Today I set aside an hour and fifteen minutes and watched the famous last lecture titled "Really Achieving Your Childhood Goals" by the late Randy Pausch a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University. In August of 2006 Pausch was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and he passed away on July 25, 2008. I encourage you to watch the lecture and then ask yourself the question "Am I achieving my childhood goals?"

    I've been pondering this thought for about 6 months now, wondering if I have achieved anything that I intend to so far in my life. This is a tough concept to contemplate. I know personally that I find it very easy to know what I don't want to be doing and what I don't like, but I find it difficult to know what exactly I want to be doing. I think it is all too common that society expects us to clock in and out of our 40 hour a week job and we're suppose to believe that this is what it is all about. Is that really what life is about? If you found out tomorrow that you were going to die in the near future what would you do?

    Personally I don't feel like I'm working towards a dream. What I am working towards is my mortgage payment, health insurance, and achieving society's expectation of being a standup citizen. I'm beginning to believe that by working toward these goals I am failing myself and my dreams and I think that this is the case for most people. We get stuck doing what is expected of us and locked into financial concerns that prevent us from achieving our dreams. Working towards society goals causes us to lose sight and motivation for our own goals. When this happens then was life really worth it?

    I think that a lot of factors add up to us achieving our dreams. Knowing the dream – this can sometimes be the hardest. The daily noise seems to drown out the internal part of us that causes us to dream. I'm so busy accomplishing "tasks' during the day that the only thing I dream about doing is sitting down and doing nothing. Having the means to accomplish the dream – Accomplishing a dream can be a financial and time consuming task. Even when accomplishing the dream does not require a direct financial investment the time that is required for a dream could have an overall impact on things either financially or otherwise. Motivation – It's strange to not be motivated to accomplish your dreams, but the shear challenges faced in accomplishing a dream can affect the desire to complete it. Support from others – Support from others to achieve your dream can have a powerful impact. I've found that most people are negative towards the concept of me accomplishing my dreams, either because they feel it is impossible, or because the dream goes against society's norm. If one person I trusted pulled me aside and told me to per sue one of my dreams now it would probably be enough motivation for me to go do it.

Are you achieving your dreams?