Kevin Hart’s relentless ambition—from his viral Shaq’s Comedy Jam performance to a sold-out 15-show streak at Caroline’s—mirrors his discipline in overcoming a fractured spine (T10-L1) with eight screws and fusion, refusing painkillers despite his father’s history. His plant-based diet boosts energy, while The Decision audiobook critiques social media’s negativity and urges personal accountability. Hart admires legends like Michael Jordan ("alien" winners), Dave Chappelle (uncompromising "GOAT"), and Will Smith for reigniting late-career success, contrasting their freedom with his corporate constraints. Eddie Murphy’s sharp Cosby SNL parody proves comedy’s power to evolve, leaving Hart hopeful for a return. Their conversation underscores how storytelling—from failure to triumph—reshapes lives and industries. [Automatically generated summary]
I think that the last time I was here, our conversation was such a great conversation because we both had point of views, right?
And when we shared the point of views, you elevated the other person's POV. Like when we were talking and I was telling you why I live the way I live, why I am the way I am, you springboarded.
Then you said, yeah, because Kev, for me, I've been doing this and we had this yin and yang thing going and it drove the conversation.
I told you, you know, before we jumped on, one of the best interviews that I've ever done and from a feedback perspective with people that just loved what the discussion was, uh, Loved the tone of the interview, the things that were said, felt inspired, motivated after.
I'm not talking about that level of success for everything.
I'm saying whatever your version of success is, to get to it, Information from someone that's done it or that's partaken in it in some degree will only add to the value of your journey.
It's only going to make it easier.
It's not to say that you got to do what they said, but with that information, you're able to process it.
Maybe use it, maybe not.
But you got it.
That's what I wanted to do.
I said, yo, I got a life.
I got a hell of a life that I've lived full of ups, downs, potholes, cobblestone speed bumps, flat roll, U-turns, some smack brick walls that I ran into, some revolving doors of back and forth.
And through it all, my mental has only gotten better.
Because I feel like I've been in a mental gym.
The mental fitness that coincides with life, you know, it should get better.
You should get wiser.
You should get smarter.
You should be able to make better decisions.
And all of my decisions came from the massive amount of fuck-ups.
And I can now share those fuck-ups.
I can now share the rights and the wrongs in the way that I handle all of the things that I've done.
And people can just take that information and go, wow, I never looked at it like that.
Especially when someone like you, you almost seem like an unattainable person.
Like, how does he do that?
How is he doing that?
How does this guy go from Philadelphia to be one of the biggest movie stars in the world?
How does he become one of the biggest stand-up comedy stars ever?
How the Why the fuck do you do that?
You almost seem like an alien to people on the outside.
But then when they hear you talk about your real life and talk about these fuck-ups, talk about these successes and talk about the lessons that you've learned, man, that's fuel for folks in a way that nothing else is because there's a lot of people that are bullshitting online.
There's a lot of these motivational speakers that haven't done shit.
And it's a weird thing.
It's like they're trying to give you motivation by sort of reciting things that they think are going to work.
Chase, like, Chase, J.B. Morgan Chase, a partner of mine, and we were doing this, well, not we were, we are, we're doing this thing called Advancing Black Pathways, right, where we're trying to cure financial literacy in the black community.
We've been, we're on, like, year number two right now, right?
And there was a conversation where, you know, they wanted to have said bankers go and talk to the kids in the inner city.
And I was like, you can't, you can't send A white man that works for JPMorgan Chase to the inner city of said community, hood, whatever, to talk to these young black kids that has no idea about the life that the black kids are living.
I said, what you need is people that have actually come from these environments.
They have made it out of the environment and now understand how money works.
Because now when I talk to you, I'm not talking to you with hypotheticals and I'm not preaching to you about what you should do and what you got to do.
I said, I'm telling you what I did that didn't work.
I'm telling you how I fucked off money and I'm telling you what I didn't know.
Hey guys, here's a fact.
There is no education that comes with money in the black communities.
It doesn't.
You can go search for it.
There isn't one.
It does not exist.
There is no one that is outright teaching the kids in a black community how to operate financially, how to set up for your future.
There is nobody talking to you about ownership, homes, mortgages, investments, stocks.
That doesn't exist.
It doesn't exist.
It's not until you get out of that environment that you meet some people that are planning their life accordingly that you start to ask questions.
It's not until maybe college and on the later side of it that you're with people that are getting jobs in the future that you start to do it.
There is no prep or education at a young age.
