#94 Chamath Palihapitiya: Understanding Yourself

As a man, I was taught that talking is weak. I also found that, as an immigrant man, I was taught that talking about emotions was doubly weak ... I was taught that, in this industry, talking is awkward. You put all these things together and the biggest thing that I found that's helped me is just talking and being open.

I think that money accelerates the point at which you can declare yourself free ... Money liberates people—it gives them freedom, but going back to what we were saying before, it doesn't make you happier.

Being happy, personally, is the pathway to help everything else make sense.

Being happy actually generates better outcomes—you have better artists, you have better engineers, you have better everything if people are ultimately just happy.

If I was an investor in your company, and you said, 'Chamath, I generate 30% free cash flow, and I'm going to give you a dividend,' I would say, 'Shane, fuck you! I don't want that money. What am I supposed to do with it? Reinvest it! Grow faster!'

I learned to lie at a very young age because lying, I think, is one of the most simple coping mechanisms that we all have. Lying manifests in all kinds of very subtle, corrosive ways.

Not even necessarily millennials but zoomers underneath them—they're the most honest of any generation about what makes them happy ... You see that in the way that they dress, the music that they listen to, the media that they consume, the way that they push back on more of a corporate tone ... They're willing to be happy in a way that they've defined for themselves.

The healthier I am mentally, the more I'm able to overcome these natural inclinations to revert to comfortable patterns that have been very well-established and well-worn. They're not healthy, but they're just habits.

People reveal themselves in small little ways over long periods of time, and when you can observe enough of those observations, you can pull them together to get a really good sense of integrity.

I think that if more people believed that they could be economically self-sufficient... it would solve a lot of the societal implications of inequity.

What does this election come down to? I think it comes down to political correctness versus cancer culture.