The Mindset Mentor - Ep 66 - Courage Speech w/ Jim Carrey

Episode Date: January 20, 2016

Fears hold us back. Courage is the ability to face those fears and carry on towards our goal anyways. In this episode I share a clip of a speech that Jim Carrey gave and then give my thoughts on what we can take from this speech in order to be courageous and face our fears. Want to learn more about Mindset Mentor+? For nearly nine years, the Mindset Mentor Podcast has guided you through life's ups and downs. Now, you can dive even deeper with Mindset Mentor Plus. Turn every podcast lesson into real-world results with detailed worksheets, journaling prompts, and a supportive community of like-minded people. Enjoy monthly live Q&A sessions with me, and all this for less than a dollar a day. If you’re committed to real, lasting change, this is for you.Join here 👉 www.mindsetmentor.com My first book that I’ve ever written is now available. It’s called LEVEL UP and It’s a step-by-step guide to go from where you are now, to where you want to be as fast as possible.📚If you want to order yours today, you can just head over to robdial.com/bookHere are some useful links for you… If you want access to a multitude of life advice, self development tips, and exclusive content daily that will help you improve your life, then you can follow me around the web at these links here:Instagram TikTokFacebookYoutube

Before we dive into today's episode, if you would like a free copy of our motivational ebook called Hack Your Goals, the Step-by-Step Guide to Achieving Success, go to mwfmotivation.com and download it. It's already been downloaded over a thousand times, so go ahead and get your copy now. All right, I'll get you the podcast right now. Welcome to the MWF Motivation Podcast, which I am proud to say has been rated the number one podcast in iTunes new and noteworthy in six different categories, including self-help and business, and is a podcast designed to help you grow into the best version of yourself in 10 to 20 minutes. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we'll take a life topic, break it down, discuss it, and leave you with thoughts to impact your life and mind. My name is Rob Dial,

and the podcast starts now. Welcome to today's episode. If you have not yet done so, please subscribe to us on iTunes, Stitcher, or SoundCloud. And if you liked this episode, we're going to be talking about courage. I hope that you share with a friend. And before I dive into the meat and potatoes of the episode, I want to share part of a commencement speech that is incredible that Jim Carrey gives. And then after, I will dive into a little bit of information and what I think about the commencement speech and what I think you can take from it and how you can actually use it in your life. So without further ado, here's a commencement speech with Jim Carrey.

You can spend your whole life imagining ghosts, worrying about the pathway to the future, but all there will ever be is what's happening here, and the decisions we make in this moment, which are based in either love or fear. So many of us choose our path out of fear disguised as practicality. What we really want seems impossibly out of reach and ridiculous to expect, so we never dare to ask the universe for it. I'm saying I'm the proof that you can ask the universe for it. Please. I can tell you from experience, the effect you have on others is the most valuable currency there is.

My father could have been a great comedian but he didn't believe that that was possible for him and so he made a conservative choice. Instead he got a safe job as an accountant and when I was 12 years old he was let go from that safe job and our family had to do whatever we could to survive. I learned many great lessons from my father, not the least of which was that you can fail at what you don't want. So you might as well take a chance on doing what you love. That peace that we're after lies somewhere beyond personality.

Your need for acceptance can make you invisible in this world. Don't let anything stand in the way of the light that shines through this form. Risk being seen in all of your glory. As far as I can tell, it's just about letting the universe know what you want and working toward it while letting go of how it comes to pass. When I say life doesn't happen to you, it happens for you, I really don't know if that's true. I'm just making a conscious choice to perceive challenges as something beneficial so that I can deal with them in the most productive way. You'll come up with your own style. That's

part of the fun. Like many of you, I was concerned about going out into the world and doing something bigger than myself until someone smarter than myself made me realize that there is nothing bigger than myself. You are ready and able to do beautiful things in this world. And after you walk through those doors today, you will only ever have two choices, love or fear. Choose love, and don't ever let fear turn you against your playful heart. Thank you so much.

