Steve Jobs

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

Steve Jobs in his Stanford University Commencement speech talks about three stories of his life.

He came from a very poor background and as matter of fact was adopted by a mother who never went to college and a father who never finished high school. No matter what your own story might be, it is time for you to stop the excuses and limitations other people have put into your head and take charge of your mind.

Steve Jobs is one of the most admired business men of our generation and will clearly be named next to Bill Gates, Donald Trump, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and the like. He illustrates very clearly that it does not matter what kind of a background you have or were you are coming from. He himself dropped out of college, because he did not see the sense of having to take classes he was not interested in. He wanted to choose what was his passion and not waste his time with what others think he should do.

Follow your dreams, trust your instinct and your intuition, listen to what your heart tells you and not what other people want you to think and do. Clearly it is good to listen to a mentor, but surround yourself with the trainers and coaches who serve your cause and what you want out of life.

You must make a conscious decision to take charge of your own destiny and live your life the way you want it. Regardless of your past, your future is not determined by what you did, but by what you think and do now. Trust that your passion for what you do right now, will serve you along your path into your future.

Steve Jobs said, he did not know at times why he followed certain instincts, but he trusted that it would all come together at the right time and it did.

I his second story Steve talks about love and loss. The love for what he did and the loss when he was fired from his own company. Again even though it was a painful experience of being rejected and basically have the company he built taken away from him, it emerged to him at a later time that it was the best thing what could ever happen to him.

He speaks about that this was one of the most creative times of his life, were he built the companies Pixtar and Next.

You see the pattern? He did not know why he was fired at that time, but he loved what he did and he continued on his path regardless and trusted it will all work out at the right time.

Next was eventually acquired by Apple at which time Steve Jobs returned to his company, using the by Next developed technology to be built in to the MAC. Love what you do and always follow your heart, do not settle for less what you can be.

Continuing on to the third part of his speak he talks about death and how every morning he ask himself the question ” If this would be by last day, will I live it in a way it truly would make me happy”? At any time when he was answering the question with a “no” he knew he had to change something.

In facing death and the fact that one day we would all certainly do, he illustrates that it would completely disregard the “fear and embarrassment of failure” by understanding that we would die the “ego” would fall away. There is no reason not to follow your heart and fear to lose, you are already there, if you trust yourself and do what your love.

Steve Jobs was diagnosed with cancer and speaks about his experience with this life threatening disease. He became aware that death is the only certainty we will all have to face sooner and later and addresses that we can not waste our days by living somebody else’s live or doing what somebody else wants us to do.

Decide what you want and truly follow your path, everything else is secondary.

In his final words of his speech Steve Jobs wishes to the graduating students is to stay hungry and stay foolish.

To Your Success

Carsten Werner

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