25 Life-Changing Insights for 2025 with Today's Leading Minds
1. Scarcity Brain: How to Fix Your Craving Mindset and Rewire Your Habits with Michael Easter
We live in a world where everyone wants to pile on all these good, new habits. However, your worst habits weigh you down more than the good ones can propel you forward. That's why tackling your worst habits is the best thing you can do. The key is identifying patterns: "Okay, I do X because of Y. Is there a smarter way to address Y?” Once you identify these triggers, you can start finding simple solutions. Think of the scarcity loop as the most addictive behavior loop we have. It hinges on three key elements: opportunity, unpredictable rewards, and quick repeatability. To break the scarcity loop: remove the opportunity, change the unpredictable rewards, or simply find a way to slow down the behavior.
I practice something called positive gossip. Every evening at dinner, I tell my kids about an act of kindness, generosity, or goodness that I’ve observed that day. This habit does two things. First, it makes dinner more enjoyable and uplifting. My kids have also started sharing their observations of kindness. Second, it trains me to be more observant of the good around me—which, as it turns out, is abundant when you choose to look for it.
Your brain doesn’t just work in one mode—it operates in three distinct gears, each shaping your focus, energy, and productivity. Understanding these gears can help you unlock your best performance. Gear one represents a slightly floaty, mind-wandering state, akin to how you might feel first thing in the morning before you've had your coffee. Gear two is the Goldilocks zone. In this state, your prefrontal cortex—the part of the brain that enables advanced thinking and learning—is fully engaged. Gear two is optimal for work because it allows you to pay attention and, more importantly, to control your focus and we also naturally prefer operating in this state while we work. In gear three, your attention is highly reactive, jumping from one stimulus to another. This is similar to the state of mind you’d experience while working on an assembly line—efficient for repetitive tasks but inadequate for deep thinking, complex decision-making, or creativity. Recognizing your own preferences and the environments where you perform best is crucial to optimizing your brain’s performance and help you identify what type of work and conditions you need to cultivate the ideal mental state.
4. Motivation Myth Busters: Science-Based Strategies to Boost Motivation in Yourself and Others with Benjamin Heddy
The self-determination theory posits that three key needs must be supported to optimize motivation. Confidence, autonomy, and relatedness. The first thing to consider is someone’s confidence level. Has their confidence dropped? Do they lack belief in themselves, leading them to avoid trying altogether or to put in less effort than they would if they were more confident? Confidence is crucial to motivation. The second need, autonomy, is equally important. Autonomy refers to the number of choices you have in your environment. When people feel coerced or forced into tasks, they are far less likely to be motivated and will put in less effort. How can you design your business environment to support autonomy? Finally, there's relatedness—a sense of community and belonging. Building this within an organization is essential so people buy into its goals, message, and mission. When people feel they belong and are part of a community, they are more likely to be motivated.
5. Mastering Strategy: How to Set Direction, Create Advantage & Achieve Executive Excellence with Rich Horwath
My coaching mantra is "lead at your level." This means owning no more than ten crucial decisions at a time. Exceeding this indicates either inadequate delegation or overstepping your leadership boundaries. By effectively delegating and empowering our teams, we can streamline decision-making and leverage the full potential of our workforce. As Jeff Bezos famously said, “Your job is not to make thousands of decisions every day; it's to make a small number of high quality decisions.” Many executives, however, get bogged down in areas outside their core responsibilities, neglecting their leadership roles.
6. The Messy Middle: How to Find Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture with Scott Belsky
My core finding is this: success hinges on building endurance in the lows and optimizing the highs. This notion of a linear path, of things simply improving over time, is demonstrably false. During these lulls, these valleys, the real work happens: building a better team, product, and yourself as a leader. This is also the time to optimize everything that works—the product, the go-to-market strategy, marketing efforts, team dynamics, and your own leadership style.
