May 15, 2020 • 11 mins
In this episode of Commencement: Speeches for the Class of 2020, Dr. Mehmet Oz, a cardiothoracic surgeon, Columbia University professor, and television personality, encourages graduates to pass along the love they receive from the world and to not take themselves too seriously.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Commencement Speeches for the Class of is a production of
I Heart Radio. Class of Parents, faculty, rising graduates, Welcome
to commencement. You made it. This year is a little different,
(00:23):
a difficult time to graduate because the traditional graduation day
has been put on hold. So we're bringing it to
you wherever you are because this is still your day,
your moment. And now put your hands together. It's time
to be inspired. This year's commencement speaker the one and
only Dr oz Hi Dr mem at Oz. Congratulations. So
(00:54):
I was taught early in my career. They blessed or
the brief where they will be reinvited, So I'll keep
the short, but hopefully power are full and useful for you.
The big question you should be asking yourself is that
my head for success and happiness, both of them, success
and happiness, and what's going to get me there? And
remember it's not just about knowledge for knowledge shake. You've
gone through college, you know that, and that's not the
key by itself. So success is moving oneself towards an
(01:16):
understanding of what is important in life. Happiness, it's being
grateful for what you get on this adventure with all
of its mental and physical challenges. And epiphanies. Right, So
the question that becomes how does one become successful and happy?
I do get them both at the same time. So
I'm gonna share my top seven techniques number seven on
the list. Every day you gotta feel productive and challenged
(01:37):
in a way Taylor made for your unique desires and strengths.
So for me, it turned out that I have two
things I could do in life surgery, which I adore
and hosted a television show. Both provide immediate gratification, Both
require quick action, make decisions rapidly. Uh. And you also
knew that I would never ever master the field, right.
There are too big, too quick changing. And so I
(02:00):
saw it is that zen experience which both gave me
that flow state where nothing would bother me. I'd lose
touch with time and location and all my creative energies
would be released. And once I found that was true,
I knew I could do that job. And at the
same time, both these gave me the opportunities to serve others,
and the service happened because I could help coordinate many
(02:22):
moving parts, lots of good people trying to do their best,
and take that from what could have been a company
of noise into a symphony that made beautiful music. So
let me just walk you through it. In the operating room,
I've got nurses who know much more about how to
hand me the right instruments and guide me along that
I would ever be able to do. I've got heart
lung machine profusionists who run the device I need to
keep the heart um and the person patient alive while
(02:45):
I'm fixing their heart. I have anesthesiologists who are my
partners and brothers who helped me make sure the patients
stay stable while I'm doing what I'm doing inside their chest.
That all got to happen, but all the actions right
in the heart, right in the middle of the person
I'm trying to help. In the studio, I've got lighting
people and camera people and producers and drops people and
everyone working together to make the beautiful symphony happen in
(03:06):
front of the camera. And in both cases, I've got
to take some very smart people allow them to collaborate
together in order to bring the final high quality result.
That's what makes me excited, and you need to find
that in your lives. Number six. Develop a system for
living your life that helps you meet challenges and evaluate
opportunities as they come in front of you, and you
want to avoid admitting the key steps to success. I'm
(03:27):
gonna walk you through them. You need a routine otherwise
you will make airs. So in my life, when I
first started as a resident, I would ride my bike
to work every single day. Now I happen to live
in New Jersey and I work in Manhattan, so I
have to ride my bike across the Hunton River, across
the bridge that George Washington Bridge, and I even do
that every day of my residency. Five during the morning
rain shines. Now I was on that bike going across.
(03:47):
I didn't have a car, and today I have to
translate that experience something very different. Now I get up
first thing in the morning seven minutes yoga. It's a
very simple workout. I've shown people what it is is
basically sun citation, but I do it every day. I
forced yourself to get that activity in, and it helps
you organize the rest of my day because for the
rest of the day I look back and say, you
know what, if I got nothing else done today, I
did my seven minutes of yoga with just a little
(04:09):
bit of mindfulness while I was doing that, and losenes
my body and loses my mind. Now, while I say
that and that you have to have a routine, it
doesn't mean you should live without awareness. You've gotta have awareness,
So develop speed bumps. For me, it's transgentle meditation, right,
because I've got to be able to respond. Remember, responsibility,
after all, is just that, right, an ability to respond.
