How To Succeed When Others Hold You Back | Neil Degrasse Tyson Speech | Goalcast

✪ Famed astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson shares lessons he learned on how to succeed when people don't believe in you and how to create meaning in life.
✪ How To Succeed When Others Hold You Back | Neil Degrasse Tyson Speech | Goalcast

Video Script:: 

you have more power than that you have the power to create meaning in your life rather than passively look for it if Einstein were here and we're talking with Einstein we can talk them for hours and hours and hours you know what question will never come out of our mouths what college did you go I want to go to that same College I bet most of your people have sat in this chair it's not about what college they went to it's about their own initiative their own Drive their own ambitions their own curiosity that is not taught in school sadly the gym instructor pointed to my father online he was in gym class and they were lining up and they were about to enter the next athletic unit and it was track and field and the gym instructor pointed to my father online and said Cyril Tyson everyone look at him he does not have the body type that would excel in track and they used him as an example and he says what no one is gonna tell me what I can't do in my life and he used that as the reason to start running any started track in that moment he decided that his one of his next tasks in life would be to take up running and excel at it there's a famous quote from Martin Luther King you can only be ridden if your back is bent these microaggressions are converted to enthusiasm to excel sticks and stones can break my bones but words will never hurt me I don't give a rat's ass what you say okay unless you are between me and some goal then I have have to navigate that some way as they say that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger the New York Athletic Club at the time accepted only right process so there's another club called the Pioneer Club which took everybody who was not accepted to the New York Athletic Club which was basically Blacks and Jews is really what that came down to and some Catholics but basically Blacks and Jews so he competed alongside Jewish athletes so there they are competing against the New York Athletic Club was coming around the back stretch coming on the final straightaway and a runner from the York Athletic Club is a few paces behind them and overhears that runners coach say cats dead so what did he say to himself he said this is one he ain't gonna catch it that extended is his his lead to the finish line and he tells this story not within a bitter tone as you might think any story like that today would certainly be told with with great remorse and consternation so he never had that kind of tone when he shared those stories with us it was here's an occasion to parlay what today might be called a microaggression into a reason to excel even more than you had expected of your own abilities and talents high school that's where you learn how to deal with difficult people there's not a single high school movie that doesn't show the angst of the cliques that have formed and what the relationships are that they have to one another it's this microcosm of real stuff to goes on in the real world there are beautiful people and they will get jobs you're not gonna get okay there are people who are nasty you're gonna have to navigate them there are people who you cannot interact with for whatever reason or another they're gonna be in the cubicle next to you in your workplace so I think we undervalue the total social pot that people are tossed into in their high school experience they want to say oh I could have learned more but I had to deal with all these people hey having to deal with all these people is now in your portfolio but when you're in the workplace you got it within a few years of that he became world class at one time had the fifth fastest time in the world in the middle distance they don't run this anymore 600 yard run and he in 1948 the Olympics was not yet ready to come back to us because we're still reeling roiling from the second world war instead that was still an Olympics that was called the GI Olympics and it was held in Hitler's Stadium so he competed in Hitler's Stadium in the late 1940s at the end of the day what matters is for who and what you become in life for me at least was what level of wisdom did he glean in his life and then successfully communicate to me either by example or by just explicit statement this is how I ended up hosting cosmos in 2014 and drilliam the widow of Carl Sagan who is hugely talented she's one of the most enlightened people I've ever met she approached me and said would you consider hosting cosmos I said I don't there's a dozen people maybe half dozen others who would jump at this opportunity I don't need to do this I really don't then I thought about it and I said well I met Carl Sagan when I was 17 I was applying to colleges he was at Cornell they for I didn't they afforded my application to him for his reaction I was already deep in the universe since I was nine and he send me a letter he doesn't know me from Adam I'm a 17 year old kid from the Bronx he's a professor of astronomy at Cornell University and I get this letter and I open it says I understand you like the same stuff I like do you want to come visit the campus to help you decide if you want to go to Cornell it was like whoa this is now he hadn't done cosmos yet that's how old I am but he was already famous he'd been on The Tonight Show and you know and had best-selling books so I took him up on it I took a bus up to Ithaca New York he met me outside his building on a Saturday divided me up to his office saw the labs I'm there in front of you did some really cool he reached back didn't even look grabbed a book off the shelf there's one of his books I think that was the baddest that was a badass thing nobody have to look that's one of my books yeah okay here and he signed it to me you'll take a future astronomer sign Karl later in the day I'm ready to go back to New York it begins to snow as it does often in December and if I huh and he says here's my home number if the bus can't get through and snow spend the night with my family and go back tomorrow I'm thinking Who am I why plot I'm nobody but I was somebody to him and I said to myself if I'm ever as remotely famous as he is I will treat students the way he has treated me and I said to myself if we can fold this memory into this this next cosmos then we have a way to justify who and what I am as the next host because a torch got passed it wasn't passed in 2014 it was passed in 1975 all right to Neil Tyson future astronomer I still have that book so I thought to myself I possibly could bring a unique contribution as host to the show because the leveraging of 10 minutes of my life into that happiness or enlightenment or the reduced suffering of someone else I'd be irresponsible if I did not if Einstein were here and we're talking with Einstein we could talk him for hours and hours and hours you know what question will never come out of our mouths is what college did you go with us I want to go to that same College I bet most of your people who've sat in this chair it's not about what college they went to it's about their own initiative their own Drive their own ambitions their own curiosity that is not taught in school sadly school they view you as this empty vessel that they pour information in and you test it over here you get a high grade you're praised I was in Central Park and it rained a little earlier so there were puddles and some of the walkways I saw a woman walking with their kid the kid has galoshes on and a raincoat on and this is big juicy muddy puddle right there I said please let the kid jump in the puddle you know the kid wants to jump in the puddle the kid is like three or four and what does the mother do she pulls the kid around to prevent that from happening that was a bit of curiosity in that moment that was extinguished kids are sources of chaos and disorder they are experimenting with their environment everything is new to them everything you splash the water there's mud it's fun you get to see the cause and effect of a force downward force operating on a fluid and on the other side of that is school should as a minimum preserve that curiosity for you so I can just tell you that what has to change when you come down the steps on the last day of school you are not singing the Alice Cooper song schools and the fact that you're happy that school is over means something is not working in there you're not enjoying the learning process that many people look for meaning in life as though they will you know I'm still searching for meaning and what my life as though it's gonna be under a rock or behind a tree well there's my meaning and I'm thinking to myself you have more power than that you have the power to create meaning in your life rather than passively look for it so for me I create the meaning and meaning to me is do I know more about the world today than I did yesterday that enhances meaning for me and if that accumulates at Ana Cruz daily in a month you know way more than you did than just that day later so that you continue to grow have I by whatever powers I have available to me have I lessened the suffering of others or the corollary to that would be have I enhanced the life of others they're related and I don't mean have I devoted the whole day to doing that then I would be ignoring myself but if there's some small gesture that I can do that can completely add value to someone's life I'm gonna do it high school that's where you learn how to deal with difficult people there's not a single high school movie that doesn't show the angst of the cliques that have formed and what the relationships are that they have to one another