7. Survive, Reset, Thrive: How to Supercharge Your Growth Strategy in Volatile Times with Rebecca Homkes
One secret of high-growth organizations is that they separate tension from friction. Most management meetings are filled with what I call tension. Tension is noise. It's someone disliking their reporting line or needing to discuss office policies. The scope of meetings often expands because we let tension consume our focus. As a leader, you should only prioritize addressing friction, because friction hinders or prevents us from creating value. Think of a rope. When items are added to our meeting agenda or we’re heading off on tangents, I ask, "Will this break the rope? Is this friction?" If not, it's just tension; you can let it go. By practicing this as a leader, your direct reports will become better at prioritizing between tension and friction themselves.
8. The Five Talents That Really Matter: How Great Leaders Drive Extraordinary Performance with Barry Conchie & Sarah Dalton
We identified five key talents that define extraordinary leaders: setting direction, harnessing energy, increasing pressure, building connectivity, and controlling traffic. If you excel in some areas but struggle with others, the focus should be on managing these gaps effectively. Top leaders are not distinguished by their brilliance in every facet of their job; instead, they excel by leveraging their strengths and forming strategic partnerships to complement their areas of weakness.
True resiliency means systems that survive and thrive in shocks. Resilient, antifragile systems embrace unpredictability and leverage challenges for growth. Building these systems requires long-term, anticipatory thinking, focusing on next-order effects while maintaining agility in decision-making. One of the most effective questions is simply this: “What if?” For example, “What if interest rates change?” In the world we live in, where changes are constant, and everything is hyper-connected, these kinds of questions are invaluable. They help you think about the future in terms of possibilities, not certainties.
One helpful framework to help you unlock the power of AI is to imagine having an infinite number of new, first-year PhD interns. How might you leverage this resource to enhance your organization?
Some believe confidence and humility are mutually exclusive. I propose the opposite: they work hand-in-hand. To genuinely and humbly ask my team for feedback—"What can I do better as your leader?"—I need a strong foundation of self-confidence. A secure sense of self allows me to ask questions, receive feedback, and implement it. Rather than a contradiction, fundamental confidence is necessary for humility. Let's consider what ambition truly looks like. It involves asking tough questions: Why are we failing? What's my role in this? How can we improve? Only through humble inquiry can we achieve our goals. The days of "heroic leadership," where the leader sits at the top of the organizational chart, making all the decisions, are over. The world is moving too fast. We need to push decision-making down into the organization, empowering our people. Having humility doesn't mean I do everything my team members tell me, but I always ask. We always ask, listen, and thank them for their input, and then we get to decide what we want to change.
We need to think of dialogue as your business's operating system and everything else as individual apps. Every facet of your company, from your offerings to your work environment, stems from a conversation that came before it. Fantastic dialogue skills can solve many problems. Imagine a simple scorecard evaluating the types of conversations happening within a company. Are they primarily focused on "it" topics like projects, customers, budgets, and milestones? Or do they center around "us"—how we work together, provide feedback, offer encouragement, understand each other's progress, and ensure smooth collaboration between teams? My basic approach is to focus on getting comfortable with "us" conversations. The rule of thumb? One “us” conversation to every five “it” conversations. As we get better at those, we unlock a powerful ability to diagnose organizational problems.
13. Strategic Choice: How to Free Up Time Within Your Team & Supercharge Strategic Thinking with Juliet Funt
The corporate world is inherently additive. It will always propose cool new things to add to the plate, never asking, "What can we let go of?" Here's the first step: spend 30-60 minutes identifying tasks that could potentially be let go of, or reduced. Simply write each one out as a ‘maybe’, without commitment. This is where the real work begins. In a team setting, this might involve discussions, working in pairs for mutual support, where you help me with my "maybes" and I help you with yours, fostering a sense of camaraderie in the process.
For a 1% price increase, without losing volume, you typically see a 10% profit increase. I have been asked thousands of times, "What is the most important aspect of price?" My answer is always the same: value to the customer. This is the fundamental and eternal equation of pricing: price equals value. The simplest method to figure out whether you can price better is to have management and salespeople estimate how customers will react to price changes. We do this systematically by asking them, "What happens if we change our price by 5%? If we increase it, how much does that affect sales, market share, etc.?" This is called expert judgment. A better method, though, is to ask customers how much they would be willing to pay, and whether they would switch if prices changed.
