Alright listen and listen well because no truer words are ever gonna be spoken.
You can do anything you want without limitation. Whatever it is that you
decide you want to make come true in your life, you can do that. It is gonna
take an inhuman amount of work, you're gonna have to be prepared to break
yourself in half, you are going to have to learn more than anyone has ever
learned, you're gonna have to push yourself harder than anyone has ever
asked you to push yourself before, you're gonna go way beyond your breaking point
you're gonna run until you vomit, you're gonna study until you fall asleep, you're
going to push and push and push and then you're gonna push some more and when you
hit the limit you're gonna push again beyond that. You're gonna force yourself
to an adaptation response and 'why?' because as Malcolm X said the future
belongs to those who prepare for it today. So if you don't put the work in
today if you don't do the unending back breaking work of developing
yourself into something greater the world is gonna pass you by. The people
that are going to own it are gonna be the ones that did that work and the one
promise that I can make you right now is that somebody- somebody out there is out
working, somebody right now is doing the things that I'm saying Somebody right
now is doing the work of failing and getting up and getting better and
pushing themselves and triggering that glorious adaptation response that makes
humans the apex predator. Someone right now they're putting in that work
and if you don't the future is gonna belong to them and as Martin Luther King
jr. said if you can't fly than run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk
then crawl but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward. It's not okay to
make excuses, it's not gonna slow people down, it's not okay to ask the world to
stop so that you can step out front, it's not okay to expect little of yourself
and demand great rewards. The only thing that's okay is to be in line with the
way that the world really works and if you want to be great you've got to
become capable of greatness. You've got to develop your skill set, you've got to
take what you have now and if that's crawling then crawl but you drag
yourself ever forward to a vision of yourself that is so clear and so
specific that nothing could knock you off your path because you my friends
know exactly where you're going, you're
willing to pay whatever price it takes to get there and no matter what anybody
says no matter how many hecklers come for you, no matter how many people try to
throw dirt on you, try to stop you, try to knock you down, no matter how many
people come for you at night while you sleep, you will rise and you will keep
pushing forward and you will get better every day
and no matter how many times people chop at you, knock you down, knock you off the
path you will get back on, you will crawl til you can walk, you will walk till you can
run and then you will run until you fly and that my friends is the only path
forward so if you want a future that makes you happy, if you want a world that
you're excited about, get your ass out there and earn it.
Give me the book back, take the book hey bro that's my chicken bro. Chicken?
Justin? Justin what is you doing man? What's up yeah ah what is you doing bro? I'm just playin
I ain't robbing iou-y'all thought it was for real y'all know me I be joking and stuff
What about the job man I ain't got no job why you should have stayed at school bro man got you
education man can't even mess with you man he right here robbing people man cool off
stupid like oh yeah just like that?
As Derek Jeter said, there may be people who have more talent than you but
there's no excuse for anyone to work harder than you do. At the end of the day
whether you believe in talent or not is completely irrelevant.
Everyone should believe in hard work, everything in your life is literally a
result of that. You're born an infant. a lump of flesh that can't even hold its
own head up and yet somehow by practicing, by learning, by growing you're
able to get better. You're literally incapable of anything when you're born
every skill that you have in your life all the things that you take for granted
at one point you couldn't do them so understanding that humans truly are an
adaptation machine and that they are capable of acquiring any skill that they
want but it requires hard work, it requires that you do the reps, it
requires that you put in the effort and at the end of the day the people that
you're going to surpass are not going to be the people that have less talent than
you maybe they even have more talent than you it's going to be the people
that you're willing to outwork but until you're willing to outwork them you're
always going to be stuck and as John Irving said to do anything really well
you have to overextend yourself and that's the key. If you want to put in an
extraordinary performance, if you want to absolutely dazzle people then you have
to do something amazing. You have to be willing to put yourself
out there, you have to be willing to do things that other people think are gonna
break you, that other people simply believe there's no way that you could be
able to pull that off, that the human animal just is not capable of the lemgths
to which you are professing to go and when you profess it you have to be
willing to back it up and you have to put yourself on that March knowing in no
uncertain terms, under no circumstances and for no reason whatsoever would you
ever be willing to back down and when you go in with that level of certainty
then and only then are you actually going to be able to pull this off and
as Billie Jean King said champions keep playing until they get it right
Fatigue will literally chip away at your will to win it is the thing inside of
your mind that weak voice that tells you that you're not going to be able to make
it, the weak voice that begs you to stop and the weak voice that promises safety
and security if you would just quit and here's the worst part about that- it's
right. if you quit right now, if you stop just
sit down, relax, you're not at risk anymore, you're not a risk of
embarrassment, you're not at risk of failure but you're also not at risk of
greatness and if you really want to achieve
something you've gotta find ways to put yourself at risk of something great
happening you've got to put yourself at risk of overextending yourself. You've
got to be willing to face that you may die that you may actually fall and
here's the thing for the people that dismiss that that say they would never
put themselves in that situation then you have limits and make no mistake
those limits are self placed and for the people that are willing to push that, for
people that are willing to go beyond that, for people who understand there are
things in this world that they're prepared to die for and it is the thing
that they put at the center of their life, it is the thing that they are
living for but they're not gonna stop and they understand that where the human
mind thinks it will break is far short of where it will actually break but
before you can find that point you've got to be willing to push yourself
you've got to be willing to go harder and farther than anybody thinks is
reasonable or sensible, that's the path and so the question is can you be
thought a fool? The question is do you believe in something so much that you
would put yourself at risk like that? The question is can you face down everyone
including the weak voice inside of your own mind to make the world come true
that you want to see come true because at the end of the day nobody's gonna do
it for you so if you're a champion, keep going until it's done.
As Nelson Mandela said education is the most powerful weapon you can use to
change the world. Wherever you are right now listening to this, I want you to burn
that into your mind. The most powerful weapon that you're going to have at your
disposal isn't a gun, it isn't a sword, it isn't a bomb, the most powerful weapon
you will ever have at your disposal if you really want to make change is
knowledge. It doesn't mean going to school. It can be school, it can be books
it can be a mentor, it can be somebody else's failure, it can be your own
failure but whatever it is to always be learning. To be learning something today
knowing that that's an investment and as Robert Louis Stevenson said don't judge
each day by the harvest you reap but rather by the seeds you plant and that's
what knowledge is. That's what the learning process is- is you're learning
something today that you may not even understand how it's going to be valuable
a one day that piece of knowledge is gonna come to
your aid one day that thing that you learned is going to be something that
you're gonna lean on one day, that thing that you've worked your ass off to
understand better than anybody else in the world, it's going to help you change
the world but you have to be doing it now, you have to be learning with an
obsession, you have to understand that ideas in equal ideas out and that you
have to chase that knowledge down, that it is a relentless pursuit and that like
you would build an armada, like you would create a stock pile of weapons, you must
create a stockpile of knowledge. You must learn and learn and learn and you must
hold yourself accountable every day to planting those seeds, to getting better,
to learning more, to understanding things more broadly, when you do that
there will be nothing that won't be unlocked to you and that's what I want you guys to
understand. It doesn't matter matter where you started your
circumstances, the money, the people that you know, none of it matters. What matters
is how much you are willing to learn, how good are you willing to get, how much
knowledge are you willing to soak in because that will become your weapon
that will be how you rise up and that would be the thing that will protect you
when you need it most.
So if you want to do something incredible tomorrow, learn today.