The Commencement Speech I'd Actually Give: 40 Rules for the Real World
From Bum to Alumni of the Year
All around the country, students are graduating from high school and college, and we’re treated with commencement speeches filled with reflections and advice to help propel the younger generation forward.
I wanted to join the fray, but with my own twist. My “cheat sheet” version of a commencement speech, a selection of rules or heuristics that I wish I knew as I made my way into the real world.
But before we do so, a quick reflection. This week I received the honor of being selected as George Mason University’s alumni of the year for their college of education and human development. I got my Master’s degree from GMU, but the funny thing is, I had to practically beg to get into the program because I had no GRE, no application, and no plan.
It was November 2008, and I was pretty much a bum. I’d finished my undergrad that June and my once-promising running career had flamed out. I didn’t know what to do, so I spent three months living with three other guys in a two-bedroom apartment, training, because I had no idea what to do with my life.
I was visiting my brother in DC and got nudged into checking out the local university’s graduate programs. I sat down with the exercise physiology professor. We talked back and forth for a while, and somewhere in there I thought, hey, this might actually be fun to pursue.
So I asked him about getting admitted. It was Thanksgiving time so he assumed I meant the following fall. I said, “No. How about January?” He politely walked me through how graduate school admissions actually work, and the deadlines were well past. I asked if there was any way at all. He said: tell me everything you know about a topic in exercise physiology.
My eyes lit up.
I launched into a long diatribe on blood lactate. About how I’d been testing my own for years in training, my theories on how to utilize it in training, and on and on. It won him over just enough to give me a shot. He didn’t give me a promise, but told me go home take the GRE this week, fill out the application, and we’ll see what happened.
So I did just that. I had my younger sister re-teach me how to do math by hand (the GRE didn’t allow calculators back then), and I took the test a few days later.
Long story short, it worked.
The University’s Alumni of the Year only walked into that office because he was scrambling to look like he had a plan, so his parents wouldn’t think he was a bum. And he happened to land in front of a professor who saw a kid who was uber passionate and just needed a little guidance.
So much of how life turns out comes down to a chance encounter, and someone willing to take a shot on you.
When you feel lost, keep showing up anyway. You never know which room has your professor in it.
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What I wish I knew as a graduate…
What you give attention to gains in value. What are you feeding? Too often, we all feed negativity, mindless scrolling, and the superficial junk that feels important in the moment but isn’t. What are you feeding your attention diet? Junk food or clean living.
No one cares. We think everyone around us is judging us. That if we mess up, wear the embarrassing shirt, or fail, we’ll wear a kind of Scarlett letter for life. It’s not true. The audience we create in our mind isn’t real. Nobody's keeping score but you. And the people who genuinely care will be there no matter what. Go do the thing.
Do Hard (Meaningful) Things. Challenges are what make us feel alive. They force us to be present and engaged, to take a risk to see if we can rise to the occasion. Seek those challenges out, both physical and intellectual. As musician David Bowie put it, “Always go a little further into the water than you feel you're capable of being in. When you don't feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you're just about in the right place to do something exciting.”
Chase your interests, not passions. Commencement speakers tell us to find our passion. That’s horrible advice. It treats passion as some kind of love at first sight. How it actually works is you try interesting things out for long enough to see if they’ll grow and develop into a passion. Go do interesting things. Explore.
Don’t Play the Status Game. Some of the most miserable people I know are the most accomplished. It’s not the success that is doing it to them, it’s that the quest for the external markers—the fame, notoriety, and accolades— can never be quenched. If you define yourself by those, you’ll forever be seeking, never content.
Care deeply. The only reason I got into graduate school is I cared A LOT about the physiology of running. It’s the same with everything I’ve had any success in. I found things I cared enough about to go deep on. To be called a “nerd.” Caring is cool. Nothing important was ever accomplished without deep curiosity and a lot of caring.
Consistency over Intensity. Crazy workouts, ice plunges, marathon working sessions sell on social media. But what actually matters in the real world is consistency. Can you show up for months and years on end. That’s what all great artists, athletes, and performers all possess.
Surround Yourself Wisely. The old adage to show me your friends and I’ll show you who you become has merit. You will rise or fall to the level of those you spend the most time with. Pick your friends, and even more so, your spouse, wisely.
Learn to Respond Instead of React. Discomfort and stress are everywhere. And they both push us to react. Which results in an endless cycle of rumination and catastrophization. Toughness is about putting space between the stimulus and your response. That space allows you to take wise action.
Spend Time Alone in Your Head. When every moment is filled with something, we make our inner world foreign. We start treating time in our head like an enemy, a problem to solve. Whether it’s a walk, run, or commuting in your car have some time where it’s just you and your thoughts.
Reserve Time for Boredom and Thinking. When Charles Darwin moved into his home, he made sure he could have a walking path because he knew his best ideas and clearest thinking came while on the move, not at the chalkboard. With so many distractions, reserve time for thinking. Boredom is often the prerequisite for creativity.
You Need Recess. When we’re little, we are great at playing. As we grow older we convince ourselves that everything must have a point. Look around, we’ve turned sleeping, exercise, reading into “productivity.” Have something in your life where the point is to be present and engaged, enjoying the activity itself, not the reward that comes after.
