“I want to do good… I want the world to be better because I was here.”
That’s my favorite quote from this Will Smith compilation… Will Smith Inspires Me – It’s His Attitude! I love his attitude and beliefs on personal responsibility and persistence. These are the tenets taught to me by my parents, grandparents, and various teachers all my life. I still have these beliefs and the truth of them becomes more apparent and meaningful to me with each passing day.
Will Smith is an American actor, producer, comedian, songwriter, and rapper. Will was born September 25, 1968, as Willard Carroll Smith Jr., in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
I hope you enjoy this video as much as I do each time I watch it… it’s beneficial to watch it to the end! A transcript follows the video.
Will Smith Compilation
Transcript of the Will Smith Compilation: Will Smith Inspires Me – It’s His Attitude
Will Smith
Will Smith: I have a great time with my life, and I want to share it.
Shares his wisdom on life.
Will Smith: I love living. I think that’s infectious. It’s something you can’t fake.
Greatness exists in all of us.
Will Smith: Greatness is not this wonderful, esoteric, elusive, god-like feature that only the special among us will ever taste. You know, it’s something that truly exists in all of us. It’s very simple. This is what I believe, and I’m willing to die for it. Period, it’s that simple. So from there, you do what you need to do. You know, I think what happens is that we make the situation more complex than it has to be.
Commentator: Because we’re looking for complexities… there has to be something complex to understand.
Yes, it can.
Will Smith: We didn’t grow up with the sense that, where we were was where we were going to be. You know, we grew up with the sense that where we were almost didn’t matter, because we were becoming something greater.
There’s no shortcut to success.
Will Smith: The separation of talent and skill is one of the greatest misunderstood concepts for people who are trying to excel, who have dreams who want to do things. Talent you have naturally. Skill is only developed by hours and hours and hours of beating on your craft.
I’ve never really viewed myself as particularly talented. Where I excel is ridiculous, sickening work ethic. While the other guy’s sleeping, I’m working. While the other guy’s eating, I’m working.
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. You know, if you don’t study, if you don’t work really hard and dedicate yourself to being better every single day, you’ll never be able to communicate with people your artistry the way you wanted to.
The only thing that I see that is distinctly different about me is that I’m not afraid to die on a treadmill. You might have more talent than me, you might be smarter than me, but if we get on a treadmill together, right, there are two things: you’re getting off first, or I’m going to die… it’s really that simple.
Lay one brick at a time.
Commentator: One summer his dad tore down a brick wall in the front of his business and told twelve-year-old Will and his nine-year-old brother to rebuild it; a job they said was impossible. It took them a year-and-a-half, but they did it.
Will Smith: And he said, “Now don’t you ever tell me that there’s something you can’t do.
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 build 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.” You do that every single day, and soon you have a wall.
Focus on making a difference.
Will Smith: You know, it’s an idea that my grandma always had… you know, if you’re going to be here, then there’s a necessity to make a difference. She always instilled the responsibility–the spiritual responsibility–you have to make every group you come in contact with better.
I want to do good! I want the world to be better because I was here. I want my life, I want my work, my family, and I want it to mean something. If you are not making someone else’s life better, then you’re wasting your time. You know, your life will become better by making other lives better.
Represent an idea.
Will Smith: I want to represent an idea. I want to represent possibilities. I want to represent the idea that you really can make what you want. One of my favorite books is The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, and that’s just… I just believe that. I believe that I can create whatever I want to create.
You HAVE to BELIEVE!
Will Smith: The first stop, before anybody else in the world believes it, is you have to believe it. There’s no reason to have a “Plan B” because it distracts from “Plan A.”
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 fifty million years of history. You have to believe that something different can happen.
Confucius said, “He who says he can and he who says he can’t are both usually right.”
Nothing is unrealistic.
Will Smith: Being realistic is the most commonly traveled road to mediocrity. Why would you be realistic? What’s the point of being realistic?
Commentator: Just put up a barrier.
Will Smith: Ya, I’m going to do it… it’s done. It’s already done. The second I decide, it’s done, it’s already done. So now, we just need to wait for yall to see. [Yeah!… Will Smith Inspires Me – It’s His Attitude]
It’s unrealistic to walk into a room and flip a switch, and lights come on… that’s unrealistic. Fortunately, Edison didn’t think so. It’s unrealistic to think you’re going to bend a piece of metal and fly people over an ocean in that metal… that’s unrealistic. But fortunately, the Wright brothers and others didn’t believe that. And, it just seems like such a ridiculous idea to me to embrace the idea that it’s not going to happen, that’s not real for that to happen. As soon as you say it, now you just made that real.
Our thoughts are physical.
Will Smith: Our thoughts, our feelings, our dreams, our ideas are physical in the universe. That, if we dream something, if we picture something, we can nail ourselves to it. That that is a physical thrust towards the realization that we can put into the universe… that the universe is not a thing that is going to push us around. That the world and people and situations are not something that is going to push us around. That we are going to bend the universe and demand that the universe become what we want it to be.
I study the patterns of the universe. There’s a redemptive power that making a choice has, ya know. Rather than feeling like you’re an effect to all the things that are happening. Make a choice… like you just decide what it’s going to be, who you’re going to be, how you’re going to do it… just decide! And then, from that point, the universe is going to get out of the way; it’s water, it wants to move and go around stuff, you know.
You know, there’s the flow of the universe that I’ve grown to know just how to go with it.
You really gotta focus.
Will Smith: I realize that to have the level of success that I want to have that it is difficult to spread it out and do multiple things. It takes such a desperate, obsessive focus; you really gotta focus with all of your fiber, and all of your heart and all of your creativity.
Attack your fears.
Will Smith: I’m motivated by fear, ya know.
Commentator: Fear of what?
Will Smith: A fear of fear. I hate being scared to do something. I think what developed in my early days was the attitude that I started attacking things that I was scared of.
Commentator: It was Franklin Roosevelt who said that “The only thing you have to fear is fear itself.”
Will Smith: Absolutely
Be willing to die for the truth.
Will Smith: You can’t be scared to die for the truth. The truth is the only thing that’s ever going to be constant.
Protect your dreams.
Will Smith: Don’t ever let somebody tell you, you can’t do something; not even me, alright? You got a dream; you have to protect it. People can’t do something themselves; they want to tell you, you can’t do it. If you want something, go get it… period!
Yes, Will Smith Inspires Me!
Works Cited
Images – Post and Rich Snippets image: “Will Smith Painting 1” by Kyle Lambert (kylelambert.co.uk) is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Video with transcript – Will Smith Compilation. (2010, January 9). Retrieved February 3, 2013, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Tyty4_FknU.
Posted is a Will Smith Inspires Me - It's His Attitude compilation to include the transcript in the post. Will Smith motivates me inside-out!