For a hot-shot CEO taking over a troubled company, mass firings are the ultimate quick fix, the accounting equivalent of crack: cheap, easy to score, instantly gratifying, and highly addictive.

I usually start with a big question, such as whether people today are happier than in the past, or why men have dominated women in most human societies. And then I follow the question instead of trying to follow my own answer, even if it means I can't formulate any clear theory.

In theory we are all equal before the law. In practice, there are overwhelming privileges that come with winning the birth lottery.

Discover the great ideas that lie inside you by discovering the power of sleep.

Women still have an uneasy relationship with power and the traits necessary to be a leader. There is this internalized fear that if we are really powerful, we are going to be considered ruthless or pushy or strident - all of those epithets that strike right at our femininity. We are still working at trying to overcome the fear that power and womanliness are mutually exclusive.

Your clothes are an extra skin, and if you feel good in them, you radiate confidence and then the clothes are just the background. If you go out and wear the most beautiful thing but you don't feel good in it, you are not 100% present. You are worrying about the collar or the fit - the key thing for me is to be present in what I'm doing rather than worrying about my clothes.

We are not on this earth to accumulate victories, things, and experiences, but to be whittled and sandpapered until what's left is who we truly are.