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One of my favorite YouTubers, former NASA engineer, & entrepreneur, Mark Rober was invited to share some life advice for MIT’s new graduating class.
Now, I have seen many commencement speeches before but this one was truly unique, especially in its delivery (there is a reason he has 25m followers on YouTube). You will have to see the speech to know what I am talking about but since you are here, I will try to summarize the 3 beautiful pieces of life advice he gave to MIT’s graduating class, going out to the world seeking success in life:
Embrace Naive Optimism
According to Mark, it’s easy to remain optimistic about what lies ahead when you are naive about how hard or uncertain it’s going to be, similar to a childhood dream of being a football superstar or an Oscar-winning actor. When you are naively optimistic, you try new things & you often take risks with irrational confidence. Mark tells students to embrace this early on in their life because, from these attempts, something truly amazing might just happen.
It’s okay to do mistakes or not know exactly what the outcome is going to be since knowing that is impossible. But as long as you take your curiosity, passion, skills, & your feeling of what the world needs into account, and approach your endeavors with dedication, the outcome might be amazing.Frame Your Failures
Mark once made 50,000 of his followers play a puzzle game. He divided them into 2 groups & gave them the same puzzle & 200 points that didn’t mean anything. He told one group that they’d lose 5 points from 200 every time they failed the puzzle, & the other group was told they wouldn’t lose any points.The group that was told that they wouldn’t lose any points tried the puzzle 2.5x times more & saw success 16% more (highly statistically significant), even though the points were meaningless.
Mark thinks when we frame our failures not as failures but in a way where we treat them as a learning step toward our final destination, we are far less likely to give up & more likely to keep improving & succeeding. When you frame failures like that, Mark says they feel like a video game. They still sting but they sting in a way where you become obsessed with crossing that level instead of giving up.
You might think your life might be way easier if your top problems in real life went away, but Mark says the hard challenges are exactly why these accomplishments are meaningful and satisfying.Foster Meaningful Relationships
Finally, Mark encourages you to not do this journey of life alone. Life gets busier & busier & it gets harder & harder to make good friends & maintain your relationships. It’s really easy to stay alone these days due to technology. But since we have been evolutionarily hardwired over 6m years to thrive on social cooperation & interactions, Mark says to double down on nurturing these relationships.
He encourages us to believe in the inherent & potential good in those around us and to use our confirmation bias positively. Once we do that, this mindset can color our outlook in life to one that’s filled with optimistic ideas & endeavors that can create ripple effects of positivity in the lives around you, just like Mark’s single mother’s constant optimism in his life, despite all their struggles, helped him try to lead a life full of positive impact.
I hope this helped & inspired you. There was a 4th surprise advice in the speech, cause why not. You can see the speech to know more.
Stay kind,
Seeam
If you haven’t already, I highly recommend watching the speech. It’s unique, inspiring, & really entertaining. To my friend Big J reading this, thanks for sharing the video!