Big Idea Daily | The Last Lecture
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by Randy Pausch |
“Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted. And experience is often the most valuable thing you have to offer.”RANDY PAUSCH |
BIG IDEA
Dream Big
FROM THE BOOK“Men first walked on the moon during the summer of 1969, when I was eight years old.
I knew then that pretty much anything was possible. It was as if all of us, all over the world, had been given permission to dream big dreams.
I understand the arguments about how the billions of dollars spent to put men on the moon could have been used to fight poverty and hunger on Earth. But, look, I’m a scientist who sees inspiration as the ultimate tool for doing good.
When you use money to fight poverty, it can be of great value, but too often, you’re working at the margins. When you’re putting people on the moon, you’re inspiring all of us to achieve the maximum of human potential, which is how our greatest problems will eventually be solved.”
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Brian's Notes
That’s from a chapter called “Dream Big.”
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In our Notes on Living Untethered, we talked about the fact that the Sun is 93 MILLION miles away and the fact that it takes 8 minutes and 20 seconds for its light to reach us.
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We also talked about the STAGGERING fact that the next closest star is 4.2 LIGHT YEARS away—which, if my math is right, is 24,690,000,000,000,000. That’s 24 QUADRILLION miles away. And... While we’re blowing our brains up with crazy numbers... Did you know that there are 200 BILLION stars in our Universe? Wrap your brain around the space to hold all THAT!
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So... When I read that passage, I immediately thought to myself, “How far away is the moon?”
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Enter: Google search query... Answer: 238,900 miles.
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Think about sending someone to WALK ON THE MOON in the 1960s. That’s crazy. If we can do THAT... then, I completely agree with Randy: “pretty much anything is possible.”
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I LOVE this line as well: “Inspiration as the ultimate tool for doing good.” ← For our purposes, this is why I’m CONSTANTLY challenging YOU to be that (radiant exemplar!) inspiration for your families and communities. Who we are will always speak more loudly than any lecture we give—which is precisely why Randy’s last lecture was so wonderfully popular.
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Practically speaking... I searched my Mac for “moonshot” to find some parallel wisdom.
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I found this gem on goal setting from Brian Cain’s The 10 Pillars of Mental Performance Mastery: “Setting big goals is great, but they have to be the right goals or they become traps. Financial goals must be secondary to family goals or you won’t have any family to set goals with. You also need to have telescope and microscope goals. Telescope goals that you can see off into the future, and then you must reverse engineer a process back to your microscope and execute on your microscopic daily goals. Telescope goals are 1, 3, 5+ years into the future and the microscope goals are what you will do in the next 24 hours to move towards your telescope goals. Remember, inch by inch, goal setting is a cinch and yard by yard, it’s hard.”
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Here’s to our telescopic moonshot goals brought to life by our microscopic daily excellence!
Big Ideas
01: THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM
02: I NEVER MADE IT TO THE NFL
03: DREAM BIG
04: EARNEST
05: THINK NEGATIVELY
“Time is all you have. And you may find that one day you have less than you think.”RANDY PAUSCH |
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