Unthinkable Life Lessons from Jim Carrey That Will Make You Feel Superhuman
“10 minutes before you die this overwhelming sense of peace comes over you.”
Jim Carrey is a stoic genius and he doesn’t even know it.
I grew up high on Jim Carrey.
Once I saw “The Mask” movie I was hooked. Ace Ventura sealed the deal. For a kid trying to escape the darkness of the mind, the Jim Carrey experience was joyous. He made me laugh and that took me to another dimension.
Whenever the pain became too much, I could just switch on one of his movies and wonder what it was like to be crazy awesome like him.
At 13 years old my best friend introduced me to a magazine article. It said Jim Carrey suffered mental illness and was suicidal. My mind was confused.
How could someone so funny and successful be suicidal?
It was the first window I ever had into the false reality I was living in. That experience was something I never forgot – the image is still clear in my mind of that day.
Jim Carrey disappeared from my life after “Me, Myself & Irene.” I don’t know where he went after that. I discovered Jim again a few years back when I heard his story of writing a check to himself for $10M before he became a household Hollywood name.
Then a viral university commencement speech Jim gave helped me discover a whole other side to him. The speech was incredible. I felt superhuman after hearing it. I played it over and over, and still do.
Jim’s life is full of unthinkable experiences that will change how you think.
With 10 minutes left before you Die, this overwhelming sense of peace comes over you
There was this missile alert in Hawaii a little while back. My assistant Linda called me crying and said “we have 10 minutes left.”
As Jim describes the final moments on The Graham Norton Show the audience is completely silent. The look on Margot Robbie’s face is one of deep thought. Jim looks at her and she doesn’t react. She’s in her own world imagining the final moments of her life. Jim continues the story.
Jim’s Assistant: Should we get in the car. Should we all try to meet up?
Jim: I don’t want to die in my car.
I sat down and this overwhelming sense of peace came over me. I started to go through a list of gratitude for my life. For everything that had happened. With about two minutes left to go I thought I’ll just close my eyes. Then I got the information that it wasn’t real.
I know what it’s going to be like in the last ten minutes if I was to know it was going to end. It’s kind of a unique place to be. There is actually a state of calm.
At the age of 16, I felt the same peace Jim felt on the day of the Hawaii Missile Crisis.
My friend was lying next to me after being stabbed repeatedly.
I was being hit in the head with a baseball bat. Suddenly, in what felt like the final moments of my life, I felt the peace Jim describes. Where you accept your fate and begin to have flashbacks of all the things you’re grateful for.
Knowing what it’s like at the end of your life makes you feel superhuman.
But why wait? Why not think about your life in that way right now?
You can do something people admire but it can never fulfill you
This lesson from Jim cuts deep.
We all secretly have fantasies of doing work people admire. Then you get to that endpoint and realize it doesn’t fulfill you. This has happened to me as a writer. I thought writing for an audience would fulfill me. It turns out it’s not that special.
You have to derive meaning from something deeper than people’s admiration of your work.
We’re All Actors
Imagine playing a different character every day of your life.
That was Jim’s life. He got paid millions of dollars to play the characters of his Hollywood masters. He’d bank the paycheck and not understand what he was doing.
Playing characters made him feel like a puppet. He could never play himself — something he wanted to do deep down for a long time.
Jim realized he played these characters on the big screen to make other people happy. These characters didn’t make him happy, though. An odd question began to make a recurring appearance in his life:
“Who would I be without all of this fame?”
Thinking about a life without fame became deeply fascinating to him. The next two questions followed:
Who would I be if I said things people didn’t want to hear?
Or if I defied their expectations of me?
These two questions often find creative people when they least expect it. They have found me, recently, too. Actors say what people want to hear so they can receive validation.
Corporate actors, that go to an office and play the role of a job title, do the same. They spend their whole day acting up to their job title without understanding why.
They dare not to say things people don’t want to hear. That would be career suicide according to their career coach.
I say f*ck it.
Say what you think. Otherwise, you’ll be trapped by the burden of having to play the role of an actor.