(04:29):
So your class is graduating and one of the hardest
times ever manageable, maybe the hardest time in the last
hundred years. Right, And I'm sure that many of you
guys don't have jobs set up, or you had them
and you lost them. You're dealing with understandable fear about
what's next in your lives. And by the way, everyone
graduating college, graduating high school has fear in their lives,
but yours is amplified a little bit turbocharged. Right. And
(04:52):
because it's already normal to be anxious and overwhelmed the graduation,
I can only imagine what it's like to be exacerbated
with COVID nineteen and all the christis around you. I
gotta say, the most important thing I'll probably share about
this wisdom is the world goes around, but it teaches
you lessons as it does it and we are ultimately
uniquely able to support each other. We are the safety
there for each other. So crutch on the people around you.
(05:13):
I remember my very first day, having been in a
recent medical school graduate when a nurse called me and
called me doctor Oz and I looked around for Dr
Oz because the insecurity had a holding that title and
the responsibility came along with it. Stunned me, But I
was in a culture of caring. People around me wanted
me to understand the field better and support the paces
I was taken care of. Find that culture of caring
(05:35):
in your life. Number five, Find a mentor, evaluate their
strengths and they're weak this is they'll have both, and
then copied the positive attributes the ones you want to
be like. Remember your teachers want you to stand on
their shoulders. My biggest mentors my father in law, and
I remember I was playing Trivial Pursuits, a board game
with him and unfortunately, I don't know how many of
you will experiences in your lives, but the answer to
(05:57):
the question was him. He beat me by the way.
He was a doctor who was crowned Rock dot By
by Rolling Stone Magazine. Rolling Stone Magazine is that he
was the first doctor to play rock music in the
operating room and I lost to him. But that's not
why I admired him. Why I admired him was this man,
Jerry Lemole had a unique ability to combine science and spirituality.
(06:18):
He understood the importance of the scientific world, but he
also appreciated that science asked questions about how things work,
Spirituality asked questions about why things work. And he knew
how to prioritize his family because he respected that. That's
what made him a mentor for me. Remember, your mentors
want you to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, so you're
free to pursue excellence without the hindrance of fear. And
(06:40):
don't forget the comfort zone. It's supposed to keep your
life safe. It doesn't work that way. Your comfort zone
is actually what keeps your life small. You don't want
to be small, but you can't be safe without being small.
Number four. Whatever you choose, do it fully with a
passion and a childlike enthusiasm. You don't want to go
through the motions. It usually fails anyway, and it's not
as much on my dad, who grew up in a
(07:02):
poor part of Turkey, and the depression was taken to
the airport. That tells me this story many times, and
he said his mom escorted him and she assisted meeting
the pilot. She'd never seen an airplane before, so this
poor pilot had to come down the stairs down to
the tarmat and speak to my grandmother and she said, listen,
you got my son on this plane. She handed him
a paper bag that had the lunch from my dad.
(07:23):
She had no idea what was going on in his airplane.
So the pilot had the paper bag, was about to
turn and go away, and she stopped him and said,
don't forget to fly that big metal bird really really slowly,
and stayed load of the ground. The lesson is clear.
It won't work in life at any level. You guys
are taking a risk just to move on with your life.
You might as make it a risk that's worth taking
to make your life that much more memorable. Number three
(07:44):
recognized relationships need to be growing and partners need to
be positively influencing each other all the time. You got
to reinvent your relationships every seven years. You have chemical
hormones that hold you together for that period. But if
you don't grow together, you will grow apart. And the
family is the final defense in the time of adversity.
So whether I'm dealing with the patient is not doing well,
(08:04):
or I messed up with taping the kids in my case,
the grandkids now because my older daughter Nathley has got
a bunch of them. They want to play Horsey. Right,
They're living in the moment and I've got to keep
up with them. And don't forget that when your form relationships,
you're already separating from each other because you have expectations
of each other. Allow those expectations to change, to keep
up with time so that you can rebuild those relationships.
Whether it's the person you're loved with, remember your family
(08:26):
already like your parents, or it's the job that you're
about to engage in, even the school that you're graduating from.
