Are you an Eeyore or a Tigger?

I thought I would share one person who has truly inspired me this year. His name is Randy Pausch. You may have heard of him and his "Last Lecture". He was an amazing man. I was very saddened to hear of his passing mid July.

If you have never heard of Randy Pausch, he was a professor Carnegie Mellon University, and a father of three small children. At age 46, he found out that he had pancreatic cancer. As time went by, and it was determined that cancer would ultimately take his life sooner rather than later, he gave his "last lecture" to a crowd at Carnegie Mellon. That lecture inspired the crowd, and became a worldwide phenomon.

Randy knew that he would not be able to watch his small children grow up, and instead of being angry and bitter about that he decided that he would make his remaining time with them count. He started documenting his thoughts about their futures, and figuring out ways to be involved with them after he was gone. Alot of this is in his "last lecture" as well as the book he wrote.

In Randy's last lecture, one of the things he asks is are you a Tigger or an Eeyore? One of the robotics mentors asked Collin's robotics team today to figure out which one you are. Tigger being the bouncy, happy, get things done type of guy, while Eeyore being the lazy, whining, never happy kind of guy.

I think it is easy to get into the complaining mode...I know I do it quite often, but then I remember Randy Pausch and through all his chronic struggles with pain, cancer treatments, he did the best he could to make time for his kids...and that is amazing.