Jim says “If it’s so easy to lose yourself, then who the hell are you?”
If you worry about losing yourself then maybe you have no idea who you are in the first place. Maybe that’s the journey you need to go on.
True Happiness Is Being Yourself.
Being yourself is a huge risk.And the reward is worth more than ten million dollars.
Not being yourself makes you a slave.
You become a puppet that society pulls the strings of when they choose — just to screw with you.
Risk being seen in all of your glory — Jim Carrey
Free yourself
The only person Jim hadn’t freed was himself.
The solution for Jim was to find someone he could show his real self to. By showing one person who he was, he found the strength to do it in public.
Try this: Show yourself to one person. See how it feels. Do they judge you or burn your dreams to the ground? Probably not. Now go beyond one person. Feel the powerful feeling take over your body. Lose control.
“We Are Not the Avatars We Create. We Are the Light That Shines through.” … (The Rest Is B.S.)
Jim said this at a 2014 commencement speech.
The avatars of your social media profiles aren’t what matters. The light Jim talks about is your ability to inspire people through your everyday, so-called “normal” life.
Your life is normal — and life-changing for somebody who sees the old you as their current self. Use your updated avatar and compare it to the old one. Let the light shine through your avatar.
Try this: share lessons from your life. Drop quotes from books you read in people’s newsfeeds. Dare to show people your raw, sometimes broken side.
Depression Is Your Body Saying:
“I don’t want to be this character anymore. I don’t want to hold up this avatar that you’ve created in the world. It’s too much for me.”
Jim has suffered episodes of depression for much of his life.
He reports in the last few years that it’s now gone. Part of the reason his depression is gone is because he’s stopped playing different characters 24/7.
The version you see of Jim on talk shows, now, is far different from the actor of a few years ago who couldn’t stop doing impersonations and playing the characters from his movie in real life, as if he was still on set and the movie camera was rolling.
You can decide *not* to be the character you’ve been playing anymore.
Think of the word “depressed” as deep rest
Jim says your body needs to be depressed. It needs deep rest from the character you’ve been trying to play.
This helpful reframe from Jim is powerful. What if depression was good for you? What if depression was a sign it was time to check out from your current lie and take a break — or have a gap year of nothing?
Try this: if you feel depressed, awesome. Now you know it’s time for deep rest. Deep rest = long walks, daily meditation, 8+ hours of sleep, afternoon naps (without the guilt), time with your family, a period of work without pay.
Creativity Frees You
When Jim suffered a broken heart he decided to just paint, according to a short documentary Jim filmed called “I Needed Color.”
I did the same with writing. When my mind feels trapped by the challenging circumstances the world is currently facing, I find a way to switch on flow and become creative.
Creativity is like a portal into a different universe.
Creativity is healing for your soul.
Try this: dare to be creative more often. Write, draw, take photos, film videos, record audio or take up public speaking. Find your medium and unleash your creativity. Notice how you feel.
Final Words from Jim:
“The Bottom Line with All of This Is Love”
— We want to show ourselves, and have that be accepted.
The unhuman success of Elon Musk in 2018 was put to the test.
During an interview, right after talking about how artificial intelligence could end life for humanity, Elon said “This may sound corny, but love is the answer. It wouldn’t hurt to have more love in the world.”
After the wild ride that Jim went on — where he lost himself publicly and came full circle — he reached the same realization as robot Elon.
It’s a fascinating lesson that will take the rest of your life to figure out and completely comprehend. In the final 10 minutes of your life you will see that love is the answer. It always was.
Use love to change the world and feel superhuman.
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Your friend was stabbed and you were beaten Tim!!!! I am so sorry to hear you went through that nightmare. I hope your friend survived it. Jim was my favourite actor too so I was surprised and delighted when he DM me and we became friends. We reminisced about his movies and his depression and his hopes of coming out to New Zealand when COVID ended. Sounds nice right? Wrong! It was a scam! Thank you for your article about Jim I’ll enjoy seeing his speech.
One of the best among the thousands you've written.