Last Lecture Series: How to Live your Life at Full Power — Graham Weaver

Speaker 0:03 [upbeat music]

Speaker 0:03 Change lives. Change organizations. Change organizations. Change the world. Class of 2024, it's an honor to present to you the one and only, the GOAT, the legend, Graham Weaver. [audience cheering] [laughs] [audience laughing] I graduated from

Speaker 0:34 s- Stanford GSB, and I took the safe job, a corporate job, that I wasn't that excited about, wasn't that good at, but I grinded it out. I toughed it out. And about a year into that job, we had this offsite in Napa. [smacks lips] And, uh, we're sitting in these conference rooms for three days listening to these, uh, presentations, and this is like PowerPoint old school, where there's 87 words on the slide, and the profe- and the person who's speaking reads every single word to you in 0.5x speed. And I'm just... You know, it, it's brutal. So about a day and a half into this offsite, I, I hatch my escape plan. So I'm sitting in the, in the room, [smacks lips] and I, I put my suit coat on. I tuck my notebook under the suit coat just to make sure there's no trace. And then as the... We take a break at 10:45 in the morning, and I file out, and I, I m- make sure I'm the last one to go in the bathroom. And I hide out in the stall. [laughs] And so I wait, like, three minutes for everyone to leave, and then I wait, like, just to be safe, I wait another five minutes. And then at one point, it does occur to me, I'm like, "I'm a 27-year-old vice president. I'm in the men's room, in the stall, hiding from my own company." [laughs] [audience laughing] All right, nonetheless, I bust out. I don't see anyone. I go up the back staircase, go to my room, take my suit off, take off my tie, and I put on my running clothes 'cause I'm gonna go for a run. And I put on my running shoes, my running shorts. I tie this red bandana around my head, which is... I always work out with a red bandana. And, uh, and then I go down the back staircase, and I go around and get on the, uh, the, um, [smacks lips] Silverado Trail. I d- I couldn't find my shirt. I'm not sure if I packed one. It's 75 degrees. It doesn't matter. So I start, I start on this run, and it is just glorious. Like, my, my playlist is amazing, and I'm having, I'm having just this great time. And on this run, I start to have this runner's high, which some of you may have experienced. And there's this voice, and this voice says, "You know, Graham, you don't have to... This isn't you. You know, you don't, you don't have to do this. Like, this isn't what you're meant to do." And it was this voice that I'd heard maybe other times, but this time it was, like, really powerful. And I realized that this voice was speaking to me, and it was, it was my truth. And, and this wave of calm and peace just kind of came over me as I finished this run, realizing that, that I was gonna listen to that voice. There were two memorable things about that run that, that have stayed with me to this day. The first one is the end of the run. So I go out, I'm going on... You know, just

Speaker 3:07 having a great run. I turn around, again, having runner's high, and at the very end of the run, one of my favorite songs comes on my playlist, which is "Eye of the Tiger" by, uh, Survivor, and it's the theme song of Rocky III, if you haven't seen that. Like the gratuitous training scene where he gets beat, and then he has to come back and train. That, that, they're playing that song, and it's like, "Dun, dun, dun, dun. Dun, dun, dun. Dun, dun, dun."

Speaker 3:29 [laughs]

Speaker 3:30 So then I'm like, "Okay. I'm, I, I'm feeling it. I'm running." And then there's this long glass building that is on this trail, and I'm, like, running, and I catch a glimpse of myself in the thing. The sun's hitting me just right. I got my bandana. You know, sweat's pouring down. I'm shirtless. I'm like, "I'm... I look like Rocky right now." [laughs]

Speaker 3:47 [laughs]

Speaker 3:47 And I start... So I just, looking in the mirror, I start doing some of these. Mm, mm, mm, mm.

