Monte Wood
speaker
192 appearances
6 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard May 2025
Monte Wood’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
I won't be missed. I'm going to go into the Golden Gate Bridge and I'm going to jump. But it's a five mile walk. And if one person smiles at me or talks to me, In this five mile walk, I won't jump. The sad part of that, Vince, is the young man jumped. One smile could have saved his life. I will tell you that we live in a world where there's so much loneliness. There's an epidemic of loneliness.
There's an epidemic of depression. And generosity is an antidote to those things. And a smile, a sincere smile is one of the easiest things to give and literally can change somebody's chemistry. You can change the chemistry in somebody's body by looking at them intently and giving them a meaningful smile. That is generosity. You may walk right by that person, but you left them with something.
You may never see them again. You have no expectation, but you may have changed their lives. And I see it all the time. How many people do you know that actually walk into a public restroom and leave it cleaner than when they went in? My wife does that. She does it because she wants it to be better for the next person that goes in. I also do that.
It's such a beautiful thing, and you don't consider that generosity, but it is. You'll never know the people that benefited from you doing that. But you're doing something, and they may learn from it and pass it on. That's how we change the world. I like to say, and this is a little bit far-reaching, but I like to say that generosity is a form of consciousness.
And not generous acts, but being a fully generous person. Walking around with the intent of being generous, you have to actually be aware of what's going on around you to be effectively generous. And if you are that aware, you're more conscious. And if you are more conscious, all of the studies show that you are going to be a happier, more joyous person.
So even that form of generosity comes back to you. Karma is real. Karma has been written about for 2,000 years. So karma is something that is not a new concept. And generosity has been written about. You can't pick up any, you can't pick up the Bible, the Koran, the Jewish Bible, the Book of Mormon. They all talk about the importance of generosity.
Almost every philosopher has talked about how important being considerate and caring about others is for your own well-being. Some philosophers have talked about it for years. I don't know why in society today we seem to ignore this tremendous power, this opportunity to be happy and conscious and successful ourselves today. by helping others, by helping the world.
It's such a powerful opportunity that if I could stand on the highest mountain and scream, please understand this for your benefit.
I'll give an example that many people have quoted. One of the most successful people in history, actually. I worked directly with Steve Jobs when he was at Next and indirectly at Apple for many years. There are many quotes that circulate on the internet now of his last and final words with his best friends. And all of them say that he talked about he wished that he had been more generous before.
in his life. He wished he had benefited those around him. Now, I think there's a little bit of a misnomer there because he was not a kind person. I sat in rooms and watched him berate other people and do it in a very inconsiderate and unkind way. But his generosity, his focus of generosity was to change the world and make it a better place.
He wanted to empower everybody of all abilities to be able to use technology for themselves. And his compass was generous. His manner was not. And in the end, I think he wished that his manner had been different. So I think that's probably the best example that I can give. Most of the great leaders that I worked with, John Chambers and Andy Jassy and many others, actually were generous people.
They worked harder than those people around them to create success for others. Some of them were very myopic and maybe didn't have the best interpersonal skills, but I don't know that they were I wouldn't say they were not generous.
I think that maybe they just didn't understand generosity, which again is one of my goals is to help people understand what generosity is, how simple, very simple, easy things when done with the right intent can make a tremendous impact in the world.
I think that greed is a big part of it. And the reason I say greed is because there are powerful entities and people who are using divide, who are using conflict and creating conflict amongst parties to line their own pockets with money. When you have a media, all of our media outlets, there's not a single good one out there, right? They're not reporting news anymore. It's all opinion.
And it's all opinion to create divide and conflict. When you have such powerful entities that are trying to do that, it's difficult for the single person standing on a mountaintop to get people to understand. Now, I will say there are some really strong and powerful people that are focused on consciousness and generosity now. And we're beginning to see some of that effect.
And I'm not going to give you any names, but I'm fortunate to be on the inside of some of that. And I am hoping that those people can create, like you and I talked about earlier, collaboration. respect for each other. I don't have to agree with everything you say.
In fact, I never will agree with everything you say, but I can respect your opinion, and I can respect you as an individual, and then I can respectfully disagree, and we can be fine together. But it is now, it's almost if a lot of media is promoting that if you don't agree, then you should hate the person that you disagree with. And that is incredibly dangerous, in my opinion. What do you think?
Yep, I would agree. And you'd be surprised the people that are generous that you might not expect. Two and a half years ago in a hot tub at a hotel in the island of Lanai and Elon Musk and Grimes and X walked up to the hot tub. We sat there and chatted for probably 45 minutes. We weren't anybody in comparison to him.
He was considerate and gave us conversation and we laughed and he talked about a German movie that he had watched and was all animated. He could have just... turned and walked away, but he didn't. He was considerate, and I considered it to be a very generous thing that he did. He left a very positive impression on me, like he really cared about people.
I'm sure when you're that wealthy, there's all kinds of limitations. And I know there were security guards in every direction, all in black, that we couldn't see. But he really stopped and cared about the conversation he was having with us. And that gives me hope. It really does give me hope that there are people, powerful people out there that will help us make a difference.
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