How to FIND Your Unique Path | Peter Dinklage's Wisdom in 10 Minutes

Good morning, Believe Nation! It's Evan. My one word is believe, and I believe that you have something special that when you unleash it, it will be able to change the world. So to help you on your journey, today's message is Take Your Own Path. Over to you, Peter Dinklage. I'm a writer, so I'm kind of curious, what type of scripts do you get coming your way that you're tired of?

I mean, originality, I know that's a very, uh, but without it being aware that it's being original, a lot of scripts are trying to be very original and they're so self-aware. I think we're living nowadays in a meta society and we can't help ourselves in that, and I think a lot of it manifests a lot in scripts that I read. Like they're— Charlie Kaufman, for example, he came into this world and he wrote those movies. And since Charlie, people have tried to be like Charlie's movies, you know, they've sort of followed, tried to follow that form, but it's not their own, it's Charlie's. And so sort of follow your own, take your own path, write what's true to you and no one else, and then it'll be wholly original. That's what I look for.

So I agree that ultimate success will come from taking your own path by you being different. If you look like everybody else and you're selling the same product, the same service as everybody else, you're not gonna stand out. You're not gonna achieve greatness. The people who go on to do amazing things in any field are the ones who are unique, who set the trends, who have their own style, and then everybody else kind of follows that. But the maybe counterculture advice that I have is often to get to that point, you need to copy people at the beginning. I'm a big believer in modeling and copying at the start of your journey. When you don't know what you're doing, when you're trying to figure things out, you copy people, you copy others, you try things on, you see if it fits. Before you become a clothing designer making brand new clothes, your own style, you, you buy other people's clothes and you try them on and you see how it fits, and you start to develop your own style. You develop your own style by trying on other people's styles and then being able to modify them and make a Singers, when they start out, a lot of them start as cover bands, right? You might cover the Beatles, or you might cover Metallica, or you might cover somebody else. And as you cover those artists, you develop your own style. You start to figure out, I like how this person does it. I like— I want to pull that from this person, that from this person. And then you are able to tweak it for yourself. And so I think if you start off trying to be wholly original, it makes it really difficult for you ever to really achieve greatness because you don't know how to how things work in the industry and you're missing out on a lot of learning opportunities. Or think if at the beginning you copy, you model, you take things that have worked for other people. That can get you 80% of the way. And really quickly. 'Cause if you're copying from somebody else who's achieved a lot of success, that shortcuts your path. I mean, you still have to do the work, but it gets you there a lot faster than you trying to figure out everything on your own. Right? If you had to figure out E=mc² on your own, you'd probably never be able to do it. But you can learn it from a book and then understand how to apply it. So you can learn from the lessons and mistakes and paths of other people to help you get somewhere faster. But it only takes you 80% of the way, right? If you copy Mariah Carey, the best you're going to become at that is just a junior Mariah Carey. If you sound exactly like her, the best you'll be able to get is a cover band of Mariah Carey and maybe sing on cruise ships. And, and that's a great career, but it's not where you could be. It's not where the ultimate greatness comes from. And so you're taking these bits from different people. It's why I have this channel, it's why I do these top tens and Mentor Meets and all these series, is to expose you guys and myself to new ideas, to how different people operate, and maybe spot something and say, that's interesting how that works for Elon Musk, that's really cool, I wanna try that. And at the beginning you're just copying Elon you know, words that he's using or thought process or brainstorming. You're copying something and it may work for you to a certain degree, and then the magic will come when you twist it and you figure out, okay, that worked for Elon, I gotta add my own little special ingredients to it to make it work for me. And so ultimate success will come when you are finding your own path, when you're creating your own art, but that's the final 20%. To shortcut your path, that first 80, I'd recommend copying, modeling, studying, learning as much as you can from people who've come before you so you can quickly figure out your style, what you like, what resonates well with you, what works for you, and then add your secret ingredient to find your own path. So the question of the day today is, I'm curious, what have you learned most from somebody? Maybe it's somebody that we profiled on the top 10 videos somewhere on this channel, Maybe it's somebody in your family or somebody that you've met as a mentor. What's a lesson that you learned from somebody else that you were able to apply to your life, to your business, that really had a big impact on you? I'd love to hear your feedback. Please leave it down in the comments below. I also want to give a quick shout out to Kaylee and Bradley. Thank you guys so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word, and taking that picture and sending it in to me. You guys look great. I really appreciate your support and I hope you enjoyed the book. So thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love, and I'll see you guys again tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso.

