Best Motivational Speech Compilation Ever 1 Hour of Motivation To Change Forever
you have to practice who you want to be
you know you don’t wake up one morning
and you’re suddenly who you think you
want to be you have to put some energy
into it so if you want to be an honest
person you have to be an honest person
every day
even starting at three and four and five
right if you’re going to be a hard
worker hard work doesn’t just appear you
have to practice hard work you have to
practice effort and i also encourage
them try to help them understand that
good things don’t come easy
you know with that effort you know
that’s where you grow that’s where
growth some of the best times in my life
when i’ve grown it’s when i’ve done
something hard
when i’ve overcome a fear
you don’t realize that when you’re doing
it but when you come out
on the other side you realize wow i’ve
really
stepped up so i push my girls but more
importantly i love them a lot and that’s
what i feel for all of you
i want you guys to
feel that in your lives so that you can
be excellent
because other people told me that i
might not be able to
to do well in school
for whatever reason i was always a good
student i worked hard but i thought
there was some magic
that happened
that made you really you know i didn’t
know that it was just plain old hard
work
so there were periods of doubt for sure
i think we all i have doubts today
doubts don’t go away
you just learn how to
deal with them you you start knowing
yourself and you become more confident
the more successes you have the more
chances you take
you don’t let the the failures or the
stumbles define you
you know everybody falls every now and
then some people fall a lot
and what i realized is that we have long
lives if we’re healthy and we do what
we’re supposed to do
i’m 47 years old
so think about it whatever mistake i
made when i was 13 who cares
so think about life as a long trajectory
but at the same time
you don’t want to make huge mistakes
because when you’re young
making big big mistakes can last forever
right so you want to choose wisely
but the stumbles the lessons learned
that’s part of life that that makes you
grow but i i came to know that i didn’t
know that when i was your age i thought
every every mistake was the end of the
world
i’ll never be able i’ll never get into
school i’ll never be you know of course
we all feel that way
um but just continue to work put the put
the effort in and i think
that has been
some of what’s helped me being first
lady
first of all is knowing who you are and
being confident in yourself because
there’ll be
clarissa what do you say pushing beyond
other people’s labels of you
right that’s a big part that’s what we
do to each other all the time we don’t
even know each other and we already
determined from one glance meeting one
line one word one phrase this is who you
are
so you have to know who you are
before that
and you and you live that reality and
you keep living it out no matter what
and if you’re a good have good character
and and good intentions
that that ultimately shines through but
in the end it’s hard work
and
i like to work hard and i like to do
good things
and you practice that now
and believe it or not i didn’t know it
it prepared me to be the first lady of
united states i didn’t know i guess i’m
doing okay but you know what
every day we just get up
and keep doing what we think is the
right thing
read
write
read read if the president were here
one of his greatest
strengths is reading
that’s one of the reasons why he’s a
good communicator why he’s such a good
writer he’s a voracious reader so we’re
trying to get our girls no matter what
to just be
to love reading and to challenge
themselves with what they read not just
read the gossip books but push
themselves beyond and do things that
maybe they wouldn’t do so i would
encourage you all to
to read read read just keep reading and
writing is another skill it’s practice
it’s practice the more you write the
better you get drafts
our kids are learning the first draft
means nothing you’re gonna do seven ten
drafts that’s writing it’s not failure
it’s not
not the teacher not liking you because
it’s all marked up and read
when you get to be a good writer you
mark your own stuff in red
and you rewrite and you rewrite and you
rewrite that’s what writing is
and if you come out with those skills
and then you’re confident and you can
articulate and you can stand up straight
and look anybody in the eye and say this
is who i am it’s a pleasure to meet you
that’s one of the things we try to do
with our mentoring program with young
girls
my message to them is if you can walk
into the white house
and meet the first lady and say my name
is how are you and look me in the eye
then there’s nothing you can’t do that’s
why it’s important if you guys walked
here
are sitting here in front of all these
people
standing tall asking questions using
your voice
you have to practice that
these arenas just show up again and
again and then you just get used to it
the nerves go away and you start
relaxing into your own abilities
but it’s practice
when you are struggling
and you start thinking about giving up
i want you to remember something that my
husband and i have talked about since we
first started this journey nearly a
decade ago
something that has carried us through
every moment
in this white house in every moment of
our lives
and that is the power of hope
the belief that something better
is always possible if you’re willing to
work for it and fight for it
it is our fundamental belief in the
power of hope that has allowed us to
rise above the voices of doubt and
division
of anger and fear that we have faced in
our own lives and in the life of this
country
our hope that if we work hard enough and
believe in ourselves
then we can be whatever we dream
regardless of the limitations that
others may place on us
the hope that when people see us for who
we truly are
maybe just maybe
they too will be inspired
to rise to their best possible selves
shoot it’s the hope of my
folks like my dad
got up every day
do his job at the city water plant
the hope that one day his kids
would go to college
and have opportunities he never dreamed
of
that’s the kind of hope
that every single one of us
politicians
parents preachers all of us
need to be providing for our young
people
because that is what moves this country
forward every single day
our hope for the future
and the hard work that hope inspires i
want our young people to know
that they matter
that they
belong
so don’t be afraid
[Music]
you hear me young people don’t be afraid
be focused
be determined
be hopeful
be empowered
empower yourselves with a good education
then get out there and use that
education to build a country worthy of
your boundless promise
