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THE LAST LECTURE has always been one of my favorite books on the list. Here is a list of top 10 reasons as to why I love the book. I have been a fan of both the lecture – Video and the book as well. Amongst a lot of other reasons why I love the book, these are some real good takeaways from it.

1) Achieving childhood dreams

Dreams start right from the time you start thinking, or maybe earlier than that. When you are a child, all the dreams sound like fantasy, after we grow up a little, sometimes we even dare to laugh at them saying how stupid some of them felt. Well, you can definitely do that or see and realize that there is a way to make even these come true, may not be in the same exact format, but definitely in a different way, but no one ever said that it is not gonna happen. If they did, why did you even listen?

2) People are more important than things

At some point, Randy Pausch says – A car, even as expensive as a pontaic is just a car and nothing else. Of course I am paraphrasing, but the message is certainly loud and clear. We live in a world where the external factors are very important, your appearance, the kind of clothes you wear, the car you drive, the house you live in and so on.. But something more important than that is who you are and the biggest achievers in the world are the ones who have kept people ahead of the smaller things.

3) Never give up

Well failures are a part of life, if you look very closely, there are ways in which we fail each day. If we start focusing on each one of them, there is no way we can live, the best thing to do is give up and throw your hands in despair. But we are bigger than that, the only people who fail in life are the ones who actually give up!

4) Difficulties are there not to stop you but to know how badly you want

The moment we hit a bump on the road, it makes us think, do we need to choose a different road, is it a wrong path I chose, I mean this is not perfect at all. I have hit a stop sign! Well a stop sign just means that you have to wait a bit and proceed again, not give up and go home. The difficulties or the road bumps are just to keep questioning yourself as to how badly you want that something and how far you are going to go to make that happen.

5) We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.

Well the easiest exit in life is to blame the circumstances, scenarios, people, cry foul and then make an exit. But truth is when things happen, they do. You don’t have a time machine to go back and set it right, it is just about how you deal with it. You can sit and cry or stand and plan. The choice is always yours, even in the game of poker, I do agree that cards matter but something more valuable than that is who you are as a person and how you deal with it!

6) Luck is where perspiration meets opportunity

Isn’t it funny? The luckiest people in the world are the ones who have achieved a lot! What is funnier is that these people keep getting luckier and luckier and it never seems to end! And the unluckiest ones are the ones who fail once or twice. But if you observe closely, the luckier ones have failed more than the unlucky ones, the only difference was in the amount of perseverance and perspiration. They just made it happen and stayed there till it happened no matter what the circumstances were.

7) Get feedback and listen to it

Well people are more than happy to offer feedback when you are not ready to listen. I agree the logic of turning a deaf ear to idiots, but what we are saying is, if the person is an idiot, neglect him. But if what he is saying makes sense, take it on the merit of the statement, see if it is going to be of any use to you and then find a way to put it to the best results. That is taking  a feedback.

8) Gratitude for lessons learnt in life

One of the richest men once said – The secret of true richness in life is GRATITUDE. The moment we start thanking the opportunities in our lives, the challenges, the problems, the spirit, the true essence of who we are, we have a renewed sense of accpetance and acknowledgement to who we are and realize how gifted our lives are and how many things we take for granted. It is one thing to know what we have in life, it is another to appreciate the same in life.

9) Enable the dreams of others

The one way to keep your dreams alive is to try and enable others succeed in their dreams. Success has a continual effect, the more you help others, the more invigorated a spirit you have to reach there and make it happen. One of the greatest joys in life is sharing and what you are sharing is one of the most divine factors of life – A DREAM in its own essence, won’t that find a way to come back to offer you a life much richer? 

10) No one is all evil; everybody has a good side

We live in a society of labels where someone who did wrong once is considered bad and the one who succeeds once is a great man no matter what wrong he does in life. But what are we actually doing? Are we punishing a bad behavior or the person? And if we are punishing the person, what gives us the right? Come on, everyone has a good side, the real question is – Are you capable enough to bring out that in them. And that is all the essence of beauty and evil in life.