Robert Greene says that how you handle anxiety is the most important quality in life:
"It will determine whether you will be successful, whether you will find your career path, or whether you won't be able to."
"Anxiety is a signal to you that you don't understand something, that there's a problem out there that you can't resolve."
"If you're able to turn it into something creative and productive, then great things will happen. You'll create a masterpiece."
@robertgreene on @hubermanlab
Elon Musk literally sat down for a 45-minute talk with Y Combinator that explains how to build world-changing companies better than any business school on earth. This is the advice he gave a room full of young founders:
1. Don't try to build something great. Try to build something useful.
Everyone obsesses over greatness. Musk says that's the wrong target. "I didn't originally think I would build something great. I wanted to try to build something useful. I didn't think I would build anything particularly great. Seemed unlikely, but I wanted to at least try." Aim for useful first. Greatness, if it comes, is a byproduct.
2. When you can't get in the front door, build your own door.
Before Musk started his first company, he tried to get a job at Netscape. "I sent my resume into Netscape and nobody responded. I tried hanging out in the lobby to see if I could bump into someone, but I was too shy to talk to anyone. So I'm like, this is ridiculous, I'll just write software myself." He didn't set out to be a founder. He became one because no one would hire him.
3. He slept in the office and showered at the YMCA.
The origin of his first company was not glamorous. "We couldn't even afford a place to stay. The office was 500 bucks a month, so we just slept in the office and showered at the YMCA." He couldn't afford proper internet either, so he drilled a hole through the office floor and ran a cable to the internet provider downstairs. That was the founder of the future richest man on earth.
4. Keep the chips on the table.
When Musk sold his first company, he received a $20 million cheque. His bank balance went from $10,000 to $20 million overnight. Most people would have stopped. He put almost all of it straight back into his next company. "I kept the chips on the table." He did the same thing decades later, over and over. He hates money sitting idle. Money is fuel for the next mission.
5. Start with the mission, then work backwards to make it a business.
Musk didn't start SpaceX to make money. He went on the NASA website to find out when humans were going to Mars, and there was no plan. So he decided to build one. "There had been no prior example of a rocket startup succeeding. A small chance of success is better than no chance of success." The mission came first. The business model came later.
6. He started SpaceX expecting to fail.
He is brutally honest about the odds. "SpaceX started in mid-2002 expecting to fail. Probably 90% chance of failing. When recruiting people, I said, we're probably going to die, but small chance we might not die." The first three launches failed. The fourth one worked with no money left. "If the fourth launch hadn't worked, it would have been curtains. We made it by the skin of our teeth."
7. Break every problem down to physics.
This is the core of how Musk thinks. "First principles means break things down to the fundamental elements that are most likely to be true, then reason up from there, as opposed to reasoning by analogy." His example is rockets. Everyone priced them based on what old rockets cost. Musk asked what a rocket is actually made of, priced the raw metals, and found the materials were only 1-2% of the historical price. The rest was inefficiency he could attack.
8. When told something takes 24 months, break it down and do it in six.
Last year xAI needed a giant computer to train its AI. Suppliers said it would take 18 to 24 months. "It's like, well, we need to get that done in six months or we won't be competitive." So he broke it into parts. Needed a building, so he found an old factory. Needed power, so he rented generators. Needed cooling, so he rented a quarter of America's mobile cooling capacity. He slept in the data centre and ran cabling himself. It got done.
9. Watch your ego-to-ability ratio.
Musk's single sharpest piece of advice for young founders is about staying honest with yourself. "A major failure mode is when your ego-to-ability ratio gets too high. Then you break the feedback loop to reality." Keep the ego small, internalise responsibility for everything, and stay ruthlessly connected to what's actually true. "You want to close the loop on reality hard. That's a super big deal."
10. Chase work, not glory.
His closing philosophy ties it all together. "It's so hard to be useful. The area under the curve of total utility is how useful you've been to your fellow human beings times how many people. If you aspire to do true work, your probability of success is much higher. Don't aspire to glory, aspire to work."
He was ridiculed for years. The press called him "internet guy attempting to build a rocket company." He agreed it sounded absurd. He did it anyway, because a small chance of doing something useful beat no chance at all.
Here's the thing though....
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STEVE JOBS GOT FIRED FROM APPLE…
Then he walked straight into MIT and dropped the most raw, unfiltered 60-minute business masterclass ever recorded.
Zero PR bullshit.
Zero image to protect.
Just pure, brutal honesty from the man who built Apple once and was about to rebuild it even bigger.
Stop scrolling.
Watch this tonight instead of Netflix.
Bookmark it. Come back to it.
This is how legends think. 🔥
Tom Cruise tells every actor: spend time in the editing room and learn what Brando already knew about the lens
“I always tell actors, spend time in the editing room. Produce a movie and really understand and study movies, study old movies, study new movies.”
“Recognise what the composition is giving you, from comedy to drama. Know what those lenses are and know how to use it to your benefit and understand the lighting.”
“You look at guys like Brando in The Godfather, he knew what Gordon Willis was doing. He absolutely understood the lighting and the lenses. And all the greats, they understand it.”
Elon Musk reveals the moment his son Saxon left an entire sushi restaurant speechless
"I was living in L.A., and I took my older boys out for lunch to Sugarfish, which is a very kind of uptight sushi restaurant. In fact, on the menu of the restaurant, it says, do not ask for soy sauce, because the chef has put the right amount of soy sauce."
"So, like, extremely strict sushi restaurant. And so the waiter is going around asking everyone what they want and then it comes to Saxon and Saxon says I'll have a cheeseburger."
"And the waiter takes a moment to recover because no one ever asked for a cheeseburger at this very strict sushi restaurant. It took him like 30 seconds to realize he'd just been asked for a cheeseburger, because you're not even allowed to ask for soy sauce."
"So then when he finally recovered, he said, we don't have cheeseburgers. And Saxon goes at the top of his voice, what? Like, what kind of restaurant doesn't have cheeseburgers? He says, fine, I'll have a hamburger."
هل ما زلت تعيق نفسك ولا تعرف السبب؟
في عام 2011، أطلقت ميل روبنز قنبلة من الصدق القاسي في محاضرة لها حصدت أكثر من 34 مليون مشاهدة:
"كيف تتوقف عن تعطيل نفسك"
الأقوى ما قالته كان هذا:
· أنت لست "عالق"، أنت تتجنب.
· دماغك يعيقك بتصميم.
· الفعل يهزم العاطفة دائمًا.
إذا كنت اليوم مرة أخرى تؤجل، تضيع وقتك أو تشعر بالذنب، هذا الثريد سيؤلمك (لكنه سيساعدك).
إليك 12 درس قوي للتوقف عن تعطيل نفسك نهائيًا 🧵👇🏾:
Kevin O’Leary: "The worst part about being a rich guy? It's your own family hitting on you for money. And it's extremely difficult, particularly during the period when you're starting to amass it."
Elon Musk fell into depression as a teenager.
Nietzsche made it worse.
He tried to solve despair with philosophy.
It only trapped him deeper in his head.
Then imagination did what analysis couldn’t.
Here are Musk's secrets that will change how you see anxiety-forever: 🪡
1. You need a world bigger than your pain.