Dear Future Generations Three Philosophies
life
is hard life wasn’t meant to be easy
if it was what would be the point of
living
think about that for a second
we all go through different struggles
and hardships but it is about how we
respond to these challenges in our lives
that define us for me
my middle school years were some of the
darkest times in my life
but i wouldn’t trade these moments away
for all the knowledge and mistakes i
made which make me that person i am
speaking to you all today
now you may be thinking here comes a
motivational talk
about the meaning of life from a young
man with little to none life experience
and well you nailed it
i’m attempting to motivate my peers to
recognize their hardships
without competing for the most trauma
because not only do our obstacles help
us grow
they define our character our character
is a way the world can view upon us is
also a way we can perceive ourselves
it is defined by the choices we make and
our mentality has to be strong
to make these difficult choices we
encounter in life
get ready to be motivated by three
philosophies i’m going to provide to you
these philosophies in no particular
order of importance
will help strengthen your mentality
follow these and whatever life throws at
you i believe
you’ll be able to handle it now how did
i realize and articulate these
philosophies in the first place
i’ve accumulated them for my humble 16
years of life
in conjunction with the life experiences
of those around me
i believe they can help other people
around my age
so without further ado
the first philosophy today is you have
to have
self-discipline i recently read
the book think and grow rich by napoleon
hill
it’s a great book it essentially helps
get your mentality
ready to accumulate riches i want to
mention
a quote from this book it speaks of
self-discipline and it reads
if you do not conquer self you’ll be
conquered by self
i’m going to say that again if you do
not conquer self
you’ll be conquered by self
for me this quote is very significant
and it is the wallpaper on the lock
screen on my phone so you best believe
i’d be seeing it every single day of my
life
and this quote is something i believe
everyone should live by every day of
their life because the principle
of this quote and of self-discipline is
very simple
if you cannot control yourself you
cannot control your life
there’s no questions about it
i believe we’ve all gone in an argument
with our family members and we snapped
at them because we were angry
or they were disagreeing with us in some
type of way
i believe we all have peers nowadays
that procrastinate from their lives
and most likely spend 12 plus hours a
day on their phone just scrolling
through tick tock and
instagram i for one have friends
who take highly addictive substances
like nicotine
and to this day continue to take these
substances even
after several attempts to quit
now i’m going to share you a story about
my good friend omar
who i’ve gotten permission of to tell
you all about him and the principle of
self-discipline
you see my friend omar he’s an excellent
basketball player
he’s currently on the jv team for his
high school and he might move up to
varsity next year
well in middle school he would have
described himself as a bit lazy
he was still a good basketball player
but he was at a plateau in his
basketball career he needed to learn how
to take his game
to the next level well in the middle of
8th and 9th grade
something snapped he suddenly had a
strong desire
to take this basketball talent and make
something out of it
he knew he had to work hard to achieve
this goal but he had to discipline
himself to work harder than anyone else
he described to me that he took a lot of
sacrifices
and it took a lot out of him you see
he did multiple workouts a day every day
whether it be early in the morning or
late at night
he did all of this because he knew he
was bound
to get great results may i remind you
omar is currently on the jv team for his
high school
he tells me that the varsity coach is in
talks of him
of moving up next year i’ve known omar
for 11 years now
and to me he is the living breathing
definition
of hard work and self-discipline
now we move on to the second philosophy
today which is caring about yourself
first
before you care about others otherwise
known as self-care
do not put the happiness of others ahead
of your own
the only thing you should feel like
doing which may seem a little selfish
is caring about yourself whether it be
physically or mentally
for example you could be eating cleaner
you can be doing more exercise
or you could even be reading a book
nowadays which is very unlikely
but just doing your own thing
do not let others discourage you to do
the things that you don’t enjoy to do
because the only things you should feel
like doing are the things that you enjoy
to do
whether they like it or not
also take time to yourself because this
is very
something very also
take time for yourself because this is
something very essential
for your well-being we can often be
caught up doing things for others
while not really taking care of
ourselves furthermore
do not let others make decisions for you
because you it will usually benefit them
