Learn Transcendental Meditation as taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and meditate regularly. This will end your suffering and give you happiness and fulfillment in life. Rock on!
David Lynch is an award-winning director, writer, and producer. He has been described by the Guardian as “the most important director of this era,” and his work includes iconic films and groundbreaking television shows such as Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks, Lost Highway, and Mulholland Drive. He is also the founder and chairman of the board of trustees of the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace, which teaches Transcendental Meditation to adults and children worldwide. Lynch has received three Academy Award nominations for Best Director and a nomination for best screenplay. He has won France’s Cesar Award for Best Foreign Film twice, as well as the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and a Golden Lion award for lifetime achievement at the Venice Film Festival.
What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift, and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?
That Motel Weekend by James Donner, The Srimad Devi Bhagavatam, and The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka.
How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a “favorite failure” of yours?
A real good failure gives a person tremendous freedom. You can’t fall further down, so there’s nowhere to go but up. There’s nothing left to lose. So this freedom is almost like a euphoria, and it can open doors in the mind that lead to what you truly want to do. And, in the doing of what you truly want to do, there’s a joy mixed with this unbounded freedom, and there’s no fear. Just a great happiness in the doing. My favorite failure was the motion picture Dune.
The key to a great life is simply having a bunch of great days. So you can think about it one day at a time.
Mr. Money Mustache (Pete Adeney in real life) grew up in Canada in a family of mostly eccentric musicians. He graduated with a degree in computer engineering in the 1990s and worked in various tech companies before retiring at age 30. Pete and his wife live near Boulder, Colorado, with their now 11-year-old son, and they have not had real jobs since 2005. This begs the question of “How”? In essence, they accomplished this early retirement by optimizing all aspects of their lifestyle for maximal fun at minimal expense, and by using basic index-fund investing. Their average annual expenses total a mere $25,000 to $27,000, and they do not feel in want of anything. Since 2005, all three of them have explored a freeform life of interesting projects, side businesses, and adventures. In 2011, Pete started writing about his philosophy on the Mr. Money Mustache blog, which has grown to reach about 23 million people (and 300 million page views) since its founding. It has become a worldwide cult phenomenon with a self-organizing community.
What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love?
Hanging my laundry on a clothesline to dry in the sun, harvesting and chopping firewood, and shoveling enormous quantities of snow after a big storm. I find it joyful to spend good solid hours on these real, traditional human activities to avoid getting sucked into the vortex of the more artificial layers of business, money, and Internet chatter.
There are many organizations that fret over small, direct expenses, yet have no misgivings about keeping superfluous staff tied up in a conference room for hours.
John Arnold is a co-chair of the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. LJAF’s core objective is to improve the lives of individuals by strengthening our social, governmental, and economic systems. John founded and was CEO of Centaurus Energy, a multibillion-dollar energy commodity hedge fund, until he shocked Wall Street by announcing his retirement in 2012. Prior to founding Centaurus, he held various positions within Enron’s wholesale division, including head of Natural Gas Derivatives, and was known as “the King of Natural Gas.” John holds a BA from Vanderbilt University, and serves on the board of Breakthrough Energy Ventures, an investor-led venture capital firm dedicated to funding transformational technologies that will reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.
What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift, and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?
Much of one’s attitude toward life depends on their level of optimism. An optimistic person will invest more in him- or herself, as the deferred reward is expected to be higher. A pessimistic person prefers the immediate returns at the expense of the long-term outcomes. However, the news cycle, driven by negative stories of the day, is the proverbial missing the forest for the trees. The reality, best captured in The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley and The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker, is that the long-term trend in almost every measure is resolutely positive. Optimism is a reflexive trait, with a circular relationship between cause and effect. The more optimistic society is about the future, the better the future is. These books serve as a reminder of the great advances society has made.
I wake up each day with the firm conviction that I am nowhere near my full potential. “Greatness” is a verb.
Maurice Ashley is the first African-American International Grandmaster in the annals of the game of chess, and he has translated his love to others as a three-time national championship coach, two-time author, ESPN commentator, iPhone app designer, puzzle inventor, and motivational speaker. In recognition for his immense contribution to the game, Maurice was inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 2016. His book, Chess for Success: Using an Old Game to Build New Strengths in Children and Teens, shows the many benefits of chess, particularly for at-risk youth. His TEDx Talk, “Working Backward to Solve Problems,” has been viewed nearly half a million times. He also appeared with me in the Brazilian jujitsu episode of The Tim Ferriss Experiment, joined by our mutual friend Josh Waitzkin.
What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift, and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?
