Harnessing the power of beauty to create a life-centered future | Tim Leberecht

The future is how. Have you asked yourself today, what's next for me? You're not alone. We've all felt that way at some point. My name is Frederik Pferdt, and for years I've helped the brightest minds at Google and Stanford and people around the world shape their futures. Now I want to help you to do the same, because the future isn't just something that happens. It's something you can create, starting right now, from within. Instead of waiting to see what happens next, let's explore how you can make it happen. Each episode dives into one key area like sleep, nutrition, relationships, creativity, storytelling, mindfulness, beauty, movement, or purpose, and brings you real stories and practical tools you can use to shape a better future for yourself. So what's one step you can take today to create what's next? Let's dive in and explore how to build a better tomorrow, starting right now. So hello friends, and, uh, welcome to the Future is How, your podcast where we explore how you can actively shape your future, starting with yourself today. I'm Frédéric Pferdt, and I'm delighted to have you join us on this journey toward a better tomorrow. Today, we're going to dive into something that everybody loves and has access to— beauty. We're going to explore the art of embracing beauty in our daily lives and how this awareness can transform not only our present, but also the future we create for ourselves and for others. Before we begin, I want to ask you, how do you envision your future when you start noticing the beauty that's already around you and within you? What does your better tomorrow look like when viewed through the lens of beauty? And this question is perfectly actually suited for our guest today, and I'm super thrilled to be joined by the number one business romantic, Tim Leberecht, the founder of the House of Beautiful Business. And in the next 5 years, I guess Tim will be revolutionizing how we perceive the intersection of business and beauty. He will be known as the thought leader for leading a global movement that transforms workplaces into spaces of meaningful connection. Creativity, and profound human experiences. Tim, welcome to the show. So great to have you.

Great to be here, Frederik. And yeah, very nice, by the way, how you pronounce my name in a proper German way. For those of you who are not familiar with German, the name actually is very Prussian and means to live right, do the right thing. So that's my moral imperative for my own life and my own future. So wonderful to see you again and be on the show.

As you probably have noticed, I introduced you with not your past bio, but your future bio. If you wouldn't mind giving us a sneak preview into your future. So I'd like you to share your future bio with our listeners. So how do you envision yourself and your impact in the coming years?

I've actually never been asked that question, and I have to admit that I don't even think about it that much, or at least I don't visualize it. So it's a really good question. And just on the top of my head, because dualities are so important for me, so I always like to have two sides, two worlds, and two practices. That's also when you mentioned the business romantic, kind of at the heart of what I was writing about with the book, right? Reconciling and marrying business and romance, or beauty and business. Something that's on the surface seemingly irreconcilable. So in the spirit of that, I actually want to offer you two versions. The one future self is one that's more linear, which is also very desirable and maybe more achievable, but it's essentially just a continuation of some of the seeds that I put in place, some of the work that I've been doing ever since I published the book The Business Romantic in 2015, the launch of the House of Beautiful Business, which is this global community that I founded and spearhead, whose mission it is to make business more beautiful, bring the arts, humanities, and other long-neglected disciplines to business. And this is a community that has grown now to a worldwide— movement is such a big word, but a worldwide, yeah, it's a global community of passionate changemakers who want to reinvent business and do business differently. So one more linear continuation of the current version of what I'm doing is that, yeah, it's what you described, right? So it's a global movement, it will have more impact, we will do more, maybe we do a festival that attracts, you know, thousands or hundreds of thousands of people. Maybe beautiful business, this idea of doing your business more beautifully, is something that's really sunk into business mainstream and is no longer a provocative idea on the margins of business. And there are teachers and who are deeply entrenched in this idea and are spreading the gospel. Yeah, that would be— I think that's very desirable, and in many ways that's sort of what I work towards, and I can see it, although I also know that it's going to take a lot of work, and it's still very much like an uphill battle to arrive there. But then I think the other future that really excites me is one that's completely different, or maybe somewhat different, and I also find that really desirable. And I think it's interesting to have two futures in your mind when you think about manifesting and projecting your own future. And the other one is really one where I'm more like, like a really just an artist without having the need to, to reconcile the art with business. So I'd love to have some sort of a Bohemian factory and be a filmmaker. Actually, I'd love to make films, you know, nothing but that, or write novels and make films and have the luxury of really just purely living my art, ideally on a— with a house by, you know, the Aegean Sea somewhere in Greece, Turkey, or— and just creating art and not having to worry about nurturing a community, running a business, and having an impact, but really just creating art for the sake of art. So when I'm trying to— maybe there is also some middle ground between there, but I find it interesting that there's— when I think about my future, that there is an extension of what is today. There's a linear continuation to some degree, maybe a progressive continuation But there's also always a completely— there's sort of the other life, which is a very romantic idea, right? And another life is always possible. There's another world and there is a door to it. You just need to find the right key and then it will unlock itself. You can unlock it and reveal itself to you. So I think those two versions I have in my mind when I think about my future.

