“You’ve got to find what you love” – Steve Jobs

“You’ve got to find what you love” – Steve Jobs

This is text taken from the commencement address at Stanford University by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

Steve Jobs, college drop-out, entrepreneur, cancer survivor, fired and rehired by Apple Computers tells Stanford University students of his life experience which he places into three categories: Connecting the Dots, Love and Loss, and Death.

Connecting the Dots describes Steve’s early years of dropping out of college and his journey to creating Apple Computers. He believes that you can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards. That is, many of the things you are doing may not make sense until later when you look back. So you have to trust in something – your gut, destine, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference” says Steve.

Steve’s second theme, Love and Loss describes his feelings of rejection when he was very publicly fired by Apple. He had lost the focus of his entire adult life and found it devastating. He felt like he had let down the previous generation of entrepreneurs. He realized that he still loved what he did and decided to start over. His success with Pixar and NeXT were created as an aftermath of his departure from Apple. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT and Steve returned to Apple. He realized that being fired by Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to him. The heaviness of being successful was replaced with the lightness of being a beginner again. “It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of his life”.

“Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only one thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love”. Steve adds, “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”.

In Steve’s final topic, he talks openly about death. He asks himself the daily question, “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” About a year ago, Steve was diagnosed with what the Doctors believed to be an incurable cancer. Later that afternoon, it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. Steve had the surgery and is fine now.

His brush with death made him realize that “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. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new”.

Steve’s final advice to the University students is not to waste your life by living someone else’s life, not to be trapped by dogma nor let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice, but to have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. He leaves them with a farewell message, “Stay hungry. Stay foolish”.

Read the full text http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html