Journey of a recluse from depression to the best comedian of 21st century: Jim Carrey

In this section of the blog NEVER GIVE UP, every week we will share and analyze the inspiring lives of great people who inspite of having their back to the wall, fought against adverse conditions and never let their Achilles heel stop them from leaving a mark in history. The aim of these analyses is to motivate you to discover your inner potential and live a life less ordinary. IF THEY COULD, SO CAN YOU! 

A school dropout, a victim of loneliness and depression under tremendous financial crunch, Jim Carry’s life has never been a cake walk.

Along with limitless fame, unbounded love from fans and a highly successful career, life also gave this ace comedian continuous hurdles right from his childhood in the form of poverty, homelessness and mental illness to legal battles and a series of failed relationships. If we analyze Jim’s life, we can find that behind the exuberant and jovial personality lies another version of his character.

On his 16^th birthday, situations compelled him to drop out from school due to heavy financial crunch after his father lost his accounting job. And this was probably his only birthday ‘gift’ that year! Soon after when they were left homeless for a certain period, frustration and anguish started developing in him. And as Anthony Robbins say, “Success is buried on the other side of frustration”, Jim soon made these bitter experiences the foundation stones of his success.  This was testified by Carrey during his one-on-one interview with Steve Kroft in the 60 minutes show by CBS  when he quoted:

“Yeah. Absolutely. People need motivation to do anything. I don’t think human beings learn anything without desperation. Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything, or creating anything. Period. If you ain’t desperate at some point, you ain’t interesting.”

While a lot of teenagers in his shoes would have succumbed to these situations and would have fallen prey to drugs and alcohol as an easy excuse to escape from the sufferings, Jim was a hard nut to crack.  With each struggle his determination increased many folds which instigated him to move strategically toward his goal.

A very interesting incident from 90s can be cited here to understand Jim’s super optimistic character (which only a few people know). During his struggling years he used to drive regularly up to Mulholland Drive in his old car and sit there for hours visualizing his future by creating a mental projection of his dreams getting fulfilled. He went on to write himself a cheque of $10 million and dated it -Thanksgiving 1995, with a note “for acting services rendered,” and kept it safe in his wallet.  The years that followed brought everything he wanted in his life and astonishingly around 1994 he crossed his projected milestone after the grand success of  Dumb & Dumber. And then there was no looking back! The Mask(1994), The Trueman show (1998), Bruce Almighty (2003), Yes Man (2008) are some of his trademark movies which helped him to scale new heights in his career.

There are two important lessons that can be learned from jim’s life; First, the importance of having a vision in life and buckling down to reach the milestone. Although the road to success will always be a roller coaster ride but in the end the fruits are worth relishing.

And secondly, if a crowd-shy recluse can grow up to be one of the greatest comedians of the modern times, you too can shape your life exactly the way you want! All you need is the patience of a saint, honesty and a positive outlook.

Key Takeaways

Here are

1) The road to success will always be filled with frustrations and tough hurdles. But then, fortune favors the brave.

2) No matter how deprived (of money, love, recognition etc) you are today, work hard honestly and have faith on the universal forces and the wheel of fortune will soon turn to your favors!

3) Don’t curse your life for the struggles and pain you have! Use your pain as a fuel to ignite the engine of your passion.