Listen, man. Like I told all my kids, all my kids have a college education. I told them all, I don’t care what you get a degree in. Until you follow your dream and connect it to your gift, you’ll never be happy. Thank you. You’ll never be happy, man. I just got to tell you, you got to chase that dream before you die, man.

You should go and live your dream. Just go see. God puts your real life in your imagination. That’s where your real your real life ain’t in your present circumstance. Your real life is not in your current situation. Your real life is not in your paycheck. Your real life, he tucks it away in your imagination.

 Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is everything. It’s a preview to life’s coming attractions.” Everything you imagine is a preview to a coming attraction. Once you understand that and quit looking at your imagination as hocus pocus, it opens up a wide range of things and possibilities and God puts your real life in your imagination. Listen to me.

This is serious what I’m telling you. Don’t you think it’s nothing else. Imagination is everything. It’s the preview to life’s coming attractions. That simply means everything that’s in your imagination is a preview of a coming attraction that God has for you. That’s why he puts it in your imagination.

 That’s why when you tell your imagination to the wrong people, it don’t go nowhere. You ever had something you thought was a brilliant idea and you took it in there to your family and your loved ones and they shot it down? You know why they shot it down? Cuz they couldn’t see it cuz God didn’t put it in their imagination.

 He put it in your imagination. If you want to kill a big dream, tell it to a small-minded person. A mother die like that. It’ll just die. I walked in that house, man, and told everybody I was quitting my job to go be a comedian. Everybody in that house shot that down. My ex-wife shot it down. Her mother-in-law shot it down.

 My mama shot it down. All my friends shot it down. My brothers and sisters shot it down. Don’t you quit your job. Go be no comedian. You can’t make no money telling no jokes like that. It’s 1985. Who you think you are? If I had listened to them, I wouldn’t even be here today. But I didn’t listen because it was evidently clear to me, God had put it in my imagination that one day I would be on stations had.

 It was written by Donnie Hathaway and it’s called a song for you. And one of the stanzas in the song I used to sing as a little boy. I’ve acted out my life on stages with 10,000 people watching and we are alone and I’m singing this song for you. I used to always imagine myself in front of 10,000 people.

 Man, I’m one of original kings of comedy, man. You know how many people I done been in front of? I done told jokes in front of 44,000 people before. But if I had listened to my mother who was saved and a Christian and a Sunday school teacher, if I had listened to her, I wouldn’t have quit my job. All my brothers, everybody told me, “You can’t go be no comedian. I left anyway.

 I won amateur night on October 8th, 1985. Won 50 bucks. I went to work the next day, October 9th, 1985. Quit my job. Everybody in my neighborhood called me a fool. I send planes, pick all of them up, take them to shows and now all of them. All of them. You got to chase that dream before you die.

 Man, Bishop Jake said one time, Bishop Jake said, “I would hate to die and never do the thing I was born to do.” You shouldn’t let that happen. You’ll chase your dream. But you know what it was? So when I was homeless, man, um, in my uh speech over the weekend I gave to the vault convention, I said something to them. I said, “The boredom of normality and the numbness of mediocrity stiffens your passions.

The boredom of normality and the numbness of mediocrity stiffens your passion. What that meant was I was so sick of myself. I was so bored in my life, man. I was so tired of being mediocre. I was just tired of it. And it was all my fault. I was mediocre because I wasn’t doing the things to be exceptional.

 And I was bored. I was I was I was losing my mind, man. On the assembly line at Ford Motor Company, going door todoor selling life insurance at a debit company. I was tripping, man. I said, “Man, what is this? My life can’t be this.” You know, you ever you ever say to yourself, “Man, it’s got to be more to my life than this.

” If you’ve ever said that, that’s cause it is. And you got to get after that, man. You got to you got to go and get at that. If you don’t do it, life becomes real normal and real mediocre to you. Now, there’s nothing wrong with being normal, but if you if normal is getting on your nerves, then you got to change something.

 If you tired of being mediocre, you got to change something. You know, now everybody has to determine what their own normal is. Normal for me is going to be different from you. Normal from you, normal for you is different from me. But once you determine what normal is for you and you ain’t okay with that no more, you got to go do something, man.

 Cuz that that get on your nerves, man. Being mediocre was driving me crazy. And it started when I was homeless, man. It just pushed me cuz I was sick of being poor. I’m going just be honest with you. Poverty, I I was sick of it. I was up to here. I had had enough. I don’t know how you feel about poverty, but that got on my nerves.

 And homeless is a whole another level of poverty. Not having a bathroom, a bedroom, a back door, a TV, a phone. You know, I was homeless in the 80s, man. It wasn’t even no cell phones then. Wrap your mind around that. So, I ain’t got no phone. I ain’t got no backyard, man. I said, “Hold up.” And I just I that but that I ain’t trying to be preachy or nothing but that pushed me towards my faith.

 My mom was Sunday school teacher. Pushed me back to what she was trying to teach me. And when I went back to that, then I started turning the corner cuz I had I had lost my faith, man. I thought God wasn’t listening. He was listening. I just wasn’t asking for nothing. I just tried to figure it out myself. I changed that, man. It changed my whole life.

 God is amazing, man. If you come to him, he always hears you. He’s always available. He ain’t ever too busy. That’s the cool thing about him. And he was available for me the whole time. It’s just I wasn’t checking in with him. God ain’t turned his back on you. You walked away from him. He always there. I got stupid.

