The Power of Inspirational People and Their Stories

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I find that one of the most effective tools for achieving personal growth is finding out about inspirational people and their stories. Hearing about a person who has broken the mold and created their own amazing path in life never fails to make me re-examine my own life and realize how I could be doing the same.

I wasn’t sure if I should post this kind of stuff though, as those stories wouldn’t quite be in line with the theme of this blog, which is how to use psychology for personal growth. Recently, however, I came across this survey by a couple of positive psychology researchers that changed my mind.

The two researchers did an internet poll of almost 1500 adults interested in positive psychology (which is the personal growth version of psychology) and asked them what they wanted to know about positive psychology. They found that what most people wanted was:

compelling case examples of actual people who lived life well, who embodied the strengths of character that we have been studying with quantitative methods.

I think that’s an excellent way to approach it. Inspirational stories are often centered around people who have done great things in business, made a lot of money, or accomplished an impressive list of things. It’s much less often that we hear about people who have lived their lives well, and embodied the values that lead not to a successful life, but to a happy life. (Of course the two are by no means mutually exclusive, you can be both happy and successful)

So I’m going to try and make Fridays Inspirational People and Stories Day. What I hope to do is tell you about people who are actually out there living the kind of of happy life we would all like to be living.

And as this is Friday, the first inspirational person profile starts right now. I hope it’s as inspiring to you as it was to me.

A marvelous example of what it means to live well: Carnegie Mellon Computer Science Professor Randy Pausch, whose “last lecture” is all over the Internet (e.g.. www.randypausch.com) [Or the bottom of this post]. Lots of universities, including my own, feature an annual “last lecture” in which award-winning teachers are asked to imagine that they are near death and to convey their final thoughts to students. I hope we all have the decency to retire the title, because now there is but one last lecture, the one by Professor Pausch.

In case you have been living under a rock, at the time of the lecture and at the time of my writing, he is dying, the victim of an aggressive pancreatic cancer. His last lecture was not maudlin, not saccharine, not filled with false bravado. It was simply wonderful. Five minutes into my watching, I forgot that he was dying. What captivated me was how he was living.

I watched his last lecture wearing many hats. As a teacher, I was inspired. As a lecturer, I was filled with admiration. As a human being, I was proud.

Watch it yourself. No summary I could offer would do it justice.

I completely agree, no summary would do it justice. The video is about his life and what he has accomplished but what really stands out is how he lived that life.

Randy Pausch is a truly inspiring person and his last lecture captures that perfectly. It’s long (1:16:27) but it has over 2 million views on YouTube, and with good reason. If you watch the whole thing you wont be disappointed.