This is a story about the power both the heart and mind have in influencing others. In this case, the one influenced is me. We rely on the most generous of souls to help us find our way.
It all begins with a short email I receive from a friend of mine back in early December 2008. I had just began my leave of absence from my full time work (systems engineer of 13years). Aakin has been one of my "brother like" friends for many years and a personal guru of unconventional forms (rpg games, iced coffee runs, and conversational walks). Aakin mentioned that Seth Godin was giving a 6 month business program. He was offering an abbreviated yet unique MBA experience not too far from my home (Port Jefferson Station, NY). After looking Seth up my first instinct was that he was a marketing hype slickster who was about to get some free labor out of super dedicated/enthusiastic people. It was also just a couple of days before the deadline and I had no idea how to proceed even if I was interested.
After a couple of weeks of exploring my new found freedom from a regular work schedule I came across some videos on Open Forum. I watched Richard Bransen sharing some of his wisdom earned by growing Virgin. The interview was with this Seth Godin character once again. This time I listened to some of Seth's video's on Open Forum and was impressed by how much his ideas jived with my own internal common sense/market view. This was a guy worth listening too, so I subscribed to his blog's RSS feed in my Google Reader. Since then I discovered the joy's of Squidoo, a fast growing web community started by Seth and some of his good friends. I've found the time to write up a few lenses for this platform and I'm sure I'll make the time to write more, but it's a powerful tool in the hands of a motivated web author.
In a recent post Seth suggested his readers explore Chris Guillebeau's website. Trusting Seth's suggestion I happily browsed to The Art of Non-Conformity. I'm very glad I decided to read some of Chris' ideas. He's offering wonderful tools to help align your perspective on the goal of self employment (for free!) and life path seeking. Within his first mini eBook World Domination he suggests we watch a short YouTube video from a professor diagnosed with pancreatic/liver cancer.
That brings us to the end of today's story. Randy Pausch was generous enough to offer us all this Last Lecture series Achieving Your Childhood Dreams. Randy talks about discovering and realizing our dreams, and enabling the dreams of others. He shares a heart felt look at how his dreams affected him, and discusses the lessons that really stayed with him, especially when the dream never came to fruition. He shows us that the power of dreams is realized in our dedication to them. In their pursuit Randy draws our attention to the "head fake" indirect learning that becomes the true prize.
Although Randy passed away June 25th, 2008 he left all of us with his enduring legacy. Thanks Randy, the power of your story continues to provide others with hope.