If I Could Tell You Just One Thing...: Encounters with Remarkable People and Their Most Valuable Advice

by Richard Reed

‘I’ve come to believe that one of the most important things is to see people. The person who opens the door for you, the person who pours your coffee. Acknowledge them. Show them respect. The traditional greeting of the Zulu people of South Africa is “Sawubona”. It means “I see you”. I try and do that.’

‘Today 100 per cent is not enough. Give 100 per cent, and then go over this border into what is more than you can do. You have to take the unknown journey to where nobody has ever been, because that is how civilisation moves forwards. 100 per cent is not enough. 150 per cent is just good enough.’

we are all members of the same human family. We all have fears, and hopes and aspirations. We all have our vulnerabilities, so we should be very careful before we attribute negative stereotypes to other people.’

‘It’s the same lesson I learnt in that cell. What you have to do is live for the day, you have to say, now is life, this very moment. It’s not tomorrow, it’s not yesterday, it’s now, so you have to live it as fully as you can. Invest in every day.’

‘The secret, darling, is to love everyone you meet. From the moment you meet them. Give everyone the benefit of the doubt. Start from a position that they are lovely and that you will love them. Most people will respond to that and be lovely and love you back and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and you can then achieve the most wonderful things.’ Then she leant forward and whispered in my ear. ‘But get rid of any of the bastards that let you down.’

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Work is more fun than fun. ‘If you can make that true of your work, you will have a wonderful life. I know how lucky I am to have found that, and how unlucky so many are to have not found that. People talk about work–life balance. But the idea of balancing one against the other makes no sense. My work isn’t against my life – work is my life.’

‘It is never right to look at someone successful and think “That person’s got money, that person’s got looks, that person’s good at cricket … so it’s easier for them.” Chances are, 90 per cent of the time you’re wrong. But even if it is somehow true, thinking that is a very self-destructive thing. It leads only to resentment, which is corrosive and destroys everything but itself.’

‘The quality of your life ultimately depends on the quality of your relationships. Not on your achievements, not on how smart you are, not on how rich you are, but on the quality of your relationships, which are basically a reflection of your sense of decency, your ability to think of others, your generosity.

Ultimately at the end of your life, if people commend you, they will say what a wonderful human being you were, and when they talk about the human being that you were, it won’t be the fact that you had a big bank account, it really won’t. It will be about how you treated the people around you and how you made them feel.’

‘THE QUALITY OF YOUR LIFE ULTIMATELY DEPENDS ON THE QUALITY OF YOUR RELATIONSHIPS. NOT ON YOUR ACHIEVEMENTS, NOT ON HOW SMART YOU ARE, NOT ON HOW RICH YOU ARE, BUT ON THE QUALITY OF YOUR RELATIONSHIPS, WHICH ARE BASICALLY A REFLECTION OF YOUR SENSE OF DECENCY, YOUR ABILITY TO THINK OF OTHERS, YOUR GENEROSITY.’

‘The opposite of question everything is question nothing. And if you don’t question things, there’s no knowledge, no learning, no creativity, no freedom of choice, no imagination. So I always ask why. And why not. I ask question, question, question, question. And then I listen. And that’s how I discover something new.’

‘There will be “Ah ha!” moments in life when a light might go on, when you think to yourself, “I MUST do that” – whatever it is. It’s not because someone says you should do it, but it’s because you feel absolutely compelled to and there would be something wrong with the world if you didn’t. If you find that light – acknowledge it. Find other people who share that passion. Cultivate it. Find that deeper purpose in your life.’

‘Well, Richard, my dad told me there’s an invisible sign on everyone’s head which says make me feel important. Remember that and you’ll be fine.’

‘My best advice is listen, listen rather than talk. I was never bright in school, but I was a very good listener, and I still am. I have a better life because of it. When I meet people, I’m curious about their story, about how they did what they did. Along the way you meet people smarter than you and they teach you what you don’t already know. So I listen to them, take away my little titbits, and off I go …’

‘Powerful elites in the world always succeed by divide and rule, using tools like fear and racism. But solidarity, the basic human connection we can all have with one another, is stronger. It is the magic weapon to achieve change. If we remember that your human rights are the same as my human rights, even if we don’t look the same, and if we support one another we all benefit, we all become stronger. Ultimately, we are each other’s security.’

‘The greatest force in my life has been coincidence, and having an openness to receiving whatever the people I met offered and wanted. Due to this my life opened up into a whole set of challenges and joys that I would not have had otherwise.’

‘It pays to always answer the knock at the door.’