Wow. So, so powerful. Thanks for sharing. I really like that you're sharing not just one vision of your future self, right? But multiple visions, right? And I think that's truly incredible. And I think that's what we all can do better, probably, right? To really not just think about like, what's the linear path forward, but what's also like maybe a passion that we have on the side that could turn into more, right? And because there's multiple futures, right, that are possible and desirable, as you said. And so I, I really like that you're, you're not just sharing like your future bio as like, you know, just an extension of what you're doing already, but there's multiple paths that you want to explore as well, right? As an artist, as a business leader, as a leader of a movement, there's multiple things that you aspired to do in the future. And so thanks for sharing that. I'm going to take that with me as an exercise as well to really map out like what are the different futures for myself that I want to explore and that I'm passionate about. So that's really an inspiring vision. Thanks, Tim. So I want to dive deeper into the House of Beautiful business because I'm just struck by its impact and, you know, the, the community that you bring in together like multiple times a year. Online and you're doing an in-person event as well that has a global reach. And I remember when we last met in San Francisco, you shared more about your passion and your work. So I was attending one of your sessions and I was really struck by one of the stories that you shared about an artist called Marina Abramović. And she did an installation, I remember, back in New York a couple of years back. It was called The Artist is Present. And immediately after your session, I have to say, I tried this, what she'd done with a leadership group at one of the big firms that we both were attending the event from. And I tried it also at Burning Man, right? And what I've tried is really powerful because it's quite simple, but it's also very profound in a way. And so if If listeners are not aware of Marina Abramović and The Artist is Present, what she basically has done is she was sitting in a chair in a museum, and you could basically walk up to that stage, sit in an opposite chair, and literally enjoy the presence of the artist by looking in her eyes. And that's what I've done then too, just trying to help people to connect on a deeper level by just literally looking in their eyes for quite some time. And I've done that too, like at Burning Man, I asked people to, you know, join me for a shorter session around just looking in each other's eyes. I've did it with friends and did it with other people too. So I want you to share a little bit more about why you were using that work from Marina and you're actually facilitating that with leaders around the world. So tell us a little bit more, what's the, what's the power of this exercise? And why it matters.

I was stunned by this when I first saw it. There's a documentary film that you can watch. This was, I believe, in 2012, and she performed this performance, which it really is, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. And I believe she did it for, I think it was 500 hours or something nonstop with some bio breaks. And she sat across from, as you described it, from other people for 5 minutes or so looking into their eyes. And Without spoiling the plot, but there's also this really touching moment when her former lover and partner Ulay, a German artist, surprises her. And they hadn't seen each other for years, and suddenly he sits in front of her and they both look at each other with this greatest tenderness and then burst into tears, you know. And it's a really beautiful moment. She also, Marina Abramović, she, by the way, just did this performance in Glastonbury, which is this big open-air music festival in the UK, where she silenced the crowd. And I believe, if I'm not mistaken, it was about 100,000 people, with 7 minutes of silence devoted to the possibility of peace. And to silence an open-air rock festival and a crowd of 100,000 or more, I think it might have been even more people, it's just an incredible accomplishment, right? The authority to have to impose silence or to invite into silence such a large group and what it does to people and how moving it is, I think is really incredible. So silence is so powerful because it creates this negative space, right? It sharpens your senses when you omit one sense, in this case, just speaking, right? And words and rhetoric. And what is so powerful about it is that you are really in a very essential way reminded of the other person's humanity. If you just look into their eyes, you see yourself, and there's a really profound connection. In fact, I just did it actually a couple of weeks ago at an event that we co-hosted in New York on the eve of UN High-Level Week. And I'm always surprised what it does to people, even if it's just 5 minutes, 10 minutes. It's incredibly hard, by the way. It's very hard to even hold the gaze of somebody else looking at you, right? Because it's— you can't hide, right? We often, very often hide behind words. And particularly in business or at the workplace, we use words to either attack, right? So we pitch an idea, we are aggressive, right? We claim territory through our words, or we defend if we're attacked ourselves. We use words to defend ourselves and to justify. But there's a space in between which is just holding each other without judgment, right? Without aggression and without defense. And that space, I think, we can enter through silence. And it's about creating intimacy. It's about creating space for tenderness. And those are not necessarily terms that we often use in business. And it's something very different than connectivity or happiness, right? So many organizations are now trying to measure happiness and trying to study when happiness peaks occur, and then optimize for happiness, workers to increase employee happiness. But intimacy is a different quality. Intimacy is based on vulnerability. And it's more authentic, and it means a real, authentic, genuine, vulnerable connection with another person. And what we've done is not something that we've invented. It's been around for decades, this format, but we've used it in a business context. It's silent dinners. So we hosted silent dinners with 20-25 CEOs, other managers in organizations, strangers, and it's always very awkward, right? Especially in a business context where you usually network and you kind of pitch your idea and a lot of power and status come into play, right? So who you are, what you represent matters. But if you leave that out and you just bring the essential humanity to the table quite literally, then usually after 10-15 minutes of silent eating, people really see each other differently. Some people trying to compensate and they act or they perform nonverbally or they play. And others just lean back and are very comfortable only with feeling the aura, the energy that is in the room, and looking at other people and sensing other people. And interestingly enough, when you eat in silence for 90 minutes, you can observe how connections are made nonverbally, right? So some people connect more with other people. It's not that everybody's connecting with everybody silently. There are You can see the energy flows almost. You can see the energy between 2 or 3 or 4 people. And I believe it's— I think it's such a powerful exercise because it really reminds us of our own beauty and the beauty of the other, not in a very superficial way, but in a really profound way. And it creates— it opens the door for a connection that then can be leveraged for other purposes. The moment when the music is turned on and people are allowed to speak again is always very strange because it's almost like you're breaking a sacred vow, right? If you revert back to language, it's almost like you're desecrating, you know, the sacred pact and the sacred silence that was in place. But when we did this exercise, for example, with an insurance company to help them with company culture building and the CEO A client came to us afterwards and said that this was the single most effective measure to foster psychological safety and trust, more than many, many exercises they had also done, because at a very fundamental level, it just created a space that just didn't exist in this organization, probably many other organizations before. So yeah, I'm a big fan of silence. And I mean, this is also what I think you write about in the book, right? When it comes to envisioning your future. So much of it is just sitting with yourself and giving yourself the time to hone your mindset and to imagine from within, right? Rather than just responding to peer pressure, societal pressures, the constant stimuli of what you should be, you know, in 5 years and 10 years and what your future should look like and those many norms and expectations that are thrown at you. So silence, I think, is key to really finding out what you want for yourself in the future.

