For his kids…
These lectures are routinely videotaped. I knew what I was doing that day. Under the ruse of giving an academic lecture, I was trying to put myself in a bottle that would one day wash up on beach for my children. Ir I wer a painter, I would have painted for them. If I were a musician, I would have composed music. But I am lecturer. So I lectured.
painting the bedrooms…
Anybody out there who is a parent, if your kids want to paint their bedrooms, as a favour to me, let them do it. It’ll be OK. Don’t worry about the resale value on the house. I don’t know how many more time I will get to visit my childhood home. But it is a gift every time I go there. I still sleep in that bunk bed my father built, I look at those crazy walls, I think about my parents allowing me to paint, and I fall asleep feeling lucky and pleased.
self esteem for kids…
There’s a lot of talk these days about giving children self-esteem. It’s not something you can give, it’s something they have to build. Coach Graham worked on a no-coddling zone. Self-esteem? He knew there was really only one way to teach kids how to develop it: You give them something they can’t do, theywork hard until they find they can do it, and you just keep repeating the process.
head fake…
The second kind of head fake is the really important one - the one that teaches people things they don’t realise they’re learning until well into the process. If you’re a head fake specialist, your hidden objective is to get them to learn something you want them to learn. That kind of head fake learning is absolutely vital.
Detection of cancer…
Leaving the doctor’s office, I thought about what I’d said to Jai in the water park in the after glow of the speed slide. “Even if the scan results are bad tomorrow,” I had told her, “I just want you to know that it feels great to be alive, and to be here today, alive with you. Whatever news we get about the scans, I’m not going to die when we hear it. I won’t die the next next day, or the day after that, or the day after that. So today, right now, well this is a wonderful day. And I want you to know how much I’m enjoying it. “ I thought about that, and about Jai’s smile. I knew then. That’s the way the rest of my life would need to be lived.
the bricks of life…
The walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people… Brick walls are there for a reason. They give us a chance to show how badly we want something.
managing time…
dreaming big for humanity…
I understand the arguments about how billions of dollars spent to put men on the moon could have been used to fight poverty on Earth. But, look, I’m a scientist who sees inspiration as the ultimate took for doing good.
permission to dream
When you use money to fight poverty, i can be of a great value, but too often you’re working at the margins. When you are putting people on the moon, you’re inspiring all of us to achieve the max human potential, which is how out greatest problems will eventually be solved. Give yourself permission to dream.