"Happiness is the single true purpose in life" (Aristotel)
Aristotel is right, because everything we do we do it in pursuit of happiness, everything else: money, carrier, love, family are ways not purposes.
What Srikumar Rao says is that happiness is part of us, that is very hard to not be happy, it is in our nature to be happy. Well, in that case why are we most of the time miserable? Because we always put "if" before happiness.
You probably never herd of Gary Vaynerchuk and I am sure you never herd of his video blog Wine Library TV.
He is not famous, he speaks with a lot of "fucks" and "shits", but he really knows what he is talking about. "If you don't like what you are doing now, please stop. You will always find a way to make money doing what you like".
You work more, you have more success, you get to be happy... WRONG. Shawn Achor says this formula is wrong and I agree. If we put happiness after the success, we will never be happy or we will be for a very short period of time, because our expectations of success increase all the time, with every success we attain.
We have to put happiness in front of all, because happiness is the engine to success... so we have to reverse the formula. How can we be happy before being successful? Well, the secret is to always live in the present.
When I watched this speech of Randy Pausch I just felt that starting this blog was a great great decision, because I am actually building a collection of lessons, lessons for life.
I am pretty young, I hope I will not die soon, but I will certainly die someday and it is a really hard job sometimes to know how to live your life. There's no answer to that, you live it your own way, but be sure that you enjoy it.
My dad died when I was fifteen and he left me with one lesson: "Wherever you go, whoever you meet, leave a place for a smile".
Watch the lesson of Randy Pausch for his children, that he will never see grow up.