Wonderful. Thanks, thanks for taking us into those experiences that you facilitated. And I was lucky enough to join you for one of those silent dinners in Berlin. And what I've observed is that it's actually one of the most hardest things to do, right? Because you're mentioning two great points. First is you're trying to see the other person differently, right? By not interacting verbally, but by trying to really observe their behaviors, by you know, looking at them and so forth. And the second thing I think is even more profound, which is you're trying to really see yourself and you're trying to sit with your thoughts, with your emotions, with whatever arises, right, in those moments. And that is very difficult for a lot of people, including me, right, where I've observed like at that dinner in Berlin that a couple of people were actually standing up and were leaving the room, right? Finding an excuse that they needed to go somewhere else or they needed to do a call or whatever it is. So I think it was not the difficult part was not like seeing someone else, but seeing your true self. I've taken that and went on like these extended silent retreats as well, right? For 10 days and even longer. And it's one of the most difficult things, but also one of the most incredible things that you can you can do because with that silence and that intimacy that you create for yourself, you're really starting to understand your true inner self. And by doing that, I think you can also see beauty, right? You can see different things that you probably don't see when you're busy during your day, like in meetings and in interactions and conversations and in this loud environment that you're usually in, right? So there's a great quote from Anais Nin that I really like, which is, "You don't see the world as it is, you see the world as you are." Right? And if you're sitting in silence, I think you truly see yourself and you see what are the values that are coming up, what are the judgments you're making about yourself and about others and so forth. And there's another quote that I really like that relates to beauty. Which is from Confucius, which is, I think, really profound, which says, everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it. And so I think this insightful quote really highlights the inherent subjectivity of beauty, right? It's something very subjective, like not everybody sees something as beautiful. So could you elaborate a little bit about how you're trying to create that beauty in business, how you create that beauty in that global movement in the House of Beauty beautiful business and so forth. So what's the power of beauty and living in those moments of awe?

Yeah, awe is a key term, right? And as you know, Deco Keltner and others at UC Berkeley and others have done really amazing research now on the role of awe and how it motivates us and how it helps us transform and how it can actually be a very powerful force for social movements. Speaking of climate action, for example, And awe is related to beauty, I think. Both are transcendent qualities. So both awe and beauty, and maybe they overlap to some degree, I think it's very hard to define them concisely, right? But both are essentially experiences of something that is greater than yourself, of a certain vastness. I don't mean necessarily in spatial terms, but of a greatness that transcends your individual rational self. So I think moments of beauty, and I don't mean this in any sort cosmetic way or superficial way, but moments of beauty when we feel like the world is beautiful or something we encounter or someone we encounter is beautiful or a moment is beautiful. It reminds us, I think, of our best angels, right? Of sort of the best of humanity, of what is possible. It reminds us of something pure, a pure state of being, right? Sort of a promised land of purity and that that maybe we have forgotten, that we have neglected, that we have abandoned in the maelstrom of everyday work and this fierce competition that we're all, of course, now part of in a capitalist system. So I think it's moments when we're reminded of our vulnerability, of the intimacy that we're capable of. There's a beautiful quote by the Portuguese poet and writer Fernando Pessoa who once said, beauty is what does not exist, right? And I like that. So it can't quite be fully defined, it can't be measured, it can't be optimized in a sense, but it's what you project into it. And that's why it's so highly subjective. And you can find beauty in a relationship with a movie that you're watching, right? There's a certain moment or there's a scene where suddenly it's like you're so deeply touched because it reveals something true. I think maybe that's a core quality of beauty, is that not that it's true, you know, what you're experiencing or what you're seeing, but that it feels true to you. And I think when you ask people about moments in which they experience beauty, they will always say that something felt true to me. This can happen in a rave, in a nightclub in Berlin, in these moments of collective effervescence, right, where we all seem to be synced, synchronized, and we're part of something that is greater than ourselves. There's this crowd that we can find beautiful. We can find beauty in entering, as I like to do, a football stadium, you know, 2 hours before the game, and just being blown away every single time by the cathedral of play, right, that these stadiums represent. But it can also happen in doing a conversation over tea in an unremarkable, nondescript café where suddenly something is said or something happens or there's a little detail that you become aware of that reminds you of something greater, right? And I think those are all moments of beauty. And I think there's also an element of harmony, right? It's moments at which we at least believe that the system around us and the world is in order. In other words, there's an attunement, there's an alignment, of inner and outer self, inner and outer world. There's harmony between nature and us. There's harmony between other people and us. We see ourselves in the other, the others see themselves in us. There's harmony between us and other creatures, animals, right? There's a sense of harmony that everything is in order. And I think those, I would say very subjectively, are experiences and moments of beauty. But I want to come back to silence and dwell on the role of intimacy. I think at the core of this, the more I I've been working on this and thinking about beauty in business in particular, the more I've come to realize that intimacy is really key. So I think intimacy is almost like a prerequisite of beauty, right? And you can have an intimate relationship when you look at a painting in a museum, but it requires that you take the time to really look and really notice and that you pay attention to things. And this is maybe another Another prerequisite of noticing beauty is, of course, the ability to pay attention. And this is— I was just talking to D. Graham Burnett, who was a speaker at our event in New York City. He founded the Strother School of Radical Attention. He's an attention researcher and activist, and his work is fascinating. And he's essentially staging experiences, artistic intervention, that help us muster what he calls attentivity, so the ability to, to pay attention. And Talking to him, I really thought, yeah, at the heart of the so-called polycrisis, this mutually— this web of mutually compounding crises, and at the heart of our disconnection and our division and our alienation, I think, from ourselves and others, and at the heart of maybe lacking beauty so often in our lives, is this— is the lack of ability to pay attention, right? To really notice. We did an exercise, for example, in Tangier at a recent festival in Tangier, Morocco, where we did silent sea gazing. So we just— this is Gustave Flaubert's quote, who won the French Nobel, is the one said, everything is interesting if you only look at it long enough. And so we had people look at the sea for an hour and then talk about what they saw, right, and then connect to what they saw. So different than gazing, looking at each other, they looked at the sea. So it wasn't an exercise in paying attention and fostering intensity, to use D. Graham Burnett's term. And I think those are— that's another, for me, another key to accessing beauty. Wonderful.

