(motivational orchestral music)
- But my lesson is this.
I don't give a shit
(applause)
okay?
You cannot let a fear of failure
or a fear of comparison
or a fear of judgment
stop you from doing what's going to make you great.
You cannot succeed without this risk of failure.
You can not have a voice
without the risk of criticism.
And you cannot love without the risk of loss.
You must go out and you must take these risks.
And people will tell you to do what makes you happy.
But a lot of this has been hard work.
And I'm not always happy.
And I don't think you should do just what makes you happy.
I think you should do what makes you great.
Do what's uncomfortable and scary and hard
but pays off in the long run.
Be willing to fail.
Let yourself fail.
Fail in the way in the place where you would want to fail.
Fail, pick yourself up
and fail again.
Because without this struggle,
what is your success anyway?
But as best we know it,
we have one life.
In it, you have to trust your own voice,
your own ideas,
your honesty,
your vulnerability
and through this, you will find your way.
You do not have to be fearless.
Just don't let fear stop you.
Live like this as best you can
and I guarantee
you will look back on a life well lived.
- As I moved to California,
$700 in my pocket and my toddler.
And I have to
fight the good fight
because people are telling me,
"I can't, you can't do this, you can't
"are you crazy?
"You're moving to California with your son?
"You'll never make it."
I was 26
when I decided to come here.
There's the age thing.
"Ah, you're too old."
If you listen to people
and if you allow people to project their fears on to you,
you won't live.
What if I believed those people
who told me that when I became pregnant in college
that I wouldn't finish?
I walked across that stage with my son on my hip.
And I collected my degree.
My diploma.
(applause)
I didn't hear the naysayers
when they were like, "you're too old to go to California.
"If you don't hit by 25, you're not gonna make it."
I will be 46 this year.
I am just touching the surface.
I am just getting started.
I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth, you know.
I had a passion.
I had a dream.
And I dived in.
And I went for my dream and
it all starts with you.
You're the temple
and you have control.
You're in a bad situation, it's up to you to get out of it.
You can't give another human
the responsibility of your happiness.
- When you have a dream,
it doesn't often come at you screaming
in your face.
This is who you are.
This is what you must be for the rest of your life.
Sometimes a dream almost whispers.
And I've always said to my kids,
"the hardest thing to listen to,
"your instincts, your human personal intuition,
"always whispers, it never shouts."
Very hard to hear.
So you have to everyday of your lives
be ready to hear
what whispers in your ear.
It very rarely shouts.
And if you can listen to the whisper
and if it tickles your heart
and it's something you think you want to do
for the rest of your life,
then that is going to be what you do
for the rest of your life
and we will benefit from everything you do.
Thank you very much.
- So don't be unconscious
all day on your phone.
(audience laughs)
Don't we live now
in a bit of a very shallow world?
Pop culture is extremely shallow.
And we're just asking the world
to get deep.
I don't like wasting my time
spending days just shaking people's hands and smiling
taking selfies.
It feels shallow to my existence.
I have a lot more to offer than my image.
I don't like being used to make people money.
I feel sad
when
I'm overworked
and that I've just become a money making machine
and that my passion and my creativity take a back seat.
That makes me unhappy.
So what did I do?
I started to say no.
I'm not doing that.
I don't want to do that.
I'm not taking that picture.
I'm not going to that event.
I'm not standing by that
because that's not what I stand for.
Slowly but surely,
I remembered who I am.
And then you go home and you look in the mirror
and you're like, yes.
I can go to bed with you
every night.
- Lobster is a soft
mushy animal
that lives inside of a rigid shell.
That rigid shell does not expand.
Well how can the lobster grow?
Well, as the lobster grows,
that shell becomes very confining.
And the kind of the lobster feels itself under pressure.
And uncomfortable.
It goes under a rock formation
to protect itself from predatory fish,
casts off the shell and produces a new one.
Well eventually,
that shell becomes very uncomfortable
as it grows right?
Back under the rocks.
I think lobster repeats this numerous times.
The stimulus for the lobster
to be able to grow
is that it feels uncomfortable.
If lobsters had doctors,
they would never grow.
Because as soon as the lobster feels uncomfortable,
goes to the doctor,
gets a Valium, gets some Percocet,
feels fine!
Never gets off its shell.
So I think we have to realize
is that we have to realize that times of stress,
are also times that are signals for growth.
And if we use adversity properly
we can grow through adversity.
- I personally am most unworthy.
But I
brought a girl child
from the street.
And I could see
in the face of the child,
that child was hungry.
God knows how many days, has not eaten.
So I gave her a piece of bread.
And the little one
started eating the bread
crumb by crumb.
And I said
eat, I said to the child,
"eat the bread.
"Eat the bread."
And she looked at me and said,
"I'm afraid
"to eat the bread.
"Because I'm afraid
"when it is finished
"I will be hungry again."
This is
a reality.
Maybe we are not hungry for a piece of bread.
But maybe there is somebody there in the family who is
unwanted, unloved, uncared, forgotten.
There is love.
Love begins at home.
And love to be true has to hurt.
And this is
what I bring before you.
To love one another.
That great love.
- [Jim Carrey] Your need for acceptance
can make you invisible in this world.
Like many of you,
I was concerned about going out into the world
and doing something bigger than myself.
Until someone smarter than myself
made me realize that there is nothing bigger than myself.
Don't let anything stand in the way
of the light that shines through this form.
Risk being seen
in all of your glory.
Our eyes are not viewers,
they are also projectors.
That are running a second story over the picture
that we see in front of us all the time.
Fear is writing that script.
And the working title is
I'll Never Be Enough.
Spend your whole life imaging those,
worrying about the pathway to the future.
But all that 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 am the proof
that you can ask the universe for it.
I realized one night in LA,
that the purpose of my life
had always been to free people from concern,
just like my dad.
I did something
that made people
present their best selves to me
wherever I go.
How will you serve the world?
What did they need
that your talent can provide?
That's all I have to figure out.
I can tell you from experience the effect you have on others
is the most valuable currency there is.
You can fail, at what you don't want.
So you might as well take a chance
on doing what you love.
Relax, and dream up a good life.
- This is the most important
and crucial period of your lives
for what you do now and what you
decide now at this age
may well determine
which way your life shall go.
And the question is,
whether you have a proper,
a solid,
and a sound blueprint.
And I want to suggest
some of the things that should be
in your life's blueprint.
Number one in your life's blueprint should be
a deep belief
in your own dignity, your own worth,
and your own somebodiness.
Don't allow anybody to make you feel
that you are nobody.
Always feel that you count.
Always feel that you have worth.
And always feel that your life
has ultimate significance.
Secondly,
in your life's blueprint,
you must have
as a basic principle, the determination
to achieve excellence
in your various fields of endeavor.
You're gonna be deciding as the days and the years unfold
what you will do in life.
What your life's work will be.
Once you discover what it will be, set out to do it.
And to do it well.
Be a bush if you can't be a tree.
If you can't be a highway,
just be a trail.
If you can't be the sun, be a star.
For is it by size that you win or you fail,
be the best of whatever you are.
(applause)
finally in your life's blueprint,
must be
a commitment
to the eternal principles
of beauty,
love,
and justice.
Well life for none of us
has been a crystal stair,
but we must keep moving.
We must keep going.
If you can't fly, run.
If you can't run, walk.
If you can't walk, crawl.
But by all means, keep moving.
- You will fail at some point in your life.
Accept it.
You will lose.
You will embarrass yourself.
You will suck at something.
There's no doubt about it.
I was a 1.8 GPA
one semester.
And the university very politely suggested
that it might be better to take some time off.
I was 20 years old,
I was at my lowest point.
But here's the thing.
I didn't quit.
I didn't fall back.
But I continued to fail
and fail
and fail,
but it didn't matter because you know what?
There's an old saying.
You hang around the barber shop long enough,
sooner or later, you're gonna get a haircut.
So you will catch a break, and I did catch a break.
Last year,
I did a play called Fences on Broadway.
It was at the same theater
that I failed that first audition
30 years prior.
Thomas Edison conducted 1,000 failed experiments.
Did you know that?
I didn't know that.
Because the 1,001st was the light bulb.
Fall forward.
Sometimes,
it's the best way to figure out where you're going.
Never be discouraged.
Never hold back.
Give everything you've got.
And when you fall throughout life,
remember this,
fall forward.
- [Robin Williams] You know,
as we come to the end of this phase of our life,
we find ourselves
trying to remember the good times,
and trying to forget the bad times.
And we find ourselves thinking about the future.
We start to worry.
Thinking
what am I going to do?
Where am I going to be in 10 years?
But I say to you,
hey,
look at me.
Please
don't worry so much.
Because in the end,
none of us have very long on this earth.
Life is fleeting.
And if you're ever distressed,
cast your eyes to the summer sky.
When the stars are strung across the velvety night,
and when a shooting star streaks through the blackness
turning night
into day
make a wish.
Think of me.
And make your life
spectacular.
I know I did.