You had to work an extra job or two
but you're here
for a lot of you even though you made it up the hill
you carry the baggage of rejection with you
but you're here.
So many people are waiting.
You're waiting for things to be perfect,
you're waiting for everyone to get themselves together.
Imagine you read one hour a day
about history
how much you will learn after 365 hours
in one year?
Think about if you study about the history of musicians, of composers
how much you would know?
- You went to Indiana University? - Yep
Right, now you got a lot of people that...
say, forget about school. You know, drop out of school
- They're idiots, they're idiots. - So you think they're idiots?
I bet most of your people who have sat in this chair
it's not about what college they went to
it's about their own initiative, their own drive
their own ambitions, their own curiosity.
Purpose is an essential element of you.
It is the reason you're on the planet at this particular time in history.
You're waiting for someone to give you the opportunity.
You're waiting for everything to line up.
You're waiting for all the situations to come together perfectly
and I’m telling you you cannot wait, you got to start working right now.
Whatever you choose for a career path remember the struggles along the way
are only meant to shape you for your purpose.
Your life matters.
Your voice matters.
Your name matters.
Sometimes you need to feel the pain and sting of defeat
to activate the real passion and purpose
that God predestined inside of you.
Imagine you read one hour a day
about history
how much you will learn after 365 hours
in one year.
Think about if you study
about the history of musicians, of composers.
How much you would know?
Imagine if you would work on the business
on some business that you want to develop every day for an hour.
Imagine how further along you will go
and get.
So it drives me nuts because we have...
when people say, we don't have the time.
We have 24 hours a day.
We sleep 6 hours a day
so it gives you still 18 hours.
There's someone shaking their head out here in front, they say probably
I don't sleep 6 hours I sleep 8 hours. Right?
Well, just sleep faster.
So with 18 hours a day
the average person works around 8 to 10 hours.
So let's assume it's 10 hours. So you have 8 hours left
then you travel around an hour a day
maybe 2 hours a day.
So now you have still 6 hours left.
So what do you do with your 6 hours?
What do you do with your 6 hours? Maybe eat a little bit,
maybe shmooze a little bit,
talk a little bit to people and all that stuff
but you can see how much time there is available
if you organize your day.
So you got to work hard.
I mean let me tell you something when I went to America
I went to college,
I went and worked out 5 hours a day
and I was working on construction
because in those days in bodybuilding there was no money
we didn't, I didn't have the money for food, supplements or anything
so I had to go to work.
So I worked in construction,
I went to college, I worked out in the gym
and at night from 8 o'clock at night to 12 midnight
I went to acting class
4 times a week.
So I did all that
there was not one single minute that I wasted
and this is why I’m standing here today.
Now is the time to start building your marriage.
Now is the time to start teaching and investing in your kids.
Now is the time to start piecing your money together
and getting yourself out of debt.
Now is the time to start pursuing something greater.
Now is the time to start building the vision that God put in your heart.
Now is the time to start saving up for the home.
Now is the time to start making those investments in yourself.
You cannot wait, don't wait another day,
don't wait another minute, don't wait another moment.
Now is your time.
How long are you going to complain
about what you don't have?
How long are you going to complain
about who didn't do it and who didn't take care of you and
who didn't call you and who don't like you and
what they said and
what they... who cares what they think?
Who cares what they said.
This is not about them, this is about me.
This is about what God wants to do in me.
This is about the legacy that he wants me to build.
This is about the impact he wants me to make.
Why am I going to put my legacy to the side
in order to appease a person who don't know who I really am.
You got to get to a place
where you recognize
that I’m not just here passing time
I’m not just here just having fun
but I’m here to build legacy.
I’m here to make things happen.
I’m here to change the world.
Now is your time.
My experience is with people
that we're probably running at about 51% of our capacity
something, I mean you can think about this yourselves.
I often ask undergraduates
how many hours a day you waste Or how many hours a week you waste.
And the classic answer is something like 4 to 6 hours a day.
You know, inefficient studying
or watching things on YouTube
that not only do you not want to watch, that you don't even care about
that make you feel horrible about watching after you're done.