Confidence Demands Evidence. You don’t get confident by faking it or talking a big game. External bravado is a mask. Real confidence is quiet and comes from deep within. It’s founded in doing the work, putting in the reps. Insecurity is loud.
Hold opinions loosely, but values tightly. When you’re young, you’re like a sponge. Willing to learn, ditch an idea, and find a better one. As you get older, you start to hold on to opinions and ideas as if they are a part of you. This is a mistake. The moment we tie our identity to a belief, it becomes something that we defend and protect. We no longer are capable of learning. On the flip side, we often shove our values aside to fit in. We’ve got it backwards.
Don’t chase the highlight reel. Be messy. You’re going to mess up, fail, do and say stupid things. That’s part of life and is often the key to growing into someone with wisdom. If you avoid anything that doesn’t look curated, well, you’re never going to have the experiences that force you to grow.
There are no overnight breakthroughs. In running we have a saying, great fall cross-country seasons are made in the summers. The breakthroughs occur because you put in months of work when no one was watching. It’s true in any endeavor. You’ve got to put in the work for a long time. Delayed gratification is the name of the game.
Joy wins. The people who love what they do outlast the ones grinding through gritted teeth. You can go hard and have a blast doing it. The greats usually do.
Plant lots of seeds. You never know what conversation or book or connection will change your life. Sometimes it may take years for that plant to grow. And we never know what seeds will blossom. The best thing you can do is spread a wide net, do interesting things, connect with genuine people doing good work, and see what sprouts.
Give yourself a shot. Most people give up before they've even given themselves a chance. You can never guarantee success, but you can put yourself in position to do something. Sometimes that something results in a breakthrough, other times you fall apart. But the only way you find out where your potential lies is by giving yourself a shot. Don’t get stuck playing not to lose.
Normal is relative. Whatever feels impossible right now is two or three expansions of normal away from routine. When I was in undergrad a 20 page paper felt long. In graduate school I had to write a 100 page literature review. That was what gave me the confidence to write my first book. Something that seemed unimaginable only a few years earlier.
You don't rise to your potential. You rise to your self-concept. The story you tell yourself about who you are and what matters is important. Too often, we let others write our story. We hand over our pen and let their voice echo in our heads. You get to write your story. Write it well.
Create space between who you are and what you do. Going all-in looks great on social media. In the real world, it pushes us towards being protective. Our story becomes “I am a failure,” instead of "I failed at running." Diversify your sources of meaning.
Abide by the 24-hour rule. Win or lose, you get 24 hours to wallow or celebrate. Then it's time to move forward. Doing the thing keeps you grounded on what’s important.
Fear of looking bad might be the most expensive emotion there is. Look, we all have a bit of high school in us. We’re still the kid who’s afraid of looking silly in the halls. If you hold on to that, you’re never reaching your potential. You’ve got to embrace doing things that might seem a bit cringe.
Under-preparation is a coping strategy. We are masters at self-sabotaging. "I didn't really try" is a softer story than coming face to face with your limits.
Your environment is stronger than your willpower. Make the right thing the easy thing. Rig your environment to invite the right kinds of actions.
Getting better is as much subtraction as addition. A good book is made great by cutting the mess, not adding more writing. Same goes for most of life.
Do things you suck at. Being a beginner keeps you honest. It humbles you and reminds you what learner mode feels like.
Do real things in the real world with real people. Go touch grass. Real things ground us. Real people will support us and call us on our BS.
You can't shove your way to success. Do the work, put yourself in position, and see what's there.
Sometimes quitting is the tough, and right, decision. Quitting opens you up to explore new opportunities. You’ve only got so much bandwidth. Blindly pursuing something you hate or think you should do is a waste of time and energy.
Love people for who they are, not what they produce. Including yourself.
Chase belonging, not fitting in. One is performative. The other demands honesty and vulnerability.
You were built to matter in your neighborhood. Now you're trying to matter to the entire world. No wonder you feel lost. Go local as much as you can. Join a running or book club. Contribute to your community. Know your neighbors.
Performative greatness is obsessed with heroic days. Actual greatness concerns itself with heroic decades.
Periodize your life. Know when it's time to grind and when it's time to back off. There's a reason athletes have off-seasons.
Don't chase the ghost of yourself. You’re constantly changing and evolving. You don’t have to live up to a former caricature.
Hard work is different than hard-to-do work. We mistake fatigue for progress, then spend all our energy creating days that are hard to get through instead of doing the work that gets us somewhere.
Remember why you fell in love with the thing in the first place.
Risk not winning. The only way to find out how good you can be is taking a shot.
-Steve Magness
I'm so appreciating everything you write, just now discovering your books and Substack. Thank you for the effort to put all this into words on a page! It's very valuable to us as your readers! Your wisdom is hard earned and thank you for continuing to gain more and share it with us.
Thank you so much for sharing this! There are many of us who strongly believe in these ideas or similar ideas, and it's comforting to know that others belive in them and share them. Not feeling alone in certain convictions fosters even more conviction.