There is no other man like Tom Cruise. Here, he tells us about how he became the man he is now — through singing, through his paper route as a kid, through the divorce of his parents, and through one ride on a motorcycle…

I was eight years old when I started to figure it out: You work.

Someone told me about greeting cards. You could sell them door-to-door. But you gotta figure out how. How do I get the job? How do I do the job?

I figured it out.

A feeling of accomplishment and independence came along with it. It helps if I can buy myself a pair of sneakers. These small steps of personal awareness came with the work. You know what else I found out? The better I became at the job, the better I could do it. The better I got at delivering newspapers, the more clients I got. And if I missed delivering the paper to a certain house one day, it was: Wow. This guy’s pissed. Then it becomes: What do I do here? And I realized, Oh, I gotta talk to this guy. Handle it. Then you see: Oh, I can fix this. By taking responsibility, I can fix this.

I was lost in so many other areas that a kid couldn’t possibly figure out. But I could deliver that paper route. Even with everything else whirling around you, you can have little wins.

All those moments on the newspaper route and selling greeting cards led up to this. I might not know what they were talking about, but I knew what I could do. I could work. Let me figure this out.

For more wisdom, read Tom Cruise’s full What I’ve Learned at Esquire.com.