I Can't Make This Up: Life Lessons

by Kevin Hart

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.

And when someone wanted to start a fight, I learned to de-escalate it just by asking, “What are you doing? Why do you wanna fight and mess up the day? All that’s gonna happen is we’ll both get punished, so let’s see if we can find a better way to work this out.”

As a parent, you can’t compete with the streets. The streets will win every time.

If I complained about this or threw a tantrum, I probably wouldn’t be working today. Instead, this schedule is something I easily accept, because it’s always been a part of my life. It turns out that the things I hated most as a child are the same things that serve me the most as an adult.

There was no middle ground between my parents. I could either choose a comfortable dictatorship or I could choose uncomfortable anarchy.

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 shoulder-shrugging is different than not caring: It’s having perspective. It’s looking at a bigger picture instead of being reactive.

Can you fail and still be strong? Can you not fit in and still accept yourself? Can you lose everything and still keep searching? Can you be in the dark and still believe in the light?

People with calluses work hard, but some people with soft hands work even harder because they got themselves to a level where they can take care of their hands.

Putting all your eggs in one basket will lead to the birth of chickens that you will have to eat. What I’m trying to say by this is love what you do,

Acceptance is a drug as powerful as crack.

The problem is, many people want you to do things, up to the point where they lose control of you.

Some people hate deadlines, but deadlines are motivation to get things done.

They were saying it because I was persistent, and that persistence was starting to show up in small improvements.

Most exciting of all, Estee at the Comedy Cellar let me host on a peak night. I tried hard not to let these small steps go to my head, because I saw other comedians mistaking success at a local club for fame.

They’d confuse familiarity—like the waitresses and valets knowing who they were—for popularity.

I have no doubt that there were people more talented, more persistent, and harder working than me. But there was one other thing that gave me the winning edge, and will always give you the winning edge: being likeable.

My mother worked hard to make sure I had a good heart, that I wasn’t an animal, that I didn’t treat other people like objects. No one is above anybody and no one is below anybody, she taught, so if you’re treating people in any other way, you are out of line with reality.

In most action movies, one person rises out of a humble beginning to discover that they have been chosen by destiny to save the world. But that’s not how it works in real life. You rise out of your humble beginning to become part of a community, and it is only together and as equals that we will save the world.

A good mentor learns as much from teaching as the apprentice does from learning.

“You don’t have to make it up. Your life is funny, stupid.

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.

That’s when I learned the biggest lesson of all: humility. In the depths of my disappointment and failure, I understood that nothing in this life is guaranteed. One day you’re hot, the next you’re not. One day you’re rich, the next you’re poor. One day you’re free, the next you’re in jail. One day you’re alive, the next you’re dead.

So what are you to do in the face of a reality that can be indifferent, cold, even cruel? All you can do is play the odds. If you choose to give up, you can be fairly certain that life will pass you by. But if you choose to try your best, you can at least tip the balance significantly in your favor.

It was more proof that only your mother thinks you’re special; to all other people, you look the same as everyone else unless you make the effort to stand out—and that effort is always worth it.

She’d built her life around working hard, being around loved ones, and participating in her church community. Here, everything seemed cold and clinical and far from God. You weren’t seen as a soul on your way to paradise, just as a chart on a clipboard.

Waiting for other people to make your dreams come true is like waiting for a bus on a corner where there’s no bus stop. Sometimes the bus driver may feel bad for you and stop anyway, but usually he’ll speed right past and leave you standing there like an idiot.

Communication is the key that unlocks a plan. Everyone should know your intentions at all times, as well as any changes to them. A good idea with bad communication is as useful as a phone with a dead battery.

A team is going to survive better than an individual, just as a team is always going to beat an individual in a sport—that is, in a team sport.

The lesson learned from all this is that if you’re not careful, your dick will get you into relationships that your head can’t fix. But the deeper lesson is that what’s important in a relationship is the bricks that every one of your words and actions lay down, because together they add up to the home that you’re going to live in for quite some time.

For most people, mixing desperation and decision-making is like mixing vodka and painkillers—a dangerous combination.

I began to clearly see all the ways I was at fault for the destruction of my relationship with Torrei: The constant infidelity, dishonesty, and negative talk—and, as the man in the situation, no matter what she was doing to me physically, it was never okay for me to put hands on her. That’s a shame I’ll have to bear for the rest of my life. These were the actions of a weak man—morally weak, emotionally weak, physically weak, everything weak.

Outside of minor differences that were all surface level and all cool to learn about, people there were just like people here. Life there was just like life here. So much ignorance comes from a lack of experience, and these trips showed me that we are all brothers and sisters—and we need to always remember that.

How you handle rejection is very similar to how you’ll handle success. If you’re strong enough to handle rejection without taking it personally, without holding a grudge, and without losing your passion and drive, then you’ll be strong enough to reap the rewards.

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.

It’s okay to fail, but it’s not okay to quit.

If you have a child, that’s a contract. Your friendships and relationships—those are contracts. Your career, your projects, your goals, your dreams—all contracts.

If you want to achieve positive goals and experience positive relationships, then put out positivity.