I said, so you need a fucking man that can go there and go, hey man, Let me tell you why y'all gotta stop taking these free credit cards.
Let me tell you why you gotta stop putting the cable in somebody else's name and continuing to fuck it up.
Let me tell you why you gotta stop being okay with not having a bank account.
Let me tell you why you gotta stop using the check cash in places.
There's nobody giving that information.
I said that's what I am.
So if we're going to have a relationship, let's build it off of something authentic.
Let's build it off of something that people can go, I get that.
Since then, to go back to your point, my relationship has been based on me telling the truth.
I told JPMorgan Chase, I want to go to the inner city and I want to have these discussions, but let me have them my way.
I don't want to have it in a JPMorgan Chase way.
And I got to credit them for backing me because they align me with other people that share the same stories, that have achieved certain levels of success, that speak to the same thing.
So everything that I've done, everything that I'm trying to do, when I do talk about it, I come proven.
I'm only talking about this because I really got knowledge about it.
I don't got knowledge about it because I'm the smartest motherfucker in the world.
That's not where the knowledge is coming from, Joe.
My knowledge is coming from, hey man, yo, don't walk through door number one.
I walked through that door.
There's a bunch of shit in that door.
It wasn't until I came out that door that I saw those monsters that I knew the other monsters weren't as bad in door number two.
But door number three is finally where you should go.
I messed up, man.
I went to the first two doors wrong.
Why can't I give that to somebody that hasn't experienced those doors yet?
Why can't I just give that information and possibly prevent them from walking into those doors?
Whether you want to admit it or not, your job is to set up the next generation.
That's our job.
Whether you want to fucking admit it or not, it's your kids, it's your friends, it's whomever.
You're supposed to live a certain way Do certain things to set up for the next generation to come and to be able to do better.
If you don't, then you're not doing your part.
And if the world never fucking grows, you got to raise your hand and be responsible.
Because you're a part of the lag.
You're part of the delay.
If we look up in 15, 20 years and we're in the same spot, what that means is that our fucking groundbreakers that was doing all the shit during that 15, 20 years never shared the information so that these new people could come through and break new ground.
This is when I was about to tape Seriously Funny, my next special.
I have to grow a little man.
So Seriously Funny, I was taping in like four months.
It was already on the books.
So this is supposed to be it.
This is my big...
Coming out party.
This has to be it, man.
You know, I feel like I'm ready.
I've been working hard.
My jokes are hitting.
I'm raw.
I'm edgy.
This is it.
This is the one.
I'm fucking funny.
Seriously.
That's why I titled that.
Seriously funny.
I was ready.
I get the call from Jeff Klanigan.
Shaq's All-Star Comedy Jam.
We're taping it, Kev.
Dude, it's like 15, 20 minutes.
You know, can you do it for me?
And Jeff and I had a relationship.
And I was like, Jeff, I'm about to tape my special.
I don't want to burn that material.
He's like, Kev, look, you can use some other stuff.
15, 20 minutes, we tape it.
But, you know, these things get some good traction, good views.
It's some good eye candy.
You should just have it out there.
All right, whatever.
I wasn't even taking it serious.
This is not something that I was taking serious.
And this is an example of sometimes you don't know what it's going to be.
You don't know what the fuel in the rocket is going to be.
You just got to fucking buckle up and be prepared for the takeoff.
Now, if it take off and you don't know where the seatbelts are and you don't know where the lights and shit at, well, now you got a fucked up rocket ride.
You're going to crash.
It's over.
It's over if you're not ready.
I do it.
This thing airs and I remember watching it.
And at the end of the show, something so small seems so fucking big.
I say goodnight.
I put up two fingers.
And as I'm walking off the stage, they put it in slow motion.
They put me in slow motion walking off the stage.
And there was a separation from everything else that was on there.
It was almost like...
This guy is the guy.
It was a small tweak in editing.
I had nothing to do with it.
I just saw it.
And the slow motion walk off, the crowd getting up, clapping.
You see people's faces, slow motion, pointing, screaming.
And I'm walking off with like a bob.
And it was almost like a coined, this is it.
This is going to be the guy.
I didn't do it.
I didn't mean for it to happen.
I didn't know it was going to happen.
God bless the editors.
God bless the Shaq All-Star Comedy Jam.
After that aired, I remember doing a show at Caroline's.
This is a true fucking story.
Shout out to Louis from Caroline's Comedy Club.
I was just doing a weekend.
Weekend, you're supposed to be doing, you know, three shows.
