“You’re never finished in life until you accept you’re finished.”
In short: David Icke is an author and speaker who joined Brian Rose in 2018 for this London Real Success Secrets clip. He shares the best advice he received from his father, and describes how facing public ridicule made him stronger.
Asked for the best advice he has ever received, David talks about his father, who was born in 1907, lived through the First World War as a child and served in the medical corps in the Second World War. His father told him he was never finished until he accepted he was finished.
David says that line came back to him powerfully when he faced mass ridicule, and he describes how he responded by touring university student unions.
Key takeaways
- You are never finished until you accept it. David’s father told him this as a child, and he says it returned when he was ridiculed.
- Ridicule has two outcomes. He says you can disappear and go under, or come out with the steel honed in the fire.
- Face the room. He went on a speaking tour of student unions where audiences came to ridicule, and says it was strengthening.
- What you say reflects you. He argues that what we say about others is a statement about ourselves.
- Challenge what is accepted. He says everyone who opened up greater understanding was ridiculed and dismissed at first.
- Don’t bow. He says you need the backbone not to bow to it, so that the world has to move, not you.
Advice from his father
David describes his father as a character who had a challenging life. He was born in 1907, went through the First World War as a child, served in the medical corps in the Second World War and, David says, won the British Empire Medal for pulling people out of a burning plane.
His father’s advice, given when David was a child, was that it does not matter what anyone says about you or does, you are never finished until you accept you are finished.
Facing ridicule on stage
David says that advice came back when the mass ridicule began. He decided he was not going to go under. He says that when you face that level of ridicule you can either disappear or come out stronger, and he chose to speak at university student unions, where large audiences came to ridicule him.
He describes speaking at a Nottingham university to the noise of ridicule and plastic beer glasses thrown at the stage. He waited for it to die down, then asked the audience whether they thought he was mentally ill and what that said about them for paying to come and ridicule someone they believed was ill. He says there was silence for the rest of the night.
What ridicule says about the ridiculer
David argues that what we say about someone is really a statement about us, and that if people realised it there might be a nicer world online. He says his team’s third documentary, The Fifty Billion Dollar Man, is about a controversial American who lives in a castle in Scotland and is much ridiculed, and that the same theme runs through it.
He adds that if you challenge what a society considers normal, it may call you crazy, and that people who opened up new understanding were all ridiculed at first. These are his views as stated in the clip.
Who is David Icke?
David Icke is an author and speaker who appeared on London Real in 2018. In this Success Secrets clip he talks about his father, the public ridicule he faced and what he learned from it, and mentions a documentary his team made, The Fifty Billion Dollar Man.
Frequently asked questions
He says his father told him he was never finished in life until he accepted he was finished.
He says he decided not to go under, and toured university student unions where audiences came to ridicule him, which he found strengthening.
He says that what we say about someone is a statement about ourselves, so ridicule tells you about the person doing it.
David Icke says it is a documentary his team made about a controversial 72-year-old American who lives in a castle in Scotland.
You can watch the full clip free on this page, with the transcript below the video.
