Push Beyond Your Limits: Overcoming Fear and Growing Through Challenges

Pushing beyond what you're comfortable with.

Just keep pushing.

And you got to push your body.

Pushing yourself.

Push through.

Push yourself forward.

Push further.

Push through.

Push it through.

Push yourself all the way.

Hello, Believe Nation. Today we're going to talk about how you can push yourself through fear. And as always, if you hear something that really, really resonates with you, please leave it down in the comments below and put quotes around it so other people can be inspired as well.

If you get to a place where it's easy as an entrepreneur, it's about to get really, really hard. And so what you find is with really good entrepreneurs, they're constantly making things difficult for themselves. And it's pushing. I like to say you push until it hurts, or you sort of— you want to be always pushing beyond what you're comfortable with. And you're sweating just a little bit all the time. And when that happens, when you're, when you're constantly pushing beyond what you think, what you know is possible, you're always sweating a little bit and you're always a little bit nervous. But that is the drug of being an entrepreneur. And so when you're pushing like that and you're never really relaxed, then it always feels small. And so in many ways, it feels to me the same now as it did at the beginning. I'm still a little nervous.

Usually in companies, there's a notion of a hierarchy, a set of objectives, a quarterly plan, and so forth. We had none of that. Our theory was that the leadership, in particular the bottoms-up leadership, really should be empowered by what we were doing, and we'd see how far they get. We didn't have an 18-month strategy. We just kept iterating. So what I learned from this is that fast iteration is the key. The most important thing to do is every week, a new product, a new idea, just keep pushing. You'd be amazed how much progress you make in 3 months or 6 months.

I've watched and I've seen different athletes over the years, not only Jamaicans, British athletes, when they're training, they try to overdo it. You gotta work with what the coach says. A lot of people, they run hard, hard, hard, hard, and then you can't finish a set. It's never like that. One thing I've learned over the years from my coach is that the last one is the most important one. That's when you improve. So if you run, you got 16, you're in 5, and you're tired, you're dying, you gotta even take one, take a little bit more rest time, take one more minute and go. Because that's when you start improving. That's when the work pays off now, because your legs are dead and you gotta push your body. You gotta overcome, it's like you're moving past a barrier, moving a step forward. A lot of people just want to stop because they're dead tired, but you gotta do that extra one. That's when you improve.

I would actually encourage all of you, you know, if at some point in your life, you know, you have to work with people where you feel a bit insecure, right? That's essential because that means you're working with people who are better than you and who are pushing you, right? And so I always encourage, if you actually feel very secure in what you do, you know, that means you're doing something comfortable. Comfortable and you're not pushing yourself. And so there are many, many times I felt working with people in a group, am I doing enough? These people seem much better than me. And I think that's an inherent part of learning.

You know, I have a terrible fear that I lay awake at night with, and that's the fear of failure and the embarrassment that comes with it. And so people like to have a lot of pride and say, you know, I'm not embarrassed. I think anybody that's an entrepreneur deep down, really deep down in their soul, has fear of failure. What will people say? What will people think? And it's hard. It's a hard challenge. And so I try to ignore it as much as I can, but I find it kind of haunting me. And so I push through because I really believe that I have an obligation to keep trying and trying and trying. And I've had plenty of failure in my life. What happened was when I turned 35 and 2008-9 happened, I became much more comfortable with admitting my vulnerability, acknowledging my mistakes, saying when I was wrong, showing my cards and saying, "Oh, that was stupid." Crumbs could be one of those situations where I tried to outsmart something and now I don't think it's going to fail, but I have to be realistic.

It could.

Anything I do could fail.

Nothing in life worth having comes free. Nobody's going to give anybody anything. Now, you get out of life what you're willing to put into it. Hard work, sacrifice, dedication— all of these things breed success. Now, I can tell you this because, you know, I was once one of the people who were assumed to be less likely to become successful. I'm from a very modest neighborhood. I didn't, you know, I didn't necessarily grow up with a silver spoon in my mouth. I didn't have all the things that I wanted, sometimes not even all the things that I need. But it's important for you to know your environment does not define you unless you allow it to. The position that you're in right now— the position you're in right now does not dictate your future unless you allow it to. You can look at your life as it is right now, and you can look at it You can say, well, I'm not where I want to be. This isn't where my life will end. You can do one of two things. You can use it as an excuse to do nothing, or you can use it as motivation to push yourself forward. The choice is yours. I need you guys to understand and believe that anything in life is possible. Whatever it is you want to do, it's absolutely possible. I don't care how much trouble you've gotten into up until now. I don't care how many things you may have done wrong. I don't care how much you may not have in your life to help you. You can do it if you believe in yourself enough to make it happen. If you put enough effort and energy and invest enough in your future You can do anything in this world you want to do. Anything's possible. Don't never let nobody tell you what you can't do. I started rapping when I was 9 years old. 9 years old. And I'm from Atlanta. So at the time when I was rapping, there wasn't no other rappers in Atlanta. And I heard every excuse why I couldn't be a rapper. I heard every excuse why I couldn't be famous. Everything from, "You can't rap, you too skinny." You know, everything from, "Don't nobody from the South make it big and go platinum." I heard all these things, a whole bunch of excuses, a whole bunch of reasons why I should not believe that I can make it. But my belief, my belief overcame their doubt because I believed in myself. And if I can do it, whatever it is that I have done, you can do it better.