15. Negotiate Without Fear: Strategies and Tools to Maximize Your Outcomes with Victoria Husted Medvec
The first objective in any negotiation, whether a one-off or an ongoing relationship, is to address the other party's pressing business needs. The second objective is to differentiate myself, my product, or my service. The third is to build the relationship, clearly defining with whom and over what timeline. The fourth objective is to maximize my outcomes. These four objectives shape the issues I bring to the table. Many people focus solely on the fourth objective (maximizing their outcomes) but they fail to realize that achieving this depends on the first two—addressing the other party's pressing needs and differentiating yourself. You simply cannot maximize your outcome unless you are focused on the other party and how you are uniquely positioned to meet their needs.
A "lazy genius" is a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don’t. The beauty of this concept is its adaptability. Whether you’re an individual or a company leader setting the culture for your team, you get to decide what matters most—where to channel your energy, focus, and genius. However, embracing this approach means you must let some things go. Not everything can matter at once, nor can everything matter forever. Rather than striving for this unattainable perfection, why not live through the lens of seasons? Staying nimble—focusing on what truly matters at that moment—lets you adjust to whatever season your life or business is moving through. That adaptability brings freedom, creativity, and even greater excellence. You’re no longer white-knuckling through an outdated plan. Instead, you’re responding intentionally to what’s in front of you, and that’s where the magic happens.
AI has immense power but no understanding of which problems it should solve. It’s like an incredibly powerful child with an inventive ability and a naive perspective on the world. On the other hand, we humans may not always know how to solve problems, but we certainly know where the problems are. The greatest skill that sets us apart from AI is identifying the problems that matter. As business leaders, we have the unique ability to guide AI in the right direction. We can pinpoint the most critical challenges in a particular sector. Once we identify the important problems, we can focus the AI on solving them.
18. Revenue Architecture: How to Supercharge Revenue Growth with Efficiency & Durability with Jacco van der Kooij
Most people think doubling revenue means doubling something else: leads, salespeople, or price. This is the common mindset. But recurring revenue is different. Doubling revenue is a compound effect. It's about making small improvements across the entire customer journey. For example, a 10% improvement in seven key metrics can double your outcome. This data-driven approach means everyone pulls together to achieve more.
A brand is built on the associations it creates in the consumer's mind. Consumers use these associations to construct their own unique story about the brand. In essence, a brand is a series of interconnected ideas. The more you nurture the brand with consistent messaging and positive experiences, the more it flourishes. The more connections your brand has, the more likely it becomes the instinctive choice for consumers. A strong brand image comes down to sticking with the same thing repeatedly. Brands need to be about consistency. Marketing leaders often approach it differently because they want to put their personal stamp on the brand, leading to constant changes and updates, but consistency is crucial. The most important thing you can do to improve your brand image is to become the gold standard in your category. Become a classic that doesn't change, isn't a fly-by-night entity, and remains the same through the decades.
20. Cultures of Growth: How the New Science of Mindset Can Transform Individuals, Teams, and Organizations with Mary Murphy
In the workplace, having a ‘culture of genius’ translates to organizations designed to support only those identified as the ones who "have it"—the star power, intelligence, ability, and competence, while everyone else executes their plans and supports them. In a culture of genius, people fear offering new ideas. Why? Because mistakes are seen as a sign of a lack of talent. This fear breeds risk aversion, and leads to poor outcomes for the organization. On the other hand, ‘cultures of growth’ are rooted in the belief that everyone has the potential for talent, ability, and skill, regardless of their current level. Good ideas can surface from anywhere. Structures exist to channel these good ideas for implementation from frontline workers to managers and leaders. People are far more willing to contribute innovative solutions because mistakes are seen as learning opportunities, not signs of inadequacy. As a result, these companies experience better bottom-line outcomes.