‘Discover the joy of embracing diversity. When people become more open to the strange, to the unusual, to the radical, to the “other”, we become more nourished as a species. Currently our ability to do that is being manipulated, diversity is being looked upon as a source of evil rather than as a source of joy and development. We must recapture the profound benefits of seeing the joy in our collective diversity, not the fear.’

‘Just work hard and be passionate. If I’ve taught my kids one thing, it’s to be passionate. I’m passionate about food, my friends, my wife, passionate about our house, our dog. I’m passionate. I get up and I’m passionate – my father believed in it and that’s the one thing he taught me, that life is amazing and it’s full of people you haven’t met yet, music you haven’t heard, books you haven’t read. And if you start each day looking for something to be passionate about, mostly you won’t be disappointed because every day you’ll find something that’ll make you say, look at that, that’s so cool.’

‘I have never met a child that is not fascinated by our natural world, the animal kingdom and the wonders within it. It is only as we get older that we sometimes lose that sense of wonderment. But I think we would all be better off if we kept it. So my advice is to never lose that, do what you can to always keep that sense of magic with our natural world alive.’

LOOK FOR THE PLUSES IN LIFE. BEING NEGATIVE COMPLETELY ERODES EVERYTHING. IF SOMETHING BAD HAPPENS, I ALWAYS SAY CANCEL AND CONTINUE AND GET BACK ON TRACK.’

‘Always believe that when you apply yourself, you can achieve anything. Make sure you give 100 per cent and work as hard as you can in everything you do, not just in what you enjoy but also in life. And don’t forget, natural ability will only get you so far, there is no substitute for practice.’

‘Life for me is about doing the right thing, on a difficult day, when no one is looking. If you do something or walk by something that you know is not right, then you’re ultimately cheating and undermining your own self. If you do the right thing, no matter what the outcome, your confidence always grows. And you have a better life that way. So just make sure you are always honest with yourself. And make sure you always do the right thing.’

‘If I’m at your house and you offer me something to eat I don’t particularly like, I’m going to smile and eat it. Try to be a good guest, try to be grateful, be a good guy, don’t be a dick.’

‘The lowliest-looking person is filled with gifts and talents beyond your imagination. Love such people as yourself. Those living on the margins of society do not need to have their problems solved for them, they just need to be given the opportunities to solve them themselves. And in doing so, they will often also solve the problems of others.’

‘What I would like is a part-time husband or companion, so if you know anyone suitable for that challenge, tell him to head this way.’

‘No matter how bad it is, no situation is ever greater than you. You always have three options: you can change the situation, accept the situation or change your mindset on how you see the situation. And you have the power in your hands to choose whichever is best for you. Never allow something else or someone’s opinion to become the title of your book. Ever.’

‘There’s always going to be someone faster, smarter, taller, more experienced than you, but the rewards in life don’t always go to them, the rewards in life go to the dogged, the determined, those who can keep going and pick themselves back up and never say die and just hang in there, sometimes quietly and undramatically.’

‘I know I can’t depend just on self-confidence, by myself I am not strong enough, but developing a confidence in something much stronger than me gives me more power, so I start every day on my knees just quietly asking for help and wisdom and to say sorry for the things I got wrong yesterday.’

IT IS NOT THE MOST MASCULINE, MACHO, OR THE ONES WITH THE BIGGEST MUSCLES WHO WIN. IT’S THOSE WHO LOOK AFTER EACH OTHER, WHO REMAIN CHEERFUL IN ADVERSITY, WHO ARE KIND AND PERSISTENT AND POSITIVE. THESE ARE THE CHARACTERISTICS THAT HELP YOU, NOT JUST TO SURVIVE LIFE BUT TO ENJOY IT. AND THEY’RE NOTHING TO DO WITH GENDER. THE PEOPLE WHO ARE SUCCESSFUL ARE THE ORDINARY ONES THAT JUST GO THAT LITTLE BIT FURTHER, WHO GIVE A LITTLE MORE THAN THEY ARE ASKED TO, WHO LIVE WITHIN THAT EXTRA FIVE PER CENT.’

‘I know it sounds kind of corny, but every day I look in the mirror and I tell myself that I am going to go out there and face it and not curl up in a ball because somebody said something or thinks that I couldn’t be or do something simply because of who I am. It’s hard, but you have to do it. Put in the hard work, discipline and focus and just keep going. Remember there are numerous people, both similar and dissimilar to you, who are rooting for you to stay strong, and to prove the naysayers wrong.’

FIND YOUR RHYTHM. LIVE YOUR LIFE TO ITS BEAT.’

‘In life, we are not what we look like, we are not our gender, sexuality or religion or race, we are how we act and the impact that we have on others. And the best way to think about the impact we have on others is in adjectives. I ask myself “What person do I want to be?” But in adjectives, not nouns. How about kind? Healthy? Ambitious? Does thinking like that get me to a more fruitful and satisfying place? I think it probably does.’

