One month ago my friend Calista heard Casey Neistat speak at Hustle Con. This weekend she told me the recording was out. The final question Casey was asked was the most important one:
Read MoreHost: What’s been the biggest failure so far for you?
Casey: The biggest failure was celebrating success.
On July 20th, 2017, Chester Bennington died by suicide. He was 41 years old. You may not know who Chester is, but you might recognize this picture:
It’s a bit old, here’s a more recent one with his friend Mike:
He was my friend too. Chester wasn’t the kind of friend you could call on a Thursday and grab a coffee with. No, he wasn’t like that.
But whenever you needed him, Chester would sing for you.
When I was 13, I was angry a lot. I was angry at my parents, angry at my friends, but mostly angry at myself for not knowing who I was.
I think that’s normal. I think all 13-year old boys are angry. When he sang, Chester was angry a lot too. You could hear it in his voice. And somehow, every time he was done singing, I didn’t feel so angry any more.
My friends from school were angry a lot too. Andy and Flo and Nils and Max. Whenever we’d saved some money, we’d go to the store and buy some of Chester’s CDs. I even remember the plastic bag I carried them around in.
If you still have CDs somewhere, maybe you have some of Chester’s CDs too.
A lot of people have the top left one. Chester’s band has sold more records than any other band in this century. They just released a new album and were supposed to go on world tour next week.
Today I realized that a lot of the greatest art we have the privilege to feel, breathe and live comes from a dark place.
Sometimes, the artist doesn’t make it back from that place. For more than half of my life, Chester went there so I and millions of other people wouldn’t have to.
Only this time, he didn’t find his way home.
I wish I could have just told him he didn’t have to go there any more. That it’s okay if he wanted to stay home a little longer. But that’s not how the world works.
Another great artist recently said you die twice:
“Once when they bury you in the grave and the second time is the last time that somebody mentions your name.”
I hope that’s true.
I’ll tell my children about Chester. I’ll ask him to sing for them when they’re angry. Maybe they’ll tell their children too and he won’t really die for a long time.
But today my friend Chester stopped singing and that made me sad.
It never ceases to amaze me how much you can learn from movies, books and music, even if it’s completely fictional. Take Harry Potter, for example. No matter how many times I watch it, read it, or think about it, I always find something new that’s interesting. Here’s what I learned from it this week:
In every trio there is a thinker, a watcher and a doer. Read More
David Blaine might be the mentally toughest person on earth.
Here’s a short excerpt of the death-defying feats he’s pulled off over the years:
…and, my personal favorite, Blaine standing atop a 100-foot high column for 35 hours with no sleep.
On multiple occasions, David was closer to dying than surviving. His strength to endure these situations is unfathomable.
More so, he has the courage to seek them out repeatedly, all because they fuel his ultimate goal: bring magic to the people.
Here’s what you and I can learn from him:
When his mother fought cancer without complaint, David saw there’s more to hardship than suffering.
You can learn from it. But you have to wonder what’s on the other side to do that.
David went to Central Booking, the Manhattan municipal jail, for jumping a turnstile once. To avoid getting his ass kicked by the four buffest guys in the cell, he used the only thing he had left: his creativity.
Eventually, he won the whole block over with his magic and got out.
Hold on to your creativity as if your life depended on it. Some day it might.
David’s mother died in his arms. It almost broke him, but it left him with nothing to lose and everything to gain. We all have things we’re afraid will be taken away some day.
The only way to not let that stop you is to let go before you lose them.
One of David’s favorite books is Siddartha by Hermann Hesse. When Siddartha practices living in poverty, a merchant asks him what he can give if he has no possessions. To that, Siddartha says:
“I can think, I can wait, I can fast. If a man has nothing to eat, fasting is the most intelligent thing he can do.”
Hunger is the most elementary test of human existence. Take it.
Navy SEALs are made comfortable with blacking out under water by having to walk across the bottom of a pool while strapped to 45 pound plates. David held his breath while hanging around sharks so he would know what it feels like to perform under stress.
Don’t just practice hard, practice under the hardest conditions.
Extreme doesn’t always mean dangerous. Blaine was afraid of cockroaches. Yes, bugs. One night, he slept in a little tent in Botswana, which was circled by one and a half ton hippos. Suddenly, the bugs became his friends.
When your brain gets close to the breaking point, it’ll throw your worst fears at you. You have to know they’re not real when the time comes.
Not succumbing to your brain’s irrational illusions is just one half of winning the battle. Once you do, you’ll still have to get it to follow you in the right direction.
David likes to trick his mind with numbers. On his 44-day fast, he created a superstition that once he’d get to 22 days, he’d be fine. After getting half, he focused on the next 11 days, and so on.
Pretend arbitrary milestones mean everything and maybe, one day, you’ll master your brain.
At the halfway mark during his second world record breath holding attempt, David said he was “100% certain that I was not gonna be able to make this.”
But he figured since Oprah had dedicated an hour to the live TV special, he’d be better off fighting until he blacks out.
After 10 minutes, the blood started rushing away from his extremities to protect his vital organs.
At 12 minutes, his left arm went numb, and he started panicking about having a heart attack.
At 15 minutes, he went into heart ischemia, with his pulse jumping from 150 to 40 and back.
16 minutes in, David is just waiting to have a heart attack. He floats to the top of the bubble, waiting. Seconds float by, feeling like years.
When the doctors pull him out of the water at 17 minutes and 4 seconds, David Blaine has held his breath longer than any human in history.
All because when he had already failed, he kept going anyway.
Most of us don’t have to risk dying to push our mission forward. But it’s the kind of magic worth emulating.
Take these lessons. Carry them with you. Within yourself. Turn them into a system. Whatever it takes to close the gap between your present state and your true potential.
Hopefully, one day, you can live at the edge.
“We are all capable of infinitely more than we believe.”
— David Blaine
“My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was 60. She’s 97 now, and we don’t know where the heck she is.”
— Ellen DeGeneres
Bzzzzzzt. There it goes again. The only new tech gadget I bought in the past 3 years. A fitness tracker. What my Garmin Vívosmart HR tries to tell me with its soft yet definite vibration is that it’s time to get off my butt and move.
Read MoreYou know how sometimes, celebs forget to remove the price tag on their shoes and then the world goes nuts?
Like the time Anna Kendrick forgot to remove the price tag from her $600+ Casadei Blade pumps. How dare she?
First, I hate to break it to you, but she’s not paying a damn cent for those shoes and second, I apologize: some of those incidents might be on me.
Read More