Because some of the days we could do one, some we could do two.
But you don't know.
I'm like, I can't even understand this.
Caroline's Comedy Club was a big comedy club.
This is New York City.
This is the melting pot where you got some of everybody.
After that is when me and Bert said, is this a New York thing?
Did the word get out in New York?
And we found out that Shaq's All-Star Comedy Jam was playing on showtime around the clock.
It was just being pumped all day, all night.
And we put up some shows outside, and the comedy club started flying.
We was adding shows.
We said, let's do small theaters.
And then I did small theaters.
And right after that moment, I taped Seriously Funny.
So Shaq's All-Star Comedy Jam hit so hard that by the time I was ready to do Seriously Funny, which was in three to four months, people were so hyped and ready to see me do something else that that became a massive attraction.
You get a new level, and each new level that gets opened up, you're able to adapt a different mindset and a different approach.
You can stop at that level, or you can go, I want more levels.
I want more fucking levels.
I don't like seeing shit That I have no idea how to obtain or gain access to.
That frustrates me.
That frustrates me when people do things and I don't know how they do it or did it.
Whether I'm going to do it or not, I want to know.
When you're around people that work in different atmospheres, what do you do, man?
Oh, man, I'm the guy that takes these labels right here.
Simple labels right here.
I have a manufacturing company where I do these, but I do them in bulk.
So we do 1,000 labels every 30 seconds, and I built a manufacturing lab, and this company here pays me X on a dollar, and I got...
35 companies doing the same thing.
I've built a multi-million dollar business based off labels.
People don't understand how important labels are.
I did at a young age, so I started manufacturing labels.
You can manufacture fucking labels?
Now I'm intrigued.
Even if I didn't want to do that, I'm intrigued that that's a thing.
I'm intrigued.
I'm intrigued that you found a way to do that.
This table.
Is it handmade?
Does a company do these?
Is it fucking custom?
Where's the wood from?
If you really dig into everything, it comes from a thought.
It comes from a broken down thought.
So you can be a person that's just around a bunch of brilliant thoughts and never ask questions.
Or you can soak some of that shit up.
You know what this pandemic showed me, Joe?
How our economy really fucking works.
Once again, I'm coming from the perspective of a young black man from the hood.
I'm from the bottom.
I don't know shit about stocks.
I don't know nothing about investments.
Never have, right?
But I know through this pandemic, now that I'm at a point where I'm actually into stocks and I'm investing and putting a portfolio together, well, I really looked at the way that the world moves.
I really looked at how we move as people.
How are we fucking still going?
What are we using?
What are we fucking using?
This is what I said to my kids.
I said, what are you still using?
What do you mean?
On a day-to-day, what do we have to use?
Tell me the things we have to use.
Toothpaste.
Who makes the toothpaste?
They told me who made the toothpaste.
Is that a company that you can invest in?
Do you feel like everybody uses this toothpaste?
If you do, that means that this is a company that's been successful and may be successful for a long time because this is a necessary need of everyone.
That's an investment, kids.
What else do we use?
What else do we use every day?
Where do you go?
What do you like?
In the mornings?
Starbucks?
Is that an investment?
Do you feel like everybody drinks Starbucks?
We drink it all the time.
You feel like everybody else does too?
I think so.
That's an investment.
That's what you put money in because you feel like it's going to last, it's going to grow.
What stores do we go to?
Where are we always at?
Target?
How many people in Target when we go?
A lot.
Is that an investment?
I guess.
Why do you guess?
At this point, you should know.
We talk about it all the time.
Why do you think it's an investment, Dad?
Why do you think it's not?
I'm talking to you about putting money in places where you feel like it's going to grow.
Do you feel like targets are going to shut down tomorrow?
Or do you feel like they're going to open more stores?
How do you feel?
This is a thing that I watch.
And this is a thing that I also watch people ignore.
This is what's wrong with our world because we don't talk to people enough like this.
We don't give them the simplicity behind the way we fucking move and the way the world goes around.
If we did get the simplicity, then we could have people taking $20 out their check and creating a portfolio.
We could have people taking $40 to $50 out their check and putting it in said thing.
Said stock, said thing.
Whatever it is, you can be doing it at a younger age.
You don't have to have the most crazy amount of money.
It can start off with the smallest amounts of money, but you can learn it that can grow.
I watch it.
I pay attention.
That's what gets me fucking going, Joe.
I pay attention to everything.
My question is, why don't most of us?
Why are we comfortable with letting the world just go by?