Should we do maybe a beauty pause or something like that together where we actually practice that for just a couple of minutes, trying to give our listeners a chance to really experience this beauty and look for it specifically? Would you be open for that? Sure. Just do a quick exercise. Wonderful. Next, let's take a moment to pause and reconnect. This is your mind state moment, a chance to reset and come back to yourself, wherever you are right now. These moments of presence are powerful. They remind us that the future starts from within. By shifting how we show up in this very moment. So wherever you are, let's just begin. If you're driving in your car, if you're doing the laundry, if you're walking through a garden, if you're on an airplane, whatever it is. So I just want you to just take a deep breath in and then exhale slowly. First, let your eyes just find something that appeals to you visually. Me. Perhaps it's the play of shadows on the wall, the color of the sky, or maybe an object that holds special meaning for you. Just trying to find that around you. And I want you to observe it closely. What details stand out? How does it make you feel? And allow yourself to just fully appreciate its beauty. Next, let's tune into the sounds around you. Maybe it's the gentle hum of your surroundings, It might be a distant laughter of children, or a dog barking, the melody of a song, the cars driving by. Just choose one sound that really resonates with you at the moment. Listen attentively. And noticing its nuances and rhythm. Now bring your attention to your sense of touch, either feeling the weight of something in your hand, or the softness of the fabric you're wearing, or maybe the coolness of the air on your skin. And just focus on the sensations and consider why they are comforting or pleasing you. Let's take another deep breath in and just exhale. By engaging your senses to just notice these 3 beautiful things, like what we see, what we hear, and what we can feel, I think you've connected more deeply with the present moment. You just recognize how this awareness influences your mood and maybe perhaps bringing a sense of calm and gratitude or even joy. And these beauty pauses I think are accessible to all of us, right? Engaging our senses and just trying to give ourselves a couple of minutes to really see and hear and feel the beauty or even taste the beauty. That really leads to, I think, calmness and that gratitude and maybe a feel of joy for all of us. So thanks for engaging in that quick exercise. So I want to ask you about something you mentioned earlier, which is that connection between beauty and the future, right? Because you mentioned that quote that beauty is something that is not there yet or not defined yet or not accessible yet. And so that is also a definition of the future, right? Because it hasn't happened yet, right? It's something that is unknown that maybe creates an emotion for us, right? Sometimes it creates anxiety. Sometimes it creates excitement. So how would you connect those two elements, beauty and the future? And how can we make use of that connection so that we can use that lens of beauty to really also shape maybe a more beautiful future?