lead by example with hope
never fear
[Music]
so i figured something out that i
thought i’d tell you about this took me
like 30 years to figure out and i
figured it out on this tour
so there’s this old idea you know that
you have to rescue your father from the
belly of the whale right from some
monster that’s deep in the abyss you see
that pinocchio for example but it’s a
very common idea and i figured out why
that is i think
so
imagine that we already know from a
clinical perspective that
you know if you set out a path towards a
goal which you want to do because you
need a goal and you need a path because
that provides you with positive emotion
right so you set up something as
valuable so that implies a hierarchy you
set up something as valuable you decide
that you’re going to do that instead of
other things so that’s kind of a
sacrifice because you’re sacrificing
everything else to pursue that and then
you experience a fair bit of positive
emotion and meaning as you watch
yourself move towards the goal and so
the implication of that is the the
better the goal the the more full and
rich your experience is going to be when
you pursue it so that’s one of the
reasons of
that’s one of the reasons for developing
a vision and for fleshing yourself out
philosophically because you want to aim
at the highest goal that you can manage
okay so you do that
and then what you’ll find is that as you
move towards the goal there are certain
things that that that you have to
accomplish that frighten you you know
maybe you have to learn to be a better
speaker a better writer a better thinker
you have to be better to people around
you or you have to learn some new skills
and you’re afraid of that whatever
because it’s going to stretch you if you
if you pursue a goal and it’s and so
that’ll put you up against challenges
okay so all the clinical
data indicates well the opposite of safe
spaces as jonathan height has been
pointing out that what you want to do
when
you identify something that someone is
avoiding that they need to do because
they’re afraid you have them voluntary
con voluntarily confronted and so you
break it down what you try to do if
you’re a behavior therapist is you break
down the thing they’re avoiding into
smaller and smaller pieces until you
find a piece that’s small enough so
they’ll do it and it doesn’t really
matter as long as they start it you know
then they can put the next piece on the
next piece and what happens is
they don’t get less afraid exactly they
get braver
they get they get it’s like there’s more
of them you can and here’s why so
imagine
you do something new
and that’s informative right there’s
information in the action and then you
can incorporate that information and
turn it into a skill and turn it into a
transformation of your perceptions so
there’s more to you because you’ve tried
something new so that’s one thing the
second thing is
and there’s good biological evidence for
this now that
if you put yourself in a new situation
then new genes code for new proteins and
build new neural structures a new
nervous system structures same thing
happens to some degree when you work out
right because your your muscles are
responding to the load but your nervous
system does that too so you imagine that
there’s a lot of potential you locked in
your genetic code
and then if you put yourself in a new
situation then then the stress that’s
the situational stress that’s produced
by that particular situation unlocks
those genes and then builds new parts of
you so that’s very cool because who
knows how much there is locked inside of
you okay so now here’s the idea
so
let’s assume that that scales as you
take on heavier and heavier loads
that more and more of you you get more
and more informed because you’re doing
more and more difficult things but more
and more of you gets unlocked
and so then
what that would imply is that
if you got to the point where you could
look at the darkest things so that would
be the abyss right that would be the
deepest abyss if you could look at the
harshest things like the most brutal
parts of the suffering of the world and
the malevolence of people and society if
you could look that
look at that
straight and and directly that that
would turn you on maximally
and so that’s the idea of rescuing your
father because imagine that you’re like
the potential composite of of all your
all the ancestral wisdom that’s locked
inside of you biologically but that’s
not going to come out at all unless you
stress yourself unless you unless you
challenge yourself and the bigger the
challenge you take on the more that’s
going to turn on and so that as you take
on a broader and broader range of
challenges and you push yourself harder
then more and more of what you could be
turns on and that’s equivalent to
transforming yourself into the ancestral
father into all because you’re you’re
like the what would you call it you’re
the consequence of all these
living beings that have come before you
and that’s all
part of your biological potentiality and
then if you can push yourself then all
that clicks on and that turns you into
who you could be that’s and that’s the
re-representation of that
positive ancestral father the point is
your best strategic position
is
how am i insufficient and how can i
rectify that
that’s what you’ve got and the thing is
you are insufficient
and you could rectify it
both of those are within your grasp if
you aim low enough one of the things why
do you see that that’s another thing you
keep saying aim low enough have a low
enough bar why do you why do you mean
that well let’s say you’ve got a kid and
you want the kid to improve you don’t
set them a bar that’s so high that it’s
impossible for them to attain it you
take a look at the kid and you think
okay this kid’s got this range of skill
here’s a challenge we can throw at him
or her that exceeds their current level
of skill but gives them a reasonable
probability of success
and so like i’m saying it
tongue-in-cheek to some degree you know
it’s like but if you’re but i’m doing it
as an aide to humility it’s like well i
don’t know how to start improving my
life someone might say that and i would
say well you’re not aiming low enough
there’s something you could do that you
are regarding as trivial
that that you could do that you would do
that would result in an actual
improvement but it’s not a big enough
improvement for you so you won’t lower
yourself enough to take the opportunity
incremental steps yes and so this is
also what is achieved through exercise
it’s one of the most important
well what do you do when you go and lift
weights you don’t go in like if you
haven’t bench pressed before you don’t
put 400 pounds on the damn bar and drop
the and drop the bar through your skull
right you know you think look when i