Those relationships have to mature, as do your relationships with
the students that went to school with you. All right,
Number two, never forget the body is a temple of
the soul, not just drugs and alcohol. That I'm talking
about things better, better than that and bigger than that.
It's not even cigarettes whose havoc at battle daily, but
(08:48):
it's subtle transgressions like junk food, like a lack of exercise,
like realizing that your physical health right is gonna dramatically
color your mental health. If your body is doing what
it needs to do, then your mind will come along
for the ride. Remember, the one thing that you can
change more dramatically than anything else is your body. And
if you can change what's happening inside your body, you
(09:09):
can change the world outside of it. That's what so
much of my focus has been on in life, sharing
wisdom with my own kids with Healthcore or Kids Foundation
that has changed the lives of so many around the country.
But if you can gain the confidence that you can
control your physical body by taking good care of it,
then the world around you seem much more manageable. And
let me take you to the last tip and the
(09:29):
most important you need to make the driving force in
your life. Love even more than wisdom. Humans don't wilt
because of darkness. We will't because of cold. Metaphorically, it's
the love you have for people, not the wisdom, not
the insights. It's the carrying for ose around you. And
you've got to know that love is the governing influence
because it's the perception of love more than it's mere
(09:50):
existence that matters to those around you. If you apply
love to the cold hearted decisions that you've got to
make in business, right, it makes them a lot easier
to make, and you make decisions is in a more
insightful way. Unfortunately, when you make cold hearted decisions, they're shortsighted,
especially if you don't have the emotion of love around them.
For example, studies of successful people have shown that's not
(10:10):
whether the child was well educated, whether the parents loved
the child, that were the most important issues. That's whether
the child perceived that they were loved right, And guess what.
For the child to perceive that they were loved, you
have to tell them they were loved. If they're blessed
with love, then they'll thrive. I'll get news for all
of you. You have been blessed with love, transparent love,
(10:30):
so please pass it along. The analogy is often made
that we're more like rain drops than individuals, and those
rain drops are falling into the sea of humanity spirituality.
I'll say it again. If you're like a rain drop,
you want to be with the rest of the water.
So do not take yourselves to seriously, but always, always,
be proud of who you are. Congratulations and good luck.
(11:02):
You can find a collection of incredible commencement addresses from
all your favorite speakers at the Commencement Podcast on I
Heart Radio or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Commencement Speeches for the Class of is a production of
I Heart Radio. Class of Parents, faculty, rising graduates, Welcome
to commencement. You made it. This year is a little different,
(00:23):
a difficult time to graduate because the traditional graduation day
has been put on hold. So we're bringing it to
you wherever you are because this is still your day,
your moment. And now put your hands together. It's time
to be inspired. This year's commencement speaker the one and
only Dr oz Hi Dr mem at Oz. Congratulations. So
(00:54):
I was taught early in my career. They blessed or
the brief where they will be reinvited, So I'll keep
the short, but hopefully power are full and useful for you.
The big question you should be asking yourself is that
my head for success and happiness, both of them, success
and happiness, and what's going to get me there? And
remember it's not just about knowledge for knowledge shake. You've
gone through college, you know that, and that's not the
key by itself. So success is moving oneself towards an
(01:16):
understanding of what is important in life. Happiness, it's being
grateful for what you get on this adventure with all
of its mental and physical challenges. And epiphanies. Right, So
the question that becomes how does one become successful and happy?
I do get them both at the same time. So
I'm gonna share my top seven techniques number seven on
the list. Every day you gotta feel productive and challenged
(01:37):
in a way Taylor made for your unique desires and strengths.
So for me, it turned out that I have two
things I could do in life surgery, which I adore
and hosted a television show. Both provide immediate gratification, Both
require quick action, make decisions rapidly. Uh. And you also
knew that I would never ever master the field, right.
There are too big, too quick changing. And so I
(02:00):
saw it is that zen experience which both gave me
that flow state where nothing would bother me. I'd lose
touch with time and location and all my creative energies
would be released. And once I found that was true,
I knew I could do that job. And at the
same time, both these gave me the opportunities to serve others,
and the service happened because I could help coordinate many
(02:22):
moving parts, lots of good people trying to do their best,
and take that from what could have been a company
of noise into a symphony that made beautiful music. So
let me just walk you through it. In the operating room,
I've got nurses who know much more about how to
hand me the right instruments and guide me along that
I would ever be able to do. I've got heart
lung machine profusionists who run the device I need to
keep the heart um and the person patient alive while
(02:45):
I'm fixing their heart. I have anesthesiologists who are my
partners and brothers who helped me make sure the patients
stay stable while I'm doing what I'm doing inside their chest.
