SYLVESTER STALLONE: “I Wasn’t Stupid. I Was Just Misunderstood.”

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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Jay Shetty (0:30)

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So one of my best memories growing up, and I don't have a lot of those, was actually watching Rocky with my dad. And my dad introduced me to the franchise and I know this for sure, I've watched the Rocky franchise including Five and Balboa after that, more than I've watched any other franchise in my lifetime. So I watch it back every year. There's only two things I watch to get motivated every year and one of them is Rocky, sir.

Sylvester Stallone (2:57)

I appreciate it. I thought you're going to ask for a refund. Okay, great.

Jay Shetty (3:02)

Hey, it's Jay. I don't know what your day has been like, but I was just thinking about you for a minute. And I hope you're being a little patient with yourself because you deserve it. And yeah, I'll talk to you soon.

Sylvester Stallone, welcome to On Purpose.

Sylvester Stallone (3:27)

Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Jay Shetty (3:29)

I want to start off by saying I don't get to start every interview this way. I've had the fortune of interviewing lots of incredible people, people who've achieved amazing things, done amazing things. But it's rare that you get to sit down with one of your personal heroes.

I wanted to ask you, you start this book, telling us about The Fortune Teller, and I wanted to know why you start there? Why do you tell us what's about to happen?

Sylvester Stallone (3:51)

I just think there's more things happening in the universe than we tend to give credit to.

I was at the very lowest level. I'm at that age of what everyone's trying to find themselves in. I think we have about three or four major crossroads that we have, and that's one that comes around 21 years old, 20, that you go, what am I going to do? What am I going to be? How do I find the right path? What's going to trigger my journey?

As I was walking down this gravel road in the mountains, I see it like, I said, it looks like the sign of a gypsy or something like fortune. You saw a hand, there's some lines up here. It's either a bathroom to wash your hands or it's a gypsy, one of the two. So I went in there, sure enough, there was like a real gypsy and she spoke broken English and she said things that came true years later. And I went, oh my God. So I've always believed from that moment on, even though I was born Catholic, I went through the whole process of theology. But sometimes as you get older, you bring in the question, what is God? What is the future? What is this? What is that? Yet we'll listen to a fortune teller. Yeah, but sometimes we don't believe in the church, but we'll believe in some person in a little shack. Well, I did at that time. And I wrote down everything and I would say 80 percent came true.