can smell the scent of blood, and before you know it, complacency has scored another ugly victory.


Each time I joined a club, I just thought to myself, “I’m not going to fail here.” It was one of the things that drove me. I always had that fear of getting humiliated, and failure was always that wee thing at the back of my mind. I kept silently saying to myself, “Failure. Don’t fail.”


The loneliness was much worse when we played away games because I had no office to use as a refuge. Then, I would often find myself sitting alone in the dressing room. I don’t think this feeling, certainly in my later years as a manager, was caused by worrying about failing. Rather it was prompted by the apprehension, anxiety and uncertainty that always surrounds a big occasion, which might be exacerbated when you depend on others to implement your wishes. I’m sure other leaders experience similar feelings, no matter how worldly and important they may seem to others.

Even now, when I’m watching United from the directors’ box or at home on the television, I feel twinges in the pit of my stomach. I never tried to get rid of this feeling. Maybe some people, before a big performance or important encounter, try to calm their nerves with breathing exercises or a dram of whisky, but I never did so. I just accepted that nagging anxiety as part of my job. It accompanied me through life and it would have been a big warning sign that I was no longer up to the task had that anxiety - which really was a sign of how badly I wanted to win - ever disappeared.


While I was always fixated on both physical and mental freshness, I was careful never to say to a player, “You look tired,” even if I thought that he did. I knew that if I uttered the phrase he would immediately feel tired. Instead I’s say to him, “You’re so strong, nobody is ever going to be able to keep up with you.”


In Mulcaster’s time, when the prestige of English was low, many people felt the urgent need to enrich the language by adopting foreign words, and today English has many thousands of originally foreign words in its vocabulary: ease from French, for example, and area from Latin. It is now the turn of English to supply words to other languages.


Just start listing ideas at random? Yes, because they won’t really be random. The ideas that come to mind first will be the most plausible ones. They’ll be things you’ve already noticed but didn’t let yourself think.


For as the image of God was composed of goodness piled on goodness, power piled on power, it became insufferable and monstrous. But in conceiving the image of the Devil there were no laws to be kept, and the creative imagination could run riot, emptying all its repressed and sensuous contents. Hence the persistent allure of Satanism and the fascination of evil.


Theo ta thấy thì chỉ nên đấu trí với y. Lão Độc Vật tuy giảo hoạt nhưng mười phần tự phụ, tự phụ thì không suy nghĩ sâu xa, muốn y mắc lừa vốn cũng không phải khó lắm.


By and large, the naturalistic religions hold out for man no greater hope than a philosophic acceptance of the inevitable, a noble but sorrowful resignation to the truth that nature is beyond good and evil, and that death is the necessary counterpart of life, as pain of pleasure. But this sacrifices the most human thing about man — his eternal, childlike hope that somehow, someday, the deepest yearnings of his heart will come true. Who is so proud and unfeeling that he will not admit that he would not be deliriously happy if, by some strange magic, these deep and ingrained longings could be fulfilled? If there were everlasting life beyond death after all? If there were eternal reunion with the people we have loved? If, forever and ever, there were the vision and the union of hearts with a God whose beatitude exceeds immeasurably the most intense joy that we have known — somehow including all the variety of form and color, uniqueness and individuality, that we value so much upon earth? Christianity alone, it would be argued, has the audacity to affirm this basic hope which the wisdom of the world represses, and so is the only fundamentally joyous religion.


But injustice, arrogance, displayed in the hour of triumph will never be forgotten or forgiven.


Interestingly enough, when you make the decision that no matter what happens, you will never give up, your self-esteem increases immediately. You respect yourself more. Your self-confidence skyrockets. Even though you have not yet stepped out of your office, the very act of making the decision that you are going to succeed, that you can do it, that you will never quit, no matter what, improves your “reputation” with yourself. You see yourself in a more positive light. You feel more like a winner. You are more composed and self-assured. You become more capable of dealing with the ups and downs of daily selling life. The very act of resolving to persist until you succeed changes your personality and makes you a stronger and more powerful person.


Again, the more you like yourself, the more you enjoy others and the more they like you. The more you like yourself, the easier it is for you to get along with a great variety of people.


The individual with high self-esteem is the one who has the greatest facility for making friends wherever he goes. Because he likes himself, he is naturally and spontaneously fond of others. When people feel that someone genuinely likes them, they are more open to listening to that person and to buying what he is selling.


What we feel is to an enormous and unsuspected degree dependent on what we think, and the basic contrast of thought ordinarily strike us as the basic contrast of the natural world. We therefore take it for granted that we feel an immense difference between pleasure and pain. But it is obvious in some of the milder forms of these sensations that the pleasure or the pain lies not so much in the feeling itself as in its context. There is no appreciable physiological difference between shudders of delight and shudders of fear, nor between the thrills of rapturous music and the thrills of terrifying melodrama. But the context of the feeling changes its interpretation, depending on whether the circumstances which arouse it are for us or against us.


Suffering and death — all that dark and destructive side of nature for which Shiva stands — are therefore problematic for the ego rather than the organism. The organism accepts them through ecstasy, but the ego is rigid and unyielding and finds them problematic because they affront its pride. The ego is the social image or role with which the mind is shamed into identifying itself, since we are taught to act the part which society wants us to play — the part of a reliable and predictable center of action which resists spontaneous change. Death and agony are therefore dreaded as loss of status, and their struggles are desperate attempts to maintain the assumed patterns of action and feeling.


To act or grow creatively we must begin from where we are, but we cannot begin at all if we are not “all here” without reservation or regret. Lacking self-acceptance, we are always at odds with our point of departure, always doubting the ground on which we stand, always so divided against ourselves that we cannot act with sincerity. Apart from self-acceptance as the groundwork of thought and action, every attempt at spiritual or moral discipline is the fruitless struggle of a mind that is split asunder and insincere. It is the freedom which is the essential basis of self-restraint.


Even the chairs, tables, and household ornaments were suggestively bulged and curved — the chairs wide-shouldered and then waisted at the back, the seat broad, and the legs so obviously thighs or calves that squeamish housewives made the resemblance all the stronger by fitting them with skirts. For when sexuality is repressed in its direct manifestation, it irradiates other spheres of life to scatter on every side symbols and suggestions of its all the more urgent presence.


But the cool calculators in Peking did not see it this way. They did not believe their security enhanced by unenforceable obligations; they recognized the potential for a misleading euphoria in a document purportedly devoted to preventing nuclear war.


The second major obstacle to selling and closing is the fear of rejection. This is the fear that the potential buyer might say no. The fear of rejection is triggered by the possibility of rudeness, disapproval, or criticism toward the salesperson by the prospect.

The rule is that 80 percent of sales calls will end in a no, for a thousand different reasons. This does not necessarily mean that there is anything wrong with the salesperson or the product being sold. People say no because simply they do not need it, do not want it, cannot use it, cannot afford it, or some other reason. If you are in sales and you fear rejection, you’ve picked the wrong way to make a living. The fact is that you are going to get a lot of rejections. As they say, “It goes with the territory.” Every experience of failure or rejection affects your self-esteem. It hurts your self-image. It makes you feel bad about yourself and triggers your worst fear: “I’m not good enough.”

If it were not for the fear of rejection, we would all be terrific salespeople. We would all make twice as much, and maybe even five or ten times as much.


When is the best time to make a sale? Right after making a sale. Why? Right after you make a sale, your self-esteem soars. You feel terrific about yourself as a salesperson. You like yourself more. You feel like a winner. When you walk in to speak to the next prospect, feeling terrific about yourself, you will perform at your very best. There will be something about you that has a powerful effect on the customer. Your positive attitude and confident bearing will trigger a desire, at a subconscious level, to buy from you.