Speaker 3:51 [laughs]

Speaker 3:52 And then I start doing some of these. A little bit of that. Start doing a little bit of this. And then I'm like, "Yeah, yeah. Feeling this." And then I, I, I see something kind of moving in the window. Take off my sungla- take my sunglasses down. I look, and all [laughs] the, the energy drains out of my body, 'cause I realize what's happened. I've been on this run for two hours. The meeting I was in ended. They broke for lunch. They go to lunch in a different room, and it's a restaurant with a window-

Speaker 4:21 [laughs]

Speaker 4:21 ... overlooking the vineyards. [laughs] So me sneaking, sneaking stealthily back into the meeting actually became me shadowboxing shirtless-

Speaker 4:30 [laughs]

Speaker 4:31 ... in front of my entire company.

Speaker 4:32 [laughs]

Speaker 4:34 So that was the first reason that run was memorable.

Speaker 4:36 [laughs]

Speaker 4:37 That happened. The second reason it was memorable was that I realized that I had heard this voice which was my inner truth, and I made a promise to myself that day that I was gonna continue to listen to that voice, and I was gonna continue to follow it, starting with l- allowing myself to leave that job. So I've been teaching here now for 22 years. I've met with so many students over that time, and what I realize is that you all have this, and all of us have this, conflict going on at all times inside of us, and it's between two forces. And the first force is your survival instinct that's been with us for thousands, if not tens of thousands of years. And this is a thing that, you know, that, that noise in the bushes that w- was, could, could possibly kill you. It wants to s- inject into you fear and doubt and worry and anxiety. It wants you at fight or flight. And, and that's your, that's kind of your voice of fear and your inner critic. And that's really loud. That voice is in your mind all the time. And then there's another voice, the second voice, and that voice has been written about and talked about by philosophers for thousands of years, and that voice has been called many names. It's been called your intuition. It's been called Source, God, the universe, your soul, your true self. You know, your inner wisdom. Lots of voice- names for that. That voice is a little quieter, and that voice isn't in your head. A lot of times it shows up in your body. It shows up in your heart, your gut, your, you know, your chest. You feel that. And unfortunately, that first voice really drowns us out a lot of times. And the thing is that the voice of fear will lead you to a life that's too small. And you know this. You already know this. And the reason you... The way that you know this is you feel this, you know? You feel this conflict, this dissonance and tension when you're in that position when you're doing something that's too small. If you want to reach full power in this one life of yours, it's

Speaker 6:40 in the second voice. It's in the voice that's the real you. This contains your dreams, your path. It contains your energy. And when you stop denying who you really are, you- there's, there's really no end to what you can accomplish. So today what I wanna do is I wanna talk to you about how to access this voice, and I'm gonna invite you today to make three promises to yourselves as you get ready to graduate. You good with that? Three promises. So the first one is a promise that's gonna help you get unstuck. The second one is a promise that's gonna help you find that voice, and the third one is a promise that's gonna help you follow it. And then you can tap into this energy source, not episodically or randomly on a run sometime, you know, but actually intentionally and regularly, and you can feel the full magnitude of what you're supposed to... what you can do in this life. So let's do it. So the first promise is take

Speaker 7:40 the nail out of your head. [laughs] This is the unstuck promise. So a number of years ago, there was a video, uh, of a woman, and she's talking to her boyfriend, and she says, "I feel all this pressure. I have headaches. I can't sleep." You know, and she's just... She seems like she's hopeless. [laughs] And her, uh, her boyfriend looks at her, he looks a little confused, and he says, "Well, you know, you could take the nail out of your head." And then you see she turns, and you realize she's stick... has a nail sticking out of her head, and it seems pretty obvious. And then she sa- [laughs] and then she says, "It's not about the nail." And she wants to talk about anything and everything except the thing that's actually gonna make her unstuck. Unfortunately, this is also true with a lot of us. We are walking around most of the time with a nail in our head. Sometimes our nail is just as obvious as it is in this video. We know what it is. We're just not dealing with it. Sometimes it's a little less obvious. But our nail is the thing that's keeping us stuck, and until we remove it, we're not gonna reach our full power. So nails can kind of fall into four buckets. Um, the first one is bad habits that we have that are keeping us from reaching our full potential. The second one is unresolved past experiences that we might have had a long time ago that we just have compartmentalized, and we haven't dealt with them. The third one is rules or assumptions. This is the way your life needs to go. You have to do this first. Your parents want you to do that. You know, all these constraints we put on ourselves with our own rules. And the, and the fourth one is fear, and it's fear that's keeping you stuck. So in, in my case, it was a job that I didn't like, but I was afraid to leave, so I stayed in the job. You could be in a relationship that you shouldn't be in, and you're afraid to leave, so you stay in the relationship. Or it could be really any decision that you wanna make, but you're afraid, and so you just... you, you repor- you stay paralyzed. And these nails, just like you're thinking in that video, why doesn't the girl just pull the thing out, right? Why,

