3 Life Lessons from Steve Jobs
A few weeks ago a colleague of mine introduced me to the commencement address that Steve Jobs gave to Stanford University on June 12, 2005. His words are very inspiring and applicable to life. Steve Jobs shared the following three life lessons.
1. Connecting the Dots
"You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life." - Steve Jobs
2. Love and Loss
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started Apple in Steve's parent's garage at the age of 20. In ten years the company went from a garage to a 2 billion company with 4,000 employees. With all this success, Jobs was then fired from Apple. He said, "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. It 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.
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. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle." - Steve Jobs
3. Death (Your Time is Limited)
In 2004, Jobs was diagnosed with cancer. After going through that experience, he related the following during his Commencement speech, "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogmas-which is living with the results of other peoples thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to be become. Everything else is secondary" - Steve Jobs
Click Here to read Steve Jobs 2005 Stanford Commencement Address
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