started working out when i was a kid i
was i was weighed about 130 pounds and i
was six foot one was a thin kid and i
smoked a lot i wasn’t in good shape i
wasn’t in good physical shape and i went
to the gym and it was bloody
embarrassing you know people would come
over and help me with the goddamn
weights here’s how you’re supposed to
use this you know it’s humiliating and
maybe i was pressing 65 pounds or
something at that point you know but
what am i going to do i’m going to lift
up 150 pounds and injure myself right
off the bat no i had to go in there and
strip down and put my skinny goddamn
self in front of the mirror and think
son of a there’s all these
monsters in the gym who’ve been lifting
weights for 10 years and i’m struggling
to get 50 pounds off the bar tough luck
for me but i could lift 50 pounds and it
wasn’t fair very long until i could lift
75 and well you know how it goes but and
i never injured myself when i was
weightlifting and the reason for that
was i never pushed myself past where i
knew i could go and i pushed myself a
lot you know i gained 35 pounds of
muscle in about three years in
university i kind of had to quit because
i was eating so goddamn much i couldn’t
stand it it’s eating like six meals a
day it was just taking up too much time
but there’s a humility in determining
what it is that the wretched creature
that you are can actually manage aim low
and i don’t mean don’t aim and i don’t
mean don’t aim up
but you have to accept the fact that
you can set yourself a goal that you can
attain and there’s not going to be much
glory in it to begin with
because if you’re not in very good shape
the goal that you could could attain
tomorrow isn’t very glorious
but it’s a hell of a lot better than
nothing and it beats the hell out of
bitterness and it’s way better than
blaming someone else it’s way less
dangerous and you could do it and what’s
cool about it
there’s a statement in the new testament
it’s called the matthew principle and
economists use it to describe how the
economy and the world works to those who
have everything more will be given from
those who have nothing everything will
be taken it’s like what’s very
pessimistic in some sense because it
means that as you start to fail you fail
more and more rapidly but it also means
that as you start to succeed you succeed
more and more rapidly and so you take an
incremental step and well now you can
lift 55 pounds instead of 52.5 pounds
you think what the hell’s that it’s like
it’s one step on a very long journey
and so it’s it and it starts to compound
on you so a small step today means puts
you in a position to take a slightly
bigger step the next day and then that
puts you in a position to take a
slightly bigger step the next day you do
that for two or three years man you’re
starting to stride
[Music]
i found that nothing in life
is worthwhile
unless you take risks
nothing
nelson mandela said there is no passion
to be found
playing small
in settling for a life that’s less
than the one you’re capable of living
now i’m sure in your experiences in
school and applying to college and
picking your major and deciding what you
want to do with life i’m sure people
have told you to make sure you have
something to fall back on make sure you
got something to fall back on honey
but i never understood that concept
having something to fall back on
if i’m going to fall
i don’t want to fall back on anything
except my faith
i want to fall forward
i figure at least this way i’ll see what
i’m going to hit
fall forward
this is what i mean
reggie jackson struck out 2600 times in
his career the most
in the history of baseball but you don’t
hear about the strikeouts people
remember the home runs
fall forward
thomas edison conducted 1 000 failed
experiments did you know that i didn’t
know that because the one thousand and
first was the light bulb
fall forward
every failed experiment is one step
closer to success you’ve got to take
risks and i’m sure you’ve probably heard
that before but i want to talk to you
about why that’s so important
first
you will fail at some point in your life
accept it you will lose you will
embarrass yourself you will suck at
something there’s no doubt about it
and i know that’s probably not a
traditional message for a graduation
ceremony but hey
i’m telling you embrace it because it’s
inevitable
and i should know
in the acting business you fail all the
time early on in my career
i auditioned for a part in a broadway
musical
perfect role for me i thought
except for the fact that i can’t sing
so
i’m i’m in the wings i’m about to go on
stage but the guy in front of me he’s
singing like
like like paparazzi he’s just wrong
and he’s just going on and on and on and
i’m just shrinking i’m getting smaller
and smaller
so they say oh thank you very much thank
you very much and you will you’ll be
hearing from us
so i come out with my little sheet music
and
it was it was uh
just my imagination by the temptations
that’s what i came up with
so i hand it to the the the accompanist
and uh she looks at it and looks at me
and looks out at the director and was
like
all right
so i i start you know that’s i’m i’m
gonna sing i’m like you know and
it’s just my imagination
once again
and then
coming
and i’m not saying anything so i’m
thinking i’m getting better so i can
start getting into it
[Music]
[Applause]
running this oh yeah
yeah thank you thank you thank you very
much mr washington thank you
so i assumed i didn’t get the job
but the next part of the audition he
called me back the next part of the
audition is the acting part of the
audition so i’m like hey okay maybe i
can’t sing but i know i can act
so they pair me with this guy and again
i didn’t know about musical theater and
musical theater is big so they can reach
everyone all the way in the back of the
stadium and i’m more from a realistic
naturalistic kind of acting where you
you know you actually talk to the person
next to you
so i don’t know what my line was my line
was well hand me the cup
and his line was well i will hand you
the cup my dear the cup will be there to
be handed to you
i said
okay
will
should i give you the cup back oh yes
you should give it back to me because
you know that is my cup and it should be
giving back
to me
i didn’t get the job
but here’s the thing
i didn’t quit
i didn’t fall back
i walked out of there to prepare for the
next audition and the next audition and
the next audition
i prayed
i prayed
and i prayed
but i continued to fail
and fail
and fail but it didn’t matter because
you know what
there’s an old saying
you hang around the barber shop long
enough sooner or later you’re going to
get a haircut
so you will catch a break and i did
catch a break
last year
i did a play called fences on broadway
[Music]
