David Letterman’s Advice To Jerry Seinfeld

Jerry Seinfeld received some career-critical advice from David Letterman. 

Make sure you fail doing exactly what you want to do. That, you can live with.

Failure is inevitable. 

What you focus on, and what you can, will, and have to prepare to fail at on your way to figuring it out, that’s a choice. 

It’s not choosing to fail. It’s just choosing what you’ll inevitably fail on your way to succeeding at. That’s not just what you can live with, it’s what you can make a life with. 

You make a life with it, because

The value of expertise is so far beyond anything.

The act of doing what you want to do, and accumulating your own experiences until they turn into expertise, is priceless.

Because you’re becoming different. The same things aren’t the valuable things. The different things are.

The struggle is the point. That’s when you become different.

When you pick your path, when you struggle, when you fail. All that to become different. All that to find your unique self.

If you haven’t seen/heard it yet, this is from Jerry Seinfeld’s appearance on Neal Brennan’s Blocks podcast.