Quite a few books have caused fundamental shifts within my being. However, the first that still resonates to this day is Passages by Gail Sheehy. I read it as an 18-year-old, and it opened my eyes to the realization that I would be a different person at every stage of my life, all the way to my old age and eventual death. It led me to realize that I should try to live my life backwards, starting with the wisdom of the elderly and applying it to the energy of youth. I have not always been able to do it, but it has helped me immensely with keeping perspective on things that matter and things that don’t.
No society in human history ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.
Sam Harris received a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and a PhD in neuroscience from UCLA. He is the author of the best-selling books The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, The Moral Landscape, Free Will, Lying, Waking Up, and Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue (with Maajid Nawaz). He also hosts the popular podcast Waking Up with Sam Harris.
What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift, and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?
The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch greatly expanded my sense of the potential power of human knowledge, while Nick Bostrom’s Superintelligence made me worry that machine knowledge could ruin everything. I strongly recommend both books. But if you just want to forget about the future and lose yourself in the book that forever changed how narrative nonfiction is written, read In Cold Blood by Truman Capote.
What purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months (or in recent memory)?
I found a great sleeve for my computer made by WaterField Designs (MacBook SleeveCase, $69). It is so well made that I carry my computer with me much more than I used to, and this has led to some very satisfying sessions of work in public places.
Muna Abusulayman is a leading media personality in the Middle East. She is the former founding secretary general of the Alwaleed bin Talal Foundation, the philanthropic arm of HRH Prince Alwaleed bin Talal’s Kingdom Holding Company and co-host of one of MBC TV’s most popular social programs, Kalam Nawaem (“Speech of the Soft”. In 2004, Muna was named a “Young Global Leader” by the World Economic Forum. In 2007, she became the first woman from Saudi Arabia to be appointed by the United Nations Development Program as a goodwill ambassador. In 2009 and 2010, she was selected as one of the 500 most influential Muslims in the world. In 2011, she was listed asl the 21st Most Powerful Arab Woman, and 131st most Influential Arab in the World by Arabian Business magazine.
What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift, and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?
For every stage in life, you discover books that speak to you, that help you change, to become the version of yourself that you need to be. It’s so very difficult to choose one book. But, if I must, it will be The Power of a Positive No by William Ury.
It allowed me to understand the reasons why I was saying yes to things I did not want to do. More important, it gave me the tools for how to say no consistently and without guilt.
You learn the secret of this business, which is there’s no secret. Be yourself.
Larry King has been dubbed “the most remarkable talk-show host on TV ever” by TV Guide and “master of the mike” by Time magazine. He has done more than 50,000 interviews throughout his half century in broadcasting, including exclusive sit-downs with every U.S. president since Gerald Ford. Larry King Live debuted on CNN in 1985 and ran for 25 years. Described as the “Muhammad Ali of the broadcast interview,” Larry has been inducted into five of the nation’s leading broadcasting halls of fame and is the recipient of both a lifetime Emmy Award and the prestigious A1 Neuharth Award for Excellence in the Media. Both his radio and television shows have won the George Foster Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting. He is the author of several books, including his autobiography My Remarkable Journey. He is currently the host of Larry King Now, produced by Ora TV.
Note from Tim: My friend Cal Fussman is a New York Times best-selling author and writer-at-large for Esquire magazine, where he is best known as a primary writer of the “What I Learned” feature. He’s interviewed dozens of shapers of modern culture including Mikhail Gorbachev, Muhammad Ali, Jimmy Carter, Ted Kennedy, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson, among others. Cal also has breakfast with Larry King nearly every morning in L.A. Since Larry can be hard to nail down and I was dying to have him in this book, Cal was kind enough to interview him in my stead. We also wanted to focus on some of Larry’s stories, so you’ll notice that the format and question are different. Thanks, Cal and Larry.
It will never get easier than right now to recklessly pursue your passion. Do it.
Tommy Vietor is a founding partner at Fenway Strategies, a creative strategic communications and public relations agency. He is also a co-founder of Crooked Media and a co-host of the political podcast Pod Save America. Tommy worked as a spokesman for President Barack Obama for nearly a decade. He served as spokesman for the National Security Council from 2011 to 2013, acting as the media’s primary contact on all foreign policy and national security issues. He joined Obama’s Senate campaign in 2004 and served as Obama’s U.S. Senate spokesman. He was a visiting fellow at the University of Chicago Institue of Politics, and was named one of the top ten communicators of 2014 by Campaigns and Elections magazine.
What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift, and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?
A book that really impacted me was The Nightingale’s Song by Robert Timberg. He follows five graduates of the United States Naval Academy (John McCain, Bud McFarlane, Oliver North, John Poindexter, and Jim Webb) through the Vietnam War and into politics. It’s an extraordinary story of courage and sacrifice and also a cautionary tale about how easy it is to lose your way and go down the wrong path, even if you think what you’re doing is in service of a noble goal.