someone talked about it
won the tony award
and i didn’t have to sing by the way
but here’s the kicker
it was at the court theater
it was at the same theater that i failed
that first audition
30 years prior
the point is every graduate here today
has the training and the talent to
succeed
but do you have the guts
to fail
here’s my second point about failure if
you don’t fail
you’re not even trying
i’ll say it again if you don’t fail
you’re not even trying my wife told me
this great expression to get something
you never had you have to do something
you never did
les brown’s a motivational speaker he
made an analogy about this he says
imagine you’re on your death bed and
standing around your deathbed are the
ghosts representing your unfulfilled
potential the ghost of the ideas you
never acted on the ghost of the talents
you didn’t use and they’re standing
around your bed angry disappointed and
upset
they say we we came to you because you
could have brought us to life they say
and now we have to go to the grave
together so i ask you today
how many ghosts are going to be around
your bed when your time comes
you’ve invested you you’ve invested a
lot in your education and people have
invested in you and let me tell you the
world needs your talents man does it
ever i just got back from africa like
two days ago so if i’m rambling on it’s
cause i’m jet lagged i just got back
from south africa it’s beautiful country
but there are places there with terrible
poverty that need help and africa is
just the tip of the iceberg the middle
east needs your help japan needs your
help alabama needs your help tennessee
needs your help louisiana needs your
help philadelphia needs your help
the world needs a lot and we need it
from you
we really do we need it from you young
people i mean i’m not speaking for the
rest of us up here but i know i’m
getting a little grayer
we need it from you the young people
because remember this so you got to get
out there
you got to give it everything you got
whether it’s your time
your your your talent
your prayers
or your treasures because remember this
you will never see a u-haul
behind a hearse
you can’t take it with you
the egyptians tried it
and all they got was robbed
so the question is
what are you going to do with what you
have i’m not talking about how much you
have
some of you are business majors some of
you are theologians nurses sociologists
some of you have money some of you have
patience some of you have kindness some
of you have loved some of you have the
gift of long-suffering whatever it is
whatever your gift is
what are you going to do
with what you have
all right now here’s my last point about
failure
sometimes
it’s the best way
to figure out where you’re going
your life will never be a straight path
i began at fordham university as a
pre-med student i i
i took a course called the
cardiac morphos i still can’t say it
cardiac
cardiac morphogenesis i couldn’t read it
i couldn’t say it i sure couldn’t pass
it
so then i decided to go into pre-law
then journalism and with no academic
focus my grades took off in their own
direction
[Music]
yeah down
i was a 1.8 gpa
one semester and the university very
politely suggested that it might be
better to take some time off
i was 20 years old i was at my lowest
point
and then one day and i remember the
exact day march 27 1975 i was helping my
mother in her beauty shop my mother
owned a beauty shop up in mount vernon
and there’s there was this older woman
who was considered one of the elders in
the town and i didn’t know her
personally but i was looking in the
mirror and every time i looked in the
mirror i could see her behind me and she
was staring at me
she just kept looking at me every time i
looked at her she kept giving me these
strange looks
so she finally took the dryer off her
head and said
some she said something i’ll never
forget
first of all she said somebody give me a
piece of paper give me a piece of paper
she said young boy
i have a prophecy
a spiritual prophecy
she said you are going to travel the
world
and speak to millions of people now mind
you i’m 20 years old i’m flunked out of
school in fact like a wise ass i’m
thinking to myself maybe she’s got
something in that crystal ball about me
getting back into school next fall
[Music]
but maybe she was on to something
because later that summer while working
as a counselor at the ymca camp in
connecticut we put on a talent show for
the campers and after the show another
counselor came up to me and asked have
you ever thought about acting you’re
good at that
so when i got back to fordham that fall
i got in and i changed my major once
again
for the last time
and in the years that followed just as
that woman prophesies i have traveled
the world and i have spoken to millions
of people through my movies
millions who up until this day
couldn’t see me i who up till this day i
couldn’t see while i was talking to them
and they couldn’t see me they could only
see the movie
they couldn’t see the real me
but i see you today
and i’m encouraged by what i see
and i’m strengthened
by what i see
[Music]
and i love
what i see
[Music]
today i want to tell you three stories
from my life
that’s it no big deal
just three stories
[Music]
the first story
is about connecting the dots
[Music]
i dropped out of reed college after the
first six months but then stayed around
as a drop in for another 18 months or so
before i really quit
so why’d i drop out
it started before i was born
my biological mother was a young unwed
graduate student and she decided to put
me up for adoption
she felt very strongly that i should be
adopted by college graduates so
everything was all set for me to be
adopted at birth by a lawyer and his
wife
except that when i popped out they
decided at the last minute that they
really wanted a girl
so my parents who were on a waiting list
got a call in the middle of the night
asking
we’ve got an unexpected baby boy do you
want him
they said of course
my biological mother found out later
that my mother had never graduated from
college and that my father had never
graduated from high school
she refused to sign the final adoption
papers
she only relented a few months later
when my parents promised that i would go
to college this was the start
in my life
and 17 years later i did go to college
but i naively chose a college that was
almost as expensive as stanford
and all of my working class parents
savings were being spent on my college
tuition
after six months i couldn’t see the
value in it
i had no idea what i wanted to do with
my life and no idea how college was
going to help me figure it out
and here i was spending all the money my
parents had saved their entire life
so i decided to drop out and trust that
it would all work out okay
it was pretty scary at the time but
