July 5, 2008 | General
I have just found a copy of a post that I originally wrote in March and thought I had lost when I accidentally wiped clean my original blog a few months ago. There is a good chance that you have heard the story and seen the video but even if you have, it's power does not diminish by watching it again. Below is the exact blog of my feelings about it at the time.
One thing about working for yourself is how you motivate yourself to get things done. When you are in a job, it's easier. I'm not saying it is better but you usually have either accountability to your boss, pressure of deadlines, awareness of company standards, customer expectations, legal obligations etc etc to drive you on.
When you start your own Home Business you initially have to find a way to motivate and discipline yourself, especially when you suffer setbacks or if things aren't happening as quickly as you would like. Surprisingly having money to pay the bills doesn't always do it and in fact it can have exactly the opposite effect if you let it take over your whole thinking.
I get my motivation by knowing that I made the right decision in quitting my job, knowing that if I work hard in my chosen venture then I can be successful and from articles and reports on inspirational people.
People like Randy Pausch.
Randy is a 46 year old American College Professor who you will see delivering what is called "The Last Lecture" to his college students. This is an academic tradition whereby a professor delivers the very last lecture that he would ever give if he were hypothetically about to die, only in Randy's case it is not hypothetical....
But it is not about death, it is about life. Over 1.3 million people have watched the full lecture on the internet, this is a shortened version for the Oprah show. It is very moving and a message of inspiration for us all.
http://video.stumbleupon.com/#p=ithct48cqw
By way of a brief update, Randy is not well at the moment as he has recently had another session of Chemo therapy but he is still alive, 10 months after he was told that he had 3 - 6 months to live. You can follow his personal blog (which contains another inspiration message that he gave to the graduates of Carnegie Mellon University) at www.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/
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