If we can model the ability to embody nonfear and nonattachment, it is more precious than any money or material wealth. Fear spoils our lives and makes us miserable. We cling to objects and people, like a drowning person clings to any object that floats by. By practicing nonattachment and sharing this wisdom with others, we give the gift of nonfear. Everything is impermanent. This moment passes. The object of our craving walks away, but we can know happiness is always possible.

Do the thing you fear, and the death of fear is certain.

Do you value your dreams? I’m not talking about your life goals and aspirations—which are extremely important—I’m talking about the artistic production of your subconscious mind after you fall asleep. In this article, I want to push back against the notion that dreams are meaningless, forgettable phenomenon, and share some pro tips for using them to promote physical and emotional healing via dream therapy.

The view that dreams represent no more than random electrical activity could only be proposed by people who have never remembered any of their emotionally significant ones. Most normal people are generally able to see the relevance of at least some of their nocturnal dramas. As stated above, while dreaming, the limbic region will usually be highly active. If we are dreaming about something unpleasant or threatening, this can be associated with feelings of anger which go with fight, the anxiety associated with flight, or the despair associated with freezing.

James Alexander, “The Hidden Psychology of Pain”

Have you ever noticed that dreams almost always carry an emotional charge? And I’m talking about the dreams that you remember. We all dream whether or not we remember. Dreams are an attempt by the subconscious mind to process our lived experiences. This is partially why sleep is so vital. When we don’t get adequate sleep, we are deprived of the healing power of dreams.

Dreams are the royal road to the unconscious.

Austrian Neurologist Sigmund Freud

Dream therapy is a healing modality dedicated to dream exploration and analysis. The idea is that by consciously remembering, writing down, and analyzing our dreams we can gain valuable insight into the emotional and physical stressors of our lives, thereby enabling us to better address unresolved issues. It helps to keep a journal or notepad close to the bed for this purpose because many dreams are forgotten after going back to sleep or proceeding with the day. There are also dream journal smart phone apps expressly for this purpose. If you don’t currently remember your dreams, start paying attention. Many people, including myself, have found that when they start paying attention to their dreams they are able to remember them with greater frequency.

People will often report that with this additional focus on dreams, their dream life becomes more active, emotionally alive, and vivid.

James Alexander, “The Hidden Psychology of Pain.”

In “The Hidden Psychology of Pain” Australian psychologist James Alexander dedicated chapter 11 to the “Healing Power of Dreams.” In it, he talks about how we dream during the REM stage (rapid eye-movement) and how this stage is crucial for mental health and cognition. People deprived of REM sleep due to lack of sleep, drug use, etc. exhibit deterioration in cognitive and emotional faculties. Mindbody doctors, like James Alexander, routinely promote dream awareness to resolve the emotional issues that lie at the heart of physical pain and ailments.

It may be that as we become more conscious of what is going on in our dream state, the emotional pressure that can drive chronic pain is finding another outlet for expression.

James Alexander, “The Hidden Psychology of Pain”

Alexander also dedicates a section of chapter 11 to “dream seeding.” Dream seeding is when we consciously bring unresolved issues to our mind before bed that we want our subconscious mind to work on as we sleep. We don’t try to solve the issues ourselves—we simply bring them to the fore.

[Dream seeding] is not so much telling your unconscious how to end a dream (resulting in a preferred outcome, or resolution), but is more about setting up the conditions for the dream to allow your natural healing capacities to come to the fore. Our mind/brain has an incredibly creative capacity for working out answers to emotional problems without our deliberate instruction. When preparing for bed, you can start the dream-seeding process by choosing to think about the situation or person, the place or incident which you feel is still unfinished or disturbing within you. There is no need to script or dictate what will happen in the dream, but you can think about key elements which you feel are highly relevant. Get a sense of what elements are the most important—people, places, situations, the time in your life, etc.

James Alexander, “The Hidden Psychology of Pain

Another term for dream seeding is dream incubation. Dream incubation famously has been used not only for healing, but for problem-solving. Here is a fascinating excerpt on dream incubation from Wikipedia (link).

