And shame is really easily understood as the fear of disconnection: Is there something about me that, if other people know it or see it, that I won't be worthy of connection?
What underpinned this shame, this "I'm not good enough, " -- which, we all know that feeling: "I'm not blank enough. I'm not thin enough, rich enough, beautiful enough, smart enough, promoted enough."
And to me, the hard part of the one thing that keeps us out of connection is our fear that we're not worthy of connection, was something that, personally and professionally, I felt like I needed to understand better.
And then, we are miserable, and we are looking for purpose and meaning, and then we feel vulnerable, so then we have a couple of beers and a banana nut muffin.
And I tell people that this is where great stories start from -- these four intersections of what you're passionate about and what others might be invested in.
The second thing I learned that day -- and this is as we clear the George Washington Bridge, which was by not a lot -- (Laughter) I thought about, wow, I really feel one real regret.
Now if you think about it, if I tossed a coin a hundred times, and I'm allowed to withhold from you the answers half the times, then I can convince you that I have a coin with two heads.
My aim is to give a voice to the silent people, to show the hidden lights behind the curtain of the great game, the small worlds ignored by the media and the prophets of a global conflict.
It's not as though, as I try to suggest, it's not as though either you have religion and then you have to accept all sorts of things, or you don't have religion and then you're cut off from all these very good things.
My soul is always soothed by the giant live oak trees, shading lovers, drunks and dreamers for hundreds of years, and I trust a city that always makes way for music.
I'm a social psychologist. I study prejudice, and I teach at a competitive business school, so it was inevitable that I would become interested in power dynamics.
And humans do the same thing. (Laughter) So they do this both when they have power sort of chronically, and also when they're feeling powerful in the moment.
So what we find is that high-power alpha males in primate hierarchies have high testosterone and low cortisol, and powerful and effective leaders also have high testosterone and low cortisol.
So two minutes lead to these hormonal changes that configure your brain to basically be either assertive, confident and comfortable, or really stress-reactive, and feeling sort of shut down.
But what lifted my heart and strengthened my soul was that even though this was the case, although they were not seen as ordinary, this could only mean one thing: that they were extraordinary -- autistic and extraordinary.
I live in New York, and last year, of the 140, 000 teenagers that were stopped and frisked, 86% of them were black and Latino, and most of them were young men.
If there's a takeaway to this talk, I hope it's that we all feel more comfortable acknowledging the power of image in our perceived successes and our perceived failures.
On Saturday I tweeted for this crate and hat, because I did not want to schlep them from the East Coast, and they showed up care of this dude, Chris, from Newport Beach, who says hello.
And a nurse from a hospital drove one right at that moment to the cafe I was in, and I bought her a smoothie and we sat there talking about nursing and death.
So we find this penny kind of fossilized in the floor, and we think that a very wealthy man must have left it there because regular people don't just lose money.
About a year later, I get to feel that way again when we find a bag full of stuffed animals in the trash, and suddenly I have more toys than I've ever had in my whole life.
And again, I get that feeling when we get a knock on the door of our apartment in Brooklyn, and my sister and I find a deliveryman with a box of pizza that we didn't order.
Sometimes Brian and I walk through the park with Scarlett, and she rolls through the grass, and we just look at her and then we look at each other and we feel gratitude.
Because we are at the present moment in the middle of a change of consciousness, and you will be surprised if you -- I am always surprised when I hear how many times this word "gratefulness" and "gratitude" comes up.
Inspiration can often come from an unexpected place, and the fact that a Jewish comedian had done more to positively influence my worldview than my own extremist father is not lost on me.
I'd like to have a little rummage in there with you now and just pull a few tools out that you might like to take away and play with, which will increase the power of your speaking.
I never thought I'd be quoting boxer Mike Tyson on the TED stage, but he once said, "Everybody has a plan, until they get punched in the face." (Laughter) And I think that's so true about business as well.
Because they process information differently, each of our hemispheres think about different things, they care about different things, and, dare I say, they have very different personalities.
The local community were really intrigued by what I was doing, but as soon as I gave them the meaning of the calligraphy, they thanked me, as they felt connected to the piece.
Imagine I give you a choice: Do you want to go for a weekend to Rome, all expenses paid -- hotel, transportation, food, a continental breakfast, everything -- or a weekend in Paris?
It's probably as unlikely that you would nowadays become as rich and famous as Bill Gates, as it was unlikely in the 17th century that you would accede to the ranks of the French aristocracy.
Well, when there are lots of alternatives to consider, it's easy to imagine the attractive features of alternatives that you reject that make you less satisfied with the alternative that you've chosen.
So we gave them cameras, they went around campus, they took 12 pictures of their favorite professors and their dorm room and their dog, and all the other things they wanted to have Harvard memories of.
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And shame is really easily understood as the fear of disconnection: Is there something about me that, if other people know it or see it, that I won't be worthy of connection? 