What do you do when you, when you change how the world thinks of cinema? What's next? I mean, uh, um, Do you keep making the same kind of film? Or if you're a person like Rossellini, if you are, you try something experimental. You push further. It's not just experimental for experiment's sake, but you push the boundaries further.

See, I'm a seed. I really am. See, but a seed has to be planted. A seed got to have water. Dirt put on top of it. If you take a seed and throw it on the concrete and walk off, the sun just burn it up. But guess what? Logically, in my mind, it doesn't make sense that to grow something, you should dig a hole, put it down in there, and cover it with dirt. Logically, that don't make no sense to me. But hold on. See, dirt is necessary for growth and development. Dirt builds character. Dirt gives you the push-through factor. Dirt makes you come with it when you don't feel like coming with it no more. And you get dirt in a lot of different ways. All of y'all that had dirt throwed on you, and dirt ain't always what you want. It's somebody talking about you down on your job. It's somebody accusing you of something that you didn't do. It's somebody telling you you ain't gonna make it. It's somebody sharing information about you that ain't true. Everybody get dirt put on them. But see, when you getting put under that stress, please know God is always working. Kirk Franklin's song, God is always working, so I smile because I know he back there. See, that dirt builds character in you. When they talking about you, it teaches you to withstand it. Then it gives you something to push through. So when you put the seed and you put the dirt on it, If you understand stress, stress really ain't just dirt. Stress, see, they don't call it dirt when they plant it. They call it soil. Because see, soil has nutrients in it. What the nutrients, when people talking about you, dogging you, lying on you, backbiting, stealing from you, talking about you, they're actually putting nutrients in you. They're building character.

You got character now.

And now the seed If they put a camera under the ground, you'd have seen the seed sprout open and start coming through the dirt because the dirt is necessary so you can prove yourself. If you don't really want to be— everything you see above ground that blossoms and plants and grows and that's beautiful, it was underground one time. All them potatoes, collard greens, they was underground one time. Them apple trees, they was underground one time. So they had to prove They self. See, you want to be successful? Well, then you got to prove yourself. You got to push through the dirt. You got to come up through here. You got to come out. Then you sprout. And then Bishop say, then you become a tree. Next thing you know, you got fruit.

All the things that, that you were honored for, you think the characters like, uh, Good Will Hunting— what was it?

Yeah, Good Will Hunting was— yeah, won the Academy Award for that.

Is there any place that you want to be?

I think where I am right now, it's a good place. That's exactly right.

Talk to me about that just a little.

I will.

I'll share with you. I'll share. Testify, brother. Yeah, please. It's that feeling of being, you know, doing like the stand-up combined with one-hour photo insomnia, you know, kind of pushing the envelope in terms of what people perceive I can do, especially in playing a character, you know, these darker, you know, troubled, and in many cases, you know, nasty, vicious. And that helps to just, you know, push it through because it— you're looking at now when once you're at this age to say you're playing characters now, which is what I always was doing before, but now it's a given. Yeah, you're heading towards Gabby time.

Oh good, don't you see? Yeah, they can't find any weapons. Don't you know what he's doing? Can't you see? He's trying to defuse the economy. He's letting people go and they're hiring the man from the train. They got the guy who ran the railroads. Don't you see what's going on, Luke?

Well, come on, Corky, let him go. But it's that idea of, you know, playing these characters and doing this. It's been a great combination, like a really good year to just push the envelope. And I think that's always what I want to do, is to try different things and kind of always change perceptions and change the rhythm.

You can—

yeah, break up—

it's—

it is a rhythm.

It's basically saying, okay, now hit it, you know, there, and then, you know, hit a little harder and then back off and then go berserk, like, you know, with the, the stand-up, which is just freeform, and then come back and play something so controlled like in One Hour Photo. Those are all possible. I mean, I was trained at Juilliard, you know, I, you know, went for 3 years and left and then, you know, went and did stand-up. But the stand-up was always just kind of a great release. And then still having that ability to play, you know, both, and having that That range really helps. For me, it's great. And you mentioned the other part, having great friends and family that just make life extraordinary. And a world to still go out and see and learn about, which is most important of all.

My advice for the younger dudes would be, you know, push yourself all the way. Don't obsess over what anybody else is doing. If you're given an opportunity and you're lucky enough to have freedom to do what you want to do on your career, Why trap yourself? Why do something that's not you?

Thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed. I'd love to know which one was your favorite clip. What message did you take most from this? How are you going to bust through your fear? I'd love to hear from you. Please leave your thoughts down in the comments below. Thank you again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever Your one word is— Much love, guys. I'll see you soon.