The 2022 Graduation Class Demotivational Speech

Students, teachers, parents, and esteemed guests, it is my pleasure to speak to you before you here today.

Your graduation is an important milestone in your life that will have profound implications. When you look back a decade or two from now, you will realize the potential you possessed and the opportunities that stood before you here today.

As the sun shines, I could congratulate you and tell you that you will all succeed and have extraordinarily bright futures. But that would be a lie.

As I stand in front of you, I do see incredibly diverse futures. Some of you will make choices that land you in prison, nearly 1%. I see those who will underlive their potential and grind out an existence through a series of odd jobs, one step from disaster, roughly 16%. A good portion of you will live in your parent’s basement at some point.

Some of you will be dead in a few years’ time. Around 10% of you will develop addictions, nearly 30% will end up in abusive relationships or become trapped with children well before you are mentally and financially prepared.

Not all of you will be astronauts, Nobel Prize winners, or leaders in your chosen field. Of those who choose to attend college, 40% won’t graduate. 37% of those who graduate college will end up with more than $100k in debt, something many don’t escape. Meanwhile, others here will fixate on money as the rest of their life crumbles.

…

Everybody wants to feel good. No one wants to be offended or challenged. We want to find our safe, comfortable bubbles and stay there. You want a prize for showing up and doing the bare minimum; for graduating while putting in the most basic level of effort; swimming with the current, letting others tell you what to do, how to do it, and when to do it.

But I am here to tell you to throw those warm and fuzzy feelings, along with any sense of entitlement, in the trash where they belong.

This world is tough and getting tougher.

How do you feel? Anxious? Scared? Worried? As you look left, right, and at yourselves, one or more of you will fall into one of the many statistics mentioned and never live up to your potential.

But, I also come with good news. You are the driver of your destiny. From this critical point in your young lives, everything that happens or doesn’t is a result of how you live in this world. The choices you make, the people you associate with, and the education you pursue and achieve depend not on your circumstances but on how you cultivate solutions and react to your surroundings.

Positive affirmations and wishful thinking don’t make anxiety go away, nor do they help you achieve your goals.

Action and Perseverance do.

To live up to who you could be, you must seek clarity, decide what you want, and then spend the rest of your natural life going after it. Victims wait for good things to happen. Don’t be a victim. Don’t go through the motions of life without thinking about where you want to be, who you want to be, where you want to be, and how you will make it happen.

Are You Willing to Pay the Price to Get What You Want?

If you don’t decide what you want, you’ll often wind up getting exactly what you don’t want.

What do you want? And what are you willing to do will turn your dreams, hopes, and aspirations into reality?

What many commencement speeches leave out is that success requires you pay a price. As Baz Luhrmann said in his famous commencement speech, Everyone’s Free to Wear Sunscreen,

Be careful whose advice you buy but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts, and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

Those who succeed rarely go into detail of the inglorious aspects of their lives to explain what really got them to where they are now. The late nights, the sacrifices, ending bad relationships, and growing out of your natural environment. But these are all necessary just to pay the price of admission.

As you sit here now, reflect on what price you will pay to get what you want.

What will you give up, no longer do, and which situations or people will you avoid?

Once you remove that stuff, you’re now primed to succeed. Once you stop making bad choices, you begin to make good choices and see their rewards. This life isn’t easy or fair. More likely than not, you’ll need to work harder than most others around you. You can avoid becoming just another statistic and rise by making the best of what you have, not what you lack, and choosing to put in whatever level of work, perseverance, and tenacity are required to make your future bright.

Remember, no matter where you go, how far you climb, or where you end up, these are all the result of the choices you began making here today.

Congratulations, Class of 2022!