[MUSIC PLAYING]
DAVID PEARL: People often ask me,
how did I get from the stage to the boardroom.
Business is theatre.
Life is acting.
From my perspective, what seemed initially to be two very
separate worlds have really blurred together.
The business world has got stuff to teach the arts,
and vice versa.
And I just love to work in this middle space where we all live.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
It's really a privilege, actually,
to be working with some of the world's most influential people
and organizations.
There are some inspiring and quite amazing
people in the business world.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
I spend my day helping other people find peace amidst
the busyness.
I think it's got to do with noticing the micromoments,
the gaps between things.
You ask people, describe a breath, and they'll say,
it's got an in-breath, and an out-breath.
But they miss the fact that in the middle there's a gap.
And if you start to look, there are gaps in your day,
there are gaps in your thinking.
So I think, go to the gaps, and let the gaps increase.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Wherever I'm working, people tell me they have no time,
there's not enough time.
And in a way, it's true-- their agenda is full.
But what I've noticed, given my background as a musician,
is you can have lots of notes.
[PIANO PLAYING]
But you can have a slower tempo.
[PIANO PLAYING]
The day may sound like duggaduggaduggaduggada.
But actually underneath, there's a slow beat.
Da, da, da.
And the successful people that I know
manage to, amidst all the noise and busyness,
find those slow tempos.
Like a slow cadence on a bike.
It's like they find a slow beat.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
The thing about performing, and every performer's different,
but for me there's that moment which, I guess, you call slow.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
For me, it's when you feel that you aren't singing,
you are being sung.
It's like you are connected to the people around you,
and no one's thinking, you're all thinking.
No one's singing, you're all singing.
This is addictive, I have to say.
It's an amazing feeling of connection,
but it's very addictive.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
The thing about being a performer
is you have to learn how to love your mistakes.
It's easy to say, we say it in business a lot.
And I think that takes real time for that to become real,
because there's a part of you that is desperate for it
to go well.
You want the approval of the audience.
But what you start to notice over time
is that what the audience really loves
is to see you get out of difficulty.
They don't want to see you slickly handling everything,
they want to see you dig yourself out of trouble.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Pull yourself back into a race, recover what you thought
was lost.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
So in a weird way, if you get through a performance
and you haven't come close to messing up,
you haven't really gone for it, is my feeling.
But it takes time.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
People come to the theater looking for something
extraordinary, but really what the theatre usually does is it
just shows ordinary stuff so you can see the extraordinary
in it.
I was thinking about this business
about ordinary and routine, and how easily the routine can
become something amazing.
And I was just thinking this, this is like dull, right?
Listen.
[PIANO PLAYING]
Sounds like, oh my God, when will it end?
But then you add a bassline.
[PIANO PLAYING]
And then you add a melody.
And the thought that runs through my head
all the time, whether I'm working
in business or on stages, I think
you can wait your whole life for something
extraordinary to happen to you, or you can just
look at what's happening and recognize that it
is pretty extraordinary.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Magic.