You had 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 waitting 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?
Right, now you got a lot of people that say forget about school.
They're idiots.
So you think they're idiots? They're idiots
I bet most of your people who've 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 are 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 gotta 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 drive 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 that 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 we have 18 hours a day.
The average person works around 8 to 10 hours.
So let's assume it's 10 hours so if 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've 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 in construction
because in those days in bodybuilding there was no money.
I didn't have the money for food supplements ar 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 marrige
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 if debt
Now is the time to start pursuing something greater.
Now is the time to start to 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 think?
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 to
in order to appease a person
who don't know
who I really am.
You gotta 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 compacity
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?
The classic answer something like 4 to 6 hours a day
You know, inefficient studying, watching things on Youtube
that not only do you want to watch
that you don't even care about that make you feel horrible
about watching after you're done.
That 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 week.
It's half a year of the workweeks per year.
And if your time is worth 20 dollars an hour which is a radical underestimate
it's probably more like 50
if you think about it in term of deferred wages
If you're wasting 20 hours a week,
your wasting 50,000 dollars a year
and you are doing that right now
and it's because you're young wasting 50,000 dollars 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 opportunity
that are in front of you.
You 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 to write
because there's no difference between that and thinking.
And one of these things that just blow me away about universities
is that no one ever tells students why they should write something.
So it's why you have to do an assignment ?
Why you are writing? Why you need a grade?
It's no you need to learn to think
because thinking makes you act effectively in the world.
thinking make you win the battle you undertakes 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 staggering successful
and watched them throughout of my life
I mean those people you don't want to have an argument with them
they'll just slash you in the pieces and they're not in a malevolent way
it's like if you are going to make your point and
they're going to make their point you better have your point organized
because otherwise, you're going to look like and be an absolute idiot
You're not going to get anywhere and if you can formulate your argument 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 schedule and stick to it.
So what the rule with the schedule?
It's not at the blood prison.
That's the first thing that people do wrong they say
Well I don't like to have followed a schedule
It's like well what kind of shedule are you setting up?
Well 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 I have to do.
It's like wrong
Set the schedule up so that you have the day you want.
That's a trick.
It's like ok I've got tomorrow
If I was going to set it up it was the best possible day I could have.
Practically speaking
What would it look like?
When you schedule that and obviously there's a bit of responsibility
that's going to go along with that
because you have any sense
one of these things that you're going to insist upon is that
at the end of these days you're not in worse shape than you were
that 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 bury yourself in
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 obligational
or maybe it's more than that depending on how far behind you are
but even that you can you can ask yourself
Well OK, I've got these responsibilities. I've scheduled 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 ok you got work tomorrow.
OK, So I want you to work tomorrow and you might say
OK Well what are you going to do for me that makes it likely that
I'll work for you well you can ask yourself that you know.
So maybe you do an hour 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, you you're useless and horrible
so you'll probably only hit it with about 70% accuracy
but that beats the hell out of the zero.
Right and If you hit even with 50% accuracy another rule is well aim
for 51%the next week or 50 and a half 50% for God's seek
because you're you're going to hit that the 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 the 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 continute 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
"Stick 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 resighted in the elementry schools.
What I think has happened over the year is we came to learn
as a civilization that words can be hurtful.
That an advance in mental health.
What I see on the flip of that coin however is
people are less able to deal with the very same people who 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 ass what you say to me.
unless you are between me and some goal
then I'll have to navigate that someway.
If there's a racist person or a sexist person,
or a person with some kind of cultrual bias.
I want to know that actually,
I want you to say everything you want to say.
Then I'll say OK that's who you are, that's how your 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 s different day.
I can't say you're being racist, you're being I that't 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 their going to be in the cubical 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.
You want to ssau 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 successfull
either measured by wealth or influence or or just joy in their lives passions.
For me, what I do for the public, 80 plus 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, and Dream.
The widow of Carl Sagan.
hugely talented.
She approached me and said would you consider hosting cosmos?
I said I don't there's a dozen people maybe have a dozen others
who would jump at this opportunity
I don't need to do this
I really don't then I though 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 excepted to 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 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 Saturda.
He did something really cool
he reached back grabbed a book off the shelf
it was one of his book
and he signed it to me
Neil Tyson future astronomer signed Carl.
Later in the day I'm 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 I'm nobody
but I was somebody to hime.
And I said to myself
if I am ever as remotely famous as he is
I will treat students the way he has treated me.
Thanks for watching. Subtitle by Keres.