Maya Angelou Motivational Speech: Success

Good morning, Believe Nation! My name is Evan Carmichael. My one word is believe, and I believe that entrepreneurs will solve all of the world's major problems. So to help you on your journey, today's message is: a lot of people don't want success. Over to you, Maya Angelou.

I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going. I wake up every morning, Well, a lot of people don't really want success. I've never understood that. This is true. You mean because they don't want it and the best evidence of that is that they fail. They fail. And the best evidence of that is they don't try things. That's right. That's right. But to succeed means that, I mean, you're in front of God and lots of responsible people and you have to either Eat your words or stand by them. I think that I have agreed a long time ago, Charlie Rose, this may be what I— my greatest blessing. I agreed a long time ago that I would die. Now, if I can admit that, that no matter what happens, I will do this thing. This is the biggest bugaboo of them all. I will do that. Well then, why couldn't I attempt something lesser?

Yeah.

So I will try.

Your fear of failure has done more to harm you than any insults anybody's thrown at you. Your fear of failure has done more to harm you than any beatings that anybody's ever put on you. Your fear of failure is the biggest thing that's holding you back from achieving amazing things and building amazing companies. And the biggest failure of all It's not doing the thing that you want to do. Not doing the thing that is inside you. That you know, if you did it, it's going to be amazing, but there's this huge wall of fear that you have to break through. And I think we need to have a discussion around fear. I think we see fear as the negative. Fear is the enemy. That we shouldn't do anything that we're afraid of. But if you look at all the people that you look up to, all the people that you respect, athletes, entrepreneurs, musicians, Whoever it is that you look up to, they had an insane amount of fear to get to where they wanted to go. There's that great diagram, I have a t-shirt of it, about the comfort zone, where it shows where your comfort zone is and it shows where the magic happens. And the magic always happens outside your comfort zone. And the more you can stretch and the more you can push what makes you scared, then the more you'll be able to create for yourself, for your community, for your family, for the world. If you just stay within this bubble and you never do the thing that you're afraid of, you're never going to grow. And you're never really going to be happy. And at the end of your life, you're going to look back and be filled with regret that you didn't do this thing. There's been a lot of times that, at least for me, and I'm sure you can relate, there's something I was so afraid to do. I was so afraid to do it. And then once I did it, it's like, "Hey, you know what? That actually wasn't that bad." And then you do it over and over and over again, and the fear is totally gone. I think about making videos on YouTube. The first times I got in front of a YouTube camera, I had to have my sister or somebody on my team come in. I used my own camera, focus it, and then leave the room because I was too afraid of their judgments or their opinions, even though they didn't really care. They were actually supportive of me, but I was just too afraid to talk in front of somebody else. Or when I was walking on the street, and filming myself. I'd be too afraid of other people, their judgments, their looking, and it throwing me off. And so if I let that prevent me from actually making videos, then I wouldn't have made this. I wouldn't be helping you guys. You wouldn't have anything to watch from me on a regular basis. Right? I wouldn't have closing in on 800,000 subscribers. It wouldn't be happening. And that would be a huge hole for me. That would make me feel really bad. Like, fast forward to age 90, looking back on my life, say, I didn't do that because I was afraid of to get in front of a camera and say something. For me, that's how I get through the immediate fear, is I fast forward to the end of my life and I trade off this immediate tiny little fear of getting up in front of a camera and doing something versus an entire lifetime of regret, and that's what I wanna try to avoid. And so failure is gonna happen. Failure is gonna happen, like you will fail. The most successful people in the world fail over and over and over and over and over again, they fail. They fail their way to success. Everybody has had massive failures. If you don't have any failures, it means you haven't tried anything. And so don't be afraid of failures. I just try to make failures on a small scale. A lot of the videos that we've made for this YouTube channel don't go anywhere. Series die all the time. The Top 10 was just one that I did as a one-off and it did well, so I was like, let's do it again, let's do it again. Let's do it twice a week, then 3 times a week, 5 times a week, and it builds. And others, I don't even remember how many we've killed off. You just— I'm not held up by it. It's just part of the distant past. I don't remember the names of the series anymore. I loved them when I launched them, and you guys didn't relate to them as well, so we killed it. And I expect most things to fail. That's okay. I don't tie my self-worth to one idea working out. And so if you can do that, if you can get past the fear of failure, And just expect things not to work at the beginning. And just keep driving and keep improving and keep getting better. Like, nothing that you try at the beginning works. Everything you do will fail at the beginning. Any skill that you try to learn, you're going to suck at at the start. It's normal. If you're trying to learn a language or pick up a new skill, you're going to go snowboarding or mountain biking or learn how to do YouTube or lights or whatever it is, you're going to suck at it at the start. That's okay, that's normal. Expect it, embrace it. And then you're gonna continue to fail and not get so caught up on every failure damaging your psyche so much. And then at the other end, and this is where model success can help, by looking at these people and knowing that they made it through, that if you stick with it and you embrace the failure and you keep going and you keep working and you keep hustling, that eventually you'll make it through, just like they did. But if you quit and you stop and you hold yourself back because you're afraid, then you're going to continue to live a life that you're going to regret instead of doing the thing that you were born to do. So the question of the day today is, I'm curious, what is the thing that you are most afraid of right now? Leave it down in the comments below. Really curious to find out. I also want to give a quick shout out to Rebecca Zhu. Rebecca, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word. I really appreciate your support and I hope you enjoyed the read. So thank you guys so much 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 again tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso.

