I Can't Make This Up: Life Lessons

by Kevin Hart

Life is a story. It’s full of chapters. And the beauty of life is that not only do you get to choose how you interpret each chapter, but your interpretation writes the next chapter. It determines whether it’s comedy or tragedy, fairy tale or horror story, rags-to-riches or riches-to-rags. You can’t control the events that happen to you, but you can control your interpretation of them. So why not choose the story that serves your life the best?

Powerful. It's all about how you think about what happens to you.

I suppose that was also my first life lesson: What’s here today may be gone later today. Nothing is permanent.

But I think that I was born with a gift: the shoulder shrug. For as long as I can remember, I’ve had the ability to shoulder-shrug things—to just accept them, say “okay,” and get on with my life. The opposite of shoulder-shrugging would be to get depressed or angry and to hold on to those emotions for the rest of my life. But for whatever reason, whether it was because my father was matter-of-fact about the heaviest stuff or God put something in me, I’ve been able to take in all kinds of experiences and information and process them without holding on to any negative emotion afterward, even at a young age.

At every moment in life, there is a fork in the path you are on. And you can choose to go right

or you can choose to go left. Every right you take leads you closer to your best possible destiny; every left leads you further away from it. These forks are not just decisions that lead to actions, like saying yes to a job offer, but thoughts that lead to beliefs, like blaming your father for ruining your life. Your life today is the sum total of your choices. So if you’re not happy with it, look back at your choices and start making different ones. Even if you are struck by lightning and injured, you made choices that led you to that spot at that particular time—and you get to choose how you feel about it afterward. You can be angry at the bad luck that you got struck or grateful for the good luck that you survived.

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.

And logically, no other response to the ups and downs of life makes sense besides gratitude. You are already in your experience. So you can either resent and resist it, and make it that much less enjoyable, or you can accept it and find something positive in it.

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 something higher than yourself: your purpose. If you believe in your purpose, you can survive the most challenging times, because God or destiny or your will—or whatever you prefer to believe in—is on your side. If you know it’s your purpose to win the race, then you’re not going to turn around, because there is no other option but to win.

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.

The toughest transition is the transition to understanding that being yourself is all you need to be.

When you mourn, when you hurt, when someone you love—or everyone you love—passes, it may feel like a void has opened up in your universe. But in the universe, energy can never be destroyed. So if the pain and the absence existed only in my mind, then it wasn’t real. It was imaginary, and me being hurt or angry about it wasn’t going to change anything. There was nothing I could do except let go of a tragic story and embrace one that served me—and her—better. So I did. I chose not to lose my mom, and instead to gain an angel. In my mind, my heart, and my life, she is still completely present to this day—and as wise, compassionate, and stubborn as ever.

Here’s another way in which something that seems negative can be interpreted positively: If people are saying critical things about you, it means you’re worth talking about. And if they’re wrong about you, even better, because it means you’re worth making stuff up about.

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. But if you’re too weak to handle failure and disappointment, then you’re too weak to handle success, which will only end up damaging your life and happiness. 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. Unless you’re at a blackjack table in Las Vegas with me, in which case you should remind me that this advice applies only to games that aren’t rigged, and that the Bellagio doesn’t need any more fountains.

Success is not an excuse to stop; it’s a reason to move the goalposts farther out and accelerate. There is no destination, just a journey. And that journey is to keep building on top of what I’m building.

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.

My mindset is: It’s okay to fail, but it’s not okay to quit. Struggle, rejection, failure, and doubt break most people. Your goal is to learn from these challenges without letting them diminish your motivation.

The secret to accomplishing this is simple: Let yourself be driven by your will to succeed rather than your fear of not succeeding.

Patience: The companion to persistence is patience. It drives away the anger, disappointment, and resentment when success doesn’t happen overnight. Patience is understanding that your moment will come at the right time, and your job is to get ready for that moment. Because if it comes when you’re not prepared, then it vanishes just as quickly. Know that your patience will always be tested, and if you c...