Always treat the receptionist with courtesy and respect. Treat everyone as if he or she is really important and valuable. Behave toward each person as if he or she is a million-dollar customer or has the potential to become one.

Perhaps the greatest benefit of all from treating people well is this: whenever you do anything to raise the self-esteem of another person, your self-esteem goes up to the same degree. When you are polite and respectful, you like and respect yourself more, while causing other people to like and respect themselves more at the same time.


You have been betrayed, hurt, and disappointed. You have become distrustful even of hope itself, as your hope has been repeatedly shattered (and that is the very definition of hopelessness). The last thing you want is to know more. Better to leave what is enshrouded in mystery. Better, as well, to avoid thinking too much (or at all) about what could be. When ignorance is bliss, after all, ’tis folly to be wise.


If your wife or husband (or whomever else you are tangled up with, unhappily, at the moment) says something that comes to close to the painful truth, then a sharp and insulting remark will often shut them up — and is therefore very likely to be offered. This is partly a test: does the person being insulted care enough about you and your suffering to dig past a few obstacles and unearth the bitter truth? It is also partly, and more obviously, defensive: if you can chase someone away from something you yourself do not want to discover, that makes your life easier in the present. Sadly, it is also very disappointing if that defense succeeds, and is typically accompanied by a sense of abandonment, loneliness, and self-betrayal. You must nonetheless still live among other people, and they with you. And you have desires, wants, and needs, however unstated and unclear. And you are still motivated to pursue them, not least because it is impossible to live without desire, want, and need. Your strategy, under such conditions? Show your disappointment whenever someone close to you makes you unhappy; allow yourself the luxury and pleasure of resentment when something does not go your way; ensure that the person who has transgressed against you is frozen out by your disapproval; force them to discover with as much difficulty as possible exactly what they have done to disappoint you; and, finally, let them grope around blindly in the fog that you have generated around yourself until they stumble into and injure themselves on the sharp hidden edges of your unrevealed preferences and dreams. And maybe these responses are tests, too — tests deeply associated with the lack of courage to trust: “If you really loved me, you would brave the terrible landscape that I have arrayed around myself to discover the real me.” And perhaps there is even something to such claims, implicit though they may be. A certain testing of commitment might have its utility. Everything does not have to be given away for free. But even a little unnecessary goes a long way.

And you still must live with yourself. In the short term, perhaps you are protected from the revelation of your insufficiency by your refusal to make yourself clear. Every ideal is a judge, after all: the judge who says, “You are not manifesting your true potential.” No ideals? No judge. But the price for that is purposelessness. This is a high price. No purpose? Then, no positive emotion, as most of what drives us forward with hope intact is the experience of approaching something we deeply need and want. And worse, when we are without purpose: chronic, overwhelming anxiety, as focused purpose constrains what is otherwise likely to be the intolerable chaos of unexploited possibility and too much choice.


Insolence is the armor of the weak; it is a device to induce courage in the face of one’s own panic.


The act of admiration is your recognition that you have met someone who is better in whatever that happens to be driving your admiration. You have unconsciously elevate them in the dominance hierarchy whether you like it or not.


He found 4 main symptoms of incompetence governing the outcome of battles: overconfidence, underestimation of the enemy, the ignoring of intelligence reports, and wastage of manpower.

Groupthink exacerbated the problem by contributing 6 additional symptoms: a shared illusion of invulnerability, an unquestioned belief in the group’s inherent morality, stereotyping the enemy as too evil for negotiation (or too weak to be a threat), a collective illusion of unanimity in a majority viewpoint (based on the false assumption that silence means consent), and self-appointed censors to protect the group form information that might weaken resolve (such as reports from spies).


In retrospect, the decision to invade seemed extraordinary. “How could I have been so stupid as to let them proceed?” President Kennedy repeatedly asked later.

The answer was clear. It was arrogance, “egos so tall that the eyes and ears can shut out whatever one prefers not to see or hear.” Kennedy, the final decider, desperately wanted to avoid being called “chicken.” Everyone around him thought he had the Midas touch and could not lose.


This is the most terrifying prospect a human being can face, because it ejects him at one go (he imagines) from all the tribal inclusions his psyche is wired for and has been for fifty million years.

We fear discovering that we are more than we think we are. More than our parents/children/teachers think we are. We fear that we actually possess the talent that our still, small voice tells us. That we actually have the guts, the perseverance, the capacity. We fear that we truly can steer our ship, plant our flag, reach our Promised Land. We fear this because, if it’s true, then we become estranged from all we know. We pass through a membrane. We become monsters and monstrous. We know that if we embrace our ideals, we must prove worthy of them. And that scares the hell out of us. What will become of us? We will lose our friends and family, who will no longer recognize us. We will wind up alone, in the cold void of starry space, with nothing and no one to hold on to.


If you find yourself criticizing other people, you’re probably doing it out of Resistance. When we see others beginning to live their authentic selves, it drives us crazy if we have not lived out our own.

Individuals who are realized in their own lives almost never criticize others. If they speak at all, it is to offer encouragement. Watch yourself. Of all the manifestations of Resistance, most only harm ourselves. Criticism and cruelty harm others as well.


What does Resistance feel like?

First, unhappiness. We feel like hell. A low-grade misery pervades everything. We’re bored, we’re restless. We can’t get no satisfaction. There’s guilt but we can’t put our finger on the source. We want to go back to bed; we want to get up and party. We feel unloved and unlovable. We’re disgusted. We hate our lives. We hate ourselves.

Unalleviated, Resistance mounts to a pitch that become unendurable. That this point vices kick in. Dope, adultery, web surfing.

Beyond that, Resistance becomes clinical. Depression, aggression, dysfunction. Then actual crime and physical self-destruction.


We get ourselves in trouble because it’s a cheap way to get attention. Trouble is faux form of fame. It’s easier to get busted in the bedroom with the faculty chairman’s wife than it is to finish that dissertation on the metaphysics.


By accepting life’s suffering, therefore, evil may be overcome. The alternative is hell, at least in its psychological form: rage, resentment, and the desire for revenge and destruction.


A person who is not well put together overreacts to the slightest hint of frustration or failure. He cannot enter into productive negotiations, even with himself, because he cannot tolerate the uncertainty of discussing potential alternative futures. He cannot be pleased, because he cannot get what he wants, and he cannot get what he wants because he will not choose one thing instead of another. He can also be brought to a halt by the weakest of arguments. One of his multiple, warring subpersonalities will latch on to such arguments, often contrary to his best interest, and use them, in the form of doubts, to buttress its contrarian position. A deeply conflicted person can therefore be stopped, metaphorically, with the pressure of a single finger exerted on his chest (even though he may lash out against such an obstacle). To move forward with resolve, it is necessary to be organized — to be directed toward something singular and identifiable.


We don’t value things; we value their meaning. What they are determined by the laws of physics, but what they mean is determined by the laws of psychology.


They had set themselves the impossible task of trying to turn lead into gold, but had got it into their heads that the value of something lies solely in what it is. This was a false assumption, because you don’t need to tinker with atomic structure to make lead as valuable as gold — all you need to do is to tinker with human psychology so that it feels as valuable as gold. At which point, who cares that it isn’t actually gold?


People didn’t want low prices — they wanted concrete savings. One possible explanation for this is that we are psychologically rivalrous, and like to feel we are getting a better deal than other people. If everyone can pay a low price, the thrill of having won out over the other people disappears; a quantifiable saving makes one feel smart, while paying the same low prices as everyone else just makes us feel like cheapskates. Another possible explanation is that a low price, unlike a discount, does not allow people any scope to write a more cheerful narrative about a purchase after the event — “I saved $33,” rather than “I spent $45.”