I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going.

Socrates said, "Practice death daily." He didn't mean that in a morbid sense.

Yeah.

He meant that if we really consciously realize and remember every day that we are all going to die, then we live life differently.

Yeah.

Because first of all, we don't sweat the small stuff, and when it comes to death, everything is small stuff. It's the same thing, you know, that the Romans thought. You know, they would carve on statues and on trees, "M.M., Memento Mori," remember death. Again, it's one of the things— we actually have now a dedicated reporter on the Huffington Post covering death. Because again, that's again a huge silence in our culture. That the thing that is the absolutely inevitable part of our lives is not being covered by the media. Yeah, the Columbia Journalism Review. His first name is Jalweed. If you don't— if you can't remember his last name, he's that. He's doing amazing things around death in our religion section, which is next to our science section, because increasingly we're trying to, to see how the two are not opposed to each other. You know, dogmas may be opposed, but the heart of every religion is very connected to the heart of huge scientific discoveries. So my point, to go back to death, And is that if we make it part of life, it will make us lead life differently. And so when the time comes for us to die, we will be prepared for it.

Yeah, because we practiced it.

Because we have practiced it every day.

Yeah. I tell people all the time, and I really believe this, that I exist to show people what's possible. I really do. That's how I, it's like, go for it, try it. Because another thing, I am no different than anyone else out there. I am not here to say I have a superpower and it was all this. It was just try it, go, let's see what happens. And all of a sudden when you get rid of judgment, now you can be creative. But any bit of judgment kills creativity. Anytime you start to go, well, maybe I shouldn't. It's funny because you look at a lip sync or You look at any kind of dancing or anything like that, as soon as people see you being inhibited, you're done. You're like, oh, this guy, what is this? But all they want is for you to give all you got.

Just put it out there.

And then everybody's with you. And let me tell you, Terry Crews is gonna give you 150% no matter what. And that's, I learned, that's my whole career.

Yeah. If you just observe, if everybody makes a little effort, Everybody take a little time for this piece of life, okay? Not for your family, not for your career, not for something else, something else, just for this piece of life, give it little time because this is the most important piece of life in your life, isn't it? Yes or no? Even if you are in love with somebody, still this is the most important piece of life, isn't it? So pay some attention to this. How does it happen? Why have you taken it for granted? Believe me, you're not going to be here forever. I'll bless you with a long life, but you're going to fall dead one day. Yes or no? Yes. So do not take this for granted. If you wake up in the morning— tomorrow, if you wake up in the morning— no, this is not my wish. But I want you to know, of all the people who go to bed tonight, over a million people will not wake up tomorrow morning. And tomorrow, if you and me wake up tomorrow morning, is it not a fantastic thing? A million people did not wake up. You woke up. Is it not a great thing? Just look at the ceiling and smile. You are still awake. You're still there. And for many, many millions of people, somebody who is dear to them did not wake up. So just check those 5, 6 people around you. They all woke up?

Wow!

It's a fantastic day. You woke up and everybody who matters to you around you woke up. Is it not fantastic day? You don't think so?

Yes.

Yes. You don't seem to think so.

Yes.

Because the problem is just this, you are living with an idea that you are immortal. When I say you are immortal, you are not actually thinking you are immortal, but you are not conscious of your mortality. If you are not conscious of your mortality, somewhere you think you are immortal, isn't it? How many moments in a day, Are you conscious that you are mortal? If you were conscious, would you have time to crib? Would you have time to fight with somebody? Would you have time to do some rubbish with your life? If you knew— if you are conscious that you are mortal, you would do nothing other than what is absolutely needed for you and everybody around you. This one thing if you do, if you just remind yourself, You don't think this is a negative thing. Death is not a negative thing. It's the only thing which has added value to your life. If you're here forever, you would be unbearable.

Yes, yes, yes.

Isn't it? Aren't we glad everybody dies one day? If you just become conscious of this one thing, that always you're conscious that I'm mortal— you don't have to think I will die today, we don't intend, we want to live as far as possible, Just you know one day I will die. If you're just conscious of this one thing, you will naturally become spiritual. Every day, every moment if you remind yourself, "This is a brief life, I'm mortal, one day I will end." Just do this for 2 days and see, you will become something truly fantastic within yourself, just this is all.

That is simply beautiful.

That's all that's needed. If you want to know the value of life, just know that it's a brief happening.