HOST: Today we hear from film and TV producer Brian Grazer. With director Ron Howard, he runs Imagine Entertainment; their most recent movie was The Da Vinci Code. With an Oscar, Emmys, and critical and financial successes to his credit, Brian Grazer has a certain amount of power in Hollywood. His phone calls get answered. Still, he is a restless man. It turns out restlessness is a way of life for him, a belief in fact. Here is Brian Grazer with his essay for This I Believe. ESSAY: I was 45 years old when I decided to learn how to surf. Picture this scene: The North Shore of Oahu -- the toughest, most competitive surfing spot on the planet. Fourteen-foot swells. Twenty tattooed locals. And me, five-foot, eight-inches of abject terror. What will get me first, I wondered, the next big wave or the guy to my right with the tattoo on his chest that reads RIP? They say that life is tough enough. But I guess I like to make things difficult for myself, because I do that all the time. Every day and on purpose. That's because I believe in disrupting my comfort zone. When I first started out in the entertainment business, I made a list of people I thought it would be good to meet. Not people who could give me a job or a deal, but people who could shake me up, teach me something, challenge my ideas about myself and the world. So I started calling up experts in all kinds of fields: trial lawyers, neurosurgeons, CIA agents, embryologists, firewalkers, police chiefs, hypnotists, forensic anthropologists and even presidents. Some of them -- like Carlos Castaneda, Jonas Salk, and Fidel Castro -- were world-famous. Of course, I didn't know any of these people and none of them knew me. So when I called these people up to ask for a meeting, the response wasn't always friendly. And even when they agreed to give me some of their time, the results weren't always what one might describe as pleasant. Take, for example, Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb. You've heard of him? However he'd never heard of me. It took me a year of begging, cajoling and more begging to get to him to agree to meet with me. And then what happened? He ridiculed me and insulted me. But that was okay. I was hoping to learn something from him -- and I did, even if it was only that I'm not that interesting to a physicist with no taste or interest in pop culture. Over the last 30 years, I've produced more than 50 movies and 20 television series. I'm successful and, in my business, pretty well-known. I'm a guy who could retire to the golf course tomorrow where the worst that could happen is that my Bloody Mary is watered-down. So why do I continue to subject myself to this sort of thing? The answer is simple: Disrupting my comfort zone, bombarding myself with challenging people and situations, this is the best way I know to keep growing. And to paraphrase a biologist I once met, if you?re not growing, you're dying. So maybe I'm not the best surfer on the north shore but that's okay. The discomfort, the uncertainty, the physical and mental challenge that I get from this -- all the things that too many of us spend our time and energy trying to avoid -- they are precisely the things that keep me in the game.

HOST:   Our This I Believe essay today comes from Alaa El-Saad  [ah-LAAH ell-SAHD], a 15-year-old student at John B. Connally High School in Austin, Texas.  Alaa is Muslim and she writes not so much of belief in that religion, but her right to express that belief.  Here's Alaa el-Saad with her essay for This I Believe.

EL-SAAD: America is built on the idea of freedom, and there is no exception for Muslim women.  I believe in the freedom of religion and speech.  But mostly, I believe it’s OK to be different, and to stand up for who and what you are. So I believe in wearing the hijab.

The hijab is a religious head covering, like a scarf. I am Muslim and keeping my head covered is a sign of maturity and respect toward my religion and to Allah’s will.  To be honest, I also like to wear it to be different. I don’t usually like to do what everyone else is doing.  I want to be an individual, not just part of the crowd.  But when I first wore it, I was also afraid of the reaction that I’d get at school.

I decided on my own that sixth grade was the time I should start wearing the hijab.  I was scared about what the kids would say or even do to me. I thought they might make fun of me, or even be scared of me and pull off my headscarf. Kids at that age usually like to be all the same, and there’s little or no acceptance for being different.

On the first day of school, I put all those negative thoughts behind my back and walked in with my head held high. I was holding my breath a little, but inside I was also proud to be a Muslim, proud to be wearing the hijab, proud to be different.

I was wrong about everything I thought the kids would say or even do to me. I actually met a lot of people because of wearing my head covering. Most of the kids would come and ask me questions—respectfully—about the hijab, and why I wore it.

I did hear some kid was making fun of me, but there was one girl—she wasn’t even in my class, we never really talked much—and she stood up for me, and I wasn’t even there!  I made a lot of new friends that year, friends that I still have until this very day, five years later.

Yes, I’m different, but everyone is different here, in one way or another.  This is the beauty of America.

I believe in what America is built on:  all different religions, races and beliefs.  Different everything.