Will Smith Explained His Philosophy On How To Deal With Failure And Now The Internet Is Inspired AF

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49-year-old Will Smith has had quite a life. After high school, Smith believes that he probably could have gotten into MIT, but instead chose to pursue a career in rap. We know how that turned out. He and DJ Jazzy Jeff’s debut single, “Girls Ain’t Nothing but Trouble” became a hit a month before he graduated from high school and off he went.

Then, after being nearly bankrupt in 1990 when the IRS went after him for a $2.8 million tax debt, Smith signed with NBC to star in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. We know how that turned out.

Following that, Smith’s goal was to become “the biggest movie star in the world.” So when he was in a room with Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger, he asked them how to achieve it. Schwarzenegger gave him a response Smith says he will never forget and guess what? His movies have grossed over $7.5 billion at the box office worldwide and inspired other talent like Kevin Hart to try to do the same.

“Following your lead @willsmith #Legend #Mood #Mindset #Global #ImOnMyWay #International #iWantItall,” Hart captioned the video, where Smith said, among many other inspiration things, “It’s hugely important that if you have a dream, that you have to dedicate your life to it and every hour of every day has to be dedicated to bringing into fruition the things that you dream about.”

And now, once again taking advantage of his new presence on Instagram, Smith once again shared some advice for life. This time the topic was how he deals with failure (transcript via Distractify).

“Fail early. Fail often. Fail forward,” Smith begins. “It’s always a little bit frustrating to me when people have a negative relationship with failure. Failure is a massive part of being able to be successful. You have to get comfortable with failure. You have to actually seek failure. Failure is where all the lessons are.”

“When you go to the gym and you work out, you’re actually seeking failure. You want to take your muscles to the point where you seek failure because that’s where the adaptation is. That’s where growth is. Successful people fail a lot. They fail a whole lot more than they succeed. They extract the lessons from the failure and they use the energy and wisdom to come around to the next phase of success.”

“You gotta take a shot, you have to live at the edge of your capabilities. You gotta live where you’re almost certain you’re gonna fail. That’s the reason for practice, practice is controlled failure. You’re getting to your limit, getting to your limit, getting to your limit, you can’t life that, you can’t do that, until you get to the point where your body makes the adjustment and then you can do it. Failure actually helps you to recognize the areas where you need to evolve.”

“So fail early, fail often, fail forward.”

Needless to say, after hearing that motivational speech, people were ready to run through a brick wall to achieve success in life.

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