Tom Hanks Powerful Rules in 29 Minutes | How to Strengthen Your Mind and Defeat Fear

In the beginning, I was just thrilled to know that someone was asking me to be in a movie, and I thought that was all that was required. And as long as they keep asking, everything, everything will fall, fall into place. When somebody laughs at Shakespeare in high school, you're done, man. You're just, you're just settled. That's all you want to do from then on. It's hard to get past the realization that you're pretending to be somebody and people are looking at you. If faith is cultivated —it will achieve mastery.

He's an American actor and filmmaker. His films have grossed over $4.3 billion in US and Canada and over $8.5 billion worldwide. He's been nominated for numerous acting awards during his career. He's Tom Hanks, and here's my take on his top 10 rules for success. Rule number 10 is my personal favorite, and make sure to stick around all the way to the end for some special bonus clips. And as you hear Tom talk, if he says something that really inspires you, Make sure to write it down in the comments below and put quotes around it so other people can learn and be inspired as well.

In the beginning, I was just thrilled to know that someone was asking me to be in a movie, and I thought that was all that was required. And as long as they keep asking, everything, everything will fall into place. And I think I had to become dissatisfied with my own process, you know, 5 or 6 movies in, where I was feeling that I was not bringing to the work anything other than that instinct. And that's when I realized that, you know, okay, part of me got older. And I think even if you're as old as 29, you have a different set of chops and perspective. You have a different, believe it or not, wisdom than you did when you were 24. And I think about every 5 years, I went through some sort of process of reexamining where I was in life, you know, as a man, man as well as an actor and thinking like, guess what, I'm 36 now and there's a whole world of movies that I can't make anymore because I can no longer— I don't want to play the young man who's trying to figure out life. I want to play a man of bitter compromise. I want to play somebody who's, who's been through something. So it's a never-ending process, I think, of examining where you are in life as a human being and then transposing that so it's going to be reflected in your work somehow. You know, this is interesting. This is a very important show business lesson, and this is why I always come— look, all I am is an instinctive actor. I don't know how to do anything else. All right, this is another story about repetition and learning by doing. We, we, we did Twelfth Night in, in high school. I was playing Andrew Aguecheek in that, not Fabian. Fabian is a bad role. He might even have been cut from— anyway, I was playing Aguecheek, Andrew Aguecheek. And we had done it like most high schools, you know, do it. "What ho, I tell you, blah, blah, blah." We all sounded like that except John Gilkerson, who was a great actor. And we, one day we were told by our drama teacher that we were going to perform scenes at every assembly for the day. So we performed these scenes 3 times, 6 times in one day. We didn't have to go to class. We just had to perform these scenes from Shakespeare for about 300 people at a time. 300 of our friends and/or enemies or the people that we, you know, hoped we wouldn't see at school when we would show up because they were evil. But, and so about third assembly, well, we started cutting up. And by the time we got to the sixth one, I had 5 or 6 gags as Sir Andrew Waggerty that were absolute killer. And when, you know, when somebody laughs at Shakespeare in high school, you're done, man. You're just You're just settled. That's all you want to do from then on. Yeah. I was a worthless student anyway, but that made me even more so. We want you to play a guy called Alan whose marriage is in bits, so he goes to Saudi Arabia to try and sell the king some high-tech virtual reality. At what point do you say, "I'm in"? I'm in. Uh, it— Right about the time that all of the major studios say, "No way in hell will we make this movie." When they are so against the idea of making the movie, you know you're gonna be— you know you've got something. When you make a movie like this that has the significance it is and everybody's talking about it, there's a buzz about it, at the same time you're working with a great director with the track record you've had. It's been 3 years since you've made a movie. Do you learn something from this experience? You learn, yeah, you learn how to trust your instincts more than anything else, 'cause you can't— ultimately, it's not an intellectual process. Acting or making a movie? Making a movie and specifically acting. Back to get a movie. There is a way, um, early on in the— early on you make this judgment decision. Yes, I'll do it. Yes. No, I won't. That's, that's really it. After that, you just have to fill yourself up, make yourself this kind of repository thing. You can't 6 months prior to it be doing some reason— ah, you see this moment right here, I am going to utilize that moment when the time comes. No, it has to be some other— you just keep loading yourself up so that when the moment comes You have so much intangible stuff at your fingertips so that you can realize, oh, I know, I have 9 images in my head that will help me communicate this idea, as opposed to one specific decision I made 6 months ago or even the night before. And I remember reading that you said after League of Their Own and that wonderful character, you know what, I don't think I wanna play pussies. I'm not gonna play pussies anymore. Anymore. And now I don't mean pussies in the— Oh, I know. In the bad term, uh, the— it's not in a pejorative sense. Well, actually it is, but it's not in the nasties. You mean guys who have— are out of— that don't have any control over their— over their destiny? Yeah. Why is this happening to me? Yeah, I'm in love with