It’s Monday morning and I think of Mondays as the best day of the week. I have a whole week ahead of me and it’s exciting. For a couple of years I used to start Mondays with a CEO call led by Cindy Samuelson. It was inspiring and left you feeling like you could do anything. So as I was thinking of what to write for my post today, I looked at my bookshelf and the book that jumped out at me was “The Last Lecture” by Randy Pausch. At the age of 46 Randy Pausch was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer. He was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and was wise beyond his years. Randy lived his life with integrity and was not afraid to follow his dreams. His legacy will live on forever. He is one of my mentors, and I hope I can inspire you through him. Here are a few lessons he taught at his “Last Lecture” at Carnegie Mellon.
- It’s not about how to achieve your dreams; it’s about how to live your life. If you live your life the right way, karma will take care of itself. Dreams will come to you.
- That is what it is; we just have to decide how we’re going to respond. We cannot change the cards we are dealt; just the way we are going to play the hand.
- If you want to achieve your dreams, you’d better work and play well with others. You might have to wait a long time, but people will show you their good side; just keep waiting, no matter how long it takes.
- Don’t complain; just work harder.
- Show gratitude.
- The best way to teach somebody something is to have them think they’re learning something else.
- Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want. The brick walls are there to show us how bad we want something.
Here is an address he gave to the graduates of Carnegie Mellon:
If you would like to see Randy’s last lecture, click on the link.
I hope you’re inspired and will live your life with passion.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I totally agree Connie. Complaining would only lead to procrastination and the worst thing that could happen is that it would demotivate you to work hard to reach your dreams. Be grateful of the obstacles that you’ll encounter in reaching your dreams. Without these obstacles, you won’t learn new things and you won’t be able to enhance your skills and instill good values.
I love your comment John. We can’t see the big picture, so we quite often get frustrated by the obstacles. If we can practice being grateful for them, I think we would move past them a whole lot faster and learn the lessons we were meant to learn.
Connie
I am so amazed- I have had and read Randy’s book and just today my husband picked it up and flipped through it and we talked about it. Then I stubble upon your blog.
The lesson is keep living my dream!
It was obviously meant to be Michelle. What a perfect lesson to focus on. Keep living your dream!