Denzel Washington's Life Advice Will Leave You Speechless (MUST

WATCH) - Motivation Madness

I found that nothing in life is worthwhile unless you take risks. Nothing. Nelson Mandela said,
there is no passion to be found playing small and settling for a life that's less than the one
you're capable of living.

Now I'm sure in your experiences in school and applying to college and picking your major and
deciding what you want to do with life, I'm sure people have told you to make sure you have
something to fall back on. Make sure you got something to fall back on, honey. But I never
understood that concept, having something to fall back on.

If I'm going to fall, I don't want to fall back on anything except my faith. I want to fall forward. I
figure at least this way I'll see what I'm going to hit.

Fall forward. This is what I mean. Reggie Jackson struck out 2,600 times in his career, the most
in the history of baseball.

But you don't hear about the strikeouts. People remember the home runs. Fall forward.

Thomas Edison conducted 1,000 failed experiments. Did you know that? I didn't know that.
Because the 1,001st was the light bulb.

Fall forward. Every failed experiment is one step closer to success. You've got to take risks, and
I'm sure you've probably heard that before.

But I want to talk to you about why that's so important. First, you will fail at some point in your
life. Accept it.

You will lose. You will embarrass yourself. You will suck at something.

There's no doubt about it. And I know that's probably not a traditional message for a
graduation ceremony, but hey, I'm telling you. Embrace it because it's inevitable.

And I should know. In the acting business, you fail all the time. Early on in my career, I
auditioned for a part in a Broadway musical.

Perfect role for me, I thought, except for the fact that I can't sing. So I'm in the wings. I'm about
to go on stage, but the guy in front of me, he's singing like Pavarotti.

He's just going on and on and on, and I'm just shrinking. I'm getting smaller and smaller. So
they say, oh, thank you very much.

Thank you very much, and you'll be hearing from us. So I come out with my little sheet music,
and it was just my imagination by the temptations. That's what I came up with.

So I hand it to the accompanist, and she looks at it, and looks at me, and looks out at the
director, and is like, all right. So I start, you know, I'm going to sing. And I'm not saying
anything, so I'm thinking, I'm getting better.

So I just start getting into it. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Washington. Thank you. So I assumed I didn't get the job, but the
next part of the audition, he called me back.

The next part of the audition is the acting part of the audition. So I'm like, hey, okay, maybe I
can't sing, but I know I can act. So they pair me with this guy, and again, I didn't know about
musical theater, and musical theater is big, so they can reach everyone all the way in the back
of the stadium.

And I'm more from a realistic, naturalistic kind of acting, where you, you know, you actually talk
to the person next to you. So I don't know what my line was. My line was, well, hand me the
cup.

And his line was, well, I will hand you the cup, my dear. The cup will be there to be handed to
you. I said, okay, well, should I give you the cup back? Oh, yes, you should give it back to me,
because you know that is my cup, and it should be given back to me.

I didn't get the job. But here's the thing. I didn't quit.

I didn't fall back. I walked out of there to prepare for the next audition, and the next audition,
and the next audition. I prayed.

I prayed, and I prayed, but I continued to fail, and fail, and fail. But it didn't matter, because you
know what? There's an old saying, you hang around the barbershop long enough, sooner or
later you're gonna get a haircut. So you will catch a break, and I did catch a break.

Last year, I did a play called Fences on Broadway. Someone talked about it. Won the Tony
Award.

And I didn't have to sing, by the way. But here's the kicker. It was at the court theater.

It was at the same theater that I failed that first audition 30 years prior. The point is, every
graduate here today has the training and the talent to succeed, but do you have the guts to
fail? Here's my second point about failure. If you don't fail, you're not even trying.

I'll say it again. If you don't fail, you're not even trying. My wife told me this great expression, to
get something you never had, you have to do something you never did.

Les Brown's a motivational speaker. He made an analogy about this. He says, imagine you're on
your deathbed, and standing around your deathbed are the ghosts representing your
unfulfilled potential.

The ghost of the ideas you never acted on. The ghost of the talents you didn't use. And they're
standing around your bed, angry, disappointed, and upset.

They say, we came to you because you could have brought us to life, they say. And now we have
to go to the grave together. So I ask you today, how many ghosts are going to be around your
bed when your time comes? You've invested a lot in your education, and people have invested
in you.

And let me tell you, the world needs your talents. Man, does it ever. I just got back from Africa,
like two days ago, so if I'm rambling on, it's because I'm jet-lagged.

I just got back from South Africa. It's a beautiful country, but there are places there with terrible
poverty that need help. And Africa is just the tip of the iceberg.

The Middle East needs your help. Japan needs your help. Alabama needs your help.

Tennessee needs your help. Louisiana needs your help. Philadelphia needs your help.

The world needs a lot, and we need it from you. We really do. We need it from you young
people.

I mean, I'm not speaking for the rest of us up here, but I know I'm getting a little gray-eared.
We need it from you, the young people. So you got to get out there.

You got to give it everything you got, whether it's your time, your talent, your prayers, or your
treasures. Because remember this, you will never see a U-Haul behind a hearse. You will never
see a U-Haul behind a hearse.

You can't take it with you. The Egyptians tried it, and all they got was robbed. So the question is,
what are you going to do with what you have? I'm not talking about how much you have.

Some of you are business majors. Some of you are theologians, nurses, sociologists. Some of
you have money.

Some of you have patience. Some of you have kindness. Some of you have love.

Some of you have the gift of long-suffering. Whatever it is, whatever your gift is, what are you
going to do with what you have? All right, now here's my last point about failure. Sometimes it's
the best way to figure out where you're going.

Your life will never be a straight path. I began at Fordham University as a pre-med student. I
took a course called cardiac morphogenesis.

I still can't say it. Cardiac morphogenesis. I couldn't read it.

Now, I was a 1.8 GPA one semester, and the university very politely suggested that it might be
better to take some time off. I was 20 years old. I was at my lowest point, and then one day, and
I remember the exact day, March 27th, 1975, I was helping my mother in her beauty shop.

My mother owned a beauty shop up in Mount Vernon, and there was this older woman who
was considered one of the elders in the town, and I didn't know her personally, but I was
looking in the mirror, and every time I looked at the mirror, I could see her behind me, and she
was staring at me. She just kept looking at me. Every time I looked at her, she kept giving me
these strange looks.

So she finally took the dryer off her head, and she said something I'll never forget. First of all,
she said, somebody give me a piece of paper. Give me a piece of paper.

She said, young boy, I have a prophecy, a spiritual prophecy. She said, you are going to travel
the world and speak to millions of people. Now, mind you, I'm 20 years old.

I'm blunt out of school. In fact, like a wise-ass, I'm thinking to myself, maybe she's got
something in that crystal ball about me getting back into school next fall, but maybe she was on
to something, because later that summer, while working as a counselor at a YMCA camp in
Connecticut, we put on a talent show for the campers, and after the show, another counselor
came up to me and asked, have you ever thought about acting? You're good at that. So when I
got back to Fordham that fall, I got in, and I changed my major once again for the last time, and
in the years that followed, just as that woman prophesied, I have traveled the world, and I have
spoken to millions of people through my movies.

Millions who, up till this day, couldn't see me. Who, up till this day, I couldn't see while I was
talking to them, and they couldn't see me. They could only see the movie.

They couldn't see the real me, but I see you today, and I'm encouraged by what I see, and I'm
strengthened by what I see, and I love what I see.

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