looking back it was one of the best
decisions i ever made
the minute i dropped out
i could stop taking the required classes
that didn’t interest me
and begin dropping in on the ones that
looked far more interesting
it wasn’t all romantic
i didn’t have a dorm room so i slept on
the floor in friends rooms
i returned coke bottles for the five
cent deposits to buy food with
and i would walk the seven miles across
town every sunday night
to get one good meal a week at the hari
krishna temple
i loved it
and much of what i stumbled into by
following my curiosity and intuition
turned out to be priceless later on
let me give you one example
reed college at that time offered
perhaps the best calligraphy instruction
in the country
throughout the campus
every poster every label on every drawer
was beautifully hand calligraphed
because i had dropped out and didn’t
have to take the normal classes
i decided to take a calligraphy class to
learn how to do this
i learned about serif and sans serif
typefaces about varying the amount of
space between different letter
combinations about what makes great
typography great
it was beautiful historical artistically
subtle in a way that science can’t
capture
and i found it fascinating
none of this had even a hope of any
practical application
in my life
but 10 years later when we were
designing the first macintosh computer
it all came back to me
and we designed it all into the mac it
was the first computer with beautiful
typography
if i had never dropped in on that single
course in college the mac would have
never had multiple typefaces or
proportionally spaced fonts
and since windows just copied the mac
it’s likely that no personal computer
would have them
if i had never dropped out i would have
never dropped in on that calligraphy
class and personal computers might not
have the wonderful typography that they
do
of course it was impossible to connect
the dots looking forward when i was in
college but it was very very clear
looking backwards ten years later
again you can’t connect the dots looking
forward you can only connect them
looking backwards
so you have to trust that the dots will
somehow connect in your future you have
to trust in something your gut destiny
life karma whatever
because believing that the dots will
connect down the road
will give you the confidence to follow
your heart
even when it leads you off the well-worn
path and that will make all the
difference
[Music]
my second story
is about love and loss
i was lucky i found what i loved to do
early in life woz and i started apple in
my parents garage when i was 20.
we worked hard and in 10 years apple had
grown from just the two of us in a
garage into a two billion dollar company
with over 4 000 employees
we just released our finest creation the
macintosh a year earlier and i just
turned 30
and then i got fired
how can you get fired from a company you
started
[Music]
well
as apple grew we hired someone who i
thought was very talented to run the
company with me and for the first year
or so things went well but then our
visions of the future began to diverge
and eventually we had a falling out
when we did our board of directors sided
with him and so at 30 i was out
and very publicly out
what had been the focus of my entire
adult life was gone and it was
devastating
i really didn’t know what to do for a
few months
i felt that i’d let the previous
generation of entrepreneurs down that i
had dropped the baton as it was being
passed to me
i met with david packard and bob noyce
and tried to apologize for screwing up
so badly
i was a very public failure and i even
thought about running away from the
valley but something slowly began to
dawn on me
i still loved what i did
the turn of events at apple had not
changed that one bit
i’d been rejected but i was still in
love
and so i decided to start over
i didn’t see it then
but it turned out that getting fired
from apple was the best thing that could
have ever happened to me
the heaviness of being successful was
replaced by the likeness of being a
beginner again less sure about
everything
it freed me to enter one of the most
creative periods of my life
during the next five years i started a
company named next another company named
pixar and fell in love with an amazing
woman who would become my wife
pixar went on to create the world’s
first computer animated feature film toy
story and is now the most successful
animation studio in the world
in a remarkable turn of events
apple bought next and i returned to
apple and the technology we developed it
next is at the heart of apple’s current
renaissance
and loreen and i have a wonderful family
together
i’m pretty sure
none of this would have happened if i
hadn’t been fired from apple
it was awful tasting medicine but i
guess the patient needed it
sometime life sometimes life’s going to
hit you in the head with a brick
don’t lose faith
i’m convinced that the only thing that
kept me going was that i loved what i
did you’ve got to find what you love and
that is as true for work as it is for
your lovers
your work is going to fill a large part
of your life and the only way to be
truly satisfied is to do what you
believe is great work and the only way
to do great work is to love what you do
if you haven’t found it yet keep looking
and don’t settle
as with all matters of the heart you’ll
know when you find it and like any great
relationship it just gets better and
better as the years roll on so keep
looking
don’t settle
my third story
is about death
when i was 17 i read a quote that went
something like
if you live each day as if it was your
last someday you’ll most certainly be
right
it made an impression on me and since
then for the past 33 years i’ve looked
in the mirror every morning and asked
myself
if today were the last day of my life
would i want to do what i am about to do
today
and whenever the answer has been no for
too many days in a row i know i need to
change something
remembering that i’ll be dead soon is
the most important tool i’ve ever
encountered to help me make the big
choices in life
because almost everything
all external expectations all pride all
fear of embarrassment or failure these
things just fall away in the face of
death
leaving only what is truly important
remembering that you are going to die is
the best way i know to avoid the trap of
thinking you have something to lose
you are already naked there is no reason
not to follow your heart
no one wants to die
even people who want to go to heaven
don’t want to die to get there
and yet
death is the destination we all share
no one has ever escaped it
and that is as it should be because
death is very likely the single best
invention of life
it’s life’s change agent it clears out
the old to make way for the new
right now the new is you
