Hollywood, the Constitution, and Your Future

I just saw Will Smith’s The Pursuit of Happyness for the second time this week, and I had forgotten what a powerful movie it was. Or maybe I just wasn’t in a position to truly appreciate it when it first came out. It’s like studying Shakespeare in high school: at the age of fourteen you can’t even begin to appreciate the language or relate to the feelings in his plays (years later, that hasn’t improved much). But with time comes perspective, and I saw this movie in a completely different light.

 

Hey. Don’t ever let somebody tell you… You can’t do something. Not even me. All right? You got a dream… You gotta protect it. People can’t do somethin’ themselves, they wanna tell you you can’t do it. If you want somethin’, go get it. Period. - Chris Gardner, The Pursuit of Happyness

 

The Pursuit

For those of you who are not familiar with the story, let me give you a quick synopsis. Chris Gardner, played by Will Smith, loses nearly everything over a sales gig that goes poorly and costs him his life savings and a marriage. He loses his car, gets evicted, and has nothing and no one left but his five year old son. He decides to apply for a position as a stock broker, and despite his lack of education or experience, gets accepted… for an unpaid internship. At the end of six months, one of twenty interns will be chosen for a full-time position.

Not to be deterred, Gardner takes the internship and is determined to be the top candidate for the job. He manages to pay for food and his son’s day care while living out of homeless shelters and subway stations. Despite the long odds and series of events conspiring against him, he never gives up on his dream. He learns to work faster and smarter than his competition. He makes bold moves, showing up at the homes of Fortune 500 CEOs to make sales pitches on weekends. He simply wanted to succeed more than the next guy. The whole world seems to be set against him, but that just seems to fuel his determination.

It was right then that I started thinking about Thomas Jefferson on the Declaration of Independence and the part about our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And I remember thinking how did he know to put the pursuit part in there? That maybe happiness is something that we can only pursue and maybe we can actually never have it. No matter what. How did he know that? - Chris Gardner, The Pursuit of Happyness

Sometimes it feels that way doesn’t it? I had a day like that just last week. I was supposed to meet a friend in Chicago, and managed to snap the key off in the lock on my car door. That same day, the car broke down in traffic and I had to have it towed to a shop. When I got home, there was a letter from the IRS asking for more of my money. Days like that just suck the life out of you. How do you stay positive when the world seems to be conspiring against you?

Life Lessons, Brought to you by Hollywood

This is one of the few movies I’ve seen in recent years that can actually teach you how to live a better life. Because it’s actually based on a true story, it holds a certain air of legitimacy and suggests that anyone, with the right attitude, can overcome the odds. Here are the main things that I took away from this movie:

Believe in yourself. When Gardner tells his wife he’s planning on becoming a stock broker, she looks incredulous and says “Stock broker? Why not astronaut?” and storms off. Without a strong belief in yourself, a single comment like that can crush your dreams before they get off the ground. If you have a dream, “you gotta protect it.”

Don’t let fear control you. Fear is good. It’s an instinct that pre-dates all of civilization. It can keep you from making the wrong choices, but it can also completely paralyze you. If you’re paralyzed by fear, as an individual or as a business, you’ll never grow. You’ll give up on the pursuit of happiness for fear of coming up short. But what good are life and liberty without happiness? Naomi at IttyBiz offers this advice: “Don’t get sidelined by fear. Don’t be afraid to be afraid. Be afraid, but get on with it.”

Success comes through networking and taking calculated risks. Chris took a gamble by going to the home of a major company’s CEO on a Sunday afternoon. The man invited him to a football game where he met several corporate executives in the skybox. He was able to turn those relationships into sales that set him apart from the pack. Over and over, he took gambles to meet the people he knew could help him reach his goals.

How do you continue to press forward on those days where the Universe seems to want you to fail? How do you deal with fear? How do you handle the people in your life who think you’re going to fail?

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