and not you what i’m trying to get at
here with all these points
is be your own person stop
trying to fit in just do your own thing
because for me it makes me really angry
that there are people every day
that get controlled by their friends and
their loved ones they become a living
replica
of that person who influenced them
they have potential to be a great person
but it is wasted by
peer pressure getting to the best of
them
and as for an example of this just look
at me
i would describe myself as a very
vulnerable person
in middle school what i mean by this is
i was afraid to say no i was afraid to
disagree to my friends because
i believe their judgment was higher than
mine i believed that their decisions
were better than mine
i was just trying to fit in with them
because they were the cool kids because
they were the people who were most
popular
my father saw what was going on and he
knocked some sense into my head
you see he said get a grip on your life
because it is yours and not theirs
and with that little bit of wisdom i
changed
i became a less shy more confident
person
heck i did an entire ted talk
there were people that didn’t like the
new me and those who did
i just simply don’t talk to them much
anymore
everything i did was for me and only me
speaking of cutting people off you do
not have to be around people you don’t
want to be around
but there is an exception to this
because as dependents we cannot yet
remove toxic family members from our
lives
but what i’m more concerned about today
is friendships
and intimate relationships there’s this
old saying that states
tell me who your friends are and i will
show you your future
this statement still holds up to this
day remember when i said
our character is a way the world can
view us
well our relationships is another way
the world makes judgments upon us
am i saying it’s bad to have friends
to have a lot of friends absolutely not
but you have to find the real friends to
have a great supporting cast around you
and at the end of the day it is your
choice
you choose you want to be around and
nobody can take that right away from you
if you have this if you feel as this one
person is not being honest with you or
another is lowering your self-esteem
then just simply cut them off
it’s just not worth it do not let
other people control your life be the
captain
of your own ship now we move on to the
final philosophy
which is do not be afraid of
failure and for me
this was the hardest one to get down as
those of you who are close to me know
i am very competitive
i don’t take losing very lightheartedly
but i’d argue that
you don’t have to be uber competitive to
relate to this
i believe everyone was once or still is
afraid
of making mistakes you want to know an
interesting statistic
around the halloween time of 2015 a
goal-based network
did a survey on what people’s worst fear
was
this gold-based network was named
linkagle and
out of 1083 respondents a third’s
worst fear was failure
to understand how we fear failure in the
first place we want
we must understand why we fear it and i
feel like the answer to this is
very very simple we want to be perfect
we want to be perfect for those around
us we want to be perfect for ourselves
we set ourselves to high standards and
we don’t want to disappoint the people
around us
but i feel like and i think everyone’s
heard this before
you cannot be perfect and for it to take
effect
into your for it to take effect in your
life you have to embed it
in your head because
let’s face it the people you adore
aren’t perfect the celebrities you look
up to
aren’t perfect i am not perfect you are
not perfect nobody
on this planet is perfect
that’s why i believe perfection is a
myth
so if we can take this desire to be
perfect
and make it seem irrational then we
could take
failure and accept it with open arms
because with failure comes mistakes and
with mistakes comes learning
opportunities
so if we can take
this opportunity we have of failure
and uses to help us grow we then
increase our self-worth
a word of caution however do not be
caught up making the same mistakes over
and over again
because that just means you’re wasting
your time
you’re not learning anything now what’s
a great example
in the real world of success from
failure
well i want you guys to take a look at
michael jordan he’s quoted saying
i’ve missed more than 9 000 shots in my
career
and i’ve lost almost 300 games
26 times i’ve been trusted taking the
games winning shot
and i missed i failed over and over and
over again in my life
and that is why i succeed now
michael jordan is pretty well known for
his success so if you can’t take it from
me
take it from him there you have it
the answer to all of life’s questions
not really there are more motivational
philosophies i’ve couldn’t have gone
into
but these are the ones that helped me
get through middle school
check back in with me after college and
i may have 10 philosophies to live by
better yet after retirement i may have
consolidated all of life’s mysteries
into one simple philosophy all i can
offer you today
is what i know and that is the three
secrets to living a successful life
are self-discipline self-care
and self-worth
[Applause]