If you have a pulse you MUST watch this video!

This is one of my favorite inspirational videos of all time. You may have seen this already as this guy was on Oprah but it’s worth watching again and again and again. In September of 2007, Randy Pausch gave a final lecture to his students at Carnegie Mellon. It has since been downloaded more than a million times on the Internet.

There’s an academic tradition called the Last Lecture. Hypothetically, if you knew you were going to die and you had one last lecture, what would you say to your students?

Well, for Randy, it wasn’t hypothetical as he was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer.

Here are some of the golden nuggets I got from the video:

You can’t control the cards you’re dealt, just how you play the hands.

We all have childhood dreams and it’s very important to remember that anything is possible and we should never lose that spirit.

Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you wanted.

When you’re doing a bad job and nobody points it out to you it’s because nobody cares about you.

Brick walls are in the way of our dreams for a reason: They let us prove how badly we want things.

Always have fun and have a sense of wonder.

Be humble.

Express your creativity.

People are a lot more important than things.

Decide if you’re Tigger or Eeyore.

Live with integrity.

Tell the truth.

When you screw up apologize.

A good apology has 3 parts:
1. I’m sorry
2. It was my fault
3. How do I make it right? Most people skip that third part. That’s how can you tell sincerity.

Show gratitude, it’s very powerful!

Don’t complain; just work harder.

If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself. The dreams will come to you if you live properly.

Just ignore everything people say and just pay attention to what they do.

The best definition I know of time well spent is to have helped a lot of other people.