Speaker 9:41 why, why is this complicated? There's two reasons that it's hard to pull these nails out of our head. The first one is we haven't admitted that we have one. And so the first way to pull your nail out of your head, oh, is, is, is to speak your truth. So let me, let me just give you an example of this, of this nail. So I have a, I have a close friend of mine, and she, uh, has insomnia, and she... it, it controls her life. She has a... She, you know, she can only sleep a few hours a night. She's tired all day. It's, it's... absolutely controls her life. So she goes to the doctor. And she's... You know, doctor has her fill out all this stuff. What are you eating? What are you drinking? What time are you going to bed? All these different things. And, uh, and then... and she... the doctor says to her, "Hey, I have good news for you," or, "I, I know how you can secure your insomnia." She says, "Great. I'm super excited to hear that." And he... and, and the doctor says to her, "You could stop drinking four to five glasses of wine with, with an hour of you going to bed. That, that, that'll help your insomnia." And she says, "That's a horrible idea." [laughs] She goes and sees four more doctors, and then she ends up with a plethora of, you know, medicine she keeps in her cabinet. And then what she does is she proceeds to build a helmet around her nail. So she, she basically has all these drugs she takes. She goes to bed at a certain time. She can't be out late. She... during the day, she needs naps. She's tired all the time. So her energy goes into protecting this nail that's in her head rather than pulling it out. The reason we don't pull it out, as I said, first, is we haven't a-admitted to ourselves that we have the problem. So we haven't said out loud, you know, "I have a problem with alcohol," or, "I'm in a relationship that I shouldn't be in," or, "A job that's not giving me energy." So to remove the nail, the first thing is to start by speaking your truth, and this is half of the battle right here. The other... The second reason that we don't pull the nail out is life is gonna get worse first. So when we tra... So if you think of this as the pattern of your life, where at any given time you're gonna reach a plateau, and the path to get to the next plateau involves something that's gonna get worse first. And these nails go on and, and the way to pull them out is gonna almost always involve something that's gonna be uncomfortable at first, uh, 'cause change always is. So if you leave a job, if you, you know, end a relationship, if you try to a-address one of your really bad habits, things are gonna get worse first. But the path to reaching the next height is really to, to... You have... You're gonna have to, you're gonna have to deal with that, that downward f- uh, path first. And then you're gonna reach another plateau, and you'll have another one and, and this is a big part of your life. So just to realize that everything that you want is on the other side of worse first Everything that you want is often on the other side of the thing that you fear right now. Think about the thing that you fear, and that's the thing you should be going at. That's where your work is right now. So if principle one, if you want to live your life at full power, the promise I would ask you tonight or today to make to yourselves is to take the nail out of your head and do

Speaker 12:43 that work. Okay, that's the not fun one. That's the getting unstuck. So the next is to try to find your energy. So we're, we're t- tapping into that inner voice. First, we got to get unstuck. Now we got to listen to that voice. So promise two is follow your energy, and I say not your passion. Here, here's why I say not your passion, because when I was at the GSB, and probably ev- every speaker who stood up here had a moment in their speech where they said some version of follow your passion, right? Has anyone heard that before? And every graduation speech you watch will have that, like, injected in there. So let me tell you why that happens, first of all, because now I'm up here giving advice, and I'll explain to you why, why, why is that what every speaker wants to tell you. The reason is that, I'll speak for myself, I have spent a large portion of my life doing something for which I had very little energy, and it was tough, and it felt like a grind, and it, and it was -- and it just absorbed a lot of, of, of energy, and I could fight through it with willpower for a little bit of time. And I've spent a nor- a, a lot of my time in an area that gave me a tremendous amount of energy, and, and there's no comparison. And so the speakers are trying to say, "Hey, come up over on this side. You know, go into the thing that gives you energy." By the way, the reason that they're on the stage in the first place is that they made that decision, so that's why they're sharing this, this advice with you. But it's very -- it can be very harmful advice to go follow your passion, and here's why. Because it implies that you have only one passion. It implies that you're supposed to know what it is when you're twenty-eight, that you're supposed to go do it for the next forty years, and you're supposed to know how to follow it, and I don't think any of those things are true. At my firm, Alpine, we've invested in over five hundred entrepreneurs who've built successful companies, and not one of them followed that path. Even the people who will give a-- stand up and tell you that advice didn't follow that path. So instead, what I'm gonna offer is for you to not follow necessarily this nebulous passion of which there's one, and it's intimidating, but instead to follow your, just your energy, whatever's

Speaker 14:44 giving you energy at the current time. So there's this exercise that I want to do with you today, which is called Nine Lives, and the way it works is imagine that you had nine parallel universes that you could, you could partake in. The first life is gonna be the thing that you're doing right now. So for me, that was I'm in the corporate job. You know, I'm gonna live in the Bay Area. I'm gonna pay off some debt. That's kind of life number one. And then lives two through ni-- lives two through nine, you have two rules. The first rule is, uh, that you-- they all have to start from today, so you can't go back in time. All your, all your remaining eight lives start with where you are right now. The second rule is you want to find the things that are -- you're super excited about. So every one of those other lives should be something that you're so excited that you, you jump out of bed to do. So for me, it might have been, okay, my, I, I s- shared life one. Life two would be, hey, I want to start my own company someday and, you know, be a founder, be a CEO. Life three, I'd love to be a professor someday at Stanford Business School. Life four, I'd love to be a, a monk and become enlightened. Life five, I'd love to be a DJ in Vegas, you know. Life six, I'd be a writer, social media, uh, influencer, you know, whatever. You come up with these, these, these things that are exciting for you. And then what you've done when you do this is you've found things that you have energy for. Energy is the language of your soul. That second voice that I accessed that day on the run, the way that it talks to you is through your energy. It doesn't use words. It uses your whole body and shows you things for which you have energy, and that's how it's talking to you. So when you're excited about something, when you're excited about someone, when something is firing you up, it's your soul talking to you. That's its voice. So you've just created with these nine lives nine things that you're super excited about. So that's how you're gonna listen to your, your, your soul. There's two things you can do with this exercise. The first is, as you're on path one and you're, and you're cranking a- a- away on path one, pull something in from one of those other lives that you, that gives you a tremendous amount of energy. So you could pull in playing the guitar, or playing in a sport, or writing a book, or writing a blog, or teaching a class at Stanford, or all these things. And what happens when you pull something in like that is your energy will become infectious. You'll light a spark. You'll light a match, and that'll, that'll actually inflame the rest of your life with excitement. So that's one way. That's the first way that you can use that exercise. The second way, which I think is even more powerful, is ask yourself this question. Of all nine of those lives, what would I do if I knew I wouldn't fail? Which one of those would I choose? That is, by definition, silencing that voice of fear and really getting in touch with that thing that is your most dear dream. And class of twenty twenty-four, I would argue at some point in your life, that's the path that you want to be on, the thing you would do if you knew you wouldn't fail, and I think that's what you'll-- that's where you'll find your richest, your richest dream. The human soul needs something to hope for, and that's why you want to continue to inject it with your energy. If you want to live at full power in this one precious life of yours, promise one, take the nail out of your head. Second promise is go toward the things that give you energy. Third

Speaker 18:17 promise is to go all in now. So one of the biggest traps that we have is we're hedged. We have one foot in, we have one foot out. Well, should I? Shouldn't I? I'm not sure. I'm kind of in. I don't know if I'm in this job. I don't know about this relationship. I don't know. I'm kind of still waiting. You know, it'll become clear at some point. I'm not really sure. When this happens, then I'll do it. You know, it's on the other side of this thing. As soon as I get done with this. And,

Speaker 18:48 you know, Goethe said, "Until one is committed, there's always hesitancy. The chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness." Sadly, most people spend most of their lives here, never really fully committing to things, and this is a huge waste of energy, and you're not gonna, you're not gonna get where you wanna go half in, half out. My story of how I started teaching started 22 years ago. Irv Grousbeck and Janet Feldstein wrote a case about me, and it was when I was 25 years old, and I was buying companies in my dorm room at Stanford Business School using a lot of debt and some credit cards, and it was... And the case had a lot of things go wrong. Most things went wrong. [laughs] So I was so excited to be a case guest. I mean, it was something that I, I dreamed about. I thought it was gonna be the coolest experience ever. And, uh, so I go in the class, and I absolutely bomb. [laughs] I am horrible. Like, my inner critic is just pounding me. You know, "Graham, you're 29." I was 29 when I taught it. "You haven't really done anything. You don't really have anything to teach these students. Like, you know, like, look at the guests who came before you. They're way more accomplished than you." And I, I was horrible. I was in my head the whole time. And just so you know, this isn't false humility. Um, this was [laughs] I was 29, and I had, uh, c- friends of mine that were in the class, and so the two days after I teach, the professor does a recap of the case. And, uh, one of the takeaways from the Graham Weaver case was, um, you don't need to have charisma or be articulate to start a company. [laughs]

Speaker 20:23 [laughs]

Speaker 20:24 True story. So that's... So I got that going for me. I'm like, "That, yeah, at le- at least we taught the students that." So, which is true, by the way. But, [laughs] but I was, I was devastated. Like, I, I, I was... I, I, I mean, my, my inner critic was like, "Graham, come back in 30 years when you've actually done something, you know, when you have something to say." You know? And this is a really common thing that our inner critic says. It one... It has many tricks it uses, and one of those is to utter, uh, is to utter to you the two most dangerous words that you're gonna hear, that you're gonna say. In 22 years of being a case guest or a lecturer, no student has ever said to me, "Graham, you know what? I l- have this dream I'm really excited about, but I just give up. I'm not gonna do it." No student's ever said that. Instead, they say, "Not now." And that's what my inner critic said. It didn't say, "You're never gonna teach." It said, "Go get 20 years of experience. You know, go figure it all out. Go make sure until everything's perfect and you're, you're, you're ready and everything's gonna be just right, and then you go do it." That's what my inner critic said. This is just fear in another form. That's all that is. So that would've been the end of it for me. The inner critic would've won, but for a student named Sarah, I'll call her Sarah, she called me, and she said, "Hey, Graham. You know, I enjoy- [laughs] I enjoyed your case." I was like, "Well, you were the one person that did, so thanks for, uh..." And she said, "But, you know, the thing I wanted to talk to you..." She didn't want to talk about how to build a business or hire or fire or investing or anything like that. She said, "I want to hear, how did you overcome your fear of failure? You know, you're, you're... You started this thing when you were 25. Like, how did you actually get the confidence to do that?" So I actually had a lot to t- tell her on that 'cause I did have to overcome my fear of failure. So I said, "Okay, Sarah, let's do this. Why don't you write down everything you fear? Because your fears have the most power over you when they're in the recesses of your subconscious mind. That's when your fears are most dangerous. That's where they can control you." So the reason we do limiting beliefs in class is we gotta get that out of our head, out, out of our subconscious, and put it down on paper. So we did that with Sarah. We looked at all the f- fears. We walked through each one, and we just made... We stripped those fears of their power, and she felt a lot better, and she felt, like, a lot more confident. And then, and then I said, "Well, Sarah, you know, tell me a little bit about your, your thing you're trying to do. You know, uh, uh, you know, are you excited about this?" Whatever. And then she just lit up, and she said, "I'm so excited about this. You know, I'm gonna go all in. I'm gonna do this with every ounce of my soul." And so most of us say, you know, "I'll start living when..." And we say, "When... I'll start living when I pay off my loans, I get more experience, I have confidence, I'm ready, I know I'll succeed, my parents are happy, my boss lets me, I move to a new city, I plan my wedding, I get married, I have a visa, I'm an R.J. Miller scholar, I pay off my mortgage, I have kids, my kids are older, my kids are grown." I've heard every single one... Well, not the R.J. one, but every other one of these.

Speaker 23:23 [laughs]

Speaker 23:23 I've actually heard people say in my coaching classes, "This is when I'm gonna start. This is when I'm gonna get going, when one of these things happens." And you know what? Then there's always a new thing, right? That never re- you never really get there. It's like... And, and then they say, "Oh, you know, sometime in the future, later, not now," which will turn into never. That's the path that we take. So anyway, going back to Sarah, I said... Sarah said, "You know, I am so excited about this. I'm gonna do this. You know, I, I have tremendous energy this. I'm all in. I'm gonna go as long as this takes." This is what she said. And I said, "So Sarah, let me get this straight. You're fired up. You have energy. You're all in as long as it takes." I said, "What's the decision, then? I don't understand. Like, what's, what's the problem?" And, and, and one, about a month later, she sent me a note saying she decided to start a company, and she just raised her seed round. As would happen many, many times throughout my teaching, as I gave advice to a student, I realized I was really giving advice to myself. And

Speaker 24:24 so I said, "This was also true for me about teaching." And so I decided I was gonna go all in as long as it took and throw all my energy into this. So the next time that there was a case, uh, about Graham Weaver [chuckles] at, at Stanford, there's this five-minute part at the end of the class where the professor asks the guest, you know, "Do you have any advice for the students?" And I was gonna write this thing on overcoming your fear of failure. Without hyperbole, I spent 60 hours on this little five-minute thing at the end of the case, which no one really pays attention to, but I was, I was, like, all in. And then sure enough, a lot of students started reaching out. I started coaching them to help them overcome their fear of failure. The case then got taught one time a year, then three, then five, then seven. Then I started doing some lectures and panels and more students, and then I eventually, the very class that I bombed, [chuckles] you know, when I first started is the class that I now teach. So you, with energy, all in as long as it takes, is enough. You don't, you don't need anything else. There's no other ingredients required. This is it. And you have these already for the things that you're excited about. What happens when you go w- when you go all in, or when I went all in, is my identity shifted. All of a sudden, I'm not on the fence. I'm not wondering if I should teach. You know, I am a teacher at this point. And th- this, uh, this conflict that I'm having between my two voices, it just dissipates because the, the, the voice of fear has lost that battle when you're all in, and it lays down its sword and kneels, and there... because you're, you're living in harmony with your second voice. There's just, there's just a lot less conflict. Doesn't mean you won't hear v- uh, pangs of doubt from your first voice, but the big thing about you're not supposed to do this, it's not supposed to be now, that goes away. And so you're not spending energy fighting yourself when you're all in. If you've taken a class from me or been in a lecture, I have more energy teaching now than I even did 22 years ago. People get this confused. They think that burnout comes from doing something for a long time. That's not true. Burnout comes from friction, stress, and tension. It comes from you being out of alignment. If I stayed in that first job for even three more years, I would've been burned out. 22 years of doing the thing that your heart wants, and I have more energy. Energy is not an exhaustible resource like willpower or endurance or fossil fuels. [chuckles] Energy is abundant. It's like love. The more that you tap into it, the more you have, and the more you give it away, the more you get back. And, and so energy's abundant. Going back to you, I would say you are the person... Th- this is the formula for starting, uh, any, any journey that you wanna start. You're the person who earned the seat that you're sitting in. Your drive, your motivation, your persistence, your willpower, and your character is enou- that you get to transport that on the next journey that you, you go on. And you forget that sometimes. It's a new journey, but you get to bring you. And you excited about something, going all in as long as it takes, is not just enough, but this is the most powerful force that there is. I started my firm when I was 25. I had no other cri- skills other than this. And when I started teaching at 29, I had no other skills other than this. And this is not just enough. It's the most powerful force there is. And this is all that you need to go on the journey that you're gonna go on. It's all you need. If you wanna live at full power, three promises. Promise you'll take the nail out of your head along the journey as you get stuck. Promise you will go toward the energy as it, as you, as you start to feel that energy, you'll move toward it, particularly the thing you would, would do if you knew you wouldn't fail. And promise you will not utter the words "not now," that you'll start heading in the direction of your, of your dreams, and that you'll go all in, and you'll stay unhedged, and you'll start that now. Those

Speaker 28:27 are the three promises. So two years ago, um, my son Chase, who's here, uh, [clears throat] he w- he went, he went off to college, and it was like someone had reached in and ripped my heart out when that happened. [chuckles] Um, you know, I, I remember the very first time when Chase was born, I remembered holding him, and I remembered he... We taught Chase sign language 'cause before he could speak, and he would do this for more, and he wanted, you know, more, uh, apple slices, [chuckles] more Cheerios, more books, more everything, and he would just get so excited, and he'd do this. I remember, um, t- his, his very first walk and the joy he ha- he had on his face, and I remember teaching him how to ride a bike, throwing a football with him, and eventually teaching him how to drive a car, and then I remember him, you know, walking away that day and, and, and going to his dorm in college and then driving home and his, you know, his room was empty for the first time ever and, 'cause he no longer, you know, was, was part of, part of my d- life on a daily basis. And then my son Blake graduated [chuckles] this year, so he's, he's going off, and it doesn't get any easier. And so this kinda set in me this existential crisis, uh, of like I h- I had this ending of something that was really important to me without a new beginning, and it... and there was this finite nature of life that I think everyone reaches. Maybe that's a midlife crisis. I'm not sure. Um, so I went on... I, I did what, what all of you would do. I went on a quest for the meaning of life, [chuckles] which I've been on my whole life, but I intensified it. [chuckles] And, and I went to the r- rural cities in Mexico. I went to the jungles of Costa Rica. And I, uh, I hired medi- I went on meditation retreats. I had a meditation teacher. As you know, I have lots of executive coaches and, uh, just did a lot of work. I did a lot of reading and was searching for this. Um, some of my favorite philosophers, Jesus, Aristotle, Buddha, Socrates, Alan Watts, you know, read, did a lot of reading on what they came up with for

Speaker 30:28 the meaning of life, which were great. You know, love thy neighbor, serve God, be present and suffering, um, seek truth. You know, all these, all these great meanings. So there's clearly not one meaning of life. Uh, the meaning of life that I came up with is that the meaning of life is for you to find your meaning of life. And what I came up with, my answer for the meaning of life, is to live your f- life at full power. And, and I believe that that power is already inside you right now, and that the way to access that power is through your second voice. And your second voice is not just the path to accessing that power, but it will also show you where to direct it to have the biggest impact that you're gonna have in this world. That voice will start ruminating on a problem, and it'll start bringing this up, and you'll think about it a d- day in, day in, day out when you have something that's keeping you stuck. That's a sign that you have your nail in your head and your voice wants you... Your, your second voice wants you to remove that. So make a promise that when that happens, you'll take the nail out of your head. That voice speaks to you in the language of energy. That's how you know what it's saying. So go toward that energy and make a promise that you will constantly move in the direction of the thing that gives you energy, particularly the thing you knew you would do if you knew you wouldn't fail. And finally, more than anything, that voice wants you to go all in. It wants you to experience yourself at full power. So make a promise that you will not wait, that you will not utter the words "not now," but you'll go all in with wherever you are in your life right now. I used to think that there were millions of decisions that we would make and that life was really complicated. But now that I've been on this earth for fifty-two years, I think that I've realized if you wanna live at full power and feel the full magnitude of what you can do in this one life that you have, that there's really only one decision. Class of 2024, which voice will you listen to? Thank you.

Speaker 32:46 [audience applauding]

Speaker 33:00 Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.