a girl and yet I can't do the thing. And because, you know, remember the era where essentially Bill Murray's early comedies established every other comedy that was written? Yes. They were all kind of like variations of Stripes or Meatball Walls or something like that. And there were a million guys that looked like— we all looked more or less the same and we were all hapless heroes in these kind of like, not low budget but medium budget comedies and some of them worked really well and by and large they were kind of like cannon fodder for the distribution machine. And by that time I was like 36 years old and I just said, you know, you make a sort of movie in your 20s and early 30s that you just can't— you got to stop doing, right? And so I sat down with my crack team of show business experts, uh, and he says, what do you think? I said, you know, I'm 36 and I just, I just, I think I got to stop playing pussies. And really it was about playing men instead of boys. Men who understood, uh, bitter compromise. And the next, the next movie that came out of that, uh, I think was, um, uh Well, we started working on Apollo 13, not long after that, Apollo 13. And I think I made Sleepless in Seattle after that. And you know, you gotta hit it to the point where you say, all right, all right, you gotta learn how to say no, which is a very hard thing to say. It is. It's a very, very hard thing to say. It's so easy to say yes to something. It's great, they're gonna pay ya. And every time you say— You're shooting in Thailand. You know, I'm gonna get to do, I'm gonna hit the trifecta on this. I get to play baseball, shoot a gun, and kiss a girl. I get to do all the 3 things that you want to do in a movie. Yeah. So yes, yes, I'm good. It's hard to say no. You have to say at the end of the day, I don't know what to bring to this. I was lucky in that I was studying theater when I was in college, university, and I got a job before I got out of college. It wasn't really a job, it was just an offer to to work in classical repertory theater, in which the pay was going to be the professional experience that went along with it. And there was a group of us, we all went, and we knew we would be gone for 4 or 5 months. We knew we would have something to do with either 5 or 6 productions that were in repertory, and just the activity was enough to warrant going. I had no preconceived notions of anything. I had saved up enough money and to barely survive and something would happen. And it just so happened that the, the going actually was the most important aspect of it, um, because I went and after I was there, there was one particular show that needed a bigger cast than the professionals could, uh, the professional company could, uh, could supply. And because I was there and I ended up getting actually paid $50 a week, which was the difference between life and death. So, um, I, I always felt as though there was something on the horizon that would come down the pike that would get me through the next, the next few months. But as far as, you know, as far as, uh, you know, bona fide break goes, the only thing you can go on is your, your faith and, and, uh, and your instinct, and that that window of cushion that you give your— that you would be able to give yourself of, you know, enough money literally to pay your rent. I was married and I had a kid at the time and just always needed to have— I say, "Well, I got $800 in the bank. I think I'm good for about another 3 months." It's always a battle against self-consciousness. It's hard to get past the realization that you're pretending to be somebody and people are looking at you, even if it's the crew. I wish I had had I wish I had more basic things, more tools. I wish I'd gone through more classes. I wish I had been forced to take a dance class. I wish I had been forced to get up and sing in front of people. I wish I had taken like— I wish I'd gone to that kind of like performance school in which you have to get past the self-consciousness of not being able to do it well and still having to do it. You know what I mean? It's like, I couldn't— the idea of singing in front of anybody makes my throat constrict. I can't do it. And I, and I wish that I would have gone— I told you weren't very good at some point, and you've never gotten beyond that. Yeah, yeah. Or get off the stage, or you don't get the job, or anything like that. I wish I had gone through more of the, the, the, the, the, the tools of the actor, so to speak. Why it took so long to get you on the boards at Broadway, uh, with Lucky Man, Nora Ephron's, this past, uh, what was it, April, May? I, uh, The great thing about the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival, Vincent Dowling said to all of us who were interns, he says, "For the most part, I cannot pay you any money. I don't have it. But I can give you something more precious than a paycheck, and that is professional experience working in the theater." with professional actors. And he was absolutely right. Yeah. Because most of the actors were from New York. There was a contingent from Minneapolis, a big contingent from Kansas City where Vincent had worked. And a bunch of us came out from California, but we were all interns. And, but the lion's share of them were guys from New York. Many of them were gay. Sure. Who just said, look, if you wanna be a professional actor, there's only one place for you to be. If you're gonna do Shakespeare for a living, you have to come to New York where you can audition for something that might give you a paycheck 3 or 4 times a week. You can't audition for something 3 or 4 times a week in Minneapolis, and there's no reason to go to Los Angeles because you'll just disappear. Right. And 2 years after the end of the second year that I was there, because my son was born in between the— my son Colin was born, so I went back and had that fabulous thing happen. And then had to move on. And they were right. If those wonderful people hadn't like taken me under their wing and said, here's how— you have a card in your wallet that says you're a professional actor now. So here's what you have to do. And I end up moving to New York. And the reason I did not do any plays on Broadway is because no one would hire me to do plays on Broadway. There was just— there was just nothing happening. Early American naval commander John Paul Jones said, if fear is cultivated, it will become stronger. If faith is cultivated, it will achieve mastery. And this is why I am a big fan of history, because observations of the American colonies over 200 years ago by compatriot Nathan Hale, who lived in that building right over there, translate— there you go— translate word for word to the United States in 2011. For I take that fear to be fear in the large scale. Fear itself, intimidating and constant. And I take faith to be what we hold in ourselves, our American ideal of self-determination. Fear is whispered in our ears and shouted in our faces. Faith must be fostered by the man or woman you see every day in the mirror. The former forever snaps at our heels, in our synapses and delays our course. The latter can spur our boot heels to be wandering, stimulate our creativity, and drive us forward. Fear or faith, which will be our master? Three men found that they could no longer sleep because of their deep-seated fears. This is a story I'm telling. Their lives were in a state of stasis because of their constant worries. So they set out on a pilgrimage to find a wise man who lived high in the mountains, so high up above the tree line that no vegetation grew, no animals lived, not even insects could be found so high up in the mountains in that thin air. And when they reached his cave, The first of the three said, "Help me, wise man, for my fear has crippled me." "What is your fear?" said— asked the wise man. "I fear death," said the pilgrim. "I wonder when it is going to come for me." "Ah, death," said the wise man. "Let me take away this fear, my friend. Death will not come to call until you you are ready for its embrace. Know that, and your fear will go away. Well, this calmed that pilgrim's mind, and he feared death no longer. The wise man turned to the second pilgrim and said, what is it you fear, my friend? I fear my new neighbors, said the second pilgrim. They are strangers who observe holy days They have way too many kids. And they play music that sounds like noise. Ah, strangers, said the wise man. I will take away this fear, my friend. Return to your home and make a cake for your new neighbors. Bring toys to their children. Join them in their songs and learn their ways, and you will become familiar with these neighbors and your fear will go away. Well, the second man saw the wisdom in these simple instructions and knew he would no longer fear the family who were his neighbors. There in the cave so high in the mountains that nothing could live, the wise man turned to the last pilgrim and asked of his fear. O wise man, I fear spiders. When I try to sleep at night, I imagine spiders dropping from the ceiling and crawling upon my flesh, and I cannot rest. Ah, spiders, said the wise man. No shit, why do you think I live way up here? Fear will get the worst of the best of us, and peddlers of influence count on that. On commencement day, speechmakers are expected to offer advice, as though you need any, as though anything said today could aid your making sense of our one damn thing after another world. But things are too confused, too loud, too dangerous to make advice an option. You need to hear something much more relevant on this day. You need to hear the most important message thus far in the third millennium. You need to hear a maxim so simple, so clear, and so evocative that no one could misconstrue its meaning or miss its weighty issue. So here goes. It's not a statement. It's— but it's a request. It's not a bit of advice, but it's a plea. In fact, it's a single 4-letter word. It's a verb and a noun which takes into account the reality of your 4 years at Vassar as well as demands of the next 4 decades you spend beyond this campus. It's a message once made familiar by the Beatles. Those northern English lads who embodied the power of 4. Help! Help! Help! We need help. Your help. You must help. Please help. Please provide help. Please be willing to help. Help, and you will make a huge impact on the life of the street, the town, the country, and our planet. If only 1 out of 4 of each 100 of you choose to help on any given day in any given cause, incredible things will happen in the world you live in. Help publicly, help privately, help in your actions by recycling and conserving and protecting, but help also in your attitude. Help makes sense. Where sense has gone missing. Help bring reason and respect to discourse and debate. Help science to solve and faith to soothe. Help law bring justice until justice is commonplace. Help, and you will abolish apathy, the void which is so quickly filled by ignorance and evil. Life outside of college Is just like life in it. One nutty thing after another, some of them horrible, but all interspersed with enough beauty and goodness to keep you going. That's your job, to keep going. Your duty is to help without ceasing. The art you create can glorify it. The science you pursue can prove its value. The law you practice can pass on its benefits. The faith you embrace will make it the earthly manifestation of your God. Here at Vassar, whatever your discipline, whatever your passion, you have already experienced the exhausting reality that there is always something going on and there is always something to do. And most assuredly you have sensed how effective and empowering it can be when more than 4 out of 100 make the same choice to help. You will always be able to help. So do it. Make peace where it is precious. Help plant trees. Help embrace diversity and celebrate differences. Help stop gridlock. In other words, help solve every problem we face. Every single one of them. With the power of 4 out of 100. Help, and we will save the world. If we don't help, it won't get done.

