Magician's 3 Tips for Recent Grads - Commencement Speech 2018
3 Mindset Hacks to Implement Today
Congratulations! Whether you are graduating high school or college in 2018, you are entering a completely different world than the one that was promised to you growing up. So much has changed, and if we’re being honest, most of it is to your benefit.
Having come from a high-achieving academic family who always expected me to follow a similar path, it came as a quite a shock to everyone when I turned down a PhD offer to pursue a career in entertainment. I pursued my dream of being a magician and never looked back. It has taken me all over the world and led to a truly joyous and fulfilling life.
Sure, there are plenty of struggles being self-employed, and it isn’t always easy. But every job has ups and downs, so why not pursue something that you truly enjoy?
Whether you are 18 or 21 right now, you have time to fail. You have no responsibility to anyone but yourself. So in this video I present three ways to adjust your mindset today as you head on into the next phase of your life.
Video Transcript:
Congratulations Class of 2018!
You are about to embark on an exciting new jou—
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’ve all heard the motivational commencement speeches. How about something practical for a change?
Here are three mindset hacks that you can implement today to start achieving your goals tomorrow.
But hey – who I am, anyway?
My name is Brian Miller. When I was 18 years old I headed off to college for a degree in audio engineering.
But when I graduated four years later I had a dual Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Philosophy. Yeah, I’m qualified to count the ways I don’t believe I exist.
I was accepted into a PhD program for Philosophy of Language but turned it down,
And I’ve only ever been a professional magician.
That’s right – for the last ten years I’ve shared my magic with thousands of amazing audiences in 11 countries across 4 continents. And so the first takeaway today is this:
There are no rules.
You don’t have to know what you want to do in ten years. You don’t have to know what you want to do next year. Hell, you don’t have to know what you want to do next month!
You will be told, if you haven’t been already, that there is only one path to success: Find a decent job, climb the ladder, don’t ruffle any feathers, retire and play golf.
And if that’s your dream, great! By all means, go get it! But for many of you, that probably sounds like a nightmare. It did to me. This is not the world your parents grew up in. The world changed so fast, it’s not even the world I grew up in!
The idea of working yourself to death for five days only to earn the privilege of recovering so that you can go back to working yourself to death again on Monday – you don’t have to do that!
You work for one third of your life. For most people, that’s 26 years. I’m begging you: PLEASE don’t spend 26 years of your life being uninspired at best and miserable at worst.
The second takeaway is this: You’re allowed to pursue your passion, and you’re allowed to change your mind.
That’s not to say that your dream job is going to be 100% good 100% of the time. I get flown around the world to do magic tricks in awesome places with amazing people. From the outside, it looks incredible.
And it is, but I also spend a lot of time away from my family. I can’t make plans with friends. It’s almost impossible to plan vacations. Thank God I found my wife Lindsey, because for years before her, dating was almost impossible.
And even though I got into this because I love magic, if I just sat in a room doing card tricks and I never spent any time learning sales, marketing, and networking, I’d never get hired to do magic at all!
All jobs have compromises. But I promise you, and this is the third takeaway, that the sacrifices you have to make will be easier to accept if you’re working towards something you believe in.
You don’t have be self-employed. You can work for somebody else; just make sure that you share their vision and your 26 years at work will be that much more fulfilling
- There are no rules.
- You’re allowed to pursue your passion.
- Sacrifice for what you believe in.
Don’t let anybody else tell you what success is, what it means, or what it looks like. Success is measured by internal happiness. Find that, and the rest will follow.
Be well, be kind, and always remember that our world is a shared experience.
Congratulations to the Class of 2018.
