Molly Graham

I am comfortable sounding like a moron.

I am great at sitting in rooms with brilliant people asking very dumb questions.

But what that actually means is that I have become an extraordinary learner.

My favorite phrase is, sorry if this is a stupid question, but ...

When you ask it that way, everybody wants to make you feel better.

They're like, no, no, that's not a dumb question.

And then they would love to teach you what they know.

People love being teachers.

It makes them feel smart.

The other thing you discover is that most stupid questions aren't actually stupid.

So many people are afraid of sounding dumb

that the world is littered with important questions that never got asked.

Questions like, can you define that word for me?

Why are we doing this?

Why are we having this meeting?

Embracing being a professional idiot often actually makes you the most valuable person in the room.

There's a last thing, part of the illusion of the stairs, that becomes really obvious the more cliffs that you jump off of.

And that is the idea that there is one set of stairs, one definition of success.

I have a lot of friends that have climbed up the stairs to some version of the top.

A fancy title, a lot of money, fame, and then they've realized that they're miserable.