That's probably 4 hours right there.
You know, you think well that's 20, 25 hours a week.
It's 100 hours a month that's two and a half full work weeks.
It's half a year of work weeks per year.
And if your time is worth
$20 in hour which is a radical underestimate
but it's probably more like $50
if you think about it in terms of deferred wages.
If you're wasting 20 hours a week
you're wasting $50,000 a year
and you are doing that right now.
And it's because you're young wasting $50,000 a year
is a way bigger catastrophe than it would be for me to waste it
because I’m not going to last nearly as long.
And so if your life isn't everything it could be, you could ask yourself,
what would happen if you just stopped wasting
the opportunities that are in front of you.
You'd be who knows how much more efficient
10 times more efficient,
20 times more efficient
that's the Pareto distribution.
You have no idea how efficient efficient people get.
It's completely... it's off the charts
the best thing you can do is teach people to write
because there's no difference between that and thinking.
And one of the things that just blows me away about universities
is that no one ever tells students why they should write something.
It's like, well, you have to do this assignment.
Well, why are you writing? Well you need the grade
it's like no,
you need to learn to think
because thinking makes you act effectively in the world.
Thinking makes you win the battles you undertake
and those could be battles for good things.
If you can think and speak and write
you are absolutely deadly
nothing can get in your way.
So that's why you learn to write. It's like...
well I can't believe that people aren't just told that.
It's- it's- it's like...
It's the most powerful weapon you can possibly provide someone with
and I mean I know lots of people who've been staggeringly successful
and watched them throughout my life, I mean...
those people you don't want to have an argument with them.
They'll just slash you into pieces
and not in a malevolent way, it's like...
if you're going to make your point and they're going to make their point
you better have your points organized
because otherwise you're going to look like
and be an absolute idiot.
You are not going to get anywhere.
And if you can formulate your arguments coherently
and make a presentation if you can speak to people,
if you can lay out a proposal,
God, people give you money, they give you opportunities,
you have influence.
Make it- a schedule and stick to it.
Okay, so what's the rule with the schedule?
It's not a bloody prison
that's the first thing that people do wrong
they say, well, I don't like to follow a schedule.
It's like well, what kind of schedule are you setting up?
Well, I... I have to do this then I have to do this then I have to do this
you know and then I just go play video games.
Because who wants to do all these things that I have to do.
It's like wrong,
set the schedule up.
So that you have the day you want
that's the trick. It's like okay, I’ve got tomorrow
if I was going to set it up, so it was the best possible day I could have
practically speaking
what would it look like?
Well, then you schedule that
and obviously there's a bit of responsibility that's going to go along with that
because if you have any sense
one of the things that you're going to insist upon
is that at the end of the day
you're not in worse shape than you were than... than.. at the beginning of the day, right?
Because that's a stupid day.
If you have a bunch of those in a row
you just dig, you know, you dig yourself a hole and then you bury yourself in it
it's like, sorry that's just not a good strategy,
it's a bad strategy.
So maybe 20% of your day has to be responsibility and obligation
or maybe it's more than that depending on how far behind you are.
But even that you can, you can ask yourself
okay, well, I’ve got these responsibilities,
I have to schedule the things in
what's the right ratio of responsibility to reward
and you can ask yourself that
just like you'd negotiate with someone who is working for you.
It's like, okay you got to work tomorrow.
Okay, so I want you to work tomorrow
and you might say, okay, well what are you going to do for me
that makes it likely that I’ll work for you?
Well, you could ask yourself that, you know
so maybe you do an hour of responsibility
and then you play a video game for 15 minutes, I don't know
whatever turns your crank man but...
you know you have to negotiate with yourself and not tyrannize yourself.
Like you're negotiating with someone that you care for,
that you would like to be productive and have a good life
and- and that's how you make the schedule, it's like...
and then you look at the day and you think well, if I had that day that'd be good
great
you know, and you... you're useless and horrible
so you'll probably only hit it with about 70% accuracy
but that beats the hell out of zero.
