[display_podcast]
Do you think often about the work your doing, and the motivation behind it?
I hope you do.
Whenever I talk about the good fortune I have to be able to share what I know with you, I almost always include something about how what YOU know, and what YOU teach, and what YOU sell is a BLESSING to those who buy it.
At least, I hope it is.
Because you're relieving someone's pain, or giving someone a path to happiness, or helping some save money or make money. Or you're helping them get healthy.
Or maybe what you do is far more important than that.
All people have dreams, and if you do whatever you can to help YOUR PEOPLE fulfill those dreams, you'll begin to live your own as well.
Randy Pausch had some dreams.
Randy is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and he's dying of cancer.
CMU had a program called "The Last Lecture" and it invited CMU professors to give the lecture they would give as if it were there last. For Randy, it really was his last.
Fortunately, it was recorded by CMU.
Randy has lasted longer than his doctors had suspected, probably due to some aggressive chemo therapy. He's hanigng on, but definitely deteriorating.
But he persists.
In fact, one of the strongest recurring themes in the lecture is something that resonates strongly with me, and made me think of my readers.
I get a lot of letters from new and struggling internet marketers talking about the hard time they're having. They've got a good product, a real mission, but are having trouble getting their project off the ground.
I don't know if one of those letters came from you, but even if it didn't, Randy's message is probably very relevant to you, too.
Randy talks about the dreams he had as a child, and how the most important ones actually came true. So even if the real message of the talk is NOT about perserverence, he certainly makes the point.
You could actually argue that the brick walls that are placed directly in the path of your own aspirations — the ones that get right in your way and even set you back — are actually good for you.
Because they thin the herd.
At about 18 minutes into the presentation, Randy says "Brick walls are there for a REASON. They are not there to keep US out, they are there to give us a chance to show how bad WE WANT something. They're not there to stop those who want it enough. They're there to stop the OTHER people."
I don't know about you, but that's going up on my wall, in BIG LETTERS.
What are your brick walls? What did you have to overcome? What's in your way RIGHT NOW?
Well, I'd venture a guess that your walls are actually a blessing to you.
I've had walls, too. Lots of them.
How about this one:
I used to be shy. Very shy. My first autoresponder message was a struggle for me to write. "Would anyone care what *I* think?" But shyness made me excel when I played Hide and Seek in elementary school. (I was very content to remain hidden, and I put all my energy into doing that very well.)
And if I could put two words together in front of a crowd of people back when i was a teeneager, it was a very good day.
Shyness kept me back until I started to work hard to conquer it. To blast through it. To pretend I wasn't shy until I had forgotten that I was.
It took a lot to get over that. But I did it.
Lots of things have stood in my way since then, and many more still do. I'll share them with you one day.
But what about YOU?
Do you want your dreams bad enough? Do you want to BREAK THROUGH that wall thoroughly and completely?
What are your walls with your online business? Is it traffic? Is it technical? Is it knowledge? Is it Product Creation? Is it experience? Is it commitment? Is it Focus?
More importantly, what are your LIFE's WALLS? Do you forget to keep your promises? Do you think about yourself first? Are you too short, too fat, too old, or too young? Maybe you're too analytical? Too emotional? Too stubborn? Too easily distracted?
Did a person of authority tell you "NO"?
Are you just not happy?
Randy's happy, and he smiles a lot, which is unusual for a man who literally has just a few months more to live. But it's a habit for him, because he's always smiled.
All through his childhood. All through his adult life. And now, as he's dying.
Randy's message is much, much bigger than what I'm sharing with you here, but while watching his lecture I thought of you, and me, and all the people I know.
And our Brick Walls.
Because he reminds us that giving is more important than receiving, that anything worthwhile is difficult, and that anything is made much better if you keep smiling.
That said, I bet you cry about an hour and eleven minutes into the video.
And at the end.
I hope you watch it.
And when you're done, I hope you share with me and my other readers the most important message that you received from this talk, both for you as a person and for you in your business.
To Your Success…and your Dreams,
–Mark Widawer
p.s. How will Randy's last lecture affect you, and how you go about your work? What impact does his talk have on you? Please comment and share your thoughts.