TRANSCRIPT
So often I hear people who have big dreams about their life. Big things that they want to accomplish in their life. Big hopes, even fantasies about what they like to become. And what I have seen is what separates the people who actually begin to live their dreams, who begin to manifest their dreams, manifest their fantasies, who become the people they really hope to become, and the people that don’t, and they keep people who keep their dreams, hopes, and fantasies in the realm of just staying dreams, hopes, and fantasies, or maybe even watch their dreams and hopes and fantasies shrivel.
It’s people who are willing to take risks and people who are willing to take healthy, intelligent risks. And what I’ve seen, starting with my own life but in other people’s lives too, is when people take risks, it’s terrifying. It’s scary. It’s always scary to take real risks. I’ve heard people say, “oh you should live without fear, live a fearless life, live a fearless existence, you know put fear in away, you know just go forward without fear.” And that sounds nice to me, but that has not been my experience.
My experience is the things that have helped me move forward toward manifesting my dreams have always required courage. Courage being doing things in spite of fear. My heart beats so fast because things can be so scary. I start worrying. I can even become paranoid or have phobias or “oh my god all these negative things are gonna happen” because I’m taking these risks. And you know what? Sometimes negative things do happen. Sometimes the risks that I’ve taken, even good healthy risks, it doesn’t turn out. Things don’t always work out. I make mistakes. I fail. I fall down hard. I get bruised. Embarrassing things happen. I lose friends. I alienate people. Oh, I feel stupid. I look stupid.
But in taking these risks and realizing, wait a second, especially if there are smart risks, wisely thought out risks, I make mistakes sometimes, maybe a lot of the time, maybe even most of the time. But I learn things and I get smarter. I get wiser. And I also gain life experience. So for me, those things all add up to me becoming stronger.
Because the other thing is, even if I take risks and even if I fail, even if I fall down, even if I get bruised, even if I get a little broken sometimes, if I don’t die—and I haven’t died yet—if I haven’t had any permanent damage to me, and so far I don’t see any real permanent damage to my brain or my body, well I really do learn something. And the next time I take a risk, I often do it more wisely and more smartly.
Now I want to talk a bit about what I’ve seen with people who don’t take risks. What happens to them? What I’ve seen is they start to dry up on the inside, and it’s sad. It’s like they start getting older. The blood doesn’t flow through them as well. I’ve seen a lot of people when they don’t take risks, they don’t even acknowledge that to themselves. But really, basically what it means to me is their fears are bigger than their motivation to actually manifest. And so they don’t make mistakes, but they don’t do things that are correct either. They don’t do things that are healthy. And the end result is their life overall—and this is what I’ve talked to with a lot of people, especially when they get quite a bit older—is they can look back and say, “I didn’t take enough risks, and that was a mistake.” And that’s the kind of mistake that you don’t really learn from. Or maybe they learn from it, but there it’s too late. They’re too old now.
That’s another one: Is there such thing really as being too old to take risks? Is there such a thing as being too old to have courage? And you know, I’m gonna take it back what I said. I don’t think there is such a thing as being too old. I think it’s never really too late. And I have lots of reasons for saying that because I’ve seen people make profound changes in their life and do things differently and take some really big leaps into courageous actions when they were in their 80s, even 90s. I’ve seen that a few times where people really do shift and things can open up.
And you know what? Emotional energy starts flowing through them. Their blood starts flowing through them again. They can start grieving in very old ages. And it’s like when people’s energy starts flowing through them again, their hope can come back. They can look younger, actually. It’s like this is the Fountain of Youth—this making mistakes and growing. And this comes down to again why children grow so much. Because children inevitably take so many risks. They have to have courage. They have to try things and fail again and again and again.
And fundamentally, children, to learn and to grow, they have to be humble. They have to try things that they don’t know how to do. Because children, especially when they’re very young, they don’t know how to do almost anything. They don’t know how to read and write. They can’t ride a bicycle. They don’t know how to walk. They can’t run. They don’t even know how to crawl when they first start. They have to learn everything, and it’s all through trial and error. It’s through making mistakes. When they try to learn how to walk, they fall down a whole bunch of times. No one ever stands up and says, “oh I can walk and this is easy.” No one ever tried to write and had good handwriting from the beginning. Everything is full of mistakes.
So in that way, to me, no matter how old we are—40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, even a hundred—we have to try. We have to learn. We have to be willing to make mistakes.
Oh, here’s an interesting one. Back, um, it was fifteen years ago now, actually in 2004, when I was working as a therapist in the West Village of Manhattan. I used to go over to Hudson River Park from where I was living and working to take my lunch break a lot. I’d just go over there, and I made friends with this very, very elderly woman who was in a wheelchair, and she was being pushed out there by her health aide. And this woman was a hundred and two years old. She was born in 1902, and she was actually a lawyer. She—or she had been a lawyer. I don’t know if she still had her license, probably not. But she was almost blind. She was slightly deaf. But her brains were good.
I remember we would have these amazing conversations because she was, what, something seventy years older than me? And she was learning Russian. And she wasn’t Russian, but she was learning Russian. And her home health aide was Russian. And I remember they would sit there and practice Russian. And I thought, she’s learning Russian at a hundred and two! And she wasn’t very good at it, but she would laugh and she’d say, “ah I have to try, if I don’t try I’m never gonna learn.” And she would screw it up, and her pronunciation was horrible, but she was going for it. And she had a childlike attitude with it. And I remember thinking, that’s how you grow. And in her case, that’s probably why she was living so long, because she kept herself living for a purpose.
Now that’s just an analogy because I think in the deeper ways, deeper things, I think learning Russian, mmm, it’s not so much of an emotional risk. I think looking at the horrible, painful things that our childhood, being courageous to speak out about injustice, being able to side with people who maybe no one is siding with in this world, being able to look at unpleasant or ugly or not very healthy sides of ourself, being willing to create art, these are all things that can be pretty scary. Sharing our art publicly, mm-hmm, there can be a lot of rejection. And putting out these manifestations of our real self, of our vulnerable self, I think it takes a lot of courage. But I also think, hmm, if people don’t take those risks, if people don’t go for it, really what’s the point of life? Why do it? Why go through this process?