-
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.