Yeah, first of all, the term beautiful is so powerful. When we confront people with the term beautiful or we ask them in our workshops or with clients or at our festival to imagine the future, we found that it means so much more to people if the future is beautiful. So they want the future to be beautiful. They want to lead a beautiful life rather than to say, The future should be just. The future should be inclusive. The future should be sustainable. The future should be purposeful. The future should be productive. The future should be successful. You know, the future should be peaceful. Those are all really important adjectives and you could give them different weight, but beautiful is the one term I believe that connects us all. And so if we think about the future, I think we should always think about the future as something that is beautiful. And that probably means that it's in a way achievable but also never achievable, right? So it's definitely within our grasp in a sense, but if we ever fully materialize it, it will probably also lose its appeal and its beauty in a sense, right? If we really fully understand beauty and codify it and implement it, it's probably gone. So there is an aspirational quality to it or sort of a mystique to it that I think is also inherent in the, in the quality, in the definition of beauty. And I think that's maybe the question, that's how I would connect the two, is what does it mean for you to have a beautiful future? And often this goes back to what we talked about earlier. Often it is, when I mentioned the two different possible visions for me, often it is your unlived life, right? It's It's sort of, again, the negative space. It's something that you have suppressed or that is a source of trauma or something that you're carrying with you, but you have never been able to fully turn it into action or manifest it for yourself. I think a lot of people would say there's an unlived dream, there's an unlived wanting, an unlived desire. You know, the British psychiatrist and writer Adam Phillips once said, "Nothing matters more than what never happened." And I think that's very true, right? When we think about our future, we always think also about the things that have never happened that we actually wanted to happen. It's maybe an unrequited love, it's an unfulfilled dream, it's a passion that we are almost like coy about, we don't want to admit. And often I think going to these places, to these unlived lives, to those things that have not happened yet, right, but that sort of attract us and that have a lot of power over us. I think that's sometimes, if not most often, where the beauty is hiding, right? So I would just encourage us to go to these places, you know, and I think in my case, for example, after I started as a musician, first of all, I studied law, then I had a musical career which was not commercially very viable. I went back to university and then I worked in marketing. I worked in Silicon Valley like you, Frederic. I worked in marketing and for a design firm, but it took me really 40 years of my life until I came home to what I did when I was 14 or 15, which was to play with fake toys and create fake publishing companies and curate conferences. I did this when I was a child, you know, 12, I was playing with toys doing that. And that's exactly what I'm doing now. And I think for 20 years or so, when I was in the corporate world, I think I was trying to function within that and succeed within that and was quite shy about going back to the roots of what I really wanted to do and what a beautiful future for me entailed, which was really to create and to connect people and to curate and to create art and to create experiences that, that may not even be impactful in terms of political resonance or societal impact, but that are just impactful because for a moment we are reminded of the beauty that's possible, you know. And I think that goes a long way, and that's just enough for me in terms of my own work that, you know, I think kind of gives me enough satisfaction and justifies why I'm doing what I'm doing. So, yeah, that's probably how I would connect it to concepts beauty and future.

And most people look for these practices or small changes that they can try out in their lives to really start to shape that maybe more beautiful future for themselves, right? So what would be the 2 or 3 things that you would suggest people can start doing now to move towards that beautiful future for themselves?

Oh, there's so many things. I think it starts with self-awareness. So it means really becoming aware of, as you talked about this earlier, Frederic, right? This, the impossibility really of being alone with ourselves, the famous experiment that showed that we'd rather receive mild electroshocks than being alone with our thoughts, right? So I think just being alone with ourselves, tuning into our body, our mind, this can be a somatic body exercise. Meditation. I think that's always the starting point. It's to really listen inward and see ourselves truly. This could also happen in the form of a silent dinner or a silent retreat. And then I think the next step is to build muscle, or maybe to play a little bit and to manifest possible futures. And this can happen by role-playing. You know, you can act, you can fake it until you become it, you know, to quote— what's her name— Amy Cuddly, any other famous TED speaker? I forgot her name. You can embody these various pursuits or possibilities for your future. And this can include that you do things that you're quite uncomfortable with. So, you know, if you're afraid of sharks everywhere, even in infinity pools like I am, then swimming in the Aegean Sea, which I did this summer, it's like a foray into a different kind of self. And future. It can be that you give a talk when you're quite uncomfortable with public speaking and you tell, you speak your truth in front of an audience. Something also that I found quite helpful that I did before I wrote my first book is I convened an inner circle. This is an idea that Priya Parker, the author of The Art of Gathering, who worked with me at the time, suggested. And so I summoned I believe it was 10 or 12 people to Munich and we sat together for a day and I essentially told them about what I wanted in my future, which was the argument of my book The Business Romantic and how I would use it in the next few years and how I would live it. Kind of putting myself out there and saying, you are the witnesses, this is very raw still, will you be part of this journey, do you have any feedback for me and encouragement? And by making this future self quasi-public, at least to a group of of 12 people or so, I became accountable, right? It became real. It became concrete rather than just being in my mind, and suddenly it was there. So I felt this need and the obligation to act on it. So I think this is also another really interesting tool, that once you've listened inward and you imagine the future, is then to articulate it in front of others, right? And this can be a dinner conversation, it can be a talk that you give at a conference, if that's at your disposal, or it's something you write, it's a blog post, it's a book, no matter how big, no matter how small, but articulating it, verbalizing it, I think really helps. And then I think it's also being very open to other ideas, you know, in terms of like your imagination. There's this beautiful book that my friend and colleague Martin Reeves, who was the chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute, wrote, The Imagination Imagination Machine, looking at the role of imagination in innovation and in business overall. Because imagination is still a bit belittled as kind of a fantasy term. It's the realm of writers, but it's not business. In business, it's innovation. Creativity is the term that we're more comfortable with. But imagination is actually a much broader, much more powerful and deeper capacity, right? It's to really imagine something that does not exist at all, right? It's like what science fiction writers do. Moral imagination comes into play. There's an empathy component to it as well. So I think mustering your imagination is really key, and you can do that by being an active imagineer, if you will, but it's also about constantly exposing yourself to the imaginations of others. So I remember what our founder Hartmut Esslinger, the founder of Frog Design, the company that I worked at for several years in the Bay Area, always told me, he said, well, if you're interested in your next business idea, go to the ballet, you know, read Dostoevsky, you know, read poetry, right? So, and if that's something you do every day, then maybe do the exact opposite, right? And go to a neuroscience seminar. But I think it's all about like, I think, widening your brain, right? And really connecting with things that are a little bit outside of your usual operational routine. I think all of that can instigate imagination. Yeah. And if you— I think these are just some of the practices I would recommend from the very basic to the more advanced activities.

