This year, on my birthday, I received a special gift from a friend. My friend and his girlfriend gave me ‘The Last Lecture‘ by Randy Pausch (Oct. 23, 1960 - July 25, 2008) with Jeffrey Zaslow. Randy Pausch was a Computer Science Professor at Carnegie Mellon. Some of you may have read the book already. It was first the lecture before the book. ‘The Last Lecture’ is a series of talks by Professors who were asked to imagine their demise and to give talks on what matters most to them.

However, for Professor Randy Pausch, he didn’t need to imagine it as his last since he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and had only a few months left to live. His lecture was not about dying, but that of “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.” Through his moving presentation, Professor Pausch talked about his lessons learned and gave advice to students on how to achieve their own career and personal goals.

One of the points that sunk deep into me, like words set in stone, was the point he made about brick wall. If you watched ‘The Last Lecture’ video, which I have embedded here, he probably mentioned the brick wall about a dozen times. As he said, “Brick walls are there for a reason…” How true isn’t it?

Throughout our lives, we will have many brick walls. Some of which are invisible to the eyes like the emotional brick walls which we might build to protect ourselves and at the same times preventing others from reaching out to us. Such brick walls are the hardest to break through as it depends a lot on ourselves to break through them. And even before we can break through them, we have to be self-aware of these brick walls that we have built up around ourselves.

The other brick walls are often made of flesh; by our loved ones, our friends and people around us. It can be a challenge to break through these walls too especially when we knew that our loved ones and friends are concerned about us. However, being concerned about us doesn’t mean that they will always know what may be best for us. In this case, we not only have to break through the physical brick wall but also the emotional portion that comes with it.

However, as what Professor Randy Pausch said, “Brick walls are there for a reason…” They are there to test how much we wanted what we want. In his own words, “… The brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.”

Are you facing any brick wall in your life now? Do remember that the brick wall is there for a reason.

Creating a positive atmosphere is a leadership quality you can develop. You can be a one-person positive energy creator at your workplace, organization, or school.

Anyone can do this.

It doesn’t matter whether you are in management or an employee.

When you do things to create a positive atmosphere, you are displaying leadership skills that upper management will notice.

No matter how negative the people are at your workplace, you still have control over the most important thing - your own attitude.

A positive attitude creates positive energy for both the giver and receiver. Just like you cannot see the wind, but you can see the results, you cannot see the positive energy, but you can see the results in yourself and in the people you work with.

The following are 5 things you can do -today- to create a positive attitude in your workplace.

1. Greet everyone today with an enthusiastic “Hello” and a smile and good eye contact. You will get some smiles back creating a positive connection, and positive energy.

2. End every phone call and email with, “Have a great day.” Your positive energy will come across, and both of you will feel energized.

3. Give everyone a compliment. It’s easiest to say something nice about what they are wearing. Even better, think of a personality quality that you can compliment someone for, such as: “You are so …”creative, detail oriented, dependable, etc”… that it makes my day so much more …”pleasant, exciting, enjoyable,” etc.”

4. Bake some chocolate chip cookies and pass them out. Homemade cookies say, “I cared enough to take the time to make them.” However, they are easy to bake because you can get the pre-mixed ones in squares at the grocery store, pop them in the oven, and in a few minutes you have a delicious cookie.

5. Good news energizes. Download the “Good News Form” on our web. It is our gift to you. Write some good news about something at work on it, and post it for all to see, or give it to your supervisor, CEO, school principal etc.

Try this for a week, and let me know your results. We love to get feedback.

By Harriet Meyerson, a Speaker, Author and Coach

I was lucky I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me; I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.