Have you heard of Randy Pausch?
From Wikipedia:
Randolph Frederick Pausch (October 23, 1960 – July 25, 2008) was an American professor of computer science and human-computer interaction and design at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Pausch learned that he had pancreatic cancer, a terminal illness, in September of 2006. He gave an upbeat and adage-laden lecture entitled "The Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" on September 18, 2007 at Carnegie Mellon, which became a popular YouTube video [viewed by tens of millions]
Randy Pausch died on July 25th, 2008. "The Last Lecture" - a book about Pausch - was published in 2008 and became a New York Times best-seller; it has since been translated into 17 languages.
I have not read the book, but I have viewed the actual lecture several times. I have embedded it below - it is an hour and fifteen minutes, but well worth the time. I suggest splitting it in two parts and watching it over the weekend (actually, once you start watching you will most likely go all the way through in one sitting).
It is hard to pick out quotes from the lecture, as it is literally filled with motivational, life lessons. But here are a few of my favorites:
"Brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want something badly enough. They are there to keep out the other people."
"We can’t change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand. If I’m not as depressed as you think I should be, I’m sorry to disappoint you."
"Be willing to apologize. Proper apologies have three parts: 1) What I did was wrong. 2) I’m sorry that I hurt you. 3) How do I make it better? It’s the third part that people tend to forget…. Apologize when you screw up and focus on other people, not on yourself."
"Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted…. I probably got more from that dream [of playing professional football] and not accomplishing it than I got from any of the ones that I did accomplish."
"It is not about achieving your dreams but living your life. If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself, the dreams will come to you."
"Never underestimate the importance of having fun. I’m dying and I’m having fun. And I’m going to keep having fun every day, because there’s no other way to play it….Having fun for me is like a fish talking about the importance of water. I don’t know how it is like not to have fun."
"I’ve never understood pity and self-pity as an emotion. We have a finite amount of time. Whether short or long, it doesn’t matter. Life is to be lived."
"To be cliché, death is a part of life and it’s going to happen to all of us. I have the blessing of getting a little bit of advance notice and I am able to optimize my use of time down the home stretch."
visit "The T.A.D. Principle"