So would you say there's beauty in AI? And let me give a little context, right? I think when you talk about intimacy, we can observe that there is now a lot of intimacy around the world where people share more and more with their AIs, right? You know, a tool you're using or technology or an app, whatever it is, right? You're going sometimes very deep sharing your your dreams, your— maybe the questions you have for sure, things that you're unsure about and so forth. So I think there's an intimacy that is created between humans and AI at the moment. So would you see— and we might tap into your imagination now— would you see a future that is more beautiful when we have these intimate relationships with AI?

You know, we actually had a couple of sessions and even a workgroup on this topic. Can AI be beautiful? I mean, in many ways, that's one of the most important questions, I believe. If we want to create a beautiful future or a future that's more beautiful, then AI will be a big part of it, whether we like it or not. And I used to say, even in the presentation I think that you attended in San Francisco, Frederic, that I believe Intimacy is inherently human because it requires vulnerability, which is also inherently human trait. If we can't suffer, then we cannot develop intimacy. And suffering is not something arguably that machines or AI can do, right? There's no suffering. Nick Cave, the writer, also wrote about this really beautifully and said, you know, AI will never have to overcome any boundaries in a sense. There's no transcendence, right? There's no suffering from which it can lift itself. Its spirits. But to be honest, I'm not so sure anymore. I think I've changed my mind there a bit, or at least I'm open to having it challenged. Because I think maybe intimacy and maybe beauty as a result of it is actually— it can be a parasocial quality, right? So you can maybe feel intimacy with a celebrity you've never met, but this person is very close to you and you feel something like intimacy. And beauty is maybe also not a personal or interpersonal quality. It's maybe something that is generated between two entities, right? That sort of transcends the dialogue or the exchange between two people or a machine and a person. And I think it is possible in the conversations with humans and AI, you know, chatbots or romantic partners or friends, we see so many of these chatbots now basically assuming the function, right, in this role, often for the elderly or for teenagers, right, or for others for whom having an AI chatbot as friend, as romantic partner, is actually a powerful device against their loneliness and isolation. And in the exchange with AI chatbots, why would there not be moments of beauty? Like, why do we have this arrogant belief that we are at the pinnacle of of evolution and only we are able to create beauty in the form of an intimate exchange with another entity. Maybe in the exchange with AI, something like beauty or beautiful moments can arise and they're possible, right? And why should that not be the case? Why are we so human-centric and so myopic in a way that we wouldn't allow that to happen? And AI is creating new meaning, right? It's creating a new language. Our language will change. It's changing how we think, changing how we feel. There's, you know, on the one hand, I think this possibility that it will really enrich our world, you know, it might change us humans and many of the things that we hold dear to our heart that we see they are inherently human. And I think they will be gone or they will change. We might not even remember what it was like. So the world will be very different. And maybe it will not be human-centered anymore. But will it be less beautiful? I don't know. There is, of course, this dystopian view. And I'm not even so worried about extinction scenarios in that sense that AI— I mean, I do see the danger, but I'm not so worried about it. But I'm more worried about AI leading to a very monochromatic reductionist world, right, where it's just about optimizing and it's sort of the lowest common denominator. There's already research saying that these tools essentially now being fed with their own data and synthetic data, they're becoming just like all the LLMs, the large language models, models are becoming more or less alike. And so there's a real danger of jeopardizing diversity of thinking and diversity of expression and cultures. But if we— and this is maybe one proposal that I would have— is if we bring in other disciplines, we just had a speaker, Wakanye Hoffman, who's doing research on indigenous wisdom and how it might inform a more beautiful version of AI. If we make AI poetic, and if we imbue language into it that is not just about productivity and efficiency and this illusion of providing us objective knowledge, but actually giving us wisdom and creating a different brand of being that we embrace as a coexistence, a really different way of— a different form of intelligence, it might overall, in concert with with us, it might overall lead to a more beautiful future. I don't think we should rule that out. There are dangers, but I think more so maybe than last year or 2 years ago, I do see the possibility of beauty with AI. And I hope, I mean, if I weren't seeing it, I don't think I would be able to envision a beautiful future because that future will involve AI for sure.

You mentioned that you changed your mind. Was there a specific moment in the past or a specific experience that you had that made you change your mind on your view on AI, the future, and if it could be beautiful?

