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

by Richard Reed

Given all that you have experienced, given all that you now know, and given all that you have learned, if you could pass on only one piece of advice, what would it be?

“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.”

“With many people, there is a sense the world is falling apart and it creates a feeling of just giving up. And that inertia is the real danger to society. People have to realize we can create change by changing ourselves.”

“liquid knowledge—the knowledge that is universal and belongs to everyone.”

“create distractions to stop distraction, and rediscover the present so they can then rediscover themselves.”

“Today 100 percent is not enough. Give 100 percent, 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 civilization moves forward. 100 percent is not enough. 150 percent is just good enough.”

“Yes, the pain can be terrible,”

“but if you say to yourself, ‘So what? So Pain, what can you do?’ and if you accept pain and are no longer afraid of it, you will cross the gate into the non-pain state.”

“In that simple statement, she summed up with tremendous courage something we should never forget: 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.”

“That is not to say such suffering is not difficult and damn hard, but it doesn’t need be totally destructive. It’s the way you approach it, and the way you approach life after.”

“It’s the same lesson I learned 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.”

“One piece of advice I want to give is avoid all life-coach lessons; they are snake oil, without exception, and the art of stating the so-fucking-obvious it makes your nose bleed.”

“their obsession with goal-setting. Because if I meet my goals, what then? Is that it, is my life over? I met my goal, do I just set another one? What’s the meaning of the first goal if the second one has to be set? Or if I don’t meet it, am I a failure?”

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.”

“Everyone I know who is successful works, and works hard. Really hard. Maybe that should be my advice: work your bloody bollocks off.”

“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 percent 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.”

“It is the secret of art, and it is the secret of life: the more time you spend imagining what it’s like to be someone else, the more you develop empathy for others, the easier it is to know yourself and to be yourself.”

“We have gone, at this point, into a digitalized way of life, a generation that has been clicking away forever, in environments that are sensorially deprived. And it creates a corrective need for human contact, for face-to-face relationships, but after the digital world we can often struggle with the imperfect nature of real people.”

“There can be something beautiful about the immediacy of connection that the digital world allows, but on the other hand dating apps where we swipe left or right can leave people feeling disposable, commodified, even, and that commodification is hurtful and degrading.”

“My interest in people, in humanity, in the way people live, whether they create a life of meaning or not, it goes back to my two parents, who are Holocaust survivors. They both spent four years plus in concentration camps and came out with nothing. All they had was themselves, their sense of decency, and their relationship. That is what endured. And my dad said that was all that mattered.”

“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.”

we need to fundamentally overhaul the system; and you do that by building a machine, campaigning, getting elected, taking office. That is how you fight the power: legally, peacefully, and with an undying purpose.

So what tips does she have for people wanting to start a movement of their own? “Never go at it alone. It’s too important. We don’t win things alone—we win in teams. So find others to do it with. Understand your goals and be clear on what you are going to work on. Build people’s leadership and support those standing for things. And once you win, ask what’s next. It’s a long fight, and it is never really over.” And her best piece of advice for winning the fight? “My single most important piece of advice is stay healthy. It’s too easy to become consumed by the issues that plague this country. It can have an egregious effect on you. People engaged in the fight lose their health, their mind, their lives. So do whatever you need to do to stay healthy—get a therapist, eat well, exercise. You need to stay strong, to stay healthy, to be in the fight for longer.”

“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 forty-three 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 tidbits, and off I go. . . .”

“Be bold. If you’re bold you might right royally screw up, but you can also achieve much more, so be bold. You’ve only got your own reputation to lose and that’s not important. It’s much better to strive for something that seems impossible, that’s quite nuts on some level. So be bold, whatever it is. Even if you work on a customer help desk somewhere, ask yourself how can I be bold? Find those small moments of boldness because they are everywhere.”

“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.”

“local people with local knowledge and a vested interest” do the best conservation work and “it’s more important than ever to support those who protect the planet.”

“There’s no major problem facing our planet that would not be easier to solve with fewer people.”

“it’s a good idea to create more than you consume.”

“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.”

“I’ve thought about this, and my advice for success comes down to three things: be curious, show up, stay in touch. You have to keep reading, listening, talking, thinking, finding out how people think, what they do. And chase down anything that seems interesting.”

“the body will achieve what the mind

believes.”

“At the end of the day I think the most important thing is don’t look back on what has happened. Instead look forward to what you can do. Just crack on.”

if you look after your people, they will look after you.

“People talk about work and play as if they are separate things, with one being there to compensate for the other, but all of it is life, all of it is precious. Don’t waste any of it doing something you don’t want to do. And do all of it with the people you love.”

“The whole thing has taught me that the barriers we put before ourselves don’t really exist. The only way barriers exist is in our heads. We create them, we feed them, and we choose to keep them alive. So we can also choose to break them down. Confidence and happiness are not luck or something only other people can have, they are decisions you make that involve hard work, commitment, and believing that you actually deserve it. There are no barriers to stop you getting them. And if for whatever reason you ever feel in despair, it is worth remembering God gives his toughest journeys to his strongest soldiers.”

“Well, to get anywhere, you’ve got to work hard, so that means you’ve got to do something that you love. Who wants a life where you turn up each day to do something you don’t like? But most importantly, make sure you actually then get up and do it. There is always someone else who can do what you can do, so you’ve got to make sure you do it first, before the other guy does. You have to get up early every morning and get to it.”

“Always believe that when you apply yourself, you can achieve anything. Make sure you give 100 percent 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.”

“With hindsight I’ve learned that all strength and power comes from within. Over the years I’ve dealt with my inner demons, my bitterness, my anger, to look at myself, to take a step to be a better Maki, to live authentically.”

“All the answers that we want are within us. Live your own life. Walk your own path.”

“The more you know, the more unsure you get. At first you don’t know the pitfalls. But if I didn’t have nerves, I’d be worried, as they engender energy; they’re petrol.”

“If I was passing on anything, I would say, for goodness’ sake, 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. There’s no good being negative. I don’t believe in negativity.”

“The bottom line is there is nothing better than going through life with no secrets. So be open about who you are as a person. Wake up in the morning and be yourself. Live your life unashamed of who you are and without the burden of secrets.”