Yes, life’s hard. The price of diesel jumped to as much as P100 per liter. Thousands still face deportation in the US. Sumatran rhinos are still critically endangered. BTS concert 2026 tickets sold out in less than an hour.

That’s life. But when the going gets tough, award-winning actor, singer and producer Piolo Pascual only has one message for today’s youth: “Don’t be oversensitive!”

“Gen Zs now are very sensitive,” he shared during his recent launch as Esquire Philippines cover boy for April. “They quit right away! We were just talking about it.”

Asked for his advice to new generations of artists, he said: “You got to be resilient. If you want something, you work hard for it, regardless of what people throw at you. If you think you feel bad, pick up the pieces, move on, don’t carry any grudge. Grow, learn, evolve and always have a purpose to fulfill. Never stop learning. Never stop walking your path.”

If he could give this new generation some pieces of advice, it would be “to know your worth.”

“Study your craft. Give it more than a hundred percent. Don’t be too sensitive. If you want to achieve something, do something, if you want to travel, be able to provide for your family, then work hard regardless of what people throw at you. Just work hard… If you have that culture, that mindset, then people don’t exist.”

According to him, a philosophy he’s been practicing since he started is: “I never said I’m good enough.”

“I always wanted to be better than what I am and what I am today, so if there is something more that I could discover about myself and be a better person, I’d do it.”

Everything he did, he said, was a tribute to the showbiz industry. His goal is to bring “our content out there to the global market.”

“I want Filipino films to break out internationally. I want us to be proud of our heritage, our culture, our sensibilities. I want to be part of that movement, so if I could still work to be part of that movement in the next 50 years, why not?” he espoused.

“I love having a purpose. I love waking up every day to new challenges — just getting there, being better in what you do but being nicer, being more humble and just learning more how you could grow as a person and how many lives you could affect just by being yourself. And I guess, by the end of it, you feel better, you feel lighter.”

The Mallari actor never thought he would go this far. “But to be still here after 30 years, I’m happy to be given that opportunity…” he said.

When he and son Inigo were thinking of their plans five to 10 years from now, he realized that he has done so much in building and being in showbiz that he forgot to stop to smell the flowers because he was always on the go.

“And now for the first time in 30 years, I’ve haven’t got a TV show or a movie, so it’s been a couple of months that I’m doing shoots, tours, concerts, endorsements, but no anything regular onset. So I was able to look back and appreciate what I’ve done and look back at the last 30 years of my work. It made me smile.”