Well, I don't know about you guys, but I absolutely love that commencement speech and what he says in it. And every time I hear it, for some reason, I get chills because it just connects with me deeply. And a few things that I want to talk about that he says, he says, we can spend our whole lives imagining ghosts and worrying about the path to the future. And we can base everything that we do in either love or fear. Most of what we're afraid of is stuff that is made up in our minds. We can imagine ghosts, he says. That's all stuff that's made up. Some of the worst things that happen to people in their entire lives are stuff that never actually happen. It's just stuff that they make up in their minds. And we have to have courage to face our fears and to keep continuing on with those fears still being there. John Wayne is quoted

saying that courage is being scared to death and then saddling up anyways. So many of us, we choose our paths based out of fear disguises practicality, he says. We don't dare to follow our dreams because we want to take the safe route, which we say, quote unquote, is practical. But nowadays, nothing is really practical. There is no real safe route for us to go. He says his father was let go of what he felt was a practical way to go, his safe job. And he says, you can fail at what you don't want, which is what happened to his father. He thought he took the safe route and failed anyways at the safe route. He said, you can fail at what you don't want, so you might as well take a chance

at doing what you love. And like I said, lots of people, they choose the job security and now jobs change so much. The world is changing so quickly that there's really no such thing as job security. that there's really no such thing as job security. So we have to make a conscious choice to see challenges as beneficial to deal with them in the most productive way. So when challenges come up, we could see them as, hey, this is something for me to overcome. This is something for me to learn from. There's no such thing as failure. There's only lessons that we learn from that quote unquote failure. And courage to keep going, to know what our fear is, is like a muscle. You have to work your courage muscles. The more you use your courage muscles, the stronger it gets. I remember I was in Costa Rica when I was 18 years old.

I graduated high school and saved up the entire year to go to Costa Rica on a surf trip with three of my friends. And we were on top of a waterfall and I am terrified of heights. It was a 55 foot waterfall. And I remember I was sitting there and I started shaking at the very top of it. And I just thought to myself, I can't sit here. I have to go. Like I have to jump. The longer that I sit here, the more that I think about it, the scarier it's going to be and the less chance that I have of actually going and doing it. So when you feel that fear, whatever it might be, the fear of failure, the fear of getting up in front and talking to people or

whatever it is, fear of being successful, whatever that thing is, you have to just stop thinking and immediately start taking action. So stop focusing on your fear of what you're afraid of and start focusing on your why. So if you want to go down this path, whatever it is, the path that you want to go down, you have to stop focusing on what your fear actually is and start focusing on why you're going down that path. The why has to be strong enough to cancel out your fear. And what I want to leave you with is something, it's actually a quote from a letter that my dad wrote when my dad was in jail. He was in jail for, God, I don't even know what anymore, but he was in jail a few times when I was a kid. And even though he was in jail and he was an alcoholic, he was

still the smartest person I've ever met in my life. And there's actually a letter that he wrote to my sister on her 19th birthday. And he talks about courage. And in it, he says, this is a quote, it says, courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the ability to carry on with dignity in spite of it. So once again, courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the ability to carry on with dignity in spite of it. So let me ask you, how is fear holding you back in what you want to do today on what you're working on, on the life that you want to pursue? How is it holding you back? And what can you do today to work your courage muscles to make better your life and to actually pursue the life that you want? Most successful people in the world

are the ones who choose to be courageous. It's not that they don't have fear, it's that they carry on with dignity through their fear. Another thing besides the most successful people, the happiest people in the world are also the ones that choose to be courageous because they overcome their fears and they realize on the other side that they weren't as bad as they thought. And that's a key thing. It's a lot easier to overcome stuff than we actually realize because we make up so much stuff in our head. So those people realize that they weren't as bad as they thought. And they're the happiest because they actually realize that they have that sense of achievement. They conquered whatever fear that was, and it built up their self-worth and what they think of themselves. And that's why some of the happiest people are also the most courageous that will go out and conquer their fears. So that's what I want to leave you

with today. And I want you to ask yourself, what's holding you back and what can you do today to work your courage muscles to make the life that you want? So with that, I'm going to leave you the same way that I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission today to somehow make somebody else's day better. I can't tell you how much I appreciate you. And I hope that you have an amazing day. Well, that's it for today's podcast. If you want the show notes for this episode, they can be found at mwfmotivation.com. Also, if you liked this episode, please spread the love and share it with a friend because it's our mission to help as many people as we can. And to keep in touch, you can follow us on Instagram and Facebook.

Both handles are at MWFMotivation with no spaces. Now you know what time it is. So go out and make your dreams a reality. Outro Music