Most people tend to think that someone who is more powerful and influential would have more anxiety and worry. But I really don’t think that’s the case.
No matter who you are – whether you’re a cashier at McDonalds or the CEO of McDonalds – we all have the same brains. We all have the same capacity for worry.
Asked whether his life and thoughts have been made more complicated as he’s become a public figure, Yuval Noah Harrari (author of Sapiens and 3 other international bestsellers) had this to say:
The content of my thoughts changed, but I don’t think the intensity changed.
One of the things I realized from now being this famous public intellectual and meeting all these famous people and leaders is that everybody is basically the same.
When you are prime minister or president of a superpower, you can’t be more worried than when you run a small business. It’s impossible. It’s the same brain. It’s the same mind.
Yuval Noah Harrari on the Tim Ferriss Show
It’s what we do with that monkey brain of ours that matters. Will we let your mind be consumed by these worries and anxieties or will we learn to pay attention to them? We all have the same capacity for worry. And we all have the same capacity for joy and mindfulness. Let’s get better at the latter.
Cheers to being as worried as the president,
JB
This was day 21 of the 30-day blogging challenge!
Are you interested in receiving a weekly email newsletter from me each week that will include links to my articles and other cool things I dig up? You can sign up here!
Jonah Baer 