I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going.

Now, if you're an artist or a filmmaker or a content creator in general, do you feel like you shouldn't even go mainstream towards TV or towards film or towards working with a music label, or should you focus on creating it all yourself? Because it still helps a lot of people who don't know how to do the online stuff.

Yeah, I mean, look, there's, there's no answer to that question. I think that it's one thing that everybody but the successful people fail to realize about any creative industry is that there is absolutely no defined path. There isn't one. So it's about paving your own path. And now for me, my path meant mainstream just didn't work, and media did work. And for other people, it's entirely antithetical to that, where mainstream is exactly the right place for them. So there is no formula that's right or wrong. I'm just much better versed in my own—

Sure.

—the trajectory that I followed myself. And that includes really running away from the establishment into whatever the most forward-thinking space is.

The idea is that every pursuit, no matter how glamorous it may seem, no matter how exciting you are— it feels to you, no matter how much you feel like you were born to do it, comes with a shit sandwich. And so the question is not, "What do I love?" The question is, "What do I love so much that I don't mind eating the shit sandwich that comes along with that thing?" So for me in my life, writing is the thing that I love and the shit sandwich was the 7 years that I was not getting published and that I was coming home from my job as a diner waitress, as a bartender, as an au pair, as a— somebody who worked in flea markets, as a cook, and I was coming home tired and smelling like other people's french fries and sitting down and doing my real job. Which was to write and then to go to the mailbox the next day and get another rejection letter and then say, "Do I still wanna do this? 'Cause this shit sandwich sucks." Like, holy— Am I ready to take another bite? You know? And I did still wanna do it. And now even as somebody who makes their living as a writer, there's no end to the shit sandwiches. It's like, "Oh, hello, horrible review in prominent newspaper. That's your shit sandwich today, Liz. You still wanna do this work?" Yep. Yeah, I still do. Still worth it. Like, "Hello, awful comment on social media." from somebody who thinks you're a pile of dog shit, you know, and just has, like, chosen every possible way that they can just cannot get it out of their system fast enough how much disregard they have for your entire life. Still want to do this thing? Yeah, I still want to do it. You know, so that's the question because if the first time you encounter the shit sandwich you're like, "Well, this isn't worth it," then that's not the thing you're supposed to be doing. And there are plenty of things in life that that I have run into the shit sandwich and I've been like, "So not worth it. So not worth it. Like, this is not— I don't wanna do this. Like, whatever the alleged benefits of this thing might be, no." I'm not down for this. SoulCycle, no. You know? Like, I know it's probably really good for me, but I feel like throwing up right now because this is too hard. Right. I'm out. You'll not be seeing me here again. You know? Like, and I love my sisters at SoulCycle, I just don't like feeling like I'm gonna throw up when I exercise. So it's not for me. You know? And so that's the question. You go into this thing thinking, "If I follow my bliss and I live my dream and I stand in my truth, then everything will be great." It doesn't mean everything will be great. It just means at the end of the day when you check in with yourself and you go, "In the end, on the balance, is this still better than not doing it?" And the answer is still, "Yeah, this thing is still better than not doing it," then you're on the right path.

While traditional paths may seem harder to find, that also means that you may learn sooner than most generations the hard lesson that you must always make the path for yourself. There is no secret society out there that will tap you on the shoulder one night and show you the way. Because the true secret is your life will not be defined by the society that we have left you. To paraphrase Robert Bolt, Society has no more idea of what you are than you do, because ultimately it has only your brains to think with. Every generation must define itself and so make the world that suits itself. So, if you must find your own path, and we have left you no easy path, then decide now to choose the hard path that leads to the life and the world that you want.