I think it is reasonable to posit that it is often the people who have too easy a time — who have been pampered and elevated falsely in their self-esteem — who adopt the role of victim and the mien of resentment. You can encounter people, contrarily, who have been hurt virtually beyond all hope of repair who are not resentful and who would never deign to present themselves as victims.


A victim act is a form of passive aggression. It seeks to achieve gratification not by honest work or a contribution made out of one’s experience or insight or love, but by the manipulation of others through silent (and not-so-silent) threat. The victim compels others to come to his rescue or to behave as he wishes by holding them hostage to the prospect of his own further illness/meltdown/mental dissolution, or simply by threatening to make their lives so miserable that they do what he wants.

Casting yourself as a victim is the antithesis of doing your work. Don’t do it. If you’re doing it, stop.


They’re busy, and they stay busy as a way of avoiding something they do not want to face. Nobody has to tell them. Deep down they know. In fact, if you remind them, they often respond with anger or irritation.

Deep down they know they are avoiding something important. That’s the most common form of laziness: laziness by staying busy.


The hardest financial skill is getting the goalposts to stop moving.


Michael Moritz, the billionaire head of Sequoia: I think we’ve always been afraid of going out of business.


No one is impressed with your possessions as much as you are.


The question worth pondering is: are you seeking out the imperfect to justify your habit of being unhappy? Does something have to happen in the outside world for you to be happy inside? Or, to put it differently: Is there a narrative of your reality that supports your mood?


If you work in an organization, the underlying rule is simple: People are not afraid of failure, they’re afraid of blame.


When things get dicey, we notice that some people are feeling the heat. Others are just fine, doing their work, unfazed by the situation. The thing is, it’s not the heat that’s actually the issue. It’s the feeling. How we process what’s happening is up to us, isn’t it?


Your brain has far more neural circuitry allocated for wanting rewards than for liking them. The wanting centers in the brain are large. By contrast, the liking centers of the brain are much smaller.


The reward of being accepted is often greater than the reward of winning an argument, looking smart, or finding truth. Most days, we’d rather be wrong with the crowd than be right by ourselves.


I think Teddy Kennedy has a deep conviction that business is greedy, nefarious and undisciplined, that all business men are sons of bitches. It’s the kind of attitude that one so often finds in people who inherited a lot of money. They feel guilty about their inheritance, and you’ve got to remember that Joe Kennedy made much of his money in gambling, in liquor, in areas that kept him from gaining real social acceptance in the WASP world. The boys were of it, at Harvard and Palm Beach, but not yet in it, and there was always a Kennedy chip on the shoulder toward business, particularly big business. If he were in the White House, Teddy would probably succeed where Jack failed in passing punitive measures and taxes, and putting so many restrictions and regulations on the conduct of business that it would jeopardize the whole economy. I think he’s a dangerous man. Not by intention; he’s a warm human being and his sympathy for the have-nots is real. But I don’t think you accomplish their betterment by hamstringing business, and I do think Teddy Kennedy is motivated partly by some malice in his heart.


The individual seeks confirmation, on the part of his fellows, of the evaluation he puts upon himself. It is only in the tribute which others pay to his goodness, intelligence, and power that he becomes fully aware of, and can fully enjoy, what he deems to be his superior quality. It is only through his reputation for excellence that he can gain the measure of security, wealth, and power which he regards to be his due. Thus, in the struggle for existence and power, which is, as it were, the raw material of the social world, what others think about us is as important as what we actually are. The image in the mirror of our fellows’s minds, that is, our prestige, rather than the original, of which the image in the mirror may be but the distorted reflection, determines what we are as members of society.


If they viewed the social pyramid as a whole, they had always to look up much farther than they were able to look down. Yet, while they were not actually at the bottom of the social pyramid, they were uncomfortably close to it. Now inflation pushed them down to the bottom, and in the desperate struggle to escape social and political identification they found succor in the theory and practice of national socialism. For national socialism offered them lower races to look down upon and foreign enemies to feel superior and conquer.


The average Russian worker and peasant has nobody to look down upon, and this insecurity is intensified by the practices of the police state as well as by a standard of living so low as to threaten at times his physical survival. Here, too, a totalitarian regime projects these frustrations, insecurities, and fears onto the international scene where the individual Russian finds in the identification with “the most progressive country in the world,” “the fatherland of socialism,” vicarious satisfaction for his aspirations for power. The conviction, seemingly supported by historic experience, that the nation with which he identifies himself is constantly menaced by capitalist enemies serves to elevate his personal fears and insecurities onto the collective plane.


By accepting life’s suffering, therefore, evil may be overcome. The alternative is hell, at least in its psychological form: rage, resentment, and the desire for revenge and destruction.


It is difficult and painful because it takes courage and even some foolhardiness to continue a discussion when you have been told in no uncertain terms by your partner to go the hell away. It is a good thing, however — an admirable act — because a person bothered by something they do not wish to talk about is very likely to be split internally over the issue at hand. The part that wants to avoid is the part that gets angry. There is a part that wants to talk, too, and to settle the issue. But doing so is going to be cognitively demanding, ethically challenging, and emotionally stressful. In addition, it is going to require trust, and people test trust, not least by manifesting anger when approached about something touchy just to determine if the person daring the approach cares sufficiently to overcome a serious barrier or two or three or ten to get to the horrible bottom of things. And avoidance followed by anger is not the only trick in the book.


We are most likely to find revolutions where a period of improving economic and social conditions is followed by a short, sharp reversal in those conditions. Thus it is not the traditionally most downtrodden people — who have come to see their deprivation as part of the natural order of things — who are especially liable to revolt. Instead, revolutionaries are more likely to be those who have been given at least some taste of a better life. When the economic and social improvements they have experienced and come to expect suddenly become less available, they desire them more than ever and often rise up violently to secure them.


Educational excellence is an essential prerequisite for cultural confidence. To put it baldly, many Asians are pleased to wake up to the new realization that their minds are not inferior. Most Westerners cannot appreciate the change because they can never directly feel the sense of inferiority many Asians experienced until recently.


After enjoying continuous economic growth rates of 7 percent or more per annum for decades, it was natural for societies like South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia to assume that they had discovered the magical elixir of economic development.


Those as yet unborn will not understand how deeply the myth of European cultural superiority had been embedded into the Indian psyche. Nehru once said that the defeat of Russia in 1905 by Japan first triggered the idea of independence for India in his mind. That was a remarkable admission; it implied that intelligent Indians could not conceive of governing themselves before Japan, an Asian power, defeated a European one.


A man so violent in his disposition that in the absence of foes he thought at once of self-destruction.


When people feel threatened by another ethnic group, their reaction is usually to disparage it, in order to affirm their own superiority. This was the way the Anglo-Indians behaved after 1857. And they expected the law to uphold their superiority.


While there will inevitably be economic ramification, the impact of low status should not be read in material terms alone. The gravest penalty rarely lies — above subsistence levels, at least — in mere physical discomfort; it consists more often, even primarily, in the challenge that low status poses to a person’s sense of self-respect. Provided that it is not accompanied by humiliation, discomfort can be endured for long periods without complaint. For proof of this, we have only to look to the example of the many soldiers and explorers who have, over the centuries, willingly tolerated privations far exceeding those suffered by the poorest members of their societies, so long as they were sustained throughout their hardships by an awareness of the esteem in which they were held by others.


We are not always humiliated by failing at things, he suggested; we are humiliated only if we invest our pride and sense of worth in a given aspiration or achievement and then are disappointed in our pursuit of it. Our goals dictate what we will interpret as a triumph and what must count as a catastrophe.