And to my brothers, the Plastic Cup boys, we got our radio show, Straight From the Heart.
I'm constantly preaching to us about it's not about now.
It's about tomorrow.
Our radio show is a good radio show and we have a following but it's not about now.
It's about tomorrow.
We got to put the work in today so that when tomorrow comes we are well equipped for the conversation that may be.
I said Joe had a fucking long ride of preparing for tomorrow.
And when tomorrow hit, it had to hit correctly because Joe never not did the work on a day-to-day basis to prepare for tomorrow.
I got everybody fired up just off of the fact that you continue to do your thing the way that you were, regardless of conversations, regardless of other offers and possibilities.
You felt something else was on the horizon for tomorrow.
But you knew it would come based off of your energy and effort that you put into the thing that you have.
Do you feel like, and this is something that, you know, I never have a good I have an okay answer, but I don't feel like it's ever the best answer.
When people say, well, what do you do when you're not doing what you love, right?
And what I've said in the past and in the present as well is I think in order to do what you love, You gotta get through the obstacles of the things that you don't love.
Getting over those hurdles and then eventually they lead you to the thing where you're like, okay, now I'm ready to pursue said thing that I want to do.
Or if you're in a job or a career and you're like, I fucking hate my job.
What I feel is like, even if you hate your job, You're supposed to be using that job for something to get to something, right?
And if you're not, then that should be the thing that you're figuring out.
Like, I don't like being here, but now that I'm here, I'm going to...
Do all that I can to get said thing so that I can then be comfortable enough to move here.
If you just go into those things with hate, because you were talking about enthusiasm, it made me think about it.
If you just got hate and you're just angry about what you're doing every day, then you're not even allowing yourself to figure out the plan of how to escape the thing that you hate to get to the thing that you love.
Tell me, when you got injured, you were explaining it to me before the podcast, but I didn't want to talk too much about it because I wanted to hear it now so everybody could hear it.
But what I do know is that this thing that's my spine has eight screws.
And these eight screws now hold it together.
So through this time of healing, because I now have metal in my back, it was about getting your back to be comfortable with the metal, but also back to a normal level of flexibility.
So where people fuck up, when you get this type of energy and you stay still, you allow that metal to get stiff.
You're not moving it.
So now your movements become robotic with it.
So because as soon as I got out the hospital, I started.
I didn't have days off.
As soon as I got out...
I started physical therapy.
I did not wait.
I got off medication.
I said, I'm not taking on meds.
You know, my dad was on drugs.
I was like, I'm not fucking around with that.
So I dealt with the pain, but I said, I gotta start now because every day that I wait, Makes it harder to go.
So because I was, you know, back and forth, side to side, doing all of those things, I got my body to get accustomed to it.
And I got flexibility.
So now when you see me working out, it looks as if I'm back.
And, you know, I'm probably 98% back to myself right now.
But the work that I put into my core and my upper body over the years are what saved me Outside of God, of course, in that situation.
Because, you know, I want to tell this people, just for you to know, this health and wellness shit is so much bigger than Then what you may think it is taking care of your body you don't know When all of that stuff comes into play and adds up correctly,
you know the the human body is amazing Recovery the ability to snap back and go back to what it once was the body muscle memory all of that stuff plays a major factor so my healing Was a lot faster because of the years of work that I put into it before.
Now, if I had enough and I didn't have that core, well, I'd be paralyzed.
I'd be fucking paralyzed.
I mean, they said, you're literally talking about this much.
Doctor, look me in the eyes.
You're lucky to be walking.
You're this much.
If your core wasn't in the shape that it was, and if you didn't have the strength to take whatever that impact was and stay, you would have been snapped and you would never be walking again.
So that instantly, thank God, I go, you know what?
Thank God for my trainer who jumped into my life at a certain time and changed my way of thinking.
Boss, Ronald Boss Everline.
And, you know, we've been rocking for seven years and the consistency of four years before of every day.
Every day.
So now I'm like, you're not wasting your time ever.
So when those people say, what are you working out for?
What are you getting in shape for?
Why are you going every day?
You don't know when you're gonna need to fucking tap into all of the work that you've done.
You don't know.
You don't know if you'll ever need it.
But to just know that you've taken care of yourself, to know that you've given yourself a chance to fucking not only survive, but perform.
You've given yourself a chance to perform at a high level in the day-to-day by taking care of your engine.
This is my machine.
So I'm taking care of the engine.
Just like any car.
