Live like you are dying is a great song by Tim McGraw. Unfortunately, Randy Pausch, is following his advice, because he is dying. In a Carnegie lecture, recreated on Oprah, Pausch provides some great life lessons. I’m sharing this because I think it also had a lot of insight into how to run a successful business. If you apply his principles to your business, you probably have no choice but to excel.
Creating his “last lecture”, Pausch provides insight into how to achieve your childhood dreams:
If you lead your life the right way the karma will take care of itself. If you live well, your dreams will come to you.”
Have fun & a sense of wonder: Learn to live life with joy. Laugh, smile and be humble. Never underestimate the power of having fun!
Stop whining: I love the story here of Pausch whining about the work it took to earn his PHD. You can spend your time complaining, or spending time playing the game hard. Stop whining, work hard and have fun.
Be creative: It is more important to be able to express yourself than to have everything perfect.
Love people more than things: What an incredible story. I love how a simple spilled soda on a new car made an 8yr old feel better about having the flu.
Live with integrity. Do the right thing and when you screw up, own up to it and apologize. Find out how you can make it right. Be sincere.
Show gratitude: Be sure that the people around you know how important they are.
I don’t know about you, but I’m adding his book, The Last Lecture to my reading list. (summary below)
A lot of professors give talks titled “The Last Lecture.” Professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them. And while they speak, audiences can’t help but mull the same question: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?
When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn’t have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave–“Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams”–wasn’t about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because “time is all you have…and you may find one day that you have less than you think”). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living.
In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humor, inspiration and intelligence that made his lecture such a phenomenon and given it an indelible form. It is a book that will be shared for generations to come.
“We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.” –Randy Pausch
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