Thank you. I’m honored to be with you today for your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. Truth be told, I never graduated from college and this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation.
Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months but then stayed around as a drop-in for another eighteen months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife, except that when I popped out, they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking, “We’ve got an unexpected baby boy. Do you want him?” They said, “Of course.” My biological mother found out later that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would go to college.
This was the start in my life. And seventeen years later, I did go to college, but I naïvely chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and 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 of how college was going to help me figure it out, and here I was, spending all 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. 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 looked far more interesting.
It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms. I returned Coke bottles for the five-cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example.
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer was beautifully hand-calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me, and we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts, and since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them.
If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class and personals 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 10 years later. Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something–your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever–because 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.
My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky. I found what I loved to do early in life. Was and I started Apple in my parents’ garage when I was twenty. We worked hard and in ten years, Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. We’d just released our finest creation, the Macintosh, a year earlier, and I’d 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 or so, things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge, and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our board of directors sided with him, and so at thirty, I was out, and very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down, that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure and I even thought about running away from the Valley. 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. I’d been rejected but I was still in love. 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 have ever happened 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 in 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. Pixar went on to create the world’s first computer-animated feature film, “Toy Story,” and is now the most successful animation studio in the world.
In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT and I returned to Apple and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance, and Lorene and I have a wonderful family together.
I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful-tasting medicine but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life’s going to 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, and that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. 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, and don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it, and like any great relationship it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don’t settle.
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, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “no” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important thing I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because 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. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctors’ code for “prepare to die.” It means to try and tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next ten years to tell them, in just a few months. It means to make sure that everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope, the doctor started crying, because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and, thankfully, I am fine now.
This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope it’s the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept. 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, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It’s life’s change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new. right now, the new is you. But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry 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 results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice, 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 Catalogue, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stuart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late Sixties, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. it was sort of like Google in paperback form thirty-five years before Google came along. I was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stuart and his team put out several issues of the The Whole Earth Catalogue, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-Seventies and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath were the words, “Stay hungry, stay foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. “Stay hungry, stay foolish.” And I have always wished that for myself, and now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay hungry, stay foolish.
Thank you all, very much
The history proves Islamic fundamentalists as the barbaric invaders. The Islamic fundamentalist have legalized these inhuman acts of raid, plunder, loot and rape in the name of god, in the name of JEHAAD ( fight in the name of Allah!) , by misguiding the young minds in the name of religion.
Line said by a Jehaadi-
No doubt I wish I could fight in Allah’s Cause and be martyred and come to life again to be martyred and come to life once more.
The quotes from hadiths prove the same: (in Islamic terminology, the term hadith refers to reports about the statements or actions of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, or about his tacit approval of something said or done in his presence) …
1) Sahih Al Bukhari, 216:”I have been ordered to fight against people until they testify that there is no God but Allah & none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that Muhammad is Allah’s Apostle, and offer the prayers perfectly and give the obligatory charity, so if they perform prayers, then they save their lives and property from me and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah & until he performs the prayers & pays the Zakat.”
2) Sahih 217: “Verily Allah has prescribed proficiency in all things. Thus if you kill, KILL WELL, & if you slaughter, SLAUGHTER WELL. Let each one of you sharpen his blade.”
3) Sahih 387: narrated by Anas bin Malik: Allah’s Apostle said, “I have been ordered to fight the people till they say: ‘None has the right to be worshipped but Allah.’ And if they say so, pray like our prayers, face our Qibla and slaughter as we slaughter, then their blood and property will be sacred to us and we will not interfere with them except legally and their reckoning will be with Allah.”
Muslims have been terrorizing India since the 7th century AD. Aurangzeb, one of the last Muslim emperors had 10,000 Hindus massacred everyday for an entire year. He alone was responsible for the massacre of at least 3,650,000 Hindus and destruction of more than 11,000 Hindu temples, and prohibitions against building new Hindu temples. Aurangzeb initiated laws which interfered with non-Muslim worship. Aurangzeb had demanded that all Kashmiri Brahmins convert to Islam.
William Durant, author of the voluminous “Story of Civilization” has described the Muslim conquests in India as constituting the saddest and goriest chapter in human history. Muslims have destroyed the whole India and have killed countless innocent Hindus in the process.
Kashmir…they are still fighting for
1675, In India, Sikh Guru Tegh Bahadur along with his disciples was burned to death by the Moghul ruler Aurangzeb.
