Steve Jobs: Stanford Commencement Speech 2005
This video is very inspiring to watch for everyone, especially students who are about to graduate and begin a new. There are three stories of his life as told in his speech.
"Today I wanna tell you three stories of my life. That's it! No big deal. Just three stories." -Steve Jobs
"After six months, I couldn't see the value on it. I had no idea what I wanna do in my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure out. And here I was spending all money my parents had saved in their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would work out okay. It was pretty scary at the time but looking back it was the best decision I've ever made. The minute I dropped out, I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me and begin dropping in on the ones that look far more interesting. It was all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friend's room. I returned coke bottles for the five cent deposit to buy food with. And I walked seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the "Harry Christmas" temple. I love that. ....and much I was stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turn out to be priceless later on."
"Because I dropped out and didn't take the normal classes, I decided to take calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learnt about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistic settle in a way science can capture, and I found it was fascinating. None of this had even a hope in any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all come back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped the end on the single coursing college, the Mac would never have the more multiple type faces with proportionally faces font. And since Windows just copy the Mac, it's likely no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would never dropped in 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 backward ten years later."
"Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots somehow connecting your future. You have to trust in something your God, destiny, life, karma, whatever, because believing 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 not would make all the differences."
2) Love and Loss
"I was lucky. I found what I love to do early in life. Was when I started apple on my parents' garage when I was twenty. We worked hard and ten years apple grown just the two of us was on the garage into two billions company with four thousand employees. We just released our finest creation, the Macintosh, a year earlier and I just turned thirty. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started?! Well, as apple grew, we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me. And for the first year all things went well. But then our visions further begins the diverse and eventually we are falling out. When we did, our board of director sided with him. And so on thirty I was out and very publicly out. What I've been focused on my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I really don't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I let the previous generations entrepreneurs down and I try to apologize was screwing up so badly. I was very public failure and even thought about running away of the valley. But something slowly begins the down on me. I still love what I did. I've been rejected but I was still in love. So I decided to start over. I didn't see advance, but turnout to getting fired from apple was the best thing that could ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being the beginner again. Let's sure about everything. The free meet me the most creative spirit on my life. During the next five years, I started the company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and felt in love with the amazing woman who become my wife. In remarkable turn in advance, Apple bought NeXT and I went returned on Apple. I'm pretty sure none of this would been happened if I haven't fired from Apple. It was awful testing medicine but I guess the patient needed it."
"Sometimes life gonna hit you on the break, don't lose faith. I'm convinced the only thing that keep me going was I love what I did. You've got to find what you love and not it is true for work, as it is for your lovers. Your work is gonna fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe it's a great work. And the only way to do a great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking and don't settle. As with all matter of the heart, you'll know you will find it. And like any great relationship, it's just getting better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking, don't settle."
3) Death
"If you live each day as specific your last, someday you're almost certainly be right. It made in pressure on me, and since then from the past thirty three years, I looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself if today was the last day of my life, what I wanna do what I'm about to do today. Remembering that all be dead soon was the most important tool to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything, all external expectations, all pride, all fear, embarrassing, or failure, this things just fall away in the face of death. Living only was truly important. Remembering you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you are something to lose. You are already naked. There's no reason not follow your heart."
"Right now, the new is you. But someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be clear away. Sounds to be so dramatic, but it's quite true. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the result of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others opinion ground down your inner voice. And most important have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."
"When I was young there was an amazing publication called the Whole Earth Catalog, which is one of the bible in my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand, not far from here, in Menlo Park. This was on the late sixties before personal computer and desktop publishing, so all made by typewriters, scissors, and polar cameras. Iit was sort of like google and paperback form, thirty five years before google came along. It was idealistic, overflowing with need tools and great notions. Stewart and his teams put up several issues in the Whole Earth Catalog. And then when it runs its course, they put up the final issue. It was the mid nineteen seventies and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was the photograph of an early morning country road. The kind that you might find yourself hits hiking on if you are so adventurous. Beneath it, with the words, Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish. It was their farewell message as their signed off, Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish. And I always wish that for myself. And now as you graduate and begin a new, I wish that for you. STAY HUNGRY, STAY FOOLISH. Thank you all very much." -Steve Jobs