That all got to happen, but all the actions right
in the heart, right in the middle of the person
I'm trying to help. In the studio, I've got lighting
people and camera people and producers and drops people and
everyone working together to make the beautiful symphony happen in
(03:06):
front of the camera. And in both cases, I've got
to take some very smart people allow them to collaborate
together in order to bring the final high quality result.
That's what makes me excited, and you need to find
that in your lives. Number six. Develop a system for
living your life that helps you meet challenges and evaluate
opportunities as they come in front of you, and you
want to avoid admitting the key steps to success. I'm
(03:27):
gonna walk you through them. You need a routine otherwise
you will make airs. So in my life, when I
first started as a resident, I would ride my bike
to work every single day. Now I happen to live
in New Jersey and I work in Manhattan, so I
have to ride my bike across the Hunton River, across
the bridge that George Washington Bridge, and I even do
that every day of my residency. Five during the morning
rain shines. Now I was on that bike going across.
(03:47):
I didn't have a car, and today I have to
translate that experience something very different. Now I get up
first thing in the morning seven minutes yoga. It's a
very simple workout. I've shown people what it is is
basically sun citation, but I do it every day. I
forced yourself to get that activity in, and it helps
you organize the rest of my day because for the
rest of the day I look back and say, you
know what, if I got nothing else done today, I
did my seven minutes of yoga with just a little
(04:09):
bit of mindfulness while I was doing that, and losenes
my body and loses my mind. Now, while I say
that and that you have to have a routine, it
doesn't mean you should live without awareness. You've gotta have awareness,
So develop speed bumps. For me, it's transgentle meditation, right,
because I've got to be able to respond. Remember, responsibility,
after all, is just that, right, an ability to respond.
(04:29):
So your class is graduating and one of the hardest
times ever manageable, maybe the hardest time in the last
hundred years. Right, And I'm sure that many of you
guys don't have jobs set up, or you had them
and you lost them. You're dealing with understandable fear about
what's next in your lives. And by the way, everyone
graduating college, graduating high school has fear in their lives,
but yours is amplified a little bit turbocharged. Right. And
(04:52):
because it's already normal to be anxious and overwhelmed the graduation,
I can only imagine what it's like to be exacerbated
with COVID nineteen and all the christis around you. I
gotta say, the most important thing I'll probably share about
this wisdom is the world goes around, but it teaches
you lessons as it does it and we are ultimately
uniquely able to support each other. We are the safety
there for each other. So crutch on the people around you.
(05:13):
I remember my very first day, having been in a
recent medical school graduate when a nurse called me and
called me doctor Oz and I looked around for Dr
Oz because the insecurity had a holding that title and
the responsibility came along with it. Stunned me, But I
was in a culture of caring. People around me wanted
me to understand the field better and support the paces
I was taken care of. Find that culture of caring
(05:35):
in your life. Number five, Find a mentor, evaluate their
strengths and they're weak this is they'll have both, and
then copied the positive attributes the ones you want to
be like. Remember your teachers want you to stand on
their shoulders. My biggest mentors my father in law, and
I remember I was playing Trivial Pursuits, a board game
with him and unfortunately, I don't know how many of
you will experiences in your lives, but the answer to
(05:57):
the question was him. He beat me by the way.
He was a doctor who was crowned Rock dot By
by Rolling Stone Magazine. Rolling Stone Magazine is that he
was the first doctor to play rock music in the
operating room and I lost to him. But that's not
why I admired him. Why I admired him was this man,
Jerry Lemole had a unique ability to combine science and spirituality.
(06:18):
He understood the importance of the scientific world, but he
also appreciated that science asked questions about how things work,
Spirituality asked questions about why things work. And he knew
how to prioritize his family because he respected that. That's
what made him a mentor for me. Remember, your mentors
want you to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, so you're
free to pursue excellence without the hindrance of fear. And
(06:40):
don't forget the comfort zone. It's supposed to keep your
life safe. It doesn't work that way. Your comfort zone
is actually what keeps your life small. You don't want
to be small, but you can't be safe without being small.