Right! and if you hit it even with 50% accuracy
another rule is, well, aim for 51% the next week
or 50.5% for God's sake
or because you're you're going to hit that
position where things start to loop back positively and spiral you upward.
On my tombstone
I want
the epitaph
"Be ashamed to die
until you have scored some victory for humanity."
Many people look for meaning
in life
as though it's going to be under a rock
or behind a tree.
Oh, there's my meaning
you have more power than that.
You have the power to create meaning
in your life
rather than passively look for it
meaning to me is do I know more
about the world today than I did yesterday
that enhances meaning for me.
And if that accumulates and accrues daily
in a month you know way more than you did than just that day later
so that you continue to grow.
My first question of me wasn't where do I find meaning?
It was how do I create meaning? And that started early,
early teens.
You can draw a line in the sand between people who transgress
but do not hold power over you
there's a famous quote from Martin Luther King
"You can only be ridden if your back is bent."
when I grew up
it was very common to hear the phrase
"Sticks and stones can break my bones
but words will never hurt me."
I haven't heard that phrase in a long time.
I don't hear it recited in the elementary schools.
What I think has happened over the years is
we came to learn as a civilization that words can be hurtful.
That's an advance in mental health.
What I see on the flip side of that coin however is
people are less able
to deal with the very same people who are around today
who were around back then who are calling you names.
I can say from the era in which I grew up
I don't give a rat's *** what you say to me
unless you are between me and some goal
then I’ll have to navigate that some way.
If there's a racist person or a sexist person
or a person with some kind of cultural bias
I want to know that actually.
I want you to say everything you want to say
then I’ll say, okay, that's who you are, that's how you're thinking.
So now, what do I need to do
because you're in my way?
Do I dig under you, go around you, leap over you
or do I go this way
and then come out the other side. Yeah, it's longer, it's more effort,
it's more energy
but on some level it's sort of the same different day.
I can't say you're being racist, you're being... that's not...
you got to navigate it. I think high school
that's where you learn how to deal with difficult people.
There are people who are nasty
you're going to have to navigate them.
There are people who you cannot interact with for whatever reason or another
they're going to be in the cubicle next to you in your workplace.
So I think we undervalue the total social pot
that
people are tossed into in their high school experience.
They want to say, "Oh, I could have learned more
but I had to deal with all these people."
hey, having to deal with all these people is now in your portfolio.
Your motivation for the guests that you have in this couch.
They...
they had some vision statement
and they have grit.
Okay, they got knocked down, they stood back up
they tried another way, they got knocked down again
then they were successful either
measured by wealth or influence or...
or just joy in their life's passions.
For me what I do for the public
80+ percent of it is driven by
duty
not by ambition.
That's how I view it. If that were the case.
This is how I ended up hosting Cosmos in 2014.
Ann Druyan, the widow of Carl Sagan
who was hugely talented.
She approached me and said,
"Would you consider hosting Cosmos?" I said, "I don't...
there's a dozen people, maybe half a dozen others
who would jump at this opportunity.
I don't need to do this
I really don't.
Then I thought about it and I said, well, I met Carl Sagan when I was 17.
I was applying to colleges, he was at Cornell
I had been accepted at Cornell but didn't know what college I wanted to go to
and the admissions office saw that I wasn't totally in the moment there.
They had forwarded my application to him
for his reaction and he sent me a letter.
And I get this letter and I open it and it says,
I understand you like the same stuff I like
do you want to come visit the campus
to help you decide if you want to go to Cornell.
He met me... outside his building on a Saturday
he did something really cool, he reached back grabbed a book off the shelf
it was one of his books and he signed it to me
Neil Tyson, future astronomer, signed Carl.
Later in the day, I’m ready to go back to New York
it begins to snow as it does often in December in Ithaca
and he says here's my home number
if the bus can't get through, from the snow
spend the night with my family and go back tomorrow.
I’m thinking, who am I? Why.. why.. I’m nobody
but I was somebody to him
and I said to myself, if I’m ever as remotely famous as he is
I will treat students the way he has treated me.