If you're an organizational leader, you can cultivate emotional intelligence at a cultural level. How? It requires a highly visible and influential leader on the business side to clearly state, “This matters here.” Consistent repetition of this message ensures people understand its importance. Conversely, the negative impact is undeniable. Leaders who lack empathy, self-control, or emotional regulation—who blow up at people or resort to name-calling—weaken this crucial aspect of the company culture. Why not leverage emotional intelligence as a strength instead?
In the computer world, uptime refers to when your device is switched on, productive, and operational—its "on time." You can translate this concept to your life. Uptime is when you feel good and on top of things. We all have those moments, maybe occasionally, where we feel like we're firing on all cylinders: thinking big, executing well, and doing what we want. Uptime is about capturing that feeling and creating it more frequently. Uptime also delves into downtime, which is the opposite of uptime. However, downtime fuels uptime. Just like a computer needs to be restarted occasionally, so do you. These rest periods create longevity for your creativity and overall well-being.
23. Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts with Oliver Burkeman
True success isn't about relentless effort—it’s about strategic surrender. Having a clear vision or intention for where you want to go is critical. Some people think that "surrender" means letting other people’s agendas walk all over yours or only doing what you feel like every day. I don’t believe that’s true. Having a clear vision or intention for where you want to go is critical; I think most people already have that. The real problem arises when we try to force things into being. If you approach life with that attitude, you’ll only make it harder for yourself. Learn to step out of the way and let action unfold. It’s a way of thinking about your limitations that helps you harness them more practically and productively.
24. The Darwinian Trap: The Hidden Evolutionary Forces That Explain Our World and Threaten Our Future with Kristian R?nn
If most people are fundamentally good, why are so many bad things happening? I believe what I call our “Darwinian demons” may be the answer to this question. Darwinian demons are selection pressures that drive any agent—an individual, an organization, or even a country—to act in ways that harm those around them but benefit them in the short term. The trap is that you lose if you choose not to play the game. Now, we find ourselves at a pivotal moment in human evolution. What would the world look like if we thought more long-term? I honestly believe we could create a world where all people's needs are met—both our generation's and future generations— where everyone has the opportunity to live a happy, dignified life.
25. Awaken: How to Lead Like Gandhi & Master the Path to Purpose, Inner Peace, and Healing with Raj Sisodia
To be conscious is to be mindful, to be awake, to see reality as it truly is, to understand the consequences of our actions in both the near and short terms - not only on ourselves but also on others. I think our entire journey on this planet as a species is one of gradual awakening, of waking up to our true potential as human beings. We are a unique species on this planet. We are the only beings who can bring something into existence that does not exist. It's like lighting a match in a dark room. We can only see a small area around us. However, with a flashlight, we can see more. And if we turn on the overhead light, we can see the entire picture. Consciousness is like that. The more we can see the bigger picture of reality, the less trapped we become in our narrow perspective. We can make decisions solely for ourselves, or we can make decisions that benefit the family, the group, the community as a whole, the organization we are part of, the country, and ultimately, the planet.
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Here's to leaving every person better than we find them in 2025 and beyond!
All the best,
Team IVY
IVY thank you so much for having me Beri Meric. I loved our rich conversation on the importance of #RadicalHumility in leadership and life. Thank you for helping us all to spread the message. Your work matters!
Chair, Disruptive Futures Institute | President, Techistential (Strategic Foresight) | Board Director & Venture Capitalist | Bestselling Author & Keynote Speaker
1 个月Thanks Beri Meric and the IVY teams! It was an absolute highlight of 2025 to join you for the IVY luminary interview sessions on my book 'Disrupt With Impact'! Enjoyed every minute of our interview, and hope it helps IVY's impact-focused CEOs and business leaders in their journey. Look forward to also learning from the other CEO Insights!
We Help Corporate and Military Teams Defeat Busyness ? Stop Wasting Precious Time on Email, Meetings & Wasteful Work and Re-Invest time in What Really Matters ? Measurable Impact on the Bottom Line
1 个月Grateful to have my insights included. Thank you - great work!