Robert Downey, Jr. - Don't Chase That Thing | A Speech All Of Us Should Hear Once!

Always know what your action is because then when you come in in the morning confident or when you come in in the morning and you can't hit your ass with both hands you know what to do. Just boil down what it is you're doing whether there's a camera around or just what am I doing today. Today I'm showing up and I'm trying to be honest and also to listen and learn. I think part of the reason I'm still so interested not just in life but also getting to do what I do is I'm a fan. I love movies, I love creativity, I love music, I love culture and the fact that I actually have a place in it while I'm observing it and digging it is like it's an honor. This concept of things just sort of falling into place, I'm a big believer in that too. What is that though? Is that you getting out of your own way? What is that? Isn't that 70% of it? Yeah. I'd say it's 70% maintenance of what can I do to do my part to stay out of the way and then the other part I always think of it as like this little super thin invisible thread but you can feel the tug and you just kind of you have to be really gentle and you have to pause when agitated and you have to go for it when you're like there's four walls in here which one has the map behind it? It's that one and you knock down the wall and it's there. Half the stuff that I've been able to do right in my creative life are principles that I learned on the mat with my seafood. Guard your center, keep your eye on the lead elbow, get to the blind side. Half the time if I would be in a critical artistic situation I would just say because Wing Chun problems are life problems, life problems are Wing Chun problems and I would just go back to how did this kind of relate to? Thirty years he has struggled with a dangerous drug addiction that nearly destroyed him and today he says he's clean, he's in love and so by the time you're in prison that's not rock bottom for you? Nope. It coincided with my recovery and the two things just somehow or other seemed to lock in and it locked in with this it was an apprentice, an apprenticeship and it was an apprenticeship that was contingent on me being in a certain headspace. Because you can reach out for help in kind of a half-assed way and you'll get it and you won't take advantage of it. It's really, it's not that difficult to overcome these seemingly ghastly problems. What's hard is to decide. Whether they say fast or alone, further together, how can you possibly? Like the old man said, together. Sometimes you can only think about further because you've got to get down field. Other times you're thinking, hey, this is my moment to run and I need a little help and a little approval and I need a little leeway, but that's any creative endeavor. It's easy to embrace hopelessness when things seem insurmountable. It's actually just a matter of time until all of the elements come together for things to be all right. I mean, I believe that, you know, most difficult situations will resolve themselves if you are persistent and if you don't, if you don't give up entirely and that's what I never did. I never gave up. I ran those six or eight lines I had a thousand times, lying in bed over and over again. It was one little mosaic after the next and it was a piece of work I was doing and I cared about doing it as professionally and as honestly as I could. At this point in my life and being, you know, kind of middle-aged and all that, well, I know I'm going to fly around the world and I'm going to sell some soap. And I know I have a new project and I know I've just retired my jersey on this 12-year journey I've been on and how do I want to start? And it came up, how would you like it? I go, yes, that's exactly what I'm going to do. I'm going to go have the Joe Rogan experience and kick off this year and this season and this new chapter by doing what I love, which is an interview as we're looking at each other and there's a give and take. I went to rehab and I stayed in the same room that Robert Downey Jr. stayed in. He became my idol because of Iron Man and what he did with his career. I made him my mentor without him even knowing about it. He wrote on a corkboard in McCallum Hall, I am here with you all. It's easy to believe that things are gathering momentum and going into a negative place. I think human nature can tend to be a little bit critical of itself. Sometimes you just got to go, yeah, I effed up. I just took full advantage of it. I mean, even though it wasn't the end of my struggle, I made the best use of that time that I could because they say if you don't do the time, the time will do you. You earn eight cents an hour. What's humbling is to have to live your life for some reason that is yet to be explained to me by God in such a public way when so much of it is so humiliating and embarrassing. So by the time I got into prison, it wasn't like, wow, this is the worst thing that's ever happened to me. You know, it was an extension of things being miserable. It's just incredible. Our culture never encourages taking a break, never encourages saying, don't chase that thing.