In a study at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Deirdre Barret had her students focus on a problem, such as an unsolved homework assignment or other objective problem, before going to sleep each night for a week. She found that it was certainly possible to come up with novel solutions in dreams that were both satisfactory to the dreamer and rated as objectively solving the problem by an outside observer. In her study, two-thirds of participants had dreams that addressed their chosen problem and one-third reached some form of solution within their dreams.

Chapter 11 is rather lengthy and insightful. If you want to read more about the connection between the mind, emotions, and physical health, I recommend grabbing a copy of The Hidden Psychology of Pain. It is a massive book (~500 pages) written for non-experts that I have benefited extensively from over the years. Here are a couple more memorable quotes that shed insight on dream therapy for those just getting started.

You may need to think creatively about the symbolism inherent in your dreams. Some of your dreams will be quite literal, but many will be symbolic representations of other experiences which may or may not be readily apparent. Try to look for what the dream is representing, and use the emotions which are generated in the dreams as a clue. . .

James Alexander, “The Hidden Psychology of Pain”

When embarking on this process, it may also be that your dreams become more threatening or disturbing. With the help of the questions posed in the last chapter, there is a good chance that you are becoming more aware of past hurts and repressed emotions.

James Alexander, “The Hidden Psychology of Pain”

My primary motivation for dream therapy is physical and emotional healing. If that weren’t enough, Psych Central identified 7 benefits of the discipline: 1) conscious and subconscious balancing; 2) insight into mood; 3) exploring symbolism; 4) sparks creativity; 5) addressing chronic nightmares; 6) positive self-care ritual; and 7) internal conflict awareness (link).

Take that for what it’s worth.

Sammy Rangel’s life gave him every reason to be angry, bitter and resentful. And for a long time, that’s exactly what he was. Physically and sexually abused as a child, Rangel ran away from home at age 11 and joined the Maniac Latin Disciples. He spent years engulfed in a life of violent crime, lengthy prison sentences, drug abuse, and promiscuity. Rangel took the first step toward transforming his life with the help of a prison drug rehabilitation program and soon after his release started working for a Safe Streets Outreach Program in Wisconsin. In 2011, he co-founded Life After Hate, a non-profit whose mission is to help people leave hate groups. He is the author of Fourbears: Myths of Forgiveness. According to its description on Amazon, the book is “a graphically illustrated guide from tortured child, to remorseless beast, to healing and change.”

I first heard Rangel’s Ted Talk over a year ago. It was powerful and inspired me to stop making excuses in life. There are a few mottos I like to repeat. One of them is, “If he can do it, I can do it, too.” Other people’s testimonies can sometimes help us recognize that many of our limitations are self-imposed. If Sammy Rangel, who was barely given a puncher’s chance, found the strength to move forward in life, what’s holding you and me back?

Recently, I stumbled across the same video and was surprised to find that there was no transcript or subtitles available. The talk is 22 minutes long and is a lot longer than most content of its kind on this site. That said, I was willing to spend hours transcribing it because I believe it is a message that can help people heal. Resentment, they say, is like drinking a poisoned cup and waiting for the other person to die. Forgiveness, on the other hand, is strength. It makes life better every single time.

Keep reading, and I’m confident you will get something out of Sammy’s testimony.

What I have learned is although the details of our lives may be different. The underlying process of getting stuck or suffering in our parts of life is the same for all of us. We do not have to be victims of our experiences or in the way that we tell our stories. But interestingly enough, stories are the only way out. And it is us who create those stories. We hold the power to change our stories and what they represent. I invite all of you to consider if it would serve you well to create a new story and a new path. And to please remember that the things that held you down will one day hold you up.

Sammy Rangel

Transcript:

Today what I’m going to share with you is a difficult story for me to talk about, and it may be difficult for you to hear. I was 41 years old when I discovered that my mother had killed my brother Renee. I was sitting in my office waiting to see the next patient. I had about 3 minutes before that appointment started. And when I read the article and this news came to me–it said that my mother had beaten my brother with a Tonka truck when he was 20 months old. At that time, that article was dated January 5 of 1969 and my mother would have been about 5 months pregnant with me. The email went on to say that my brother had died at 19 as a result of his injuries. He had permanent brain damage, partial paralysis down the side of his body, and the article said that he was losing consciousness and bleeding out of different places from his body. As I was sitting there, what I imagined myself–what I wanted to do, what I knew I was capable of, was getting up, taking off my suit coat, walking to my car, finding where I knew my mother would be, and taking her life.

