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That may sound like a violent message, but stopping a bully is different than being a bully. The real message is: You are somebody. You matter. And no one is allowed to take away your right to your property, your right to your safety, or your right to be yourself. Those are things that should be defended.
It’s easy to complain about your life—how tough it is, how unfair it is, how stressful it is, how everyone else has it much better. But if you step into the life of someone you envy for just a day, you’ll discover that everyone has their own problems, and they’re usually worse than yours. Because your problems are designed specifically for you, with the specific purpose of helping you grow.
Having nothing to prove is the most freeing thing in the world. Rather than constantly defending your ego, you can have a sense of humor about your shortcomings.
I realized through her that we move through life, especially in our first twenty-five years, as sponges, slowly soaking up information from different people, environments, and experiences—and this becomes us. Some people fill up early and get stuck in their ways, and others keep absorbing their whole lives.
Don’t invite them into the conversation. You already know what you want to dedicate yourself to, so you don’t need to ask for their approval. There’s no need to seek external approval when you already have internal approval.
That’s the biggest difference between the amateur and the professional, between the wannabe and the star, between the dabbler and the expert. The unsuccessful get halfway to the finish line, then turn around. The successful get halfway, then keep going. Both run the same distance, but only one makes it to the finish line. To win the race, then, having talent, speed, and endurance help, but those things are nothing without commitment. To commit successfully, you don’t have to always believe in yourself—because, let’s face it, we all have our doubts at times. But you do have to believe in
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I was learning to treat everything as if it were a high priority, because that next meeting or show or dinner just might be the one where you get what you’ve been looking for. It just takes one person to say one thing, and your whole life can change. If success happens in part by chance, then the more you expose yourself to it, the luckier you will be. I worked hard in order to get lucky.
An entertainer makes you laugh, I realized, but an artist makes you understand.
A lot of my philosophy is that life is about making the right choices in the dark. Many people ask me what to do if they have doubts about their career or how talented they are or what their passion is. My answer: When it comes to the future, it’s impossible to have any certainty. I may appear to be certain, because I’ve learned to have confidence in my abilities and faith in my will to succeed. But what I don’t know—and what no human being knows—is how we will fulfill our destiny as individuals and what that destiny will be.
If you wait for certainty, you will spend your whole life standing still. And if you grow discouraged and give up when things get rough, you’ll miss out on your best possible destiny. So the secret is to be excited about what is in your power to control, be accepting of what’s not in your power to control, and then move with certainty into an uncertain future.
Every experience is a potential life lesson. Even if you don’t appreciate it at the time, each struggle in the present is preparing you for something else in the future.
Though people say to live in the moment, each moment leads to other moments. So treat each moment like a seed, and care for it so that something beautiful can grow from it.
You can work hard. You can be talented. You can know all the right people. You can follow all the right lessons. You can be smart, rich, beautiful, everything—and still, life can deal you a bad hand.
If you experience loss, it doesn’t mean you lost. It means you’ve been blessed with an opportunity to take a moment, realize how special someone or something has been to you, and go through new doors that were closed to you before. No jokes here. Just wisdom.
Look at what people make important. Why does anyone give a shit about some comedian’s relationship status? If they have nothing better to do, let ’em talk. I’m going to make the choices that serve my happiness, not their expectations, and that’s all that matters.
If life is a struggle, then struggle. If you get rejected, get rejected again. If your dreams are smashed, keep dreaming. Just keep your eyes on the prize—and always remember that you have to fail to win.
If this sounds arrogant, that’s because it is. If you don’t believe in your own greatness, no one else will. You’re limited only by your doubts, your fears, and your desire to fit in rather than stand out.