Oil changes, just like, you know, your fucking, your brakes, your tires, the rotors, all of that shit.
You taking care of that so that it's a great ride every time.
You gotta do the same with your body.
Don't ignore that shit, people.
You know, we dropping like flies right now.
Heart attacks, strokes, you know, kidney failure.
You got people with diabetes.
You got people getting legs or arms cut off from bad eating, from bad eating over the course of years.
Take that shit serious.
Don't wait till the end.
That's serious.
That's not a joke.
So when I look at people dying around me, we have no control over when the day is going to come, but I'm going to try to help amplify my time here as much as I can.
But now, you know, make sure you get your rest time so that you can come back and give the energy.
Your cardio changes.
I'm on a bike.
I'm Pelotoning.
I'm Hydroing.
I'm running.
So the workouts change and you become more consistent with your system, with my new system.
So I think by July, July, my goal is for my 41st birthday, that's July 6th, to be around 8, 8.5% body fat at the age of 41. So it's all about looking good with the body fat?
For me, the body fat means that I've just been super focused.
I eat.
I don't want people to think that I don't eat.
I'm not a foodie, though, so it doesn't really count, but I'm not on some strict, crazy diet.
It's like just because you make the decision to go and try plant-based doesn't mean that you have to engulf in that world.
Learn it.
Understand it.
And see if there's benefits that work for you.
I stopped eating red meat so much because I learned that I didn't have to have it.
I thought that I needed it.
To survive.
That's what I was under the mindset.
Like, if I don't eat this, things are going to change for me.
That's what I thought.
But once I found out there was protein and things and other foods and other resources, and then I started to learn more about the plant-based food space, I was like, I'm going to give it a try.
Because there was a moment where you had the impossible, you had the beyond, and you had all this stuff that was out there, and you're trying everything.
I liked that one the most.
So after liking the beyond one the most, then I said, let me see if I can be more consistent.
Since doing that, I've seen a significant change in just being...
More vibrant, more up and at it.
Like, you know, my days were always long, so there used to be a wall that I would hit.
You know, when I was eating and I was red meat, whether it be the burger patty without the bun, whether it was steak and eggs for protein, whatever it was, I would always hit a wall a day where, you know, I'm dozing.
And there's bio-variability that everybody has to take into consideration.
Like, your body's gonna be different than Jamie's, it's gonna be different than mine, everybody's body's gonna respond different to different kind of foods.
It's really different, you know?
Some people work great off of just fish.
I know people that are on a carnivore diet, and they're in the healthiest shape they've ever been in their life.
All they eat is red meat, they use ribeyes all day long.
And you go, what the fuck?
That doesn't even make any sense.
Meanwhile, they look great, and they'll swear to you they've never felt better.
Psoriasis is gone, joint pain gone, healthier than ever.
And then I know other people that are all 100% plant-based, and they're like, I got off my meds, I feel great.
I think focus on eating properly, whether it's eating properly plant-based or eating properly with a carnivore diet, just cutting out all the bullshit.
And focusing on the fact that you're eating for health and for vitality.
I don't believe he knew last time I saw him in here.
But...
The first time I met him, he's a powerful guy.
It's still your motherfucking set.
He's that guy.
And he's just always this booming voice and just gigantic muscles and he's all drive and go.
And then when his heart failed, and then he had to have his heart replaced, I saw him about a year later, and he had this remarkable calm that had come over him.
He was just like this different person, very loving and embracing, and had all this happiness and all this joy and all this appreciation.
So when you talk about C.T. Fletcher and you talk about his calm, you know what, man?
I've been on the other side.
He's been, yeah!
Let's go!
And that's great!
That doesn't mean that he doesn't still have that, but now there's a different energy and a different level of relaxation that can come because I know how fortunate I am to be taking these steps.
So those little steps that I was taking, the discomfort of not being able to do, the love and energy made me go, it's going to be alright, I'm going to get there.
Because you definitely feel defeated for a little bit.
dealing with any type of mental struggle because that is something that's so serious because nobody understands what that is except that person.
So I never talk as if that's an easy thing.
I talk as if that's a thing that I don't fully know about.
So you can only...
Have some type of remorse and feeling of understanding for people that are battling any type of mental illness or mental health.
Because that's just a different monster and a different machine.
So whatever the reasons to escape that are for you and from you, that's something that's TBD. To be determined between you and whoever's trying to help you.
People on the outside, we got no right...
We got no right if you're not fucking dealing with the same thing.
And she just started talking to me about some things that were bothering her.
