{"id":5119,"date":"2014-11-04T23:29:35","date_gmt":"2014-11-05T05:29:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/?p=5119"},"modified":"2014-11-04T23:29:57","modified_gmt":"2014-11-05T05:29:57","slug":"the-brick-walls-are-there-for-a-reason-and-other-great-words-of-advice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/the-brick-walls-are-there-for-a-reason-and-other-great-words-of-advice\/","title":{"rendered":"The Brick Walls Are There For A Reason and other great words of advice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #993366;\">\u201cThe brick walls are there for a reason. They&#8217;re not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.&#8221;<\/span>\u00a0 ~ Randy Pausch<\/p>\n<p>If you don\u2019t know who Randy Pausch is, let me tell you a little about him. Randy was a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University and he started the building virtual worlds course at CMU.\u00a0In 2006, he learned he had pancreatic cancer.\u00a0 He was in his mid 40\u2019s.\u00a0 In August of 2007 he was told that his cancer was terminal and informed he had 3-6 months to live.\u00a0 Just a month later, on September 18, 2007, Randy got up and gave a lecture at Carnegie Mellon titled: \u201cThe Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.\u201d\u00a0 I had the opportunity to watch this talk that Randy gave and I have to tell you that it was incredibly touching.\u00a0 Here was a man who had just found out he only a short time to live, yet the tone of his talk was upbeat and funny and incredibly sincere and touching. He made me laugh and he made me tear up as I watched his talk.\u00a0 There is something so real about the words of a person who knows they only have a short time to live, and their perspective on life is so powerful to listen to because there is no pretense there of any kind.\u00a0 It is as genuine as it comes. Randy died on July 25, 2008 at the age of 47. Over 17 million people have watched his talk on You Tube.<\/p>\n<p>Let me share some of the great quotes that came from his talk and you will see why I was so touched by this man\u2019s words:<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #993366;\">\u201cWe cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #993366;\">\u201cNo matter how bad things are, you can always make things worse.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #993366;\">\u201cExperience is what you get when you didn&#8217;t get what you wanted. And experience is often the most valuable thing you have to offer.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #993366;\">\u201cA lot of people want a shortcut. I find the best shortcut is the long way, which is basically two words: work hard.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #993366;\">\u201cThe key question to keep asking is, Are you spending your time on the right things? Because time is all you have. \u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #993366;\">\u201cTime is all you have and you may find one day that you have less than you think.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #993366;\">\u201cComplaining does not work as a strategy. We all have finite time and energy. Any time we spend whining is unlikely to help us achieve our goals. And it won&#8217;t make us happier.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #993366;\">\u201cToo many people go through life complaining about their problems. I&#8217;ve always believed that if you took one tenth the energy you put into complaining and applied it to solving the problem, you&#8217;d be surprised by how well things can work out.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #993366;\">\u201cIt&#8217;s not about how to achieve your dreams, it&#8217;s about how to lead your life, &#8230; If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself, the dreams will come to you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #993366;\">\u201cIf I only had three words of advice, they would be, Tell the Truth. If got three more words, I&#8217;d add, all the time.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #993366;\">\u201cWhen it comes to men who are romantically interested in you, it\u2019s really simple. Just ignore everything they say and only pay attention to what they do.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #993366;\">\u201cLook, I&#8217;m going to find a way to be happy, and I&#8217;d really love to be happy with you, but if I can&#8217;t be happy with you, then I&#8217;ll find a way to be happy without you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #993366;\">\u201cShowing gratitude is one of the simplest yet most powerful things humans can do for each other.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #993366;\">\u201cPeople are more important than things.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p>If any of you want to here the entire talk you can find it below (the full talk is just over an hour). \u00a0What a great man and what great words of advice to all of us. Have an amazing day everyone!<\/p>\n<p>~Amy<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/iframewidth=420height=315src=\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ji5_MqicxSoframeborder=0allowfullscreen\/iframe\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ji5_MqicxSo\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cThe brick walls are there for a reason. They&#8217;re not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.&#8221;\u00a0 ~ Randy Pausch If you don\u2019t know who Randy Pausch is, let me tell you a little about him. Randy was a professor [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3770,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5219,46,855,5214,5215,4159,5217,1620,5221,201,151,65,180,494,629,464,478,232,64,5222,35,770,134,5213,3449,5220,1925,677,5218,78,336,5216,813,3201,866,250,1357],"class_list":["post-5119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-achieving-your-childhood-dreams","tag-attitude","tag-cancer","tag-carnegie-mellon-university","tag-cmu","tag-complaining","tag-computer-science","tag-death","tag-died","tag-dreams","tag-example","tag-gratitude","tag-happy","tag-important","tag-inspiration","tag-joy","tag-legacy","tag-lessons","tag-life","tag-lived","tag-love","tag-motivational","tag-perspective","tag-randy-pausch","tag-romantic","tag-shortcut","tag-sincere","tag-speech","tag-the-last-lecture","tag-time","tag-truth","tag-virtual-reality","tag-walt-disney","tag-whining","tag-wisdom","tag-work","tag-you-tube"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5119"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11541,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5119\/revisions\/11541"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}