It wasn't so much a moment. It was more listening to a lot of conversations, speaking with, for example, the Nigerian philosopher Bayo Akomolafe, who was our philosopher-in-residence, who calls himself a posthumanist. Who in a really interesting conversation reminded me that, or suggested that AI might actually be, it's humbling us. And in a way, it's bringing us back to a pre-enlightenment, pre-human-centered era. So it's kind of like a decolonizing tool for him, you know. And I thought that was quite interesting. We've objectified knowledge. We made knowledge scientific. We made it rationally. Evident, we reduced it in a way. And maybe there's a way for AI to remind us of the— because AI is also really a black box. It's in a way unpredictable, right? There's not a single AI engineer in the world who can truly predict what it will produce in terms of responses. And every response is different. So there's something about the volatility and the unpredictability of AI that actually is very raw and that disrupts and challenges our enlightenment based rational thinking and this idea that we're at the center of the world and that we only have enough data and objective knowledge we can control and manage and exploit this world. And this humbling is an opening. This humbling is maybe an opportunity also to think about our role and how we want to coexist with AI in the future. So maybe that's a too optimistic or naive or utopian way of reading it. But I think that conversation with him, I think, was maybe one of the moments that maybe really changed my mind.

You highlighted human-centeredness 4 times in the last 5 minutes. So it seems to be a very important concept for you, right? Basing our designs and ideas on human needs. But you also promote something that might be an evolution of human-centeredness, which is life-centeredness, right? Can you talk a little bit about that evolution? And is there something beyond life-centeredness?

Yeah, so human-centered, I used it also because really as a foe now almost. And when we started the House of Beautiful Business in 2017, human-centered was what we really tried to promote, right? Human-centered was not necessarily taken for granted in business, which was at the time very tech-driven and cold and technocratic and data-obsessed. That conversation changed. We had all the conversations about purpose and sustainability and ESG. And also, I think emotional intelligence and of course, inclusivity, DEI. So there's a very different understanding now, I think, of business in the workplace. And it became, for what it's worth, I think it became more human-centered. And I think most organizations, most CEOs right now would agree that they want a human-centered organization, they want human-centered products, they want human-centered business model. I think the caveat there is that, of course, by making everything human-centered, so catering to our needs for convenience and comfort and winning and knowing and controlling and managing, we produce all these externalities that are now coming to haunt us, right, that are very much the crux of the polycrisis. Whether that's nature or it's mental health, it's basically exploiting our own inner resources. So we're paying a high price for having moved the human to the center at the expense of nature and the environment and other life on Earth. And maybe even, this is also an interesting, of course, emerging field, interplanetary life, right, and interplanetary being. And I think we're in this moment of great humbling, and COVID certainly also fueled that. I think it was also a moment of like, oh my God, we're quite brittle, we're quite fickle as a species. We're not as strong as we thought we might be. Nature is strong, stronger than us. And restoring this connection to nature and to life itself is, I think, really, pun intended, vital for creating a more beautiful future. And it means also that we're honoring the life around us, animals, nature, interplanetary, but also maybe the mystic spheres that we can't quite even name that surround us, the energy, the aura. That I mentioned earlier, you might call that spiritual or not, and your own inner life, right, that we so often suppress, especially at work where all of the life that is inside us, all of the uncomfortable emotions also, negative emotions, even though they might not be negative but they're often called negative, sorrow, melancholy, rage, anger, we don't really want to bring them to work, right? We bring the happy, shiny, consistent self. So also allowing life to be much richer inside us and expressing it, I believe, is really a vital ingredient of a more beautiful future, right? I think we'll be much more in harmony with ourselves if we allow that, and we would be much more in harmony with everything that surrounds us if we do that. And vitality or vibrancy and feeling alive is also a key component of beauty or of this idea of leading a beautiful life, right? So this is also based on many conversations that we had with with people at work or other people that they're saying, what I want is I want to feel alive, right? And they're seeking experiences, whether that is Burning Man or it's football or it's a concert or it's extreme sports or it's travel or it's a new encounter or a new romance. All of that, I think, have in common that it makes you feel alive, right? And so I think that's what we mean with the life-centered economy, which is now at the, really at the heart of our mission. We want to create a life-centered economy. And that, by the way, is also an economy where we consider AI also as a form of life, right? It doesn't matter how it was generated. It doesn't matter that it's not biological, organic life. Who are we to determine what life is, right? It is a part of our reality now, and it is evolving, and it is an organism of sorts. So I think if you apply those definitions of life I think it also is a form of life. So it's the idea of a much broader, more holistic economy household that I believe is really— is increasingly replacing this now a bit quaint concept of the human-centered economy.

I love how you describe that evolution, right, from focusing on our human needs to focusing on life needs and what life is all about. And you described that beautifully. So I feel like this is what everybody should probably take away, where the focus should be really on that notion, what makes me alive and what makes me feel alive? And how can I use those moments to also look for the beauty, to combine those two things together again? To bring in the future into that equation, maybe there is a future-centered movement as well, because that's something that's on everybody's minds, right? Everybody wants to figure out like, what's going to happen next, right? And what can I create next? Or what should I create next? And for me, it's really important to not see the future as something that happens to us, right? And we're passively recipients of the future. But it's something that we actively shape, right, that we have control over. And if we put life-centered into that focus and saying like, you know, what makes me feel alive, what makes my future feel more alive for myself, I think we are on a better path moving forward. So, Tim, I have to say, this has been like a truly inspiring conversation, which also you know, has had some practical elements, right, where people actually, you know, can, can take something for themselves and do those small changes in their lives to really create a more beautiful future for themselves. Is there anything more that you want to share before I ask you the last question?

I would just add to that, Fredrik, that it's not just about creating a more beautiful future for myself, right, for ourselves is I think what is also so important now is that we create a beautiful future for others, right? And maybe others in particular who, not like us, unlike us, have maybe less agency or a sense of agency and the ability to actually shape their own future. And so often when— and I think I would really insist on that— so often when we talk about beauty or intimacy, vulnerability, right, I think there's always a bit of this discomfort also with these terms because we're thinking, "Oh my God," in the world as it presents itself now, which in many ways is hardening, right? So I just look at the conflicts and the wars in the Middle East, Ukraine, elsewhere, and all the suffering and all the horror and injustice. You might think this is quite sort of ludicrous or even obscene to talk about beauty as something worth aspiring for. But But I think that's also not quite right. I think if we conceive of beauty as something that helps us develop a relationship to others, if it fosters intimacy, if it helps us to see other worlds, to quote Arne Eisenman, right? We see the world as who we are and really understand who we are, who the other is, and seeing the other and seeing the beauty with others. I mean, this may sound soft and may sound a bit yeah, too playful, but I do believe that it actually has— there's a significant contribution there, that beauty can save the world, you know, if we really foster those resources. So there is also a political component to it that I don't think we should just dismiss. And that's important, I think, you know. I just wanted to add that because so often when you have these conversations and it's about like, what's my future and how do we envision a more beautiful future for ourselves, Yes, that's important, but it becomes truly beautiful, of course, if it's more beautiful for more of us.

So what's next for Tim? And I want to focus that question a little bit, right? I like to ask people around how do you want to be in the future, right? Because I think that's for me a very important question. I mostly hear people talking about like what they want to have in the future, right? Or what position or careers they want to pursue in the future, or even like materialistic things like what they want to, you know, get in the future, right? I rather focus the conversation of how do you want to be in the future, because I feel like that's fully in our control, right? We have control over how do we show up tomorrow. How do we show up for ourselves? How do we show up for others? And so I just want to ask you that question, like, how do you want to be in the future? Like, are there any things that, you know, you want to exercise in terms of like human values? Like, you know, I think we all want to be more kind, hopefully in the future. We want to be more loving. We want to be more empathetic. So yeah, I just want to leave that question with you.

I want to answer this question by citing fellow business romantic Warren Buffett, who I just read today said something really beautiful. He was talking about winning and losing and he said, "In the future, winners are not going to be those who have financial wealth or have a formidable career and moving upward and climbing up the social ladder and have power." He said the distinction between those who will be winners, he called them, or losers, you could also say, those who have a beautiful life and those who don't, is, are they loved by those who they want to be loved by? You know, so the question is really, who do you want to love you? And are you loved by those? And I thought it was such a good question. And maybe that's also what I really want. I think I want to be loved by those who, like, you know, who I want to love me. And I want to be loving. And in my particular case, I think, I think I want to be a better father. You know, I have a 14-year-old daughter, um, and yeah, just be in the next 10, 20— like, I look forward to how that relationship might evolve, and I just want to be more present and, and hope that some of the beauty that we today, that we talked about today, that, that's accessible for her and her faculties, and that I help her do so. And Yeah, and I think, I don't know about you, but with age, I'm 52, I'm trying to be more wise and less enraged, maybe less judgmental, you know. I mean, I also tend to be quite judgmental. Maybe that's something that's our German upbringing, you know, conditions us to be in a way. I try to be less judgmental, be more embracing of many forms of life and what people want to do with them. So yeah, if I accomplish just one of those I just mentioned, then I look forward to the future.

And that brings us back to something that you've shared in the beginning, which is being vulnerable with each other, right? And I think as soon as you share that you want to be more loved and you want to love more, right? And your daughter is going to listen to that. I think there's going to be a great path forward, right? Because now we've shared it, we put it out into the world. We are now vulnerable in a way, but also we have that contract with each other around, like, you know, being more loved and loving more. And so that was a wonderful first step, Tim, and I think all of our listeners can hopefully follow, right? Where just ask yourself that question, how do you want to be in the future? And then maybe share that with someone else that you're close with or that you haven't spoken to even for a while. And I think that moves you towards a better future for yourself and hopefully for others too. So today I'm just very honored to have you on this podcast with us, The Future Is How. As we've learned that embracing beauty and intimacy around us and even within us, we really can enrich our lives and influence the future we are creating. It's all about making these small and mindful choices that lead to greater fulfillment and connection. So listeners, I encourage you to incorporate maybe the beauty pause that we've done into your daily routine. Some of the practices that Tim has shared and just experiment your way to the future, right? I think these moments of appreciation can open doors to new insights and possibilities you might have otherwise missed. So, Tim, it has been a true pleasure to have you on the show, and thank you for sharing your wisdom. I think you're already a very wise human being, so, and inspiring us to see the beauty in our everyday lives and in our future as well. And to our listeners, thank you for joining us on The Future Is How. Remember, with your focus on the beauty all around you and inside you, this is how you create a more beautiful future for yourself and for others. So let's continue on this journey towards a better tomorrow, starting with a better you, and looking forward to seeing you in the future. Thank you so much. That's a wrap for today's episode of The Future Is How. Remember, the future isn't something we wait for. It's something we create with every choice, every breath, and every step we take. If this episode sparked something in you, share it with someone who's ready to shape what's next. And don't forget to subscribe and leave review. Your next chapter begins now. So what will you create today? I'll see you in your future.