And when we talk, what I found is I can relate to my daughter because I know for sure that where I come from, it's allowed me to see exactly what she's seeing plus so much more.
Plus so much more.
And this was a time where the hair was an issue.
My daughter went through a big hair thing.
You know, she wanted her hair to be a certain way.
And the hair wouldn't...
There was no way that her hair was going to be able to look like what she wanted it to.
So the discussion was, honey, as a young black girl...
Your hair is not going to do what your friend's hair does.
You know, my daughter goes to a private school.
So there's white girls here.
You got some mixed girls here.
And, you know, these girls are out and they can jump in the pool, get out and their hair is a certain way.
I'm like, honey, yours isn't going to do that.
But if you want a different look, then that means that we can work on ways to obtain it.
But honey, it's not going to happen overnight.
And I had to make sure that my daughter understood how beautiful she was.
I had to make sure that my daughter understood why it's okay for her hair to be different and be unique and not the same.
I had to go into a full father programming of making you understand your value.
And my daughter needed that.
But it wasn't something that just came out of nowhere.
Like, Dad, I want to talk to you about my hair.
It was an anger that she later then came and wanted to discuss.
But if I didn't have the free speaking zone, that's some shit that just would have been in and never talked about.
But I gave her something that she used to As a reason to say what I don't like and don't judge me, Dad, but this is really making me mad.
I'm all about this work and all about this hustle.
Granted, there's nothing wrong with that.
It's a good thing.
But after a certain point, you gotta prioritize accordingly.
When you get to a certain point where the decisions that can be made are a little more controlled and you have the ability to maneuver differently because of the success that you've obtained, make those adjustments.
I didn't make those adjustments.
I was still hustle, hustle, hustle.
Granted, great dad.
We're doing stuff.
I'm home.
I'm getting back home.
But my in and outs, three days, I'm out.
Two days, three days, I'm out.
I gotta go film the movie.
Y'all come down for the weekends.
Alright, I see you guys.
We'll eat dinner.
We'll do stuff.
And it's great.
Crammed it all in.
Alright, y'all.
I gotta go.
I'm working.
And it's not bad.
But now...
Alright, I'll film a movie.
After I'm done filming a movie, I need to take 30 days off.
I need to take 40 days off.
That's just with me and the fam.
Now, hey, you go tour, it was just, pow, year and a half, we out.
Four days out the fucking week, I'm out, year and a half, I got to get it.
Well, now, let's go a month and a half, let's stop for three weeks.
I'm with the fam.
So I still have my three days a week that I was here, but then I'm going to stop for three weeks.
This is dedicated to fam time.
Don't nobody do anything with me or talk to me.
I'm home.
Now, my office, I was in that office when we fucking opened.
Office opened at nine.
I'm there at eight.
You know, there's a chance that I may be in that office till fucking six.
Now, yo, no matter what, guys, that day in the office has to end at like three.
I gotta be home for dinner.
I got dinner with the fam.
My priorities have changed.
But it brings me back to the decisions that you're now able to make based off of life's circumstances, life's lessons.
So because of all the shit that I went through, because of the things that I now got to see, Because of that hospital room and those four walls and me seeing my family and what that love did for me and to me.
Well, I'd be damned if I fucking look past that.
I'd be damned if I not do what I'm supposed to do and give that the same amount of attention in return.
Because my eyes got open.
Fuck, is that why that happened?
What are you saying to me?
Was I supposed to?
What?
Okay, I'm going to assume.
I'm going to assume and I'm going to look at the signs that are clearly being given and I'm going to try my best to do my part.
I'm going to try my best to grow.
So my time now is so valuable but the priority within my time are making sure that the people that I love and that love me have some time.
When it's all said and done, I want to know that I made those adjustments.
My first book, I can't make this up, Life Lessons.
Was a New York Times number one bestseller, and I got bit.
I got bit by the bug.
Wow.
As an author, I wanted to write a book.
I did it.
Look at the success that it had.
The opportunity came up for me to voice that book on Audible.
And the Audible success was just as good, if not greater, than my hardcover.
And people loved the fact that the stories were real, but hearing my voice...
And hearing me be personable while being real was a bonus from other things than they've ever had the privilege of listening to.
So I said, I want to do another one, man, but I'm big on this motivation, self-help, inspiration thing.
I'm really big on trying to do my part.
So, as I was telling you earlier, I said, in my life, man, I got so...
So many stories of all of my twists and turns and right moves and wrong moves and decision-making that enhanced those moves or that devalued them and made them incorrect.
