It takes strength to be kind; it's not a weakness.
Daniel Lubetzky
I make mistakes daily, letting generalizations creep into my thoughts and negatively affect my behavior. These mistakes have taught me that the first step to successfully choosing kindness is being more mindful about it, letting go of impatience and intolerance along the way.
The rule of law, democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of expression - we cannot take them for granted. They do not exist willy-nilly across the world; they are very rare.
Failure holds the seeds for greatness - so long as you water those seeds with introspection, they can be the root of your success.
Civilized discourse demands critical thinking, self-reflexiveness, sober-headed analysis.
Empathy is one of our greatest tools of business that is most underused.
I know that when you are experiencing failure, it's pretty damn painful. It is easy in retrospect to wax poetic about it. But in the moment, you don't think you will survive, let alone have the time to reflect on how valuable those lessons will be for you in the future.
For me, empathy is an existential question - it's about the survival of the human race. That is, it's imperative for us to overcome the challenges we face.
We're all human, and part of being human is showing respect and support for others' life choices.
First of all, magicians practice a lot. It requires a lot of discipline. Second, you can't be afraid to be a leader, to go onstage, and you learn to have presence. You need to be able to visualize and connect and create. Most important, you learn to think outside the box.
Relying on the power of kindness is a sensitive undertaking. The challenge is to inspire people to be kind more often without tainting the selflessness that comes from doing something nice with no ulterior motive.
One of the magical things about kindness is that it's what we nerds call a 'happiness aggregator.' People confuse kindness with being nice. And they're very different. You can be nice and be passive. But kindness requires action.
For me, work is both a hobby and a passion. And sometimes an obsession.
We strive for a culture of constant communication. Team members know in real time if there are performance issues. Team leaders know in real time if a team member is unhappy.
Without a doubt, what drives sales is letting people try our products.
Emotional intelligence is a very important skill set, not just to be happier but also to succeed professionally.
As a society, we're failing to recognize something my dad knew to be true - that kindness is the greatest show of strength. Too often, we are led to believe that strength is best demonstrated by exerting dominance or superiority over others, while kindness is portrayed as the opposite - a sign of weakness.
The people who work at FDA are just trying to do their jobs.
While domestically the president may be able to somewhat reshape his/her image through defining moments and actions, this is far less feasible internationally.
Kindness boggles my mind. It's the only force in nature that increases simultaneously for the giver and the receiver.
My dad was born in 1930 in Lithuania, located in Eastern Europe. He was 9 years old when the war started, and his family was sent to the Kovno ghetto. They were soon separated and sent to the Dachau concentration camp in Germany.
Trying to forget or hide your mistakes is a huge error. Rather, hold them near and dear to your heart. Wear them proudly.
We need to understand the other side to impact the other side. We become much more effective as humans and leaders when we engage in hearty conversations with those who are different from us, not necessarily to change our opinions, but to build the empathy muscle.
Politics is, by its nature, not my favorite thing because it's more about dividing people, not bringing them together.
Even though people do not traditionally think of being empathetic as a business skill, it can create enormous value.
We all have a responsibility to try and make this world better, whether it's through our work, the causes we champion, the way that we treat people, or the values we impart to the next generation.
The Kind Foundation was created to scale our social impact and be able to deepen our focus on fostering empathy and developing kinder communities.
Tasting failure, even when you truly believe in a project, is a critical part of the growth process.
KIND has gone through many iterations as it deepens its social impact. When you're selling a million dollars a year, the impact you can have is very different than when you are selling over a billion dollars a year. Scale has allowed us to do things we never thought possible.
From an early age, my initiative took many forms - teaching myself magic so I could do magic shows, buying wholesale goods and then selling them to other kids, learning many languages.
My dad's life story was a string of kindness. He treated everyone as an equal, whether it was the bank teller or the bank president. He even attributed his survival to the courage of kindness.
I have an innate sense of justice and felt compelled to create an organization that would ensure consumers are provided with sound nutrition guidance. In establishing Feed the Truth, my intent is to elevate reputable science, bolster the voices of the nutrition community, and improve the guidance and information offered to Americans.
I can't tell you exactly why my work ethic is the way that it is, but I know that I will always work harder than anyone else I know.
We don't always know exactly what we're doing as parents. Children don't come with instruction manuals, as the saying goes. So it's important to me that I always question the choices I'm making as a father, to really stay alert and open to the balance between being too hard or too soft.
Showers last only 10 minutes, but you can't do anything else in there but think. The shower is probably the main place I come up with ideas. That's where I came up with the concept for OneVoice, my nonprofit organization.
I'm never going to give up - it's part of my lifeblood to help, protect, and defend Israel.
Wall Street sharks will go where they smell the blood, and you cannot change that.
As hundreds of millions of Chinese have improved their standard of living, this has put enormous pressure on natural resources, raw materials, and food basics, among others.
The power of the individual, market forces, and the private sector permeate our lives. With that power comes responsibility to address huge challenges. Climate change cannot be solved by governments alone. Xenophobia, hatred, and intolerance - more business leaders have to play a role in trying to be positive leaders, civic leaders.
As an independent skeptical of all news stations and wanting to understand diverse perspectives, I tend to navigate between CNN, ABC, PBS, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, CNBC, and yes, FOX.
Only Americans vote for their president, but foreigners care almost as much - and sometimes more - about who will lead the most powerful nation in the world.
As a business owner, I understand the importance of prioritizing your bottom line, but it's equally as important to consider how you can succeed while also thinking about the long-term impact on the community.
Growing up, I heard a lot about strength. My dad - a Holocaust survivor - embodied it, though he would never say that about himself. Not only did he survive one of the most horrific events in history, but he never lost hope along the way, crediting acts of kindness with keeping him alive.
I cannot think of any venture I have initiated where an earlier failure wasn't an important precursor to an eventual success.
You have to be very careful. If you over-commercialize a social mission, it completely loses its soul.
I have a whole section of a filing cabinet in my office full of ideas. Some are ideas for books or articles I want to write. One is a romantic comedy; one's about my dad's life. I've also got ideas for books on moral relativism as well as democracy and human nature. There's also a really cool concept for a spy novel.
When I was a kid, we'd go to the movies, and my parents would reach out to everyone around us in the theater, most of whom could barely afford the movie ticket. They'd hand out popcorn and Milk Duds, strike up conversations with them, lend shoulders to cry on, learn their names, and smile at everyone.
It doesn't matter who you are or where you come from - there's no substitute for hard work.
When you're bringing an idea to fruition, there are two distinct phases: the skeptic phase and the evangelist phase. During the first phase, you have to be willing to ask the hardest questions - is this idea worth pursuing? But once you are convinced, you flip a switch. It's about getting it done.
The truth is that a campaign defines how the electorate will see their president - and this all the more true when shaping the president's image in the eyes of the largest constituency that will actually not vote for them: the international community.
