Be. Inspired. :: Tyler Perry Says God, Grace & Focus Are How He “Made It”

Whether or not you’re a fan of Tyler Perry, if you’d like to be motivated or inspired by your passion or what drives you (happy or crazy for that matter), I suggest you take a moment and hear how he answers, how he “made it.” Check it out.

And here’s a transcript of what he shared,

You know what the question is that a lot of people ask me all the time?  “How did you make it?” Well I’ll tell you, there’s only one answer for that.  And I say this in press all the time but people will cut it out articles or people won’t want to print it or they don’t want to say it. But the truth be told, it was nothing but the grace of God.  You can plant seeds all day long.  You can go around giving your business card to people, you can go around knocking on doors and auditioning, you can do all of that every day of your life and nothing, for most people, nothing happens.  When a seed is planted in the ground, all you can do is water it.  You cannot control the sunshine, you cannot control the weather, and you cannot control what the locusts will come and destroy.  All you can do is plant your seed in the ground, water it, and believe.  That is what allowed me to be in this position right now.  I would not stop believing.  I planted my seed and I worked really hard.  I had one idea and that was to do a play.  All the other stuff came.  My only focus was to do my one play, and I knew if I could get that to work, everything else would come to pass.  There’s so many people who go in so many directions.  This week they’re doing this and next week they’re doing that.  Those kind of people are all over the place and I usually try to get them to focus.  Focus on one thing, one area.  Put all of your energy into watering one area.  If you spread the water across many many seeds, you don’t have as much water for one seed.  So focus on one thing.  Make it your priority and stick with it no matter what.  No matter how many people told me no, no matter how many people lied to me, no matter how many times I put the show up and nobody came.  But I remember when I did my very first show, I worked my butt off and saved 12,000 dollars. Tax returns, H&R Block money, I saved it, worked hard, saved it myself, rented the 14^th street playhouse, put that show up, thought that 1200 people would come over a weekend and 30 showed up and I knew every one of them.  But I didn’t stop.  That didn’t deter me. That was in 1992.  ’93, same thing happened.  ’94, ’95, ’96, ’97 up until 1998.  Same devastation:  nobody showing up in the audience.  I was doing one show a year, working with different promoters, trying to get the show up, and nobody showed up.  But I didn’t stop.  And what I say to you now, looking at me now, here.  I am a human being. There’s no difference between my humanness and your humanness.  The only thing is if you’re trying to get there, you cannot stop believing in any way. No matter what anybody says, no matter what anybody tells you, you have to know it beyond knowing it.  It is a feeling.  When something is for you (this is how I knew it was for me), when something is for you, there is a feeling that is deep down inside of you that will not allow you to let it go.  It will keep you going when you can’t even keep yourself going.  That’s why the mantra here at the Tyler Perry Studios is “A Place Where Even Dreams Believe.”  Because there comes a time in your life where you’ve worked and you’ve stressed and you’ve tried to get there and you couldn’t on your own, but you have a dream. And that dream has to take on the belief for you because you can’t do it by yourself.  So what I would tell you is this. Don’t stop.  Narrow your focus to one idea.  One.  And make it work.  That will give birth to all the others.  All you can do is plant the seed and water it.  God Himself has to give the increase.  Only God can make the sun shine.  Only God can bring the rain.  But if you’ve planted the seed then you’ve done your part.  I wish you so much success in 2012.  Anything you want is possible.  God knows I’m a living witness.  Please feel me, please hear this from my heart. Anything you want is possible.  If I didn’t believe it, I wouldn’t take the time to send this message to you. Take care of yourself.

I feel like I just went to church.

–@ManuelaDC