I just turned away from him. When I turned around and start talking to him, I just cut a deal with him. I said, “If you let me make it, when I get there, I’m going to tell everybody it was you.” So, guess what? You just asked me about it. Didn’t I just tell you about it? Every chance I get. 2009 was one of the biggest career changes of my life.

 The book Act Like a Lady Think Like a Man came out in 2009 and I signed up for Family Feud in 2009. Those two moments transcended my career. It took me from being a comedian and a radio show show host and it just launched me into mainstream America. And then all of a sudden I was in everybody’s house and then here came the talk show and then here came little big shots and here came Showtime the Paulo here came Miss Universe. Here came Fox New Year’s Eve.

Here came NFL it everything. It just started piling on you know and that’s how it works. And you just had to have faith. Now listen to this part of it too. Your life is like a stock chart. Stocks take dips and everything. When your life takes a dip, it ain’t time to trip. It ain’t time to sell the stock. You got to remember your life.

 You a blue chip stock. It takes dips. CocaCola takes dips. Disney. Facebook takes dips. You don’t sell the stock because it took a dip. You got to look at what made the stock great in the first place. So all these people on the internet talking about me, what he ain’t no more and he lost this and it that that’s that’s just a little dip.

 You have no idea where God takes you on the next uptick. You just got to hang in there. Now, come October when the news hit the fan, all them haters gonna go somewhere and be quiet cuz they gonna see this little stock is about to go. It’s going to shoot up again. Cuz that’s a promise of God. That’s how it work.

 I’m a blue chip stock. You are a blue chip stock. If you think of yourself as a blue chip stock, how can they how can they downgrade you? You can’t downgrade me. I’m a big black Nike swoosh. That’s what I [Applause] am. I have the same gift that God gave me 62 years ago that I turned professionally 35 years ago. I have the same gift. They can never take my gift.

You can take this show and take that show and you can think what you done is cool. All you did All you did was replant me a lot. See, I’m I’m a motivational speaker, so you have to excuse me while I start getting on tangents like this. So, check this out. Buried and planted appears to be the same thing, but it ain’t.

 See, when something’s buried, when you bury something, you say goodbye to it. When something is planted, you expect to see it again. I’m planted. You’re planted. All you got to do is live in the life of expectation and God will give you what you expect. If you expect nothing good to happen, nothing good is going to happen.

 But the God I serve does, his promise is that he delivers if you believe. I just happen to believe. So what does it matter to me what they do? It’s not a it’s not a gimmick. Vision boards are very real. You have to understand that. You have to understand all successful people have them. You can’t you’re not going to get everywhere you want in life without writing your visions down, without having them in front of you. It’s a scripture.

 This is not a See, this is not a theory that Oprah Winfrey came up with. This is a biblical scripture. God set it in place where you could have the life of your dreams. He put it in place. There is a way that you can have the life of your dreams. You just have to learn the principles of success.

 Now, they got all these books out here, but all these books on self-help and success, they’re based on the principles from the Bible. Ain’t nobody coming up with no new stuff. Proverbs got all that information in it. All of that information is in Proverbs. You ain’t got to look no further. But since Proverbs is hard to understand, people have self-help books like The Magic of Thinking Big, Power Positive Thinking, The Winner’s Circle, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.

 All this stuff come out the Bible. There is a scripture Habbeca 2 and two. It says, “Write the vision and make it plain so that he who reads it will run to it.” And even though it terry terry mean take a long time. Wait for it for surely it will come at an appointed time. That’s in the Bible.

 That ain’t in the rich people’s copy. That’s in everybody everybody’s Bible. The problem is everybody don’t do it. But it’s right there. But you got to do it. I’m just telling you it’s if you don’t do it it’s it’s it’s too hard. It’s almost impossible. That vision board has changed my life. Everything I put on my vision board. I get everything.

 Now, you have to understand something. It’s not going to come when you want it to come. It comes at an appointed time. That’s the trick. But the appointed time is what throw people off. Because most, see, when you ask God for something, he sends it. He ships it immediately. Soon as you ask him something and you really believe he’ll do it, he boxes it up and he ships it to you immediately.

 The problem with the package is he never gives you the date that the package is going to arrive. He doesn’t do that. He doesn’t do that because if he told you the date that the package would rely would arrive, it would destroy the requirement he has of all of us which is faith. Faith is the belief in things that you cannot see.

 So if you ask God for a million dollars and he tell you I’m going to give it to you in March of 2020, you wouldn’t need no faith. You’ll be talking to people crazy cuz you know in 2020 I’m going to be a millionaire. But he sent a million soon as you asked for it. But it’s going to come at an appointed time. The problem is people stop waiting on the package.

 Then when it get to you cuz he delivers only to Faith Street. when he delivers to you on Faith Street, but you done stepped off of Faith Street. You over here on I don’t see House Circle. He don’t ship there. Instead of staying on Faith Street, you done stepped over here to I don’t believe it boulevard or it took too long avenue. Then the package come to Faith Street is just like the post office in FedEx.

 If you ain’t there to receive it, it got to go back. That’s how it work, man. It ain’t a magic trick. God is real fair and simple. That’s how I got here. Cause a vision board. [Music] [Applause] [Music]