Steve Jobs Could Have Died

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and Pixar International, made a speech recently to the graduating class at Harvard. In it, he tells three stories from his own life of events that changed his outlook for the better. Fascinatingly, they were all tales of adversity, some of it devastating. They describe:

• His adoption as a child and eventual dropping out of university when he found his working class parents were sacrificing all their life savings to keep him in an undergraduate career that didn't inspire him
• His being fired in a boardroom coup from Apple, which he had co-founded at the age of 20 in his parents' garage and which had, in ten years, grown into a $2 billion corporation
• His being told, quite recently, by doctors, that he had a rare form of inoperable cancer and would be dead within 3 to 6 months.

Steve Jobs later discovered that his cancer was an even rarer variety than the medics had at first thought and that this form was, in fact, operable. By this time, however, he had lived through the experience of expecting death at any moment and had discovered what he felt was really important in life. It was those old chestnuts: family, health, relationship, community and giving something back. In his conclusion, he had this to say:

"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 results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's 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 become. Everything else is secondary."

This is an eloquent statement from a man who has done a great deal already and been to the brink of death to find out what counts and what is just a blind waste of life. I predict he'll do a whole lot more and that it will change people's lives profoundly. This is what I'm trying to talk about in The Could Life.

We'll be coming back to this theme...