Another Sikh, Bhai Mati Das was sawn into right and left halves while he was still alive. Year 1971, 3,000,000 Bangladeshi Hindus Killed during the Pakistan-Bangladesh war. January 25th 1998, 23 Kashmiri Hindus, including 10 women and four children, were gunned down by a group of Islamic terrorists from Pakistan in Wandhama, 27 km from Srinagar. On April 19th Islamic terrorists belonging to the Pakistani Lashkar-e-Tobia terrorist organization claimed responsibility for killing at least 13 Kashmiri Hindus in Prankot village near Mahore in Udhampur district. The victims included four women and two children. Since 1990 more than 10,000 Kashmiri Hindus have been brutally murdered by Islamic fundamentalists.
Not only India but Islamic radicals were responsible for the human massacre worldwide.
From 1894 to 1896 Abdul Hamid, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, killed 150,000 Armenian Christians. .
In July 1974, 4,000 Christians living in Cyprus were killed by Fahri Koroturk, president of Turkey and his Islamic army.
From 1843 to 1846 10,000 Assyrian Christians including women and children were massacred by the Muslims.
From 1915 to 1918 750,000 Assyrians were killed in the name of Islamic Jihad.
In 1933 thousands of Assyrian villagers were murdered by the Iraqi soldiers in Northern Iraq.
Over 280,000 Ugandans killed during the reign of Idi Amin from 1971 to 1979.
Over 30,000 Mauritanians have been killed by the Islamic dictators since 1960.
In 1980, 20,000 Syrians were murdered under the rule of Hafez Al-Assad, President of Syria.
Since 1992 120,000 Algerians have been murdered by the Islamic fundamentalist army.
The Muslims Extremists forced the violent partition of India into three parts in 1947 (India, West Pakistan and East Pakistan). Pakistan’s aim is to separate Kashmir from India and declare it as an Islamic state.
Genocide committed in the name of Allah! Even today, they kill innocent people of India by causing bomb blasts and killing innocent individuals. Currently, the followers of Islam are concentrating their efforts in Kashmir, a northern state in India. Kashmir has been the land of the Hindus since ancient times. The word Kashmir itself is derived from Rishi Kashyap a great spiritual leader of Hinduism.
The number of terrorist organization breeding in Kashmir has reached up to 32 which includes Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM) and Muslim Janabaz Force. The Muslims have destroyed this beautiful land completely. Today the Pakistan-sponsored Muslim terrorists continue to kill, torture and rape the innocent Hindus of Kashmir.
This is not I or many others just say, but this is what the bloodshed pages of history that reveals about the Hindus massacred by Islamic radicals.
Terrorist Outfits (Only J&K)
1. Lashkar-e-Omar (LeO)
2. Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM)
3. Harkat-ul-Ansar (HuA, presently known as Harkat-ul Mujahideen)
4. Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT)
5. Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM)
6. Harkat-ul Mujahideen (HuM, previously known as Harkat-ul-Ansar)
7. Al Badr
8. Jamait-ul-Mujahideen (JuM)
9. Lashkar-e-Jabbar (LeJ)
10. Harkat-ul-Jehad-i-Islami
11. Al Barq
12. Tehrik-ul-Mujahideen
13. Al Jehad
14. Jammu & Kashir National Liberation Army
15. People’s League
16. Muslim Janbaz Force
17. Kashmir Jehad Force
18. Al Jehad Force (combines Muslim Janbaz Force and Kashmir Jehad Force)
19. Al Umar Mujahideen
20. Mahaz-e-Azadi
21. Islami Jamaat-e-Tulba
22. Jammu & Kashmir Students Liberation Front
23. Ikhwan-ul-Mujahideen
24. Islamic Students League
25. Tehrik-e-Hurriat-e-Kashmir
26. Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Fiqar Jafaria
27. Al Mustafa Liberation Fighters
28. Tehrik-e-Jehad-e-Islami
29. Muslim Mujahideen
30. Al Mujahid Force
31. Tehrik-e-Jehad
32. Islami Inquilabi Mahaz
Some of you may already know that I travel around the region pretty frequently, having to visit and conduct seminars at my offices in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Suzhou (China). I am in the airport almost every other week so I get to bump into many people who have attended my seminars or have read my books.
Recently, someone came up to me on a plane to KL and looked rather shocked. He asked, ‘How come a millionaire like you is travelling economy?’ My reply was, ‘That’s why I am a millionaire.’ He still looked pretty confused. This again confirms that greatest lie ever told about wealth (which I wrote about in my latest book ‘Secrets of Self Made Millionaires’). Many people have been brainwashed to think that millionaires have to wear Gucci, Hugo Boss, Rolex, and sit on first class in air travel. This is why so many people never become rich because the moment that earn more money, they think that it is only natural that they spend more, putting them back to square one.
The truth is that most self-made millionaires are frugