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.