Thank you guys so much for watching. I made this video because Xavier Gravel asked me to. So if there's a famous entrepreneur that you want me to profile next, leave in the comments below and I'll see what I can do. I'd also love to know which of the 10 rules had the biggest impact on you and why. What change you're going to make in in your life or business as a result of watching this video? Leave it in the comments and I will join in the discussion. Finally, I want to give a quick shout out to Marcus Henneman. Marcus, thank you so much for buying a copy of my book. It really means a lot to me. For those of you watching, if you want a chance at a shout out in a future video, make sure to pick up a copy of the book and email in your receipt so we can keep track. Thank you guys so much for watching. Continue to believe, or whatever your one word is, and I'll see you soon.

Gump!

What's your sole purpose in this army?

To do whatever you tell me, drill sergeant.

Goddamn it, Gump! You're a goddamn genius! That's the most outstanding answer I've ever heard. You must have a goddamn IQ of 160. You are goddamn gifted, Private Gump. Listen up, people!

Now, for some reason, I fit in the Army like one of them round pegs. It's not really hard. You just make your bed real neat and remember to stand up straight and always answer every question with, "Yes, drill sergeant." Is that clear?

Yes, drill sergeant! What you do is you just drag your nets along the bottom. On a good day, you can catch over 100 pounds of shrimp. Everything goes all right, 2 men shrimp in 10 hours. That's what you spend on gas. Tundra Sergeant! Go! Why did you put that weapon together so quickly, Gump? You tell me, Tundra Sergeant. Jesus H. Christ! This is a new company record. If it wouldn't be a waste of such a damn fine enlisted man, I'd recommend you for OCS, Private Gump. You are going to be a general someday, Gump. Now, Disassemble your weapon and continue. Anyway, like I was saying, shrimp is the fruit of the sea. You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, sauté it. There's shrimp kebabs, shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo, pan-fried, deep-fried, stir-fried. There's pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp. Coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich. That's about it.

What's the pool on me up to right now? What's it up to? Wait, what is it, $300? Is that it? $300? I'm a schoolteacher. I teach English composition. This little town called Adley, Pennsylvania. The last 11 years, I've been at Thomas Alva Edison High School. I was a coach of the baseball team in the springtime. —Bitágon. Back home, I tell people what I do for a living, and they think, "Well, that figures." But over here, it's a big mystery. So I guess I've changed some. Sometimes I wonder if I've changed so much my wife is even gonna recognize me whenever it is I get back to her. And how I'll ever be able to— to tell her about days like today.

Uh, Ryan—

I don't know anything about Ryan. I don't care. The man means nothing to me. He's just a name. But if— [SIGH] You know, if going to Ramel and finding him so he can go home, if that earns me the right to get back to my wife, well, then— then that's my mission. You want to leave? You want to go off and fight the war? All right. All right, I won't stop you. I'll even put in the paperwork. Just know that every man I kill, the farther away from home I feel.

Captain Phillips, please come in. Have a seat. Shama shi. I'm Chief O'Brien. I'll be your corpsman today, okay? Can you Please tell me what's going on. Can you talk? Can you tell me what's going on?

Yeah, uh, I'm okay.

Are you okay? Because you don't look okay. Are you in any pain right now? Are you in any pain right now? Uh, right there on your side? Okay, let me see it really quick. Can you lift up your arm a little bit? Does that hurt a little bit? Okay. Is it tender? Go ahead and put your arm down. OK, I need you to look at me. I need you to calm down. I need you to breathe. There you go. Deep breaths. There you go. Very good. Awesome. Now I want you to relax your arm. OK, we're going to put this little thing on your finger, and we're going to get your heart rate and your oxygen level, make sure you're breathing OK. OK. I want you to keep doing that, OK? What happened to your head? Captain, can you tell me what happened to your head?

They, uh, uh, uh, there is— it's okay, take your time, take your time.

There's a 2cm laceration on the left eyebrow. It's okay, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay. I want you to look at me and I want you to breathe. Do you understand? Okay, all right. There's about a 4cm gap, little laceration there on the left temple. Okay, very good. All right, you're You're doing great, okay? Did all this blood come from your eyebrow and your head? What? Did all the blood come from your eyebrow right here and on your head?

Well, not all of it. No, not all of it. Okay.

That's not mine. Okay. All right. All right. Look at me. Okay, we're going to lay you down, okay? Yeah.

All right. Yeah.

I want you to lay down nice and gently. Nice and gently, okay? You're okay. I got you. There you go. Very good. Captain, you're safe now, okay? Thank you. You're welcome. You're okay. Thank you.

You're welcome. Does my family know?

Your family knows you're safe, and you will be able to call them as soon as you are taken care of. Sir, I need you to breathe. You are safe and you are fine.

It's gonna be okay.

Huh. Everything's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay.