Derek Thompson

Don't get too big for your britches.

I see this a lot.

Don't stand out too much.

Don't try too hard.

You're just going to fail.

You're going to embarrass us.

Whereas in other cultures, I think particularly one thing we do amazingly well in America is that we not only celebrate success, we also celebrate failure.

When I lived in Silicon Valley and I had a startup that didn't work, hey, I still had VCs lining up to give me more money because they said, okay, great, you've learned from that experience.

That's terrific.

You'll do better the next time.

That would be an example of how we can have these culture-wide beliefs that perpetuate what we're able to try.

I think with your work around abundance, by believing what is possible, by imagining a possible future, this is how we get it done.

We can't do what we can't see, what we can't imagine.

And so having those beliefs that the world could be better, that we could lead to an abundant future, it's not just about self-help tricks and tips.

It really is about the future of society.

I think the answer to that is we have to fight

the narrative that we don't have agency.

There's a study done that kind of became gospel in the psychology community.

It was called Learned Helplessness, and this was a study done by Seligman and Meyer.

Everybody knew the story of learned helplessness.