At this stage in my life I had obviously overcome a lot of the abuse, a lot of the neglect and torture that she had put me through, but for some reason I was more angry at this than anything I had experienced previously. And it became quite apparent that at some point, my family had conspired to keep this secret from me over 41 years. It was just a twist of fate that I was able to discover this news. So I knew I had about those 3 minutes to pull myself together because I knew then, even though I wanted to, I was not going to get up, I was not going to drive toward where my mother was out, and I was not going to kill her. What I was going to do was pull myself together so that I could meet my responsibility to the next patient coming into my office. But in those 3 minutes I relived quite a bit of what she had done to me.

I was 3 years-old when my mother left me and my sister with her brother. And I can remember him motioning to me to come to him through a mirror that laid or rested on his bedroom doorway. When he was calling me in, I knew I didn’t want to go in there, but I felt powerless. And so I found myself next to the bed. He was naked. He was fat. He was ugly to me. And behind him I saw my sister crying. And even though I shouldn’t have understood what was happening, I did understand what was happening. And he pulled me on to the bed, and at that point my sister tried to defend me. She was just a couple years older than me at that time. And I remember him threatening her, that if she didn’t shut up that he would kill us both. And then he raped me. On the same night that he raped my sister.

Eventually we told my mother what had happened to us at the hands of her brother, and she did worse than nothing about it. She continued to make us show this man affection and respect. We had to spend time with him. We had to sit on his lap. We had to kiss him on the cheek when we greeted him. And this happened over many years. When I got that message, I realized that my mother had picked up with me where she had left off with my brother.

By the time I was 8 years old I had already tried to kill myself for the first time. Oftentimes, I wasn’t allowed to eat. I wasn’t allowed to sleep. I wasn’t allowed to go to the bathroom. And I had other siblings, and quite often the beatings I was taking could be happening right here and my siblings could be watching TV, or playing, or talking as if nothing was going on a few feet from them. The scars you see on my head are not from other men, are not from the streets. These are scars I [have] because as they would cut my head open with objects, as they were hitting me, I didn’t get to go to the hospital to have stitches or to get my broken bones fixed.

A part of the abuse was deep humiliation. A part of her cruelty included not being able to use the bathroom. And I would often have to walk around in my underwear in front of my siblings and family because she didn’t want me to be able to sneak food into my mouth or into the bathroom or into the basement when I went to go do chores. And so there was no hiding the fact that eventually if I needed to go to the bathroom and they wouldn’t let me, I would eventually sh*t and p*ss on myself. And if I did that, she would often make me take my underwear off and put them in my mouth, and then put her hand over my mouth so that I couldn’t throw-up, I couldn’t spit it out. And if I had the nerve to throw up, she would punish me even more.

I reached a turning point at 11, just after my birthday. I remember on this occasion I had snuck out of the room. I used to have to kneel next to her bed, and I remember crawling very quietly on the pattern on the floor that I discovered wouldn’t creek as loud as I snuck out in the middle of the night. And I found myself back in the room standing over her with a knife. And I was debating killing her, but there were 2 reasons that I remember that prevented that. One, I was afraid. I don’t think I was born to kill. And the other is I loved my mother deeply despite all that abuse, and I couldn’t bring myself to do that. And so I made a choice. I made a choice to leave. To run away. And that was a pretty big event because as a result of the abuse, I had no friends. I had no sleep-overs. I had no one in the community that I could go to. I was going into a completely unknown, unfamiliar, isolated space in the world.

And it didn’t take long. Within that first year, I was having sex. I was drinking. I was smoking. I was doing cocaine. I was in a gang. I was violent and aggressive, carrying weapons. I had dropped out of school and right before I turned 12, me and my 11-year old girlfriend buried our first child together. When we went to the hospital while she was in labor, they put me in a room by myself. And eventually a doctor opened the door and he rolled in a table, like a medical table, and on this table was a blue napkin that looked a lot like a tablecloth. And there was something underneath there. And then he left and he closed the door behind him. I had a feeling that I knew what was under there, but your mind can’t quite grasp it just yet. And eventually I got up and I lifted the paper towel and there was my dead son. He had been dead 2 days before she gave birth to him, and so his body was already starting to decompose. He was green and black and other colors that nobody should have to see on a baby. And his head was like a balloon filled water, it was just lop-sided and laying on the table. And there was no one there to talk to me about that or to process that or to make sense for me.

