There's a very simple thing I do ... It's a very simple question, and it starts with an 'if,' and the 'if' statement is really important because your mind can't argue against it ... 'If I loved myself, truly and deeply, what would I do?' And I ask myself that when I'm making choices.

I have no desire to ever go back to a gym and lift weights the way I used to, pushing myself to the heaviest. Now, for me, workout is play. It's an elegant dance. When I'm doing rings, I'm doing ballet. And I've always loved the ballet, but rather than watching, I'm performing ballet purely because I exist.

I'm living in a way I've never lived before. First of all, I'm truly grateful for every day, everything, but I'm only doing what I want to do, when I want to do, on my terms ... I will cut off relationships in a heartbeat with friends if they're an ass to me once. I don't care. I'm too good. I don't have time for this.

If you're going to make a commitment to love yourself, you have to leave the shackles of the past behind. Forgive yourself, and then you start to love yourself.

If you look at any tribal or primitive society, there's always a rite of passage where you go from boy to man or girl to woman. You're challenged, tested, and welcomed into the tribe ... We miss that in our society. I don't think college and partying does it.

Leap, and the net will appear.

It's the inner game ... The inner game is the ultimate game. If your inner game's off, everything's off, because your inner game will get you through the good and the bad. And the inner game will make the bad bearable; it'll get you through it. But if the inner game is off... that's when it's really bad.

I never felt like I fit in anywhere. I was a shy kid. I just read like crazy ... Books were my refuge as a child.

And the anesthesiologist came, and I remember her because she had these really cool dangling earrings, and she had these cool glasses, and she was brown. I think she was Hispanic. And I don't know why, but I had to tell her... I looked at her and grabbed her hand, and I said, 'Look, I'm scared.' And I felt this fear—I'd never felt fear like this before. It was like a pure fear. And she just held my hand. And I remember at that moment feeling fear and regret of being there alone and who I wish was there.

The gym, I've always said, was my happy place. Wherever I travel to in the world, I had to find a gym. Put me in a room with the rusty, rusty weights and former prisoners... and I am happy. They speak my language.

Maybe death is the ultimate surrender, and you have zero choice, and we all go through that. One day, we will have the ultimate surrender. You lose control of everything, and you have to give into that.

With startups—to be able to build a company from scratch and go take it somewhere—you basically have to be able to do everything.

It's easy to say yes to the short-term quick money hits, but that takes you away from the big long-term thing...

Personal evolutions begin with some act of destruction. This lends itself to the belief that these amazing epiphanies about the human condition emanate out of the ashes of various forms of disaster.

To be a phoenix, you got to burn.