Jim Carrey encouraged students to take a leap of faith and chase their dreams in an inspiring speech

In 2014, actor Jim Carrey surprised students at the Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa, with an inspiring speech. In true Jim Carrey fashion, it was sprinkled with humor but also comprised deep and profound wisdom that still rings true today. The "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" star shared a poignant story about his father to the graduates and urged them never to settle. 

“Now fear is going to be a player in life, but you get to decide how much. You can spend your whole life imagining ghosts, worrying about the pathway to the future, but all it will ever be is what’s happening here, the decisions that we make at this moment, which are based in either love or fear,” Carrey said during the speech. “So many of us choose our path out of fear disguised as practicality. What we really want seems impossibly out of reach and ridiculous to expect, so we never dare to ask the universe for it.”

The star's father Percy Carrey lost his accounting job when young Carrey was just 12 years old and the family then “had to do whatever we could to survive.” The 61-year-old actor told students that he believed his father too could have been a comedian if he hadn't been afraid of failure.

“My father could have been a great comedian but he didn’t believe that that was possible for him, and so he made a conservative choice. Instead, he got a safe job as an accountant,” Carrey said, according to The Wrap. “When I was 12 years old, he was let go from that safe job, and our family had to do whatever we could to survive. I learned many great lessons from my father, not the least of which was that you can fail at what you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.”

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the "A Series of Unfortunate Events "star didn't just attend the ceremony to address the graduating students. He also received the honorary degree of Doctor of Fine Arts Honoris Caus at the ceremony. The actor is also a believer in manifesting your dreams. According to Carrey, the secret to success is “letting the universe know what you want and working toward it.”

“Your job is not to figure out how it’s going to happen for you, it’s opening a door in your head, and when the door opens in real life, just walk through it,” he advised. And of course, no talk from Carrey could go without a couple of jokes. According to the Washington Post, he also told the students, “I’m here to plant a seed today. A seed that will inspire you to go forward in your life with enthusiastic hearts and a clear sense of wholeness. The question is, will that seed have a chance to take root or will I be sued by Monsanto?”