but someday not too long from now you
will gradually become the old and be
cleared away
sorry to be so dramatic but it’s quite
true
your time is limited so don’t waste it
living someone else’s life
don’t be trapped by dogma which is
living with the results of other
people’s thinking
don’t let the noise of others opinions
drown out your own inner voice and most
important have the courage to follow
your heart and intuition
they somehow already know what you truly
want to become
everything else is secondary
stay hungry stay foolish
today
i want to talk about purpose
[Music]
but i’m not here to give you the
standard commencement about finding your
purpose we’re millennials we try to do
that instinctively
instead i’m here to tell you that
finding your purpose isn’t enough
the challenge for our generation is to
create a world where everyone has a
sense of purpose
one of my favorite stories
is when jfk went to go visit the nasa
space center and he saw a janitor
holding a broom and he asked him what he
was doing and the janitor replied mr
president i’m helping put a man on the
moon
purpose
is that feeling
that you are a part of something bigger
than yourself
that you are needed and that you have
something better ahead to work for
purpose is what creates true happiness
and today i want to talk about three
ways that we can create a world where
everyone has a sense of purpose
by taking on big meaningful projects
together
by redefining equality so everyone has
the freedom to pursue their purpose
and by building community
all across the world
so first let’s take on big meaningful
projects
our generation is going to have to deal
with tens of millions of jobs replaced
by automation like self-driving cars and
trucks
but we have the potential to do so much
more than that
every generation has its defining works
more than three hundred thousand people
work to put that man on the moon
including that janitor
millions of volunteers immunize children
around the world against polio and
millions of more people built the hoover
dam and other great projects
and now it’s our generation’s turn
to do great things
now i know maybe you’re thinking i don’t
know how to build a dam
i don’t know how to get a million people
involved in anything
well
let me tell you a secret
no one does when they begin
ideas don’t come out fully formed
they only become clear as you work on
them
you just have to get started
movies and pop culture just get this all
wrong
the idea of a single eureka moment is a
dangerous lie it makes us feel
inadequate because we feel like we
haven’t had ours yet
and it prevents people with seeds of
good ideas from ever getting started in
the first place
[Music]
in our society
we often don’t take on big things
because we’re so afraid of making
mistakes
that we ignore all the things wrong
today if we do nothing
the reality is
anything we do today
is going to have some issues in the
future
but that can’t stop us from getting
started
so what are we waiting for
it is time for our generation defining
great works
how about stopping climate change before
we destroy the planet and getting
millions of people involved
manufacturing
and installing solar panels
how about curing all diseases and
getting people involved by asking
volunteers to share their health data
track their health data and share their
genomes
[Music]
these achievements are all within our
reach
let’s do them all in a way that gives
everyone in our society a role
let’s do big things not just to create
progress but to create purpose
the second is redefining
our idea of equality so everyone has the
freedom to pursue their purpose
now
many of our parents had stable jobs
throughout their careers but in our
generation we’re all a little
entrepreneurial whether we’re starting
our own projects or finding our role in
another one
and you know that’s great because our
culture of entrepreneurship is how we
create so much progress
an entrepreneurial culture thrives when
it is easy to try lots of new ideas
facebook wasn’t the first thing i built
i also built chat systems and games
study tools and music players and i’m
not alone
jk rowling got rejected 12 times before
she finally wrote and published harry
potter
the greatest successes come from having
the freedom to fail
now
today
we have a level of wealth and equality
that hurts everyone
when you don’t have the freedom
to take your idea and turn it into a
historic enterprise
we all lose
and right now today our society is way
over indexed on rewarding people when
they’re successful and we don’t do
nearly enough to make sure that everyone
can take lots of different shots
now let’s face it
there is something wrong with our system
when i can leave here and make billions
of dollars in 10 years
while millions of students can’t even
afford to pay off their loans let alone
start a business
i know a lot of entrepreneurs
and i don’t know a single person who
gave up on starting a business because
they were worried they might not make
enough money
but i know too many people who haven’t
had the chance to pursue their dreams
because they didn’t have a cushion to
fall back on if they failed
[Music]
every generation
expands its definition of equality
previous generations fought for the vote
and civil rights
they had the new deal
and great society
and now it’s time for our generation to
define a new social contract
we should have a society that measures
progress
not just by economic metrics like gdp
but by how many of us have a role we
find meaningful
we should explore ideas like universal
basic income to make sure that everyone
has a cushion to try new ideas
and we’re all going to make mistakes
so we need a society that’s less focused
on locking us up and stigmatizing us
when we do
and as our technology keeps on evolving
we need a society that is more focused
on providing continuous education
through our lives and yes
giving everyone the freedom to pursue
purpose isn’t going to be free
people like me should pay for it
and a lot of you are going to do really
well and you should too
but it’s not just about giving money
you can also give time
and i promise you
if you just take an hour to a week
that’s all it takes to give someone a
hand and help them reach their potential
now maybe you’re thinking that’s a lot
of time i’m not sure if i have that much
time
i used to think that
we can all make time to give someone a
hand
let’s give everyone the freedom to
pursue purpose not just because it’s the
right thing to do but because when more
people can turn their dreams into
something great we are all better for it
purpose doesn’t only come from work
the third way
we can create a sense of purpose for
everyone is by building community
and in our generation when we say
purpose for everyone
we mean everyone in the world
in a recent survey of millennials around
