Transcription
[Music] I found that nothing in life is worthwhile unless you take risks. Nothing. Nelson Mandela said, “There is no passion to be found playing small and settling for a life that's less than the one you're capable of living.” Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked; there is no reason not to follow your heart now.
Fear is going to be a player in your life, but you get to decide how much. You can spend your whole life imagining ghosts, worrying about the pathway to the future, but all there will ever be is what's happening here and the decisions we make in this moment, which are based in either love or fear. So many of us choose our path out of fear disguised as practicality. What we really want seems impossibly out of reach and ridiculous to expect, so we never dare to ask the universe for it. I'm saying I'm the proof that you can ask the universe for it. Fail big.
Today is the beginning of the rest of your life, and it can be very frightening. It's a new world out there; it's a mean world out there, and you only live once, so do what you feel passionate about. Take chances. If we stay in process, all right within ourselves, in the joy of the doing, we will never choke at the finish line because we aren't thinking of the finish line. Cuz we're not looking at the clock; we're not watching ourselves on the Jumbotron performing the very act that we're in the middle of. No, we're in process. The approach is the destination, and we are never finished.
Don't be afraid to think outside the box. Don't be afraid to fail big, to dream big, big. But remember, dreams without goals are just dreams. If you don't know what you want to be when you grow up and you're 30, that's just fine. But I don't want to have to blame you for not exposing yourself to what you can be when you grow up. If you're sitting home watching football and say, "I don't know what I want to do with my life," why don't you do what my parents did? Visit a new thing every weekend. Go on a trip. Talk to experts and all manner of tasks and, uh, you know, visit a chef school, visit a geology expedition. Do just do things. And if you like it, you'll probably be better at that than anything else you choose to do because you you will invest even your downtime doing it. And as the saying goes, pick something you would do for free and make that your career, and you'll never live a sad day in your life.
My father could have been a great comedian, but he didn't believe that that was possible for him, and so he made a conservative choice instead. He got a safe job as an accountant, and when I was 12 years old, he was let go from that safe job, and our family had to do whatever we could to survive. I learned many great lessons from my father, not the least of which was that you can fail at what you don't want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love. Joy is the feeling that we have from doing what we are fashioned to do, no matter the outcome.
I started enjoying my work and literally being more happy when I stopped trying to make the daily labor a means to a certain end. For example, uh, I need this film to be a box office success. You know, I need my performance to be acknowledged. I need the respect of my peers, and all those are reasonable aspirations, but the truth is, as soon as the work, the daily making of the movie, the doing of the deed became the reward in itself for me, I got more box office, more accolades, and respect than I ever had before. See, joy is always in process, to under construction; it is in constant approach, alive and well in the doing of what we're fashioned to do and enjoying, of course.
It was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college, but it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something: your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give, give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference. You will at some point fall, and when you do, I want you to know this, remember this: there is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction.
Now, when you're down there in a hole, it looks like failure, and when you're down in the hole, when that moment comes, it's really okay to feel bad for a little while. Give yourself time to mourn what you think you may have lost, but then here's the key: learn from every mistake. Almost any path you take will make you wiser as a person. It's not just knowledge; what is the arc? It's there's data. Data can become information; information on further study becomes knowledge, and after enough time, when you see how the knowledge plugs in and applies, it can become wisdom. Wisdom is the distilled essence of all the details. Listen to people's comments; people have life experience; don't ignore it, but what you want to do is fold it in to your own sensibilities. Every failed experiment is one step closer to success.
You've got to take risks, and I'm sure you've probably heard that before, but I want to talk to you about why that's so important. Life's not fair; it never was; it isn't now, and it won't ever be. Do not fall into the trap, the entitlement trap, a feeling like you're a victim. You are not. Get over it and get on with it. And yes, most things are more rewarding when you break a sweat to get them. And when I say life doesn't happen to you, it happens for you, I really don't know if that's true; I'm just making a conscious choice to perceive challenges as something beneficial that I can deal with them in the most productive way. Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life because almost everything, all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.
So first we have to define success for ourselves, and then we have to put in the work to maintain it. Hard work works. Working really hard is what successful people do. And in this text, tweet, quirk world that you've grown up in, remember, just because you're doing a lot more doesn't mean you're getting a lot more done. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it, and like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking; don't settle. That peace that we're after lies somewhere beyond personality, beyond the perception of others, beyond invention and disguise, even beyond effort itself. You can join the game, fight the wars, play with form all you want, but to find real peace you have to let the armor go. Your need for acceptance can make you invisible in this world. Don't let anything stand in the way of the light that shines through this form. Risk being seen in all of your [Applause] [Music] [Music] glory [Music].