Alright listen and listen well because no truer words are ever gonna be spoken. You can do anything you want without limitation. Whatever it is that you decide you want to make come true in your life, you can do that.
It is gonna take an inhuman amount of work, you're gonna have to be prepared to break yourself in half, you are going to have to learn more than anyone has ever learned, you're gonna have to push yourself harder than anyone has ever asked you to push yourself before, you're gonna go way beyond your breaking point you're gonna run until you vomit, you're gonna study until you fall asleep, you're going to push and push and push and then you're gonna push some more and when you hit the limit you're gonna push again beyond that. You're gonna force yourself to an adaptation response and 'why? ' because as Malcolm X said the future belongs to those who prepare for it today.
So if you don't put the work in today if you don't do the unending back breaking work of developing yourself into something greater the world is gonna pass you by. The people that are going to own it are gonna be the ones that did that work and the one promise that I can make you right now is that somebody- somebody out there is out working, somebody right now is doing the things that I'm saying Somebody right now is doing the work of failing and getting up and getting better and pushing themselves and triggering that glorious adaptation response that makes humans the apex predator. Someone right now they're putting in that work and if you don't the future is gonna belong to them and as Martin Luther King jr.
said if you can't fly than run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward. It's not okay to make excuses, it's not gonna slow people down, it's not okay to ask the world to stop so that you can step out front, it's not okay to expect little of yourself and demand great rewards. The only thing that's okay is to be in line with the way that the world really works and if you want to be great you've got to become capable of greatness.
You've got to develop your skill set, you've got to take what you have now and if that's crawling then crawl but you drag yourself ever forward to a vision of yourself that is so clear and so specific that nothing could knock you off your path because you my friends know exactly where you're going, you're willing to pay whatever price it takes to get there and no matter what anybody says no matter how many hecklers come for you, no matter how many people try to throw dirt on you, try to stop you, try to knock you down, no matter how many people come for you at night while you sleep, you will rise and you will keep pushing forward and you will get better every day and no matter how many times people chop at you, knock you down, knock you off the path you will get back on, you will crawl til you can walk, you will walk till you can run and then you will run until you fly and that my friends is the only path forward so if you want a future that makes you happy, if you want a world that you're excited about, get your ass out there and earn it. Give me the book back, take the book hey bro that's my chicken bro. Chicken?
Justin? Justin what is you doing man? What's up yeah ah what is you doing bro?
I'm just playin I ain't robbing iou-y'all thought it was for real y'all know me I be joking and stuff What about the job man I ain't got no job why you should have stayed at school bro man got you education man can't even mess with you man he right here robbing people man cool off stupid like oh yeah just like that? As Derek Jeter said, there may be people who have more talent than you but there's no excuse for anyone to work harder than you do. At the end of the day whether you believe in talent or not is completely irrelevant.
Everyone should believe in hard work, everything in your life is literally a result of that. You're born an infant. a lump of flesh that can't even hold its own head up and yet somehow by practicing, by learning, by growing you're able to get better.
You're literally incapable of anything when you're born every skill that you have in your life all the things that you take for granted at one point you couldn't do them so understanding that humans truly are an adaptation machine and that they are capable of acquiring any skill that they want but it requires hard work, it requires that you do the reps, it requires that you put in the effort and at the end of the day the people that you're going to surpass are not going to be the people that have less talent than you maybe they even have more talent than you it's going to be the people that you're willing to outwork but until you're willing to outwork them you're always going to be stuck and as John Irving said to do anything really well you have to overextend yourself and that's the key. If you want to put in an extraordinary performance, if you want to absolutely dazzle people then you have to do something amazing. You have to be willing to put yourself out there, you have to be willing to do things that other people think are gonna break you, that other people simply believe there's no way that you could be able to pull that off, that the human animal just is not capable of the lemgths to which you are professing to go and when you profess it you have to be willing to back it up and you have to put yourself on that March knowing in no uncertain terms, under no circumstances and for no reason whatsoever would you ever be willing to back down and when you go in with that level of certainty then and only then are you actually going to be able to pull this off and as Billie Jean King said champions keep playing until they get it right Fatigue will literally chip away at your will to win it is the thing inside of your mind that weak voice that tells you that you're not going to be able to make it, the weak voice that begs you to stop and the weak voice that promises safety and security if you would just quit and here's the worst part about that- it's right.
if you quit right now, if you stop just sit down, relax, you're not at risk anymore, you're not a risk of embarrassment, you're not at risk of failure but you're also not at risk of greatness and if you really want to achieve something you've gotta find ways to put yourself at risk of something great happening you've got to put yourself at risk of overextending yourself. You've got to be willing to face that you may die that you may actually fall and here's the thing for the people that dismiss that that say they would never put themselves in that situation then you have limits and make no mistake those limits are self placed and for the people that are willing to push that, for people that are willing to go beyond that, for people who understand there are things in this world that they're prepared to die for and it is the thing that they put at the center of their life, it is the thing that they are living for but they're not gonna stop and they understand that where the human mind thinks it will break is far short of where it will actually break but before you can find that point you've got to be willing to push yourself you've got to be willing to go harder and farther than anybody thinks is reasonable or sensible, that's the path and so the question is can you be thought a fool? The question is do you believe in something so much that you would put yourself at risk like that?
The question is can you face down everyone including the weak voice inside of your own mind to make the world come true that you want to see come true because at the end of the day nobody's gonna do it for you so if you're a champion, keep going until it's done. As Nelson Mandela said education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world. Wherever you are right now listening to this, I want you to burn that into your mind.
The most powerful weapon that you're going to have at your disposal isn't a gun, it isn't a sword, it isn't a bomb, the most powerful weapon you will ever have at your disposal if you really want to make change is knowledge. It doesn't mean going to school. It can be school, it can be books it can be a mentor, it can be somebody else's failure, it can be your own failure but whatever it is to always be learning.
To be learning something today knowing that that's an investment and as Robert Louis Stevenson said don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but rather by the seeds you plant and that's what knowledge is. That's what the learning process is- is you're learning something today that you may not even understand how it's going to be valuable a one day that piece of knowledge is gonna come to your aid one day that thing that you learned is going to be something that you're gonna lean on one day, that thing that you've worked your ass off to understand better than anybody else in the world, it's going to help you change the world but you have to be doing it now, you have to be learning with an obsession, you have to understand that ideas in equal ideas out and that you have to chase that knowledge down, that it is a relentless pursuit and that like you would build an armada, like you would create a stock pile of weapons, you must create a stockpile of knowledge. You must learn and learn and learn and you must hold yourself accountable every day to planting those seeds, to getting better, to learning more, to understanding things more broadly, when you do that there will be nothing that won't be unlocked to you and that's what I want you guys to understand.
It doesn't matter matter where you started your circumstances, the money, the people that you know, none of it matters. What matters is how much you are willing to learn, how good are you willing to get, how much knowledge are you willing to soak in because that will become your weapon that will be how you rise up and that would be the thing that will protect you when you need it most. So if you want to do something incredible tomorrow, learn today.