Number four. Whatever you choose, do it fully with a
passion and a childlike enthusiasm. You don't want to go
through the motions. It usually fails anyway, and it's not
as much on my dad, who grew up in a
(07:02):
poor part of Turkey, and the depression was taken to
the airport. That tells me this story many times, and
he said his mom escorted him and she assisted meeting
the pilot. She'd never seen an airplane before, so this
poor pilot had to come down the stairs down to
the tarmat and speak to my grandmother and she said, listen,
you got my son on this plane. She handed him
a paper bag that had the lunch from my dad.
(07:23):
She had no idea what was going on in his airplane.
So the pilot had the paper bag, was about to
turn and go away, and she stopped him and said,
don't forget to fly that big metal bird really really slowly,
and stayed load of the ground. The lesson is clear.
It won't work in life at any level. You guys
are taking a risk just to move on with your life.
You might as make it a risk that's worth taking
to make your life that much more memorable. Number three
(07:44):
recognized relationships need to be growing and partners need to
be positively influencing each other all the time. You got
to reinvent your relationships every seven years. You have chemical
hormones that hold you together for that period. But if
you don't grow together, you will grow apart. And the
family is the final defense in the time of adversity.
So whether I'm dealing with the patient is not doing well,
(08:04):
or I messed up with taping the kids in my case,
the grandkids now because my older daughter Nathley has got
a bunch of them. They want to play Horsey. Right,
They're living in the moment and I've got to keep
up with them. And don't forget that when your form relationships,
you're already separating from each other because you have expectations
of each other. Allow those expectations to change, to keep
up with time so that you can rebuild those relationships.
Whether it's the person you're loved with, remember your family
(08:26):
already like your parents, or it's the job that you're
about to engage in, even the school that you're graduating from.
Those relationships have to mature, as do your relationships with
the students that went to school with you. All right,
Number two, never forget the body is a temple of
the soul, not just drugs and alcohol. That I'm talking
about things better, better than that and bigger than that.
It's not even cigarettes whose havoc at battle daily, but
(08:48):
it's subtle transgressions like junk food, like a lack of exercise,
like realizing that your physical health right is gonna dramatically
color your mental health. If your body is doing what
it needs to do, then your mind will come along
for the ride. Remember, the one thing that you can
change more dramatically than anything else is your body. And
if you can change what's happening inside your body, you
(09:09):
can change the world outside of it. That's what so
much of my focus has been on in life, sharing
wisdom with my own kids with Healthcore or Kids Foundation
that has changed the lives of so many around the country.
But if you can gain the confidence that you can
control your physical body by taking good care of it,
then the world around you seem much more manageable. And
let me take you to the last tip and the
(09:29):
most important you need to make the driving force in
your life. Love even more than wisdom. Humans don't wilt
because of darkness. We will't because of cold. Metaphorically, it's
the love you have for people, not the wisdom, not
the insights. It's the carrying for ose around you. And
you've got to know that love is the governing influence
because it's the perception of love more than it's mere
(09:50):
existence that matters to those around you. If you apply
love to the cold hearted decisions that you've got to
make in business, right, it makes them a lot easier
to make, and you make decisions is in a more
insightful way. Unfortunately, when you make cold hearted decisions, they're shortsighted,
especially if you don't have the emotion of love around them.
For example, studies of successful people have shown that's not
(10:10):
whether the child was well educated, whether the parents loved
the child, that were the most important issues. That's whether
the child perceived that they were loved right, And guess what.
For the child to perceive that they were loved, you
have to tell them they were loved. If they're blessed
with love, then they'll thrive. I'll get news for all
of you. You have been blessed with love, transparent love,
(10:30):
so please pass it along. The analogy is often made
that we're more like rain drops than individuals, and those
rain drops are falling into the sea of humanity spirituality.
I'll say it again. If you're like a rain drop,
you want to be with the rest of the water.
So do not take yourselves to seriously, but always, always,
be proud of who you are. Congratulations and good luck.
(11:02):
You can find a collection of incredible commencement addresses from
all your favorite speakers at the Commencement Podcast on I
Heart Radio or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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