With no attempt there can be no failure; with no failure no humiliation. So our self-esteem in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do. It is determined by the ratio of our actualities to our supposed potentialities.


Since Smith’s day, economists have been almost unanimous in subscribing to the idea that what best defines, and lends such bitterness to, the condition of the poor is not so much the direct physical suffering involved as the shame attendant on the negative reactions of others to their state — in other words, the unavoidable sense that their poverty flouts what Smith termed the “established rules of decency.”


Nixon never fully understood that panegyrics on de Gaulle tended to irritate Pompidou more than reassure him. Heads of government generally prefer to distinguish themselves from their predecessors rather than be considered in their shadow. After all, de Gaulle had dismissed Pompidou as PM, and only his unexpected resignation had saved Pompidou from oblivion.

Pompidou, at any rate, felt no obligation to reciprocate. He replied sardonically: “President Nixon and I were matching Gaullisms but there was neither victory nor vanquished” — a formula always uttered by the side that believes it has won.


Qualitatively, the emotional intensity of the identification of the individual with his nation stands in inverse proportion to the stability of the particular society as reflected in the sense of security of its members. The greater the stability of society and the sense of security of its members, the smaller are the chances for collective emotions to seek an outlet in aggressive nationalism, and vice versa.


The more thoughtful observers have realized that the solution for the problem of disarmament does not lie within disarmament itself. They have found it in security. Armaments are the result of certain psychological factors. So long as these factors persist, the resolution of nations to arm themselves will also persists, and that resolution will make disarmament impossible.


Misuse of systems analysis apart, there was a truth which senior military officers had learned in a lifetime of service that did not lend itself to formal articulation: that power has a psychological and not only a technical component. Men can be led by statistics only up to a certain point and then more fundamental values predominate. In the final analysis the military profession is the art of prevailing, and while in our time this required more careful calculations than in the past, it also depends on elemental psychological factors that are difficult to quantify.


Few people enjoy receiving criticism. Receiving bad news about your work triggers feelings of self-doubt, frustration, and vulnerability. Your brain responds to negative feedback with the same fight-or-flight reactions of a physical threat, releasing hormones into the bloodstream, quickening reaction time, and heightening emotions. ***

Precisely because the suffering was so vast and so unexpected, after a century’s smug belief in uninterrupted progress, European’s self-confidence was shaken and its economic foundation eroded. WW2 and the period of decolonization completed the process, narrowing horizons further and compounding the sense of impotence. European governments suddenly realized that their security and prosperity depended on decisions made far away; from being principal actors they had become supporting players. Europe after 1945 thus faced a crisis of the spirit that went beyond its still considerable material resources. The real tension between the US and Europe revolved about Europe’s quest for a sense of identity and relevance in a world in which it no longer controlled the ultimate decisions.


No one wants to occupy the “last” place in society. No one wants to be the most despised. As long as racism remains intact, poor white people are guaranteed not to be the worst.


Poverty is bleak and cuts off your long-term brain. It’s why you see people with four different babydaddies instead of one. You grab a bit of connection wherever you can to survive. You have no idea how strong the pull to feel worthwhile is. It’s more basic than food. You go to these people who make you feel lovely for an hour that one time, and that’s all you get. You’re probably not compatible with them for anything long term, but right this minute they can make you powerful and valuable. It does not matter what will happen in a month. Whatever happens in a month is probably going to be just about as indifferent as whatever happened today or last week. None of it matters. We don’t plan long term because if we do we’ll just get our hearts broken. It’s best not to hope. You just take what you can get as you spot it.


Psychologically speaking, we are inherently self-hating. This is not a bug, it’s a feature of human evolution. We are evolved to be miserable and insecure to a certain degree, because it’s the mildly miserable and insecure creature who is going to do the most work to innovate and survive.


Coolness often means not using the stuff your father uses.

Coolness often is a kind of a rebel statement. Coolness is associated with hip & youth. Coolness means supporting an upcoming product that stands against a big corp. That means it is very, very hard for any big corp to be cool.


Lincoln seemed to know, perhaps more than any other American president in history, when to hold his tongue and when silence was a graver mistake than speaking up. At the core of this skill was an understanding of one of the most fundamental truths of human nature. We are self-preserving creatures who are instinctively compelled to defend, deflect, and deny all threats to our well-being, not the least of which are threats to our pride.


Đặc biệt, nó có vai trò lớn trong việc thay đổi tâm lý kẻ thua cuộc của rất nhiều người Hàn Quốc thời đó, sau nhiều năm bị Nhật chiếm đóng và quốc gia bị chia tách vì Chiến tranh Triều Tiên. Cao tốc Gyeongbu hoàn thành đã tạo ra tinh thần “có thể làm được” cho rất nhiều người dân nước này.


Out of the right speaker in your inner ear will come the endless stream of self-aggrandizement, the recitation of one’s specialness, of how much more open and gifted and brilliant and knowing and misunderstood and humble one is. Out of the left speaker will be the rap songs of self-loathing, the lists of all the things one doesn’t do well, of all the mistakes one has made today and over an entire lifetime, the doubt, the assertion that everything that one touches turns to shit, that one doesn’t do relationship well, that one is in every way a fraud, incapable of selfless love, that one had no talent or insight, and on and on and on.


Just as the limitations of lower class and status position produce a lack of interest and a lack of self-confidence, so do objective opportunities of class and status produce interest in advancement and self-confidence. The confident feeling that one can of course get what one desires tends to arise out of and to feed back into the objective opportunities to do so. Energetic aspiration lives off a series of successes; and continual, petty failure cuts the nerve of the will to succeed.


Whether anyone in the room had perspective enough to recognize that the communist threat in Central America was significantly overstated and was seized upon because it offered a low-risk environment to talk tough, take action, and yet avoid confrontations with really dangerous enemies or really complex foreign policy situations is another issue. As in Grenada, fighting communists in Central America can be seen in retrospect as a kind of therapy program for American egos wounded in Southeast Asia to win their confidence back by beating up on rag-tag resistance groups who, while dangerous to people in their path, were not appreciably worse than the right-wing regimes we were supporting and certainly never really posed a major threat to any US interests.


It was a somewhat frantic gesture, not in keeping with Stalin’s usual perspicacity. For the very request for reassurance defines the potential capacity for unreliability of the other side. If a partner is thought capable of desertion, why would reassurance be credible? If not, why would it be necessary?


A lot of time went into getting to this point and the fear of rejection can be paralyzing. No matter how many times you tell yourself that it’s not you that’s being rejected but your product or idea, it’s hard not to take it personally.


Human victims typically experience symptoms like low self-esteem (due to low regard by the group), feelings of depression (due to unworthiness of efforts), social withdrawal (reduced investments in the social environment), anxiety (due to a threatening environment), and they can also be shown to experience a plethora of physiological effects.


There is a direct and inverse relationship between the fears of rejection and failure, and high self-esteem. The more you like yourself, the less you feel rejection and the less you fear failure.


There’s no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.


Violence and cruelty has 4 general causes: greed and ambition; sadism; high self-esteem and moral idealism. Popular belief and cliched stories tend to have it that greed and sadism are dominant. In fact, they’re vanishingly small. It’s actually high self-esteem and moral idealism — convictions of personal and moral superiority — that drive most acts of evil.


A common feature of our hero-making cognition seems to be that we all tend to feel like this — relatively low in status and yet actually, perhaps secretly, possessing the skills and character of someone deserving of a great deal more. I suspect this is why we so easily identify with underdog heroes at the start of the story — and then cheer when they finally seize their just reward. Because they’re us.

If this is true, it would also explain the odd that, no matter what our level of actual privilege, everyone seems to feel unfairly lacking in status.