Ultimately, if I were to give information, it's just to open up people's eyes.
It's to open up your eyes to To the reality of you competing with you.
I want people to understand that we lose because we are okay with ignoring our faults, right?
It's not until you can accept your faults, your bullshit, that you can grow and do better.
We point the finger a lot by we, myself included.
I'm an example of it.
Yo, I didn't do that because nobody told me.
I didn't get up.
I didn't hear the alarm.
Why didn't you call me and get me up?
Yo, I didn't know we was going to go eat.
Didn't nobody tell me we was going to go eat.
I would've came to eat, but y'all ain't tell me.
I ain't know we had a test today.
Why didn't you tell me we had a test today?
I ain't study.
Because ain't nobody reach out and tell me.
There's so many things that we place the blame on others for that are truly our responsibility.
And it becomes a habit.
It's a force of habit.
So it's not until you break that habit.
That you can do bigger and better shit.
So this audible original of mine called The Decision is about making you look at shit differently.
Making you realize the tone of today and making you understand how much you're a part of it.
I got a big thing on social media in there where I'm like social media is mindfuck people and to people now thinking that it's what the world thinks.
Social media has mindfucked people into thinking that the comments below a post are what the world must be feeling and thinking about you.
The insecurity levels have raised to an all-time high because my belief is now I posted something.
People are saying these things underneath.
I don't want to go outside because this is how they feel.
So I've now put this shit in my head that as soon as I walk outside, if you look at me, you're talking about my post, ain't you?
Well, it's a natural human instinct because those are the things that can kill you.
From the days when we were living in small villages worried about animals attacking us, you had to be always worried about negative.
Negative was a thing you had to concentrate on because that could take your life.
Positive was something that's great, that's good and all, but you really got to concentrate on negative.
And unfortunately, that human instinct is carried over.
Into this time where we don't really have the same fear of danger that we had before for the most part.
But we still concentrate on these negative things.
We still concentrate on negative comments, negative stories.
These negative things carry more weight.
Because we have a natural inclination to keep an eye out for danger.
It's like our human reward system has been hijacked.
It's been hijacked by social media.
This new thing that we're not prepared for.
Reading anonymous, written things that are negative.
There's a book called The Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt.
And he wrote about this with children, about how many, especially girls, so many girls are experiencing super high levels of self-harm, suicide, depression, all because of social media.
Because they're writing things and their friends are commenting on them and people are anonymously saying, you stupid fat bitch.
And they're like, ooh!
And it fucks with their head in a way that other generations before didn't have to deal with.
Before social media, there was nothing that could affect them in this way.
And it's tough because there's gifts and there's curses to it, of course.
There's an amazing benefit behind it, and of course now we're seeing the bad within it.
So what I encourage any and everybody to do is just understand who you are.
Truly understand who you are.
Learn yourself.
Learn yourself.
Learn your pros and your cons.
Get your flaws.
Get them out the way, but with you, not nobody else.
This is a you and you thing of the shit that you know you need to work on.
I'm telling you people, when you really look yourself in the mirror and you start to pick yourself apart by yourself, there's only room for improvement.
Me being one of the only black guys in our entertainment space because there's a handful of us that get to look behind the curtain.
There's a curtain.
There's another room and there's a curtain.
And in that room is some shit.
You're like, God damn, I didn't know y'all was fucking doing this back here.
I didn't know y'all was getting this type of money back.
Y'all been doing this for how long?
This is how it happens.
There's a room that you get in and the information and understanding that comes in it.
It's unreal, the stuff that you start to discover.
But it's a discovery.
It's a discovery.
You gotta stumble upon this treasure of information and discovery.
And if you don't, Maybe you're in the right environment and you hear some stuff and you can ask some questions, but nine times out of ten, it's not offered.
It's a search and find.
And when I was constantly in those situations and I found myself saying, so how, but why?
Well, also, the possibility that some young kid could listen to this audio thing, listen to you talk about these things, and then one day succeed and run into you the same way you ran into Jeff Bezos.
I listened to you talk about your fuck-ups and you made me feel like you were human.
Like I thought you were just Kevin Hart.
Like when people see you, you're Kevin Hart.
You're walking the red carpet.
You're in Jumanji.
You're all over the place.
Fucking comedy specials for 50,000 people in arenas and shit.
People don't know that you're a human.
You don't seem like a human because you're not like a human that they know.
