I found Ben Affleck's Oscars speech on Sunday incredibly inspiring (and in a way I might add, that transcends the fact that I inexplicably and frustratingly got a major crush on him after watching Argo). I can't even count the number of times nearly every day that I convince myself not to try and think: why bother? I'm just going to fail/suck/get made fun of/be told I can't/ fill in whatever discouragement we often tell ourselves.
It's really hard to try. And it is hard to remember that those talented people that we admire and aspire to be like also had/have the same feelings of constant doubt and discouragement, and times when the only people who believed in them were themselves and maybe a few other loved ones. It's hard to remember that most of the time, the most remarkable thing about these people is that they just kept working really hard and they kept believing in themselves and their work and they don't experience failure as just failure and evidence that they don't deserve to do great things in life.
I'm going to make Affleck's words into an inspirational mantra.
(At about 4:00): "You have to work harder than you think you possibly can. You can't hold grudges. It's hard but you can't hold grudges. And it doesn't matter how you get knocked down in life, because it's going to happen. All that matters is you got to get up."
P.S. Sorry the only full video I could find (in the 5 min I was willing to spend searching) was this one where everything is sideways.
I just finished Rob Lowe's memoir, Stories I Only Tell My Friends. I would definitely recommend as a story of someone who worked really hard to make it in show business.
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