Today I want to tell you three stories from my life.
1. The first story is about connecting the dots.
All of my working class parents savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out, and trust that it would all work out ok. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made.
If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very very clear looking backwards ten years later.
You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.
Believing that the dots will connect down the road, will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well worn path, and that will make all the difference.
2. My second story is about love and loss.
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 dollar company with over 4000 employees.
And then I got fired.
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.
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.
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 ever happen 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.
Sometimes life's gonna hit 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.
If you haven't found it yet, keep looking, and don't settle.
Like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on.
So keep looking. Don't settle.
3. My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, some day you'll most certainly be right".
Almost everything, all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure, these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.
About a year ago, I was diagnosed with cancer.
I had the surgery, and thankfully I am fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death.
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven, don't want to die to get there. And yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.
And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.
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"Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish."
Thank you.
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