But when you talk and you talk about your life, And some kid might just get a spark off of that and blow that spark, make that ember flame up and take over.
And next thing you know, you're running into that person at some other Super Bowl party.
There's gonna be people that don't have room for it, right?
They're all closed up.
It's like a cup.
There's no room in their cup.
They're full of their own shit.
It's not gonna get in there.
There's other people, they're gonna have a spot for you.
They're gonna have a spot and you're gonna make that engine better.
You're gonna make the whole engine of their life better.
There's things that I think about all the time when I'm working out or when I'm tired.
I think about inspirational things that people have said.
And they get me through.
They shift.
It shifts my mind, steals me up, makes me think about things in a different way, and I can accomplish more because of those thoughts.
I can accomplish more because of that energy that some person...
And you did that to me, man.
You did that to me the last time we had a conversation.
I remember leaving our conversation going, that motherfucker is motivational!
And I got a lot of text messages from a lot of friends and a lot of people go, that was a great one.
But there was a shift.
Like when someone is really getting after it in their life and you're around them, there's a shift in your own life.
It's a tangible thing.
It's like if you could see it on a meter, it's almost like your meter goes up.
You feel it, but you don't quantify.
It's not something you put on a scale.
It's not something you'd see on a meter, but it's real.
And you gotta believe it's real and know it's real.
And when you're doing this, when you're putting out this audiobook, and even these conversations that you put out, when people know what you've accomplished and you put these conversations out, it resonates, man.
When you watch this doc and you watch how he approached his days and why he approached it and the things that he did and his reason for doing them and ultimately what he wanted and what his priority and what his goals were, you go, fuck.
Dude, this is the time when he's talking about walking into the ring, as he steps in the ring, like all the nervousness, all the things that are going through, and that as his confidence builds, as he gets towards the ring and he steps through the ropes, I'm a god.
Well, he's one of those guys, one of those super winners that just, I mean, when he was young, I mean, everyone knows the story, but if you don't, he basically had no love in his life until he met Customato.
And Customato became a father figure, but also...
Customato is a hypnotist and a psychologist in a lot of ways and a fantastic boxing coach as well and took this young kid and showed him that you're gonna get love from accomplishment and you're gonna conquer and you're gonna become the greatest heavyweight boxer of all time and through his tutelage up until the moment that he died Mike Tyson was just a just a phenom a thing that we had never seen before he was the pit bull with no leash That
I don't give a fuck about these numbers, anything I got.
Dave, in my opinion, you're the GOAT. In my opinion, your last special...
Has allowed you to surpass the Richard Pryor, in my opinion.
Dave Chappelle, I got to witness, do groundbreaking, controversial movement as a comedian in the times where comedy was being frowned upon.
Comedians were being held accountable For doing what we thought we would never be ridiculed for.
The one person that stood on a pedestal that got the attention that no others can get outside of a myself, a rock, a Seinfeld, he said, in the time where the fucking fire is the hottest, I'm going to do what nobody else will.
When it was the most fucking pressure, and when the times of, we can cancel you, by the way, which is the stupidest shit that I've ever fucking witnessed in my 40 years of life.
The whole idea of, I can kill you today with the goddamn click of a button.
I can end your life!
By the way, this is a real feeling that people have.
I'm in control of your life.
If I want your life to stop and be over, I'll cancel you.
And that means you can't live no more.
This is how ridiculous it is.
Think about the meaning of cancel culture.
So you're saying that my life is over, I can no longer survive or provide for myself.
There's a moment where Dave is probably at about 40, 45 minutes in.
Me and Chris both look at each other and at the same time, without saying the word, balled up the material that we just worked on.
We fucking, without saying it, without saying it, I ripped the page that I had in my little book and Chris just balled up his little fucking thing and we were like, he's unbelievable.
We came in, crafted, we got some shit that we wanted to fucking work on.
unidentified
Dave just went up there and talked It's like he's living like a legend.
Literally, I can only hope to be remotely close to as creative as he is at that point in my career and find this Jell-O. He's in an amazing Jell-O right now.
I'm smiling air to fucking air and I remember there was a moment where we were talking and Eddie would say something and then Chris was like come on man you know damn well Eddie ain't nobody doing that and then you would fucking hear Dave shut up damn it Chris with you and rock and then I'm just there quiet I'm just fucking quiet and then I would have moments where I would tune in but literally you saw why The goats were the goats.
There was some sort of an award show where he came up and talked on the podium and he was doing material and he was talking about them taking away Bill Cosby's degrees.