5 Lessons in Life You Can't Afford to Learn Too Late

What's up, Believe Nation? Greetings from Copenhagen, Denmark. My name is Evan Carmichael. My one word is believe, and I believe in people more than they believe in themselves. And my hope is that a little bit of that rubs off onto you so you can create something amazing in this world. So to help you on your journey today, we're gonna look at 5 lessons in life that people often learn too late, and hopefully you can pick it up a lot sooner. Lesson number 1 is don't sleepwalk through life.

I advise students, as much as possible, look for the job that you would take if you didn't need a job. I mean, don't sleepwalk through life and don't, don't say it's all going to be great, you know, I'll do this and I'll do that, and, you know, I'm just marking time to get to be older. That's— I've told people, that's like saving up sex for your old age. I mean, it just is not— it is not a good idea. Yeah, yeah. What are urging them to do. I'll explain just what I'm talking about. No, it, it just— yeah, you really want to be doing what you love doing, and you can't necessarily find it on your first job, right? But don't give up before you find it.

Lesson number 2: Live life without fear.

If there was one concept that I would suggest to people to take a daily confrontation with is fear. The problem with fear is that it lies, right? So fear tells you, hey, you know, if you say that to that girl, she's gonna know she has you, you know, and she'll never really be attracted to you if she knows how much you attracted to her. Don't say that, no. How we get her is when she walks by, ignore her. Right, right, so slip it, pop it on your shoulder. Fear tells you dumb shit like that, right? You know, so for me, the daily confrontation with fear has become a real practice for me since about 3 years ago. I went skydiving in Dubai, right? And skydiving is a really interesting confront with fear, right? So I gotta stand up, I'm sorry, I gotta stand up. All right, so all your friends, what happens? You go out, how you, oh, sorry, I dropped my thing. So what happens is you go out the night before and you take a drink with your friends And somebody says, "Yeah, we should go skydiving tomorrow." And you go, "Yeah, we'll go skydiving tomorrow. Yeah, yeah." And you go, "Yeah." And everybody goes, "Yeah." Right? And you go home, and you're by yourself, and you're like, "Mm." Right? You're like, "Well, I mean, they was drunk too." Right? So maybe they not— maybe— I mean, we don't have to go. We don't have to do it. So then that night, you're laying in your bed, and you just keep— And you're terrified. You keep imagining over and over again jumping out of an airplane and you can't figure out why you would do that, right? And you're laying there and you have the worst night's sleep of your life, but you still have the hope that your friends were drunk, right? So you wake up the next day and you go, you know, down and you stay where you were going to meet and everybody's there. You're like, ah, shit. All right, all right, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, right? So you get in the van And you don't know that your friends had the same night that you had, because they're pretending like they didn't. They're like, yeah, man, my uncle's a Navy SEAL. And you know, this is going to be great. I've been looking forward to this. And you're like, oh my God. Oh my God. And your stomach is terrible. You can't eat and everything. But you don't want to be the only punk who doesn't jump out of this airplane. So you get there. And then you have the safety brief. And you're standing there. And the guys will tell you, well, if the chute doesn't open, what's going to happen is you're doing— well, why the hell— what could happen? That the chute— wouldn't open, right? So you do a thing, and what you do is your first jump, you're attached to a guy who is going, you know, he's going to walk you out. So you go and you get there and there's an airplane and nobody's stopping, everybody's still going. So you get onto the airplane and you're sitting there, and, and, you know, it's extra because you're sitting on some dude's lap, some stranger. You sitting on his lap and it's like, you know, you trying to make small talk. Yeah, man, you "So you be jumping with people all the time, huh?" Right? You know. So, and then you just want to make sure, you know, you got kids, right? You got people you need to see, right? You just want to make sure he's serious, right? So you get in there. So everything's normal. So you fly and you go up, you go up, you go up, you go up to 14,000 feet and you notice there's a light. It's red and it's yellow and green, right? So right now the light's red. So then you start thinking at some point the light's going to go green, but you don't know what's going to happen, right? And you wait and it goes yellow and the light goes green and somebody opens the door. And in that moment you realize you've never been in a frickin airplane with the door open, right? Terror. Oh, sorry, I'm spitting. I'm sorry. Oh, sorry. No, terror, terror, terror, terror. Right? So you go and then, you know, if you were smart, you sat in the back so you don't go first, right? And then people start going out of the airplane. And you go and the guy walks you up to the end of the thing and you're standing and your toes are on the edge and you're looking out down to death. And they say, "On 3!" And they say, "1, 2!" And he pushes you on 2 because people grab on 3, right? Right? And you go, "Ahh!" And you fall out of the airplane, and in 1 second, you realize that it's the most blissful experience of your life. You're flying, right? It doesn't feel like falling, right?