‘Whatever you do, do it with intent. In martial arts we call it “one plus one”. Just one good kick and one good punch is better than twenty you didn’t have any intent behind. Do not say something unless you mean it, do not do something unless you are committed. Do not confront by shouting, but confront by using your intellectual powers and the power of a better argument, by standing your ground, by keeping your centre, by never transgressing so they cannot attack. Ultimately, the trick is to absorb and redirect their energy. You use their own power against themselves.’

‘I don’t believe in the so-called declining years. Every day is a full twenty-four hours, with sixty minutes in each hour, and it is the same amount of time whether you are twelve, twenty, forty or eighty. You’re getting as much daylight as anyone else and the same amount you’ve ever got. It’s up to you what you do with it.’

‘If you put your head on a pillow late at night and think it hasn’t been a good day, wake up next day and change something. It might be your ideas or attitude, it might be to leave a job or husband. It could be anything, but change something. Don’t just drag on a set of circumstances which just aren’t falling into the right places. You’ve got to listen to and then act on that inner spark.’

‘None of us should ever underestimate our ability to change people’s lives. There is a direct cause and effect of what we do here and what happens there. But if you want to help you have to actually do something. You can’t just talk about it.

‘We need people with different life experiences so we can hear each other’s stories, to add to them, to understand them, to disagree with them, to help people stop feeling self-conscious about bumping into other tribes and help people feel there could be something richer if they experiment with other human relationships.’

WOMEN HAVE TO HONOUR THEIR OWN POTENTIAL. WOMEN MUST GIVE THEMSELVES THE RIGHT TO THRIVE IN EVERY SINGLE WAY, AND NOT DEFINE HOW LOVING OR HUMBLE THEY ARE BY THE AMOUNT THAT THEY ARE PREPARED TO STEP SIDEWAYS TO ACCOMMODATE SOMEONE ELSE. THEY NEED TO SAY, “I’VE GOT ONE LIFE, I’VE BEEN GIVEN LIFE, IT HAS BEEN BREATHED INTO ME AND HERE I AM AND I SHOULD USE IT FOR THE BEST POSSIBLE PURPOSE.” WHATEVER EACH WOMAN HERSELF DEFINES THAT TO BE.’

‘You somehow need to find a way to believe, to keep going. But it’s not enough to just say to yourself “be confident”, you can’t just BE confident, you have to surround yourself with people who bring the best from you, who will help you, who will help you grow that confidence.

‘I’m a spokesperson for the beliefs that I want for my country. I want children to be taught that they are living in an amazing country, an amazing continent – that we have nothing to envy in any way.’

‘If you get on a plane in the Congo, it’s full of Americans, English, Chinese and Indians, but very few Africans, it’s mad. It seems a lot of people love our resources!’

‘Through quality education our own people can become agents of change, become leaders of their own country, so we can work with the West as equals, that is what’s missing.’

ANY VOICE YOU HAVE IN THIS WORLD, YOU HAVE TO USE IT. WHATEVER MONEY YOU HAVE THE DAY YOU DIE, YOU DIE WITHOUT IT, SO DONATE IT. IF YOU CAN ONLY GIVE AN HOUR OF YOUR TIME, THEN DO THAT.’

‘Don’t take holidays. When you get to my age you will regret taking them. Give yourself a maximum of a day or a day and a half a year. And use that to read books on your industry. The rest of the time you should just work.’

The conversation has the feel of a cat playing with a mouse. And I’m not the one purring.

‘People tend not to be accidentally successful. If you see anyone very, very good at something, they tend to be very driven by what they do and they work really hard at it. So find the thing that makes you passionate and do that. And if you can find something you’re passionate about that also makes a difference to others, it will be a greatly fulfilling quality in your life. In the end, the things that give the most fulfilment are the things you do for others.’

FIND THE THING THAT MAKES YOU PASSIONATE AND DO THAT … IN THE END, THE THINGS THAT GIVE THE MOST FULFILMENT ARE THE THINGS YOU DO FOR OTHERS.’

‘I had a father who loved me, who had no difficulty in expressing his love for me. I felt cherished, I felt beloved, I felt confident, and it meant that I was never fearful, so I stepped into the world bold and brave. Women who have that bond with their father are women who are able to do things with their lives or conquer the world.’

‘Treat everybody as equal value, irrespective of his or her status or who they are. That’s the thing I want for my children, I want them to always feel that nobody’s better than you and vice versa. That’s what my parents taught me. Never treat anybody as lesser and never accept anyone treating you as lesser. Respect the humanness of the other person.’