And I walked out of that hospital and I remember feeling less like a runaway and more like a throwaway. I felt that no one would be there to help me process or to understand my life or these experiences. And I remember moving from being scared to being angry. And I expressed that anger through violence. I escalated the type of violence. Before I was fighting but it was more defensive, now I’m choosing to be aggressive. Now I’m choosing to start fights. Initially when I went to the streets I remember there was a situation where a man asked me to participate in a murder. As he was killing someone he asked me to finish. And I couldn’t bring myself to that. But now after this situation, I felt like I wanted to kill, I felt like I wanted to hurt someone. And I remember me and my friend, we picked a homeless person–an innocent victim–and we beat him up and I tried to kill him that day. He had done nothing to us but it was my expression.

Eventually, that led me to going to prison as an adult at the age of 17 years old. And I was sent to prison not for the crime I actually committed but because of how terrible a teenager I was before I became an adult because the crime they sent me to prison for was usually considered a minor crime but technically it was enough to send me away. And I ended up in a maximum-security prison because I was fighting all the time, I was talking crap all the time. I had no problem cussing you out or trying to pick a fight. For the record, I wasn’t a very good fighter, but I was wiling to fight.

This prison that I walked into had a pretty hostile climate. I walked into racial tension between the whites and the blacks. And very soon after arriving there, a race riot kicked off. And it was the white against the blacks, and as a minority I had to side with the blacks if I was going to join the fighting. And we were quite outnumbered. There was about 10 of us willing to fight and about 30 of the men that we were going to be fighting. And we knew it was clear which side you were on. I myself had 2 knives in my hand, and the whites were armed with knives and spears and metal chairs and mop ringers–you name it, anything that could hurt or maim you. And the order was given to start fighting.

As we started fighting and we’re all trying to kill each other at this point, a guard came in much like on a cat-walk [a runway or ramp] like you see up here. And from above he started shooting and when he shot, everyone ran. But unfortunately my position–my escape was between the whites and the door out. And so my back was against the wall. And eventually the guard who came in to start shooting left again, and that signaled another round of fighting. And those white men came to get me–I’m doing my best to fend them off. An acquaintance–if you can call another person in prison such a thing–saw that I was isolated and cut off, and he joined the fight to help protect me and to help me find a way out. And at that point, that guard came back in and another shot rang out.

I looked to the side and I saw my friend who had joined was shot in his side–had a rather large hole. He was laying on the ground, the whites ran back to their cells. And I remember the guard yelling at me that if I were to touch him, he would shoot me too. But at this point, I had no fear, I had no sense of danger. My friend was screaming, and the ironic thing is that I have two knives in my hand, and I’m looking at a group of men who are armed. And yet they shot him because he was black. I grabbed my friend and I dragged him 150 cells to the other side of the building that I was in. And it was immediately apparent that the guards were not going to allow me or him to go to the hospital. No one in, no one out is what they said. And I asked several times and when it was clear that there were going to allow him to die, I started fighting with the guards. And then other people came out to help me, and we eventually took over that cell hall and took the keys from the guards and we forced our way to the hospital that was in the prison. By that time, my friend had already passed away.

I spent the next 28 months in segregation and isolation for that but because of my courage, or my role, in that prison riot. I started to gain more respect and more power through my gang. Almost immediately from the hall 28 months after spending that much time in the hall, I was released to society. I remember going in as a street punk, a kid who was just loud-mouthed and willing to fight to now I’m still loud-mouthed and willing to fight, but now I have power, now I have authority, and now I have embraced hate, not just anger. And when I embraced hate I was willing to kill for any reason. And I’ve always said, I had more animal in me than human at that time.

So it’s no surprise that just a few months later I was on my way back to prison in another state for even more violent crimes. As a gang leader at this point walking into that prison, I was able to take over and take control of prisons rather easily. I was able to have guards beat up or inmates beat up. I had access to resources that others would find hard to get. And eventually that led to me more encounters, and while I was in that prison system I beat up 4 more guards. And I spent approximately 5 years out of the 7 that I stayed there in segregation and I was transferred 17 times.

And what was ironic to me was that on one of these occasions, a man had said he felt he was in danger for his life because of my presence. And so they came and got me in the middle of the night and put me on the bus and were transferring me to another prison. And when I got to that prison and as I’m walking off, the security staff recognized me and then told the bus driver and their staff “This man cannot come here. We’re not equipped to take him here.” It is one thing to be locked up for many years, and it’s another years to be kicked out of the well completely. When a man is rejected even from prison, where is there left go? And so it was a deeply shaming and humiliating experience in many ways.

At some point, I was forced into a treatment. And at this point, I thought I could go into this treatment, outsmart myself, and outsmart the people there who were meant to give me help. I was willing to play the game because I was willing to fight for the carrot on the end of the stick, which was an earlier release than if I didn’t do the prison program. So I said, “I’ll go there, I’ll play this game.”

In the process of treatment, I remember my counselor asking me in front of my peers to talk about my mother. This struck me as very odd, I had not talked about my mother since I ran away from home, and had no desire to. And he pressed me, and when he asked me to do that, almost with the first word came the tears. I described all that abuse, all that neglect, all of the times she made me go to school smelling like urine, all of the times she had pulled patches out of my hair, all of the times she had left wide open gashes and cuts on my body. I had no problem expressing that.

And then he did something very strange. He took a chair, and he put it in front of me. And he told me to imagine that my mother was sitting in that chair. He said “What would you say to her if she was sitting here?” I was like I don’t want to talk to her. And he pressed me, and as I thought about what I would say, I remember saying “How could you do this to me? How could you do this to us? Why did you do these things?” But of course no answer came.

And then he pressed me further. He asked me to sit in the chair. I had no desire to sit in that chair. Did not want to empathize. Did not want to understand her perspective. I wanted to hate her and blame her. And I felt wholeheartedly justified in that stance, in that position, because much of what she had done was unforgivable if you asked me. But I did. I looked back at my chair, and I racked my brain what would she say. The only thing I could come up with was “I’m sorry.” Here I am in my late 20s still trying to see her as a human being underneath all that hate. Then he asked me to go back to my chair, and he asked me how I was feeling. And I expressed all those feelings of being a victim, being abandoned. Being brutalized, being unloved, unseen, invisible to her and to everyone else in the world.

And my turning point came with this next question: “Sammy, have you ever hurt anyone the way your mother has hurt you?” Since then my life has been one long apology. To my victims. To my siblings. To my children who I had abandoned at this point. Including my enemies that I felt had deserved whatever I did to them. And as you can see, getting to this point is still very difficult to talk about. I didn’t want to mess up my final point, so if you bear with me I’d like to read it to you to make sure that it comes across clear. I feel that this is the most important part of this message:

What I have learned is although the details of our lives may be different. The underlying process of getting stuck or suffering in our parts of life is the same for all of us. We do not have to be victims of our experiences or in the way that we tell our stories. But interestingly enough, stories are the only way out. And it is us who create those stories. We hold the power to change our stories and what they represent. I invite all of you to consider if it would serve you well to create a new story and a new path. And to please remember that the things that held you down will one day hold you up. Thank you.

If you have ever listened to an inspirational video on YouTube, there’s a good chance either Eric Thomas or Les Brown was the speaker. Occasionally, you’ll get lucky and both will feature on the same clip. If I had to summarize the focus of their talks with one word, that word would be adversity. Eric Thomas and Les Brown are no stranger to adversity. Thomas was a high school drop-out who spent two years on the streets of Detroit. Brown was given up for adoption at an early age and declared “educable mentally retarded” in grade school. I’ve transcribed a raw clip entitled “Through Hell” in which the two mega motivators talk about overcoming adversity and achieving one’s dreams.

Transcript:

Brown: It’s not easy. It’s hard changing your life.

Thomas: I’m talking about a problem in my life. For you I don’t know what it is, but that problem, you cannot ignore it. Why? It will not go away. It will not go away on its own. It will not. You won’t just wake up one day and it won’t be there anymore. It’s going to be there, and it will haunt you for the rest of your life. So I’m telling you from personal experience, deal with it. Deal with it.

And the sooner you deal with it, and the sooner you overcome it, the sooner you get your rewards, baby. The sooner you get on the other side of it, the sooner you begin to feel fulfillment. The sooner you get on the other side is self-actualization–your dreams become a reality. The sooner you get on the other side of the problem is a wealth of success. The sooner you deal with the fact that you have test anxiety–deal with it. It’s not the end of the world. Deal with it because when you deal with it you can create a solution for it and you can get over it. Deal with it. That you and your children don’t have the best relationship–deal with it.

Deal with the fact that you’re a procrastinator. Deal with the fact that it’s hard for you to execute. Deal with the fact that every time something happens you’re worried about it. Deal with the fact that you have this anxiety that every time you’re about to reach another level of success. Every time you’re about to go to another level, you feel overwhelmed. Deal with the fact that you’re struggling with your success, that you feel like why me? Or why not my sister? Why me? Why not other people? Deal with the fact that you feel guilty that you’re successful. Deal with it.

Brown: Ladies and gentlemen, I started working on my dream. And most people don’t work on their dreams, why? For many years I didn’t. One is because of fear. The fear of failure. What if things don’t work out? And the fear of success. What if they do work and I can’t handle it? The other thing is that most people, ladies and gentlemen, they get comfortable. They stop growing, they stop working on themselves, they stop stretching, they stop pushing themselves. And they end up becoming very cynical about life, and they throw in the towel on themselves, on their families, and on their dreams.

And the other thing is that most people don’t feel worthy. What I’m doing now I could have been doing years ago. But because I did not have a college education. Because I didn’t believe in myself. Because I allowed other people’s opinion of me to control my destiny I didn’t act on my ideas. And not only is it important for you to know it’s possible for you to choose your future, but it’s necessary that you work on yourself, that you develop yourself.

It’s necessary that you get the energy drainers out of your life–people who don’t want anything. People who are not striving. People who are not challenging themselves. People who aren’t growing. People who’ve stopped dreaming. It’s necessary that you align yourself with people and attract people into your business who are hungry. People who are unstoppable and unreasonable, people who are refusing to leave life just as it is. And who want more. My mother used to say “birds of a feather flock together.” If you run around with losers, you will end up a loser. It’s necessary that you get the losers out of your life if you want to live your dream.

The next step is that it’s you. That it’s you. That no one can do it for you but you. And even though you’ve faced disappointment. Even though you will experience some setbacks, it goes with the territory. You must understand that. What if all of us took that attitude after we’ve faced a rejection or a no? We have a meeting and no one shows up. Or somebody says “You can count on me,” and they don’t come through. What if we have that kind of attitude. The car’s repossessed. Nobody believes in you. You’ve lost again and again and again. The lights are cut off, but you’re still looking at your dream, reviewing it every day and saying to yourself, “It’s not over until I win.”

You are going to incur a lot of disappointment. A lot of failure. A lot of pain. A lot of setbacks. A lot of defeats. But in the process of doing that, you will discover some things about yourself that you don’t know right now. What you will realize is that you have greatness within you. What you will realize is that you’re more powerful than you can ever begin to imagine. What you will realize is that you are greater than your circumstances. That you don’t have to go through life being a victim.

What I like for you to do right now–I want you to think about your dream because I’m in a room full of dreamers. Think about your dream right now. I want you to think about it and envision it. Now ladies and gentlemen, let me share something with you. I do not believe that any of us has dreams that were not given to us for the purpose of accomplishing those particular dreams. And I want to share something with you that has changed my life. That dream that you’re holding in your mind, that it’s possible. See sometimes we can’t say “I can do that.” But what we can say is that it’s possible that I can have my dream as we run toward it.

As we work on it, day-in and day-out. It’s necessary to know that everybody won’t see it. That everybody won’t join you. That everybody won’t have the vision. It’s necessary to know that. That a lot of people like to complain but they don’t want to do anything about their situation. But you’re an uncommon breed. You know–you have to know within yourself that I can do this even if no one else sees it for me, I’m going to see it for myself. That’s necessary.

It’s also necessary, ladies and gentlemen, that you be creative when you’re working on your ideas. That you understand the importance of changing up. I can live my dream. It’s necessary. I’ll work on myself. Surround myself with winners. Become creative. It’s me. I got to make it happen. It’s not over until I win.

Imagine you are walking in the woods and you see a small dog sitting by a tree. As you approach it, it suddenly lunges at you, teeth bared. You are frightened and angry. But then you notice one of its legs is caught in a trap. Immediately your mood shifts from anger to concern: You see that the dog’s aggression is coming from a place of vulnerability and pain. Rjis applies to all of us. When we behave in hurtful ways, it is because we are caught in some kind of trap. The more we look through the eyes of wisdom at ourselves and one another, the more we cultivate a compassionate heart.

Will Smith generates hit movies at a more prolific rate than any other actor in Hollywood. His most recent success was his role as the genie in Disney’s blockbuster remake of Aladdin. Will Smith rose to fame in the 90s playing the goofy teenager that couldn’t stay out of trouble in the sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Since then, his on-screen character and real-life person have evolved. If you best remember Will Smith from his teenage years, you may be taken aback by the amount of wisdom he has acquired over the years. I know I was when I first heard him speak. Today I’ve transcribed a YouTube compilation of Will Smith’s best motivational life advice. It spoke to me, and I’m confident it will speak to you, as well.

Transcript:

I’m motivated by fear. Fear of fear. I hate being scared to do something. It’s very simple. This is what I believe, and I’m willing to die for it. Period. You can’t be scared to die for the truth. The truth is the only thing that’s ever going to be constant. And you can’t fear what might happen to you if you were to tell the truth because what happens to you if you don’t tell the truth is worse than telling the truth will ever be. . .

The first step before anybody else in the world believes is you have to believe it. There’s no reason to have a plan B because it distracts from plan A. . .

And I think, psychologically, the advantage that that gives me over a lot of people that I have been in competition with in different situations is it’s difficult to take the first step when you look how big the task is. The task is never huge to me. It’s always one brick. I believe, and I learned very young that you don’t try to build a wall. You don’t set out to build a wall. You don’t say I’m going to big the biggest, baddest, greatest wall that’s ever been built. You don’t start there. You say I’m going to lay this brick as perfectly as a brick can be laid. There will not be one brick on the face of the earth that’s going to be laid better than this brick that I’m going to lay in this next ten minutes. And you do that every single day, and soon you have a wall. . .

I’ve never really viewed myself as particularly talented. Where I excel is ridiculous, sickening work ethic. You know, while the other guy is sleeping, I’m working. While the other guy is eating, I’m working. . .

The separation of talent and skill is one of the greatest misunderstood concepts for people who are trying to excel, who have dreams and want to do things. Talent you have naturally. Skill is only developed by hours and hours of beating on your craft. . .

I always knew that I could work hard enough. There wasn’t an issue with discipline. There wasn’t an issue with the ability to sacrifice or the willingness to sacrifice. There’s no easy way around it. No matter how talented you are, your talent is going to fail you if you’re not skilled. If you don’t study, if you don’t work really hard and dedicate yourself to being better every single day.

This one year my father had his shop and he decided for whatever reason that he wanted a new wall on the front of his shop. So he tore it down, probably about 16 feet high and 30 feet long. He just completely tore the wall down, and my brother and I had to dig a six feet hole for the foundation. We were mixing the concrete by hand. A year and a half. We were building this wall for a year and a half. Every day after school we were coming, mixing concrete, putting it in the hole, doing it, and it was just myself and my little brother.

And I remember standing back looking at that wall saying there’s going to be a hole here forever. A year and a half later we laid the final brick. And my father stood back with my brother and I, and I know he planned this. He says he didn’t, but I know he had been planning this and writing this for the past two years. We stood back and looked at the wall, and he looked at me and my brother and he said “Now don’t yall ever tell me that you can’t do something,” and walked into the shop. . .

As a child, my parents always told me you could be whatever you want to be, you can do whatever you want to do. And that office, that position, the highest office on the face of the earth. It was something I heard my parents saying it but I didn’t totally believe it. Yet I went out in the world and I carried myself and I held myself high and I stood there and I looked people in their eyes and I talked to people as if I was deserving of everything that this planet has to offer. I really want to say to children out there and to people who are watching. Confucius said one time, “He who says he can and he who says he can are both usually right” . . .