the world
asking what most defines our identity
the most popular answer wasn’t
nationality ethnicity or religion
it was citizen of the world
that’s a big deal
every generation expands the circle of
people we consider one of us
and in our generation that now includes
the whole world
we understand that the great arc of
human history bends towards people
coming together in ever greater numbers
from tribes to cities to nations to
achieve things that we could not on our
own
we get that our greatest opportunities
are now global
we can be the generation that ends
poverty
that ends disease
and we get that our greatest challenges
need global responses too
no country can fight climate change
alone or prevent pandemics
progress now requires coming together
not just as cities or nations but also
as a global community
[Music]
but we live in an unstable time
there are people left behind by
globalization
across the whole world
and it’s tough to care about people in
other places when we don’t first feel
good about our lives here at home
the purpose and stability in our own
lives
that we can start to open up and care
about everyone else too
and the best way to do that
is to start building local communities
right now
change starts local
even global change starts small with
people like us
in our generation
the struggle of whether we connect more
whether we achieve our greatest
opportunities comes down to this
your ability
to build communities
and create a world where every single
person has a sense of purpose
i i try to think what did i say that
could actually be helpful or useful to
you in the future
and uh i thought perhaps uh tell the
story of how i sort of came to be here
how did some of these things happen
and and maybe there’s some lessons there
um because i often find myself wondering
how did this happen
so
when i was young i i
i didn’t really know what i was going to
do uh when i got older
but but then eventually i thought that
the idea of inventing things would be
would be really cool
the reason i thought that was because
i i read a quote from author c clock
which said that
efficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic
and and that’s really true
if you think if you go back
say 300 years the things that we take
for granted today
would be you’d be burned at the stake
for you know being able to fly
that’s crazy
being able to see over long distances
being able to communicate having um
effectively
with with the internet
a group mind of sorts
and having access to all the world’s
information
instantly from almost anywhere in the
earth
this is stuff that that really would be
magic it would be considered magic
in times past in fact i think it
actually goes beyond that because there
are many things that we take for granted
today that weren’t even imagined
in times past they weren’t even in the
realm of magic
so that it actually goes goes beyond
that
so i thought well
you know if if i can do
some of those things basically if i can
advance technology then that’s like
magic and that would be really cool and
i always had sort of a slight
existential crisis because i was trying
to figure out what does it all mean like
what’s the purpose of things
and i came to the conclusion that if if
we can advance the the knowledge of the
world if we can do things that expand
the scope and and scale of consciousness
then we’re better able to ask the right
questions and become more enlightened
and and that’s really the only way
forward
so i i studied
physics and business because i figured
in order to do a lot of these things you
need to
know how the universe works and you need
to know how
how the economy works
and you also need to be able to bring a
lot of people together to work with you
to create something because it’s very
difficult to do something as as an
individual if it’s if it’s a significant
technology
i originally came out to to california
to
try to figure out
how to improve the
energy density of of electric vehicles
basically to try to figure out if there
was an advanced capacitor that that
could serve as an alternative to
batteries
and um that was in 95 and
that’s also when the internet
started to happen
and it i i thought well i can either
pursue this tech this technology where
success maybe may not be one of the
possible outcomes which is always tricky
or
participate in the internet and and be
part of it so i decided to to drop out
did some internet stuff what one of
which was paypal and and i think maybe
it’s helpful to
say one of the things that was important
then in the creation of paypal
was uh was kind of how it started
because
the initial thought was with paypal was
to create an agglomeration of financial
services so you have one place where
all your financial services needs would
be seamlessly integrated and and work
smoothly and then we had like a little
feature which was to do email payments
and whenever we’d show the show the
system off to someone uh we’d show the
hard part which was the um
the agglomeration of financial services
which was quite difficult to put
together nobody was interested then we’d
show people email payments which was
actually quite easy and everybody was
interested so i think it’s important to
to take feedback from your environment
you know it’s it you want to be as
closed loop as possible it’s so we focus
on email payments and really try to make
that work and that’s what really got
things to take off
but but if we hadn’t if we hadn’t
responded to what people said then we we
probably would not have been successful
so it’s important to look for things
like that and and focus on them when
when you when you see them and get
correct your prior assumptions
going from paypal
what what are some of the
the other problems that uh are likely to
most affect the future of humanity
it really wasn’t from the perspective of
what what’s the rancor best way to to
make money um which which is which is
okay but
what i think is going to most affect the
future humanity so i think the biggest
terrestrial problem we’ve got is a
sustainable energy but the production
and consumption of energy in a
sustainable manner if we don’t solve
that this the sensory is the century
we’re we’re in deep trouble
and then the the other one being the
extension of life beyond earth to make
life multi-planetary
so that’s the basis for
the latter is the basis force for spacex
and the former is the basis for
tesla and solar city and and when i
started spacex i it was actually
initially
i thought that
well there’s there’s no way one could
possibly start a rocket company i wasn’t
that crazy
but but then
i thought well what is a way to
increase nasa’s budget that was actually
my initial goal
so
i i thought well if we can do a low-cost
mission to mars something called mars
oasis which would land seeds with with
dehydrate wood with seasoned dehydrated
nutrient gel and you hydrate them upon
landing and then you’d have this great
sort of money shot of green plants on a
red background and the public tends to
respond to um
precedents and superlatives
and this would be the first life on mars
the furthest that life’s ever traveled
as far as we know
and and i thought well that that would
get people really excited
and and and therefore increase at nasa’s
budget so so obviously the financial
outcome from such a mission would
probably be zero so anything better than
that was on the upside
so i actually went to i went to russia
three times to look at buying a
refurbished icbm because that that was
the best deal
and uh i can tell you it was very weird
going there in 2000 late 2001 2002
going to the russian rocket forces and
saying i’d like to buy
two of your biggest rockets
but you can keep the nuke
that’s a lot more
um
and
that was 10 years ago i guess so
they thought i was crazy but but i did
have money so that was
that was okay
after making several trips to to russia
i came to the conclusion that
that actually uh
my initial impression was was wrong
about
because my initial thought was well
that there’s not enough will to explore
and expand beyond earth and have a mars
base and that kind of thing but i can’t
conclusion that that was wrong um in
fact there’s plenty of will particularly
in the united states
because the united states
is a nation of explorers of people who
came here from from other parts of the
world i think
the united states really
a
distillation of the spirit of human
exploration
but if people think it’s impossible then
or it’s going to completely break the
federal budget then they’re not going to
do it
so
after
my third trip i said okay
what we really need to do here is try to
solve the space transport problem
and uh and started spacex
and uh this this was against the advice
of pretty much everyone i talked to
but one friend made me sit down and
watch a bunch of videos of rockets
blowing up let me tell you he wasn’t far
wrong i think it was it was tough going
there in the beginning because i’d never
built anything physical i mean i built
like little model rockets as a kid and
that kind of thing but
um i never had a company that built
anything physical so i’d figure out how
to how to do all these things and and
bring together the right team of people
and so we we did all that and and then
failed three times um
it it was tough tough going
because thing about a rocket is that the
the passing grade is a hundred percent
and uh
you you don’t get to
actually test the rocket in the real
environment that it’s going to be in
so i think so the best analogy for for
rocket engineering is
it’s like if you want to create a really
complicated bit of software
you could you can’t run the software as
an integrated hole and you can’t run it
on the computer it’s intended to run on
but the first time you put it all
together and write it on that computer
it must run with no bugs
that’s that’s basically the essence of
it so we missed the mark there
that the first launch i was picking up
bits of rocket near the
the launch site was bizarre and uh
but we we learned with with each
successive flight and uh and were able
to with uh especially with the fourth
flight in 2008 uh reached orbit and that
was also with the last bit of money that
we had
thank goodness uh that that happened i
think the saying is fourth times the
charm
so that’s we got the falcon one two
orbit
and then
uh began to scale that up to to the
falcon 9 which is
about an order of magnitude more a
thrust it’s uh around a million pounds
of thrust
and
we managed to get that to orbit and then
uh developed dragon spacecraft
which
recently was able to dock and return to
earth from the space station
that was a white knuckled event
so yeah it’s a huge relief still can’t
quite believe it actually happened
but there’s a lot more that that that
must happen beyond this in order for
humanity to be to become a space faring
civilization ultimately
a multi-planet species and that’s
something i think it’s it’s it’s vitally
important and and i hope um
that that some of you will will
participate in in that either at spacex
or at other companies because it’s just
really one of the
the most important things for the
preservation and extension of
consciousness
it’s worth noting as i’m sure people are
aware that the earth has been around for
four billion years
and civilization at least in terms of
having
writing has been around for 10 000 years
and that’s been generous and i think um
i’m actually i’m actually fairly
optimistic about the future of earth so
i don’t want to
i don’t want to sort of people to have
the wrong impression that i think we’re
all about to die
i think things will most likely be okay
for a lo for a long time on earth
but not not for sure but most likely
but but even if it’s if it’s sort of 99
likely one a one percent chance is still
it’s still worth spending a fair bit of
effort to ensure that we have um we’ve
backed up the biosphere you know
planetary redundancy if you will
and so i think i think it’s really
really quite important and in order to
do that
there’s a breakthrough that needs to
occur which is to create a rapidly and
completely reusable um transport system
to mars which which is one of those
things that’s right on the borderline of
of impossible
um but that that’s sort of the the thing
that we’re
we’re going to try to achieve there with
with with spacex
and then on the on the on the tesla
front uh the goal with tesla was really
to try to show that what electric cars
can do because people had the wrong
impression we had to change people’s
perception of an electric vehicle
because they used to think of it as
something that was slow and
ugly and had low range and like a golf
cart
and and so that’s why we created the
tesla roadster to show that you can be
fast
attractive and and long range and it’s
amazing how
even though you can show that something
works on paper you know and the
calculations are very clear
until you actually have the physical
object and they can they can drive it it
doesn’t really sink in for people
um and so that that i think is is
something worth noting if if you’re
gonna create a company the first thing
you should try to do is create a working
prototype
um you know everything everything looks
great on powerpoint but if you have if
you have an actual demonstration article
even if it’s in primitive form that’s
much much more effective for convincing
people
i i think the the overarching point i
want to make is that um
you guys are the magicians of the 21st
century they’re like anything holds you
back imagination is is the limit
um and
go out there and create some magic thank
you
[Music]
you