Psychologists define humiliation as the removal of any ability to claim status. Severe humiliation has been described as “an annihilation of the self.” It’s thought to be a uniquely toxic state and is implicated in some of the worst behaviors the human animal engages in, from serial murder to honor killing to genocide. In story, an experience of humiliation is often the origin of the antagonist’s dark behavior.


You can’t let those failures get to you, because they will erode your confidence and chip away at your psyche. Pretty soon those inner demons will have you second-guessing everything from your swing to your putting stroke to the color of socks you’re wearing.


We are its exclusive military supplier, its only military ally (though no formal obligation exists). The Arab nations blame us for Israel’s dogged persistence. Israel sees in intransigence the sole hope for preserving its dignity in a one-side relationship. It feels instinctively that one admission of weakness, one concession granted without a struggle, will lead to an endless catalogue of demands as every country seeks to escape its problems at Israel’s expense. It takes a special brand of heroism to turn total dependence into defiance; to insist on support as a matter of right rather than as a favor; to turn every American deviation from an Israeli cabinet consensus into a betrayal to be punished rather than a disagreement to be negotiated.

And yet Israel’s obstinacy, maddening as it can be, serves the purposes of both our countries best. A subservient client would soon face an accumulation of ever-growing pressures. It would tempt Israel’s neighbors to escalate their demands. It would saddle us with the opprobrium for every deadlock.


Much talk has been given to having an “exit strategy.” My thought was that “exiting” a war was a by-product of winning that war. Unless you want to lose, you don’t tell an enemy when you are done fighting, and you don’t set an exit unrelated to the situation on the ground.


Yet strangle enough — and as much as both Syrians and Israelis will resent me for saying this — they were more similar in attitude and behavior than either was to Egypt, for example. The Egyptian leadership group is suave, jaded, cosmopolitan. Their Syrian counterparts are prickly, proud, quick to take offense. Egypt is accustomed to leadership in the Middle East; there is a certain majesty in its conduct and in its self-assurance. Syria fights for recognition of its merit; it consumes energy in warding off condescension. Israel shares many of Syria’s qualities.

The Egyptian President was sure of his authority; he did not need to build a consensus for individual acts, or if he did, he managed masterfully to obscure the process by which he achieved it. Sadat in one form or another had been negotiating since 1971; Asad was entering the negotiating process for the first time. For so controversial a move as a negotiation with Israel, he had to build a consensus daily, maybe even hourly. Even had he been so disposed, he could not dare the great gestures of Sadat, who sacrificed tactical benefit for long-term gain. The Syrian President needed to win every point if he wished to retain his authority; he could yield only to overwhelming force majeure. The Israeli leaders, for wholly different reasons, were in the same position.


From my study of history I was convinced that the period just after any diplomatic victory is frequently the most precarious. The victor is tempted to turn the screw one time too many; the loser, rubbed raw by the humiliation of his defeat, may be so eager to recoup that he suddenly abandons rational calculation.


He would have to prove his manhood if he was to continue the process. In other words, a show of ferocity was needed to make possible a conciliatory position.


Like many basically sentimental peoples, Israelis sometimes cultivate a surface abrasiveness; it is because they dare not give vent to what they feel lest they be thought weak or prove unable to contain their emotions.


Employees expect managers to “protect” them, to watch out for their interests and to be involved enough to understand the personalities in the group and put protections in place to assure that equality is maintained. When this doesn’t happen, employees grow resentful and frustrated. Morale slides, taking productivity with it. Sometimes the issues that drive employees away seem minor, yet they reflect an underlying problem with trust and betrayal.


People lose it sometimes. Little things add up, tensions and frustrations build. People feel powerless to control or change situations that they believe should be different that persist because you (or someone else or another department or the company) intentionally created the circumstances. Whether there is truth to this perception doesn’t matter; perceptions are reality as viewed through the ever-changing hues of emotions.


There’s a twist. What looks like self-sabotage is actually self-protection. What we are protecting ourselves from? Stress, anxiety, discomfort. We’re protecting ourselves from leaving our comfort levels.


One way we protect ourselves from failure is by not trying. Linking our self-worth to how well we play golf is the problem. If our best game isn’t good enough, our self-esteem will take a beating. To avoid that, when the going gets tough, we quit, don’t give it our all, get careless. The subconscious logic is this: If I didn’t really try, I didn’t really fail. We might feel bad about losing a match, but it’s far less painful than feeling bad about ourselves.

Another way we sabotage ourselves in a stressful situation is trying a much harder shot than necessary, such as trying to carry a hazard that would require the best shot we ever hit. If we fail, we can blame the fact that it was next-to-impossible shot. We can rationalize that we didn’t really fail; we just made a bad decision.


Burnout isn’t caused by working too hard, but by resentment at having to give up what really matters to you.


They employ tactics that may not seem fair to you, because they try to keep you off balance and prevent you from thinking clearly. They want you to feel as if the negotiation is personal — and if something goes wrong it’s your fault. They put you on the defensive and try to separate you from you rational self. They hope your bruised ego will prevent you from looking objectively at the negotiation as it unfolds.

Is this psychological warfare? You bet! Intimidators take advantage of your human side, focusing less on the business aspect of what you’re trying to accomplish and more on the personal side. They hope you’ll do anything — give anything — to seek balance and find balance in the negotiation, even if it means your side has to cede ground.


It is important to know who we are, feel comfortable in our own skin. If we do not know our own identity, we cannot respect the identities of others. If we are not secure about our own identity, we become uncomfortable with the strength of another person’s identity.


Procrastination is the tendency to delay unpleasant but important acts. Procrastination is idiotic because no project completes itself. We know that these tasks are beneficial, so why do we keep pushing them on to the back burner? Because of the time lapse between sowing and reaping. To bridge it requires a high degree of mental energy.


Our brains are designed to reproduce rather than search for the truth. In other words, we use our thoughts primarily to persuade. Whoever convinces others secures power and thus access to resources. Such assets represent a major advantage for mating and for rearing offspring. That truth is, at best, a secondary focus is reflected in the book market: novels sell much better than non-fiction titles, in spite of the latter’s superior candor.


Confidence is a 100% inner mind issue. Meaning that there’s nothing anyone can say or do to make you feel confident. You have to be able to provide it to yourself.

The best part about realizing and accepting this fact is that having confidence is 100% within your power.


Don’t complain. About anything. Not even to yourself.


Our “ego” or self-conception could be pictured as a leaking balloon, forever requiring the helium of external love to remain inflated, and ever vulnerable to the smallest pinpricks of neglect.


We are not always humiliated by failing at things, he suggested; we are humiliated only if we invest our pride and sense of worth in a given aspiration or achievement and then are disappointed in our pursuit of it. Our goals dictate what we will interpret as a triumph and what must count as a catastrophe.

With no attempt there can be no failure; with no failure no humiliation. So our self-esteem in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do. It is determined by the ratio of our actualities to our supposed potentialities.


Most notably, it will fail to mention our tendency to cease being excited by anything after we have owned it for a short while. The quickest way to stop noticing something, may be to buy it — just as the quickest way to stop appreciating someone may be to marry him or her. We are tempted to believe that certain achievements and possessions will give us enduring satisfaction. We are invited to imagine ourselves scaling the steep cliff face of happiness in order to reach a wide, high plateau on which we will live out the rest of our lives; we are not reminded that soon after gaining the summit, we will be called down again into fresh lowlands of anxiety and desire.


The final outcome was also significantly influenced by cultural considerations. The American-led coalition, by and large, accepted as positive many attributes of America’s political and social culture. America’s two most important allies on the western and eastern peripheries of the Eurasian continent, Germany and Japan, both recovered their economic health in the context of almost unbridled admiration for all things American. America was widely perceived as representing the future, as a society worthy of admiration and deserving of emulation.

In contrast, Russia was held in cultural contempt by most of its Central European vassals and even more so by its principal and increasingly assertive eastern ally, China. For the Central Europeans, Russian domination meant isolation from what the Central Europeans considered their philosophical and cultural home: Western Europe and its Christian religious traditions. Worse than that, it meant domination by a people whom the Central Europeans, often unjustly, considered their cultural inferior.


But much like its Roman and Chinese predecessors or its French and Spanish rivals, it also derived a great deal of its staying power from the perception of British cultural superiority. That superiority was not only a matter of subjective arrogance on the part of the imperial ruling class but was a perspective shared by many of the non-British subjects. Cultural superiority, successfully asserted and quietly conceded, had the effect of reducing the need to rely on large military forces to maintain the power of the imperial center.


In resisting Western pressure, the PAP was also exhibiting — and exploiting — Singaporeans’ deep suspicion and sensitivity towards and the slightest hint of post-colonial condescension. The West was not wrong to want to share its message of liberty and freedom. But what some Western critics failed to take into account was the shared, shameful memory of white imperialism, military intervention and economic exploitation that festers just beneath the surface of most Asian societies. The indignities of colonial rule left Asians with the psychological legacy of having to struggle with what Mahbubani described as “the sub-conscious assumption that perhaps they were second-rate human beings, never good enough to be number one.” The West’s continued economic and cultural dominance makes many ordinary Singaporeans, like many Asians, extra-sensitive to being talked down to by Americans or Europeans.


Men are more ready to repay an injury than a benefit, because gratitude is a burden and revenge a pleasure.


The problem is trying to prove a point or gain a victory through arguments is that in the end you can never be certain how it affects the people you’re arguing with: They may appear to agree with you politely, but inside they may resent you. Or perhaps something you said inadvertently even offended them — words have that insidious ability to be interpreted according to other person’s mood and insecurities.


Wrongs are often forgiven, but contempt never is. Our pride remembers it forever.


The feeling that someone else is more intelligent than we are is almost intolerable. We usually try to justify it in different ways: “He only has book knowledge, whereas I have real knowledge.” “Her parents paid for her to get a good education. If my parents had had as much money, if I had been as privileged…” “He’s not as smart as he thinks.” “She may know her narrow little field better than I do, but beyond that she’s really not smart at all. Even Einstein was a boob outside physics.”


An overt trait often conceals its opposite. People who thump their chests are often big cowards; a prudish exterior may hide a lascivious soul; the uptight are often screaming for adventure; the shy are dying for attention. By probing beyond appearances, you will often find people’s weaknesses in the opposite of the qualities they reveal to you.


What is offered for free or bargain rates often comes with a psychological price tag — complicated feelings of obligation, compromises with quality, the insecurity those compromises bring, on and on.


The human animal has a hard time dealing with feelings of inferiority. In the face of superior skill, talent, or power, we are often disturbed an ill at ease; this is because most of us have an inflated sense of ourselves, and when we meet people who surpass us they make it clear to us that we are in fact mediocre, or at least not as brilliant as we had thought. This disturbance in our self-image cannot last long without stirring up ugly emotions. At first we feel envy: If only we had the quality or skill of the superior person, we would be happy. But envy brings us neither comfort nor any closer to equality. Nor can we admit to feeling it, for it is frowned upon socially — to show envy is to admit to feeling inferior. To close friends, we may confess our secret unrealized desires, but we will never confess to feeling envy. So it goes underground. We disguise it in many ways, like finding grounds to criticize the person who makes us feel it: He may be smarter than I am, we say, but has no morals or conscience. Or he may have more power, but that’s because he cheats. If we do not slander him, perhaps we praise him excessively — another envy’s disguises.


The moment of victory is often the moment of greatest peril. In the heat of victory, arrogance and overconfidence can push you past the goal you had aimed for, and by going too far, you make more enemies than you defeat.


Capone didn’t condemn himself. He actually regarded himself as a public benefactor — an unappreciated and misunderstood public benefactor.

Few of the criminals in Sing Sing regard themselves as bad men. They are just as human as you and I. So they rationalize, they explain.


At the heart of the assertion that others are wrong is actually an unspoken admittance that we don’t want to be rejected. It is in the spirit of not wanting to be wrong ourselves that we project that role on others.


But talking about fault is similar to talking about truth — it produces disagreement, denial, and little learning. It evokes fears of punishment and insists on an either / or answer. Nobody wants to be blamed, especially unfairly, so our energy goes into defending ourselves.


The Identity Conversation looks inward: it’s all about who we are and how we see ourselves. How does what happened affect my self-esteem, my self-image, my sense of who I am in the world? What impact will it have on my future? What self-doubts do I harbor? In short: before, during, and after the difficult conversation, the Identity Conversation is about what I am saying to myself about me.


When your husband forgets to pick up the dry cleaning, he’s irresponsible. When you forget to book the airline tickets, it’s because you’re overworked and stressed out. When a coworker criticizes your work in front of department colleagues, she is trying to put you down. When you offer suggestions to others in the same meeting, you are trying to be helpful.


The urge to blame is based, quite literally, on a misunderstanding of what has given rise to the issues between you and the other person, and on the fear of being blamed. Too often, blaming also serves as a bad proxy for talking directly about hurt feelings.


We can have an influence, but here we need to be especially careful. The paradox is that trying to change someone rarely results in change. On the other hand, engaging someone in a conversation where mutual learning is the goal often results in change. Why? Because when we set out to try to change someone, we are more likely to argue with and attack their story and less likely to listen. This approach increases the likelihood that they will feel defensive rather than open to learning something new. They are more likely to change if they think we understand them and if they feel heard and respected. They are more likely to change if they feel free not to.


The paradox is that people cannot take risks unless they feel safe, unless they feel secure that they will not be unfairly treated, embarrassed, harassed, harmed, or hurt because they choose to take some action. When people feel safe, their defensive mechanisms are not aroused because their self-esteem is not threatened. They become more open (and vulnerable) to outside influence and to learning.


Another interesting finding from these studies was how the managers who lost confidence in their own judgments tended to find fault with their people.


A critic of Napoleon nailed it when remarking: “He despises the nation whose applause he seeks.”


There’s no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.


Incredibly, the brain treats threats to our neural models in the much same way as it defends our bodies from a physical attack, putting us into a tense and stressful fight-or-flight state. The person with merely differing views becomes a dangerous antagonist, a force that’s actively attempting to harm us.


Everyone who’s psychologically normal thinks they’re the hero. Moral superiority is thought to be uniquely strong and prevalent form of positive illusion. Maintaining a positive moral self-image doesn’t only offer psychological and social benefits, it’s actually been found to improve our physical health. Even murderers and domestic abusers tend to consider themselves morally justified.


Violence and cruelty has 4 general causes: greed and ambition; sadism; high self-esteem and moral idealism. Popular belief and cliched stories tend to have it that greed and sadism are dominant. In fact, they’re vanishingly small. It’s actually high self-esteem and moral idealism — convictions of personal and moral superiority — that drive most acts of evil.


We’re taught the appropriate lesson and left in no doubt about the costs of such selfish behavior. But the awkward fact remains that, as we experience the story unfolding in our minds, we seem to enjoy “playing” the antihero. I wonder if this is because, somewhere in the sewers far beneath our hero-making narrators, we know we’re not so lovely. Keeping the secret of ourselves from ourselves can be exhausting. This, perhaps, is the subversive truth of stories about antiheroes. Being freed to be evil, if only in our minds, can be such a joyful relief.


The sad truth is that most of us are cowards whenever we can be. We usually know what needs to be done, but we shrink from the responsibility to do it. Unless occasion calls upon us without a choice, we’ll find a way around.


If that country can make this kind of thing, films about itself, oh, that country must have a pride and must have an inner strength, and must be strong enough and must be free.


In some areas, such as the Arab countries, anti-Americanism may be a cover for a more general inability to respond to modernity — witness the slow progress of economic growth and democratization.


It has often been suggested that those with the least power are often the most sadistic if given the power of life and death over people even lower on the pecking order, and the rage engendered by this rigid pecking order was suddenly given an outlet when Japanese soldiers went abroad. In China even the lowliest Japanese private was considered superior to the most powerful and distinguished native, and it is easy to see how years of suppressed anger, hatred, and fear of authority could have erupted in uncontrollable violence at Nanking. The Japanese soldier had endured in silence whatever his superiors had chosen to deal out to him, and now the Chinese had to take whatever he chose to deal out to them.


There is, in all client-patron relationships, a mixture of dependence and resentment at having to be dependent.


He was, Dundas stressed, to disclaim any territorial ambitions in China — an assurance bound to be considered as an insult by the recipient because it implied that Britain had the option to entertain such ambitions.


One great piece of pricing advice I received was that you can price the product based on the seniority of the person in the room. If you’re meeting with a mid-level manager of a medium-sized company, you shouldn’t go crazy with the pricing. But if a senior executive is in the meeting, you can tell the deal is important enough for him/her to spend time on it, and you can price accordingly.


Vanity refers to excessive pride or admiration of one’s own appearance, achievements, or abilities. It is the excessive desire for admiration and attention from others, often driven by a preoccupation with oneself and a belief in one’s superiority or uniqueness. Vanity is often associated with a self-centered and narcissistic attitude, where individuals constantly seek validation, praise, or approval from others to boost their self-esteem.

Paradoxically, vanity can stem from deep-seated insecurity and a fear of being seen as less than perfect.

It’s essential to distinguish between healthy self-confidence and vanity. Healthy self-confidence involves a positive self-image and belief in one’s abilities without the need for constant validation from others. Vanity, on the other hand, involves an unhealthy obsession with self-admiration and external validation, often at the expense of genuine relationships and empathy.

Cultivating a balanced sense of self-worth and self-esteem, grounded in both strengths and vulnerabilities, can lead to more fulfilling and authentic connections with others and a healthier outlook on life.


The lesson from fiction is that we can’t really imagine plenty properly. Our brains are wired for scarcity; we are focused on the things we don’t have enough of, from time to money. That’s what gives us our drive. If we get what we’re seeking, we tend to quickly discount it and find a new scarcity to pursue. We are motivated by what we don’t have, not what we do have.


The prospect of being lonely but right — dedicating your life to something that no one else believes in — is already hard. The prospect of being lonely and wrong can be unbearable.


He liked to remind people that he was a mere mortal, not a Greek god — something that mortals say only when they want to invite comparisons to gods.


We concluded that cars are the means to a sort of dream fulfillment. There’s some irrational factor in people that makes them want one kind of car rather than another — something that has nothing to do with the mechanism at all but with the car’s personality, as the customers imagines it.


People with a high level of self-efficacy approach difficult tasks as challenges to be mastered rather than issues to be avoided. On the other hand, people with a low self-efficacy shy away from difficult tasks, which are perceived as personal threats. Individual with high level of self-efficacy maintain a strong commitment to achieving difficult goals and persisting with them even in the face of failure. They also tend to attribute failure to insufficient effort and poor knowledge. In contrast, individuals with low self-efficacy have a low level of aspiration and commitment to their chosen goals, do not maintain any analytical focus, and give up easily. Failure is attribute to external obstacles and personal deficiencies. As a consequence they rapidly lose faith in their own capabilities. A person’s level of self-efficacy is often the result of previous successful or unsuccessful experiences (either personal experiences or those of role models).


When men can freely communicate their thoughts and their sufferings, real or imaginary, their passions spend themselves in the air, like gunpowder scattered upon the surface; but pent up by terrors, they work unseen, burst forth in a moment, and destroy everything in their course.


Most people feel the greatest amount of stress when they’re working hard or long hours and feeling that they’re not getting anything in return for their efforts and sacrifices. For some people this recognition is in terms of money, though more often it is actual recognition that they feel is lacking. Money loses much of its charm after a while, but praise for work well done lives in memory for a long, long time.


I admire Richard from afar for a bunch of reasons. And I guess I tend to respect people, like Richard, who have very strong moral opinions. But why can’t they keep their opinions to themselves? The thing I dislike the most is when people tell me what I should or should not do. I absolutely despise people who think they have any say over my personal decisions.


The only other thing worth ranting about: people who are too preachy. There’s just no reason for folks to evangelize, and to be self-righteous about it.

And I’m sounding just like one of them.

But it’s an easy trap when people start taking you far too seriously.


What Sun could have done is allow anybody to do their own Java — no string attached — while wagering that they themselves could do a better job. That’s the sign of a company that isn’t blinded by greed or by fear of competition. It’s the sign of a company that believes in itself. And doesn’t have time to hate.


The winnowing can be brutal on young people who were the smartest in their class and then suddenly are shown the door by McKinsey after two years. But if you make it onto the partner track, it’s a contended little club of survivors. In a sense, McKinsey has solved the same riddle as the army has in convincing people to go to war and get shot at — for the feeling of serving something greater than oneself. None of its rivals have come even close to creating a system like this.


People like to feel they’re in control — in the drivers’ seat. When we try to get them to do something, they feel disempowered. Rather than feeling they made the choice, the feel like we made it for them. So they say no or do something else, even when they might have originally been happy to go along.


Optimism is the best bet for most people because the world tends to get better for most people most of the time.

But pessimism holds a special place in our hearts. Pessimism isn’t just more common than optimism. It also sounds smarter. It’s intellectually captivating, and it’s paid more attention than optimism, which is often viewed as being oblivious to risk.


But the alien circling over Earth?

The one who’s confident he knows what’s happening based on what he sees but turns out to be completely wrong because he can’t know the stories going on inside everyone else’s head?

He’s all of us.


Political power is a psychological relation between those who exercise it and those over whom it is exercised.


Good oratory, said Demosthenes, is characterized by three points — action, action, and action, but the might have said it just as well of youth. Youth is as confident and improvident as a god. It loves excitement and adventure more than food. It loves the superlative, the exaggerated, the limitless, because it has abounding energy and frets to liberate its strength. It loves new and dangerous things; a man is as young as the risks he takes.

It bears law and order grudgingly. It is asked to be quiet when noise is the vital medium of youth; it is asked to be passive when it longs for action; it is asked to be sober and judicious when its very blood makes youth “a continuous intoxication.” It is the age of abandon, and its motto, undelphianly, is Panta agan — “Everything in excess.”


I flee from their music and art as relics of the chaos that preceded creation; and I wait impatiently for them to discover that Bohemianism, too, is a convention and a pose, that their proud deviations from accepted manners reveal a secret doubt of their own inner worth.


I should be a ridiculous upstart if I pretended to have solutions for all these problems. They rose out of the nature of man, which I cannot change with words. We distrust the unfamiliar, for we have not learned to deal with it; and when, in some moods and places, it speaks of burning us, we do not warm to the prospect.


France’s crushing defeat in 1940 left psychological scars that continue to influence the country’s politics and society to this day. At the time, the French considered themselves Europe’s dominant power and one of the major colonial empires in the world. They controlled huge territories in North Africa, West Africa, and Southeast Asia. The thunderclap of invasion and conquest after just 6 weeks of fighting shook France’s self-confidence to the core, and its people are still struggling with the consequences of that failure even now, more than 60 years later. Some would argue that ever since 1940, France has been seeking to overturn this disaster, and to prove to itself as well as to other countries that it remains a great nation. It is for this reason that de Gaulle’s almost lone defiance that grim summer would eventually become so important in recreating France’s self-respect.


Eric’s safety strategies were keeping him not only from making a less-than-perfect choice, but from making any choice. Monkey logic dictated, Because I delayed the decision, I did not make a mistake and am safe.


It is important to remember that safety strategies, both behavioral and mental, do actually alleviate anxiety in the short term. They keep us safe from the monkey’s perceived threats, and the anxiety that perception triggers.


Like the quest for certainty, the quest for perfection can include overplanning and list making. It can mean spending too much time on clothing and grooming, as well as decorating and cleaning.


In those tender moments we first realized that the joys of self-expression come at a cost. The price of creativity is the judgment of others.

If we cannot tolerate the primordial fear that others’ judgments trigger — that of being kicked out of the tribe — we learn to anticipate those judgments and internalize them. We put the crayons down. We stop singing. We proclaim that we don’t have any talent.


She had loved the time in China, where she and George had delighted in biking around the capital of Beijing, among other activities. Now she was 51, the kids were off on their own, and her husband was working ferociously long hours at a job he could not even discuss with her because of its sensitive nature. “It is still not easy to talk about today, and I certainly didn’t talk about it then. I felt ashamed, I had a husband I adored, the world’s greatest children, more friends that I could see — and I was severely depressed. Sometimes the pain was so great, I felt the urge to drive into a tree or an oncoming car. When that happened, I would pull over to the side of the road until I felt okay.”


We are hopelessly absorbed with ourselves. If we care about anyone it is usually ourselves first of all. Luck is when the guy next to you gets hit with the arrow. 2500 years of history have not change man’s basic narcissism; most of the time, for most of us, this is still a workable definition of luck. It is one of the meaner aspects of narcissism that we feel that practically everyone is expendable except ourselves. We should feel prepared to recreate the whole world out of ourselves even if no one else existed.


When we appreciate how natural it is for man to strive to be a hero, how deeply it goes in his evolutionary and organismic constitution, how openly he shows it as a child, then it is all the more curious how ignorant most of us are, consciously, of what we really want and need. In our culture anyway, especially in modern times, the heroic seems too big for us, or we too small for it. Tell a young man that he is entitled to be a hero and he will blush. We disguise our struggle by piling up figures in a bank book to reflect privately our sense of heroic worth. Or by having only a little better home in the neighborhood, a bigger car, brighter children.


The more thoughtful observers have realized that the solution for the problem of disarmament does not lie within disarmament itself. They have found it in security. Armaments are the result of certain psychological factors. So long as these factors persist, the resolution of nations to arm themselves will also persists, and that resolution will make disarmament impossible.


Patients, when hearing the news, mostly remain mute. (One of the early meanings of patient, after all, is “one who endures hardship without complaint.”) Whether out of dignity or shock, silence usually reigns, and so holding a patient’s hand becomes the mode of communication. A few immediately harden (usually the spouse, rather than the patient): “We’re gonna fight and beat this thing, Doc.” The armament varies, from prayer to wealth to herbs to stem cells. To me, that hardness always seem brittle, unrealistic optimism the only alternative to crushing despair. In any case, in the immediacy of surgery, a warlike attitude fit.


Nothing better symbolized the loss of confidence than the rise of the management-theory industry. As companies rushed to outsource everything in sight, many even outsourced their thinking to a growing number of “witch doctors.”


In this talk, I tell the story of how, when I was first a manager at New York Tech, I didn’t feel like a manager at all. And while I liked the idea of being in charge, I went to work everyday feeling like something of a fraud. Even in the early year of Pixar, when I was the president, that feeling didn’t go away. I knew many presidents of other companies and had a good idea of their personality characteristics. They were aggressive and extremely confident. Knowing that I didn’t share many of those traits, again I felt like a fraud. In truth, I was afraid of failure.

Not until about eight or nine years ago, I tell them, did the imposter feeling finally go away. I have several things to thank for that evolution: my experience of both weathering our failures and watching our films succeed; my decisions, post-Toy Story, to recommit myself to Pixar and its culture; and my enjoyment of my maturing relationship with Steve and John. Then, after fessing up, I ask the group, “How many of you feel like a fraud?” And without fail, every hand in the room shoots up.

As managers, we all start off with a certain amount of trepidation. When we are new to the position, we imagine what the job is in order to get our arms around it, then we compare ourselves against our made-up model. But the job is never what we think it is. The trick is to forget our models about what we “should” be. A better measure of our success is to look at the people on our team and see how they are working together. Can they rally to solve key problems? If the answer is yes, you are managing well.


A person is more likely to read an ad for a major purpose — such as an automobile - after they have bought the product than before the purchase. Reading the ad reinforces the correctness of the decision made in the buyer’s mind.


It was not the reward itself, but the anticipation of the reward that prompted the greatest release of dopamine to the brain.

By the time the odds of success changed to 50/50, their dopamine levels went through the roof! The guarantee of getting what we crave produces less dopamine than is the case when there’s some risk of coming up empty-handed.

This explains many things. It explains gambling, dating, religion, drug addiction and employee incentive programs. It also tells us something important about shopping. A shopper’s dopamine levels will be at their highest in anticipation of acquiring the thing they seek, and those levels will be even higher if there’s a known risk of not getting it. This outcome also goes a long way toward explaining the enduring appeal of off-price stores, outlet malls and even rummage sales, where shoppers have to treasure-hunt for bargains in their size, color or style. The mere fact that they may or may not find what they like produces enhanced dopamine levels.


Neither society found itself floundering or stagnating for lack of purpose. The Athenians became artists and philosophers, trying to seek purpose in the abstract, while the Spartans focused their lives on military strength and might. Rather than depriving life of purpose, material abundance created a scarcity of meaning. Athenians moved further up Maslow’s pyramid, exploring science and creativity. And the Spartans’ lust for battle? I suppose Maslow would call that a form of self-actualization, too.

The lesson from fiction is that we can’t really imagine plenty properly. Our brains are wired for scarcity; we are focused on the things we don’t have enough of, from time to money. That’s what gives us our drive. If we get what we’re seeking, we tend to quickly discount it and find a new scarcity to pursue. We are motivated by what we don’t have, not what we do have.


It’s like I don’t feel secure enough in my happiness unless other people agree, ratify, and support and see it.


Fanaticism is always a sign that one has adopted one of a pair of opposites at the expense of the other. The high energy of fanaticism is a frantic effort to keep one half of the truth at bay while the other half takes control. This always yields a brittle and unrentable personality. This kind of righteousness depends on “being right.” We may want to hear what the other is saying, but be afraid when the balance of power starts to shift. The old equation is collapsing and you are sure that you will lose yourself if you “give in.” And how the ego works to keep the status quo! In this event, one must put some faith in transcendence — and have the courage to sacrifice a point of view for the sake of the relationship.


Người nghèo sợ người khác biết mình nghèo, người giàu lại sợ người khác biết mình giàu, người có bản lĩnh lại sợ người khác quá đề cao mình, người không có bản lĩnh lại sợ người khác đánh giá thấp mình.


Among the most vocal are youth who have suffered under competitive pressures imposed on them by parents or society. Teaching these young people, I often observe in them a desire to fail. They seem to seek failure by making no effort to win or achieve success. They go on strike, as it were. By not trying, they always have an alibi: “I may have lost, but it doesn’t count because I really didn’t try.” What is not usually admitted is the belief that if they had really tried and lost, then yes, that would count. Such a loss would be a measure of their worth.