Having the opportunity to study greatness. Any time you have that opportunity, there are certain intricacies that will make clear who you are. It becomes that much more clear who you are. The definition of who I am is very clear to me, and it also redefines who I want to be in that I know for a fact that I’m stronger than I thought I was. You can’t help but ask yourself the question what would I do if I was in Muhammad Ali’s shoes. I’m not the best at anything. Eddie Murphy is funnier than I’ll ever be. Denzel is more powerful than I’ll ever be. I think that my strength is I can do everything well. I can do a little bit of everything and that’s what I concentrate on to be my strength. I’ll never be able to compete with Denzel. . .

Enjoy connecting with people and ideas. I have a mission statement. Every year for probably the past 10 years I’ve worked out a mission statement for myself. And for the last few years the mission statement has stayed the same, and it’s been improve lives. When I go into something I’m looking for how the quality of this piece could potentially improve lives, but it’s all along the way. It’s when you make the movie and how you’re interacting with people in the process, the concept of improving lives runs through the center of everything I do. And then I realize that the way to improve lives is to continually improve yourself. So with that every morning when I get out of the bed, I haven’t fixed everything in the world yet, so there’s always something to do. . .

I want my life, I want my work, my family, I want it to mean something. If you’re not making someone else’s life better, then you’re wasting your time. Your life will become better by making other lives better. . .

A few months ago I said that I believed that if I chose to I could be the president of the United States. And I think as I’ve had the chance to intellectualize why I said that I think that there’s a certain delusional quality that all successful people have to have. You have to believe that something different than what has happened for the last 50 million years of history–you have to believe that something different can happen. The one thing that I truly try to communicate in the interpretation of Ali is the complex simplicity of greatness. How greatness is not this wonderful, esoteric, illusive, God-like feature that only the special among us will ever taste. It’s something that truly exists in all of us. . .

Loss is bound to joy. Pain and suffering are bound to joy. Being able to survive something is actually a big part of being able to find that next wave of joy. You appreciate smaller things. . . I hated being scared. That I didn’t want to even take the meaning. I just hated being scared to do something. And I think what developed in my early days was the attitude that I started attacking things that I was scared of.

Fear is known to trigger a fight, flight, or freeze response. Fear can lead to aggressive action (fight), avoidance behaviors (flight), or no action at all (freeze). Today, I’ve transcribed a short clip in which NBA legend and business mogul Michael Jordan shares his view that work ethic eliminates fear. FYI, the clip begins at 0:42. [Update: The video was removed, but the transcript is accessible below.]

Transcript:

Interviewer: This whole thing about you practicing. If you talk to any of your teammates, they would say even if they saw something in the game, “You should have saw him on Thursday.” To practice with you was like they had a game instead of practice.

Jordan: When I got to the pros with Kevin Loughery, you know, when I was drafted #3. Kevin Loughery used to put me on the starting 5, we used to be killing the second 5, but he wanted to test me out. So let’s say we’re going to 8. It could be 5-1 or 5-2 against the second team. If we lose, you gotta run. He would switch me in the middle of the game to the second team. And I”m saying “Well, OK, you’re trying to prove a point. Boom. We’ll bounce back and win the game.” Those are all training tools and every day in practice was like that to me. It was a competition. So when the game comes, there’s nothing that I haven’t already practiced. It’s a routine. Whatever happens in the game now, OK, I’ve done this before.

Interviewer: Was fear of failure a motivator?

Jordan: I never feared about my skills because I put in the work. Work ethic eliminates fear. You know, so if you put forth the work, what are you fearing? You know what you’re capable of doing and what you’re not.

Interviewer: As a member of the Chicago Bulls, the last shot, game 6.

Jordan: Oh, Utah. . . I practice as if I’m playing in the game. So when the moment comes in the game it’s not new to me. That’s the beauty of the game of basketball. That’s the reason why you practice. That’s the effort. So when you get to that moment, you don’t have to think. Instinctively things happen.

Ignore those that make you fearful and sad, that degrade you back towards disease and death.

You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire.