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College tore me up, stole my confidence, stirred my curiosity, lit my intellectual fuse, and lifted me onto a spacecraft called Life that I’ve been riding high and low ever since.
For some and maybe many (maybe you), it’s true that there’s something about college that does a real number on a human being. At a stage in life when you’re supposed to be gaining confidence you realize how little you know and how fragile everything is yet all the adult stuff that is so hard moves ever closer to reality.
I bring this up because I’m thinking about my graduation day from Wake Forest University on May 19, 1985. It was a sunny day but my mind felt cloudy as if a storm was coming fast and it was going to roar and knock me off my feet. Figuratively, it did, and more than several times. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I wasn’t sure who I was. I didn’t know myself. And I didn’t know how to go about deciding what move to make next.
I am reflecting on all these powerful and not-so-pleasant memories as I’ve been listening to a range of commencement speeches this week. The best ones are honest, brutally so, because honesty at least gives us all a grounding on what graduating from college means and how life will go after that which, of course, is a mixture of madness and incoherence and wrong turns mixed with joy and flourishing and finding your way somehow making it all feel worthwhile.
A few years ago I heard about a guy nicknamed Gary Vee (Gary Vaynerchuk), who was then and still is a popular Internet personality and author. Then I picked up on his down-to-earth common sense comments on his videos. He’s a straight talker from Queens, New York who had a knack for connecting with his audience.
He connected with me in his recent commencement address to the New York University Stern School of Business undergraduates. Standing out from so many other speeches I’ve been listening to were his blunt counterintuitive insights about how to be successful and what it all means – and doesn’t mean – to him. Listen to all this.
“I tell you none of my self-esteem or how I affirm who I am is based on my bank account or my following. I don’t give a crap about Gary Vee and my followers. I don’t give a crap about the money I’ve made. I judge myself on how people who actually know me feel about me.”
He says there are two ways to get to the top: being insecure and being confident. Of the billionaires he has spent time with, the insecure ones are “sad. They don’t like it and their lives suck, and it’s not sustainable. Please don’t let insecurity be your fuel to the top.”
The alternative route to success, being confident, is the way to go.
“People who become billionaires through purity and actual confidence stay there the longest.”
He goes on: “Losing is good. The adversity is the fun. I was an atrocious student.”
He urged graduates off all other opinions and advice when it comes to what they want. “Listen to no one except yourself.”
The biggest misconception in business, he said, is that “nice guys finish last. The concept that being a nice guy will make you a loser is the scariest and most messed up statement in our society.”
“Be kind and empathetic and loving with yourself. Because if you can’t do that for yourself you can’t for anybody else.”
He says he is successful because his 12-15 hour days aren’t like work; they feel like he’s golfing or sailing or laying on a beach.
“If you enjoy your work and you like yourself, it will be good. And if you don’t, and you’re focused on how much money you have in the bank, it will be bad.”
In my career, I have found his words to be true. If I wake up in the morning as I do now, and look forward to the work I will do that day, it’s like a play day. It’s not arduous; it’s invigorating. Life means something and I’m sure of it. When there have been times when I didn’t like my job, it felt like my entire life was a black sheet covering my every thought.
How much money I make has never been my preoccupation. Meaningful work has.
These Class of 2024 graduates, many of whom never had a high school graduation, have been through difficult circumstances. The pandemic lessened the joy in their lives. Yet they plowed ahead.
Tough kids, all. I hope they all find things to do with their lives that feel every day like they’re going sailing on a beautiful day with the sun shining.
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Sammy Sportface, a sports blogger, galvanizes, inspires, and amuses The Baby Boomer Brotherhood. And you can learn about his vision and join this group's Facebook page here:
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