Well, we used to look up at the sky and wonder
at our place in the stars.
I want to skip the flattery and the attaboys.
Because I do know this.
The sooner that we become less impressed
with our life,
with our accomplishments,
with our career,
with whatever that prospect is in front of us,
the sooner we become less impressed and more involved
with that and these things,
the sooner we get a whole lot better
at doing it.
It's like we've forgotten who we are now.
Explorers, pioneers, not caretakers.
Now, why do you pursue things that scare you?
Why seek the role that's hard?
Because it cost me something.
Because it costs,
it comes with a price.
it's not really a risk unless you lose the fight.
I feel more alive in them.
I have an experience in the making of them.
I'm nervous every day I come to work.
There are things you can get away with in this world,
and there are things you can't.
Life is not easy. It is not. Don't try to make it that way.
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"
of 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.
I feel like, when I nail a day
and I knock and I know I did, I feel like, Yes.
I have a measure at the end of the day like
you set out to do something,
you prepared for it, you had the intention and you did it.
That gives me gratification,
that makes me feel,
gives me significance,
that gives me confidence
to be brave,
have courage,
and when you do,
you get stronger,
you get more aware,
you get more respectful
of yourself,
and that which you fear.
I want to talk about our opponent
this afternoon.
They're bigger, faster,
stronger, more experienced
and on paper, they're just better
and they know it too.
I want to tell you something that they don't know
they don't know your heart.
Because heading out there is what I feel like I was born to do
and it excites me.
Just because you can?
No. Come on
it's not a good enough reason to do something
even when it means having more,
be discerning,
choose IT
because YOU want it.
Do IT because YOU want to.
It's on you.
We remember the stuff we earn, the stuff we experience,
more than what the teacher tells us or what someone gives us for free.
We just do, we broke a proverbial sweat on it,
whether it's mental or physical or whatever, we built it.
We understand, we felt how we got it,
how we achieved it,
how we got what we wanted.
Those stick with us
whether we forget them intellectually, they were written in our lineage
and they build resilience
and they- and they- and they build
a healthy, true optimism going forward to know
that, Oh, no I've worked for something before and achieved it.
Delayed gratification.
Oh, there are choices I can make today for myself
that will pay me back later in life.
And I've got friends and trust me I've done it myself.
You know that
lose a job and then get another
but won't take it because it's less salary than maybe the one they had before,
and all of a sudden find themselves,
three, four, five, six, seven, eight years a decade later going..
They're still stuck. They didn't do anything,
they're still saying like, NO, I'm gonna find that thing and I'm going...
You missed a decade, man.
Just go do that one that you love to do, that maybe was gonna pay you less
because you'd at least been building something through the day
and who knows what that would have led to.
Maybe that would have led to something
where you're getting paid five times more than you were
doing something else you love even more.
So sometimes it's not even about what choice we make.
Just make a choice and commit to it and go and dive in.
So while we're here
and they're going to run across the jumbotron, let's make it
a place where we break a sweat,
where we believe,
where we enjoy the process of succeeding
in the places, and ways that we are fashioned to,
where we don't have to look over our shoulder
because we're too busy doing what we're good at,
voluntarily keeping our own council because we want to.
Traveling towards immortal finish lines,
we write our own book,
overcoming our fears.
We make friends with ourselves.
And that is the place
that I'm talking about.
From the soles of your feet,
with every ounce of blood you've got in your body,
lay it on the line until the final whistle blows,
and if you do that,
if you do that
we cannot lose.
So turn the page,
get off the ride,
you are the author
of the book of your life.
Knowing who we are is hard.
It's hard.
Give yourself a break,
eliminate who you are not,
first,
and you're going to find yourself where you need to be.
And the Oscar goes to
Matthew McConaughey
I had a very important person in my life come to me and say, "Who's your hero?"
And I said, "I don't know. I got to think about that, give me a couple of weeks."
I came back two weeks later, and this person comes up and says, "Who's your hero?"
I said, "I thought about it, you know who it is?" I said, "it's me in 10 years."
So, I turned 25, ten years later
that same person comes to me and goes, "So are you your hero?" and I was like
"not even close."
No, no, no
She said, "why?" I said, "because my hero is me at 35."
So you see every day, every week, every month, and every year of my life,
my hero is always 10 years away.
I'm never going to be my hero.
I'm not going to obtain that. I know I'm not
and that's just fine with me because that keeps me with somebody to keep on chasing.
So, to any of us,
whatever those things are, whatever it is we look up to,
whatever it is we look forward to, and whoever it is we're chasing,
to that I say,
to that I say, "all right, all right, all right."
And to that I say "just keep living."
Thank you.
Nobody has ever choked?
I have,
you know what I'm talking about, fumbling at the goal line,
stuck your foot in your mouth once you got to the microphone,
had a brain freeze on the exam that you were totally prepared for,
forgot the punch line to a joke in front of 4000 graduating students
at the University of Houston commencement.
Or maybe you've had that feeling of, Oh my god
life just cannot get any better than this moment
and ask yourself do I deserve this?
Now, what happens when we get that feeling?
Tense up.
We have this sort of out-of-body experience
where we are literally seeing ourselves in the third person
and we realized that the moment
just got bigger than us.
You ever felt that way?
I have
and it's because we have created a fictitious ceiling,
a roof
to our expectations of ourselves,
a limit where we think it's all too good to be true.
But it's not.
And it's not our right to say or believe it is.
We shouldn't create these restrictions on ourselves,
a blue ribbon, a statue, a score,
a great idea, the love of our life,
a euphoric bliss.
Who are we
to think that we don't deserve or haven't earned these gifts when we get them?
It's not our right.
But
if we stay in process, alright
within ourselves in the joy of the doing,
we will never choke at the finish line.
Why?
Because we aren't thinking of the finish line,
because 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 the process.
The approach is the destination and we're never finished.
Bo Jackson,
what did he do? He used to run over the goal line
through the end zone and up the tunnel.
The greatest snipers and marksmen in the world,
they don't aim at the target.
They aim at the other side of the target.
We do our best when our destinations are beyond the measurement,
when our reach continually exceeds our grasp,
and when we have immortal finish lines.
And when we do this,
the race is never over. The journey has no port.
The adventure never ends
because we are always on the way.
So do this.
Do this and let them,
let somebody else come up and tap you on the shoulder and say, "Hey, you-
you scored."
Let them run up and tap you on the shoulder and say, "man, you won."
Let them come tell you,
"you can go home now."
Let them say,
"I love you too!"
Let them say,
"Thank you."
Take the lid off the man-made roofs that we put above ourselves
and always play like an underdog.
There we go.
Responsibility of Freedom and the freedom in responsibility.
life’s more than just straight Saturdays
with as much cake as you want to eat it just is.
We'll see how long you last doing that.
If you really do it. You won’t last that long
responsibility is appreciation of a past.
it’s building up a lineage,
it’s investing in ourselves,
it’s investing in something we started to build yesterday
that we want to take into tomorrow.
There’s a response that gives us freedom
So to actually have true freedom
we have to be more responsible for certain things
for ourselves, who we are
constantly investigating and interrogating
our better selves
to say I’m going to be a little bit better at this tomorrow
knowing that we never land
we never, we never, there’s no, there’s no ta-da moment.
and that is one thing I think we all got to watch
because we all are so result oriented.
but there’s no ta-da moment.
We’re always chasing yet
and if we can get comfortable and understand and laugh
and- and be ready to work hard the fact that
we’re all just achieving our way to the unachievable.
and that’s as good as it gets
and that’s pretty damn awesome.
Thank you
Good luck
just keep living.