It's hard to come away from Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture:� ; Achieving Your Childhood Dreams without feeling inspired. It's impossible not to
sense that you've just spent an hour with one of those truly superior individuals who hasn't been passively putting on time on the planet, he has been
living his life.� ; It's impossible not to notice that he has learned a lot, and because he is a born teacher, he is sharing it.
A very good friend of mine watched this with me recently, and I was struck by the first thing they referenced afterwards was virtually the only negative in the entire program. Fairly early he talks about practicing with a football team.� ; No ball. Coach asks how many men on a team. 22.How many has the ball at any given moment? 1. Right. Today we're going to focus on what the other 21 are doing. Moral: what is NOT THERE is sometimes the most significant. Afterwards, someone comments that the coach ran them pretty hard, and he agrees. "And that's good. When people have STOPPED TELLING YOU YOU'RE SCREWING UP, THAT'S THE END. It's over. Because it means they've given up on you.
Now that is very true. I was also struck by that particular insight when it occurred during the Pausch's talk, mostly because it brought something happening elsewhere into sharp focus, but to walk away from an entire hour of a lecture that is ostensibly about achieving dreams and being focused only on that sentence and the fact that most 19 year old males are out of ideas if you take porn and gunfire off the table, that's just astonishingly negative. It's not "glass half empty" it's "there are 4 sips missing from this glass and I'll bet it's already contaminated with backwash." Come on! I blame the same media and internet phenomena as my friend does for the teenage and 20-somethings with pathetically stunted imaginations, but if we listen to where that story goes next, it turns around DRAMATICALLY, and it turns around VERY, VERY FAST.
It's Monday morning. There are a hundred reasons to be bummed if you want to be. But there are just as many, if not more, reasons to be encouraged, if you want to be. So which do you want to focus on?
Complete lecture for those who haven't seen it. It is well worth the time:
�
A very good friend of mine watched this with me recently, and I was struck by the first thing they referenced afterwards was virtually the only negative in the entire program. Fairly early he talks about practicing with a football team.� ; No ball. Coach asks how many men on a team. 22.How many has the ball at any given moment? 1. Right. Today we're going to focus on what the other 21 are doing. Moral: what is NOT THERE is sometimes the most significant. Afterwards, someone comments that the coach ran them pretty hard, and he agrees. "And that's good. When people have STOPPED TELLING YOU YOU'RE SCREWING UP, THAT'S THE END. It's over. Because it means they've given up on you.
Now that is very true. I was also struck by that particular insight when it occurred during the Pausch's talk, mostly because it brought something happening elsewhere into sharp focus, but to walk away from an entire hour of a lecture that is ostensibly about achieving dreams and being focused only on that sentence and the fact that most 19 year old males are out of ideas if you take porn and gunfire off the table, that's just astonishingly negative. It's not "glass half empty" it's "there are 4 sips missing from this glass and I'll bet it's already contaminated with backwash." Come on! I blame the same media and internet phenomena as my friend does for the teenage and 20-somethings with pathetically stunted imaginations, but if we listen to where that story goes next, it turns around DRAMATICALLY, and it turns around VERY, VERY FAST.
It's Monday morning. There are a hundred reasons to be bummed if you want to be. But there are just as many, if not more, reasons to be encouraged, if you want to be. So which do you want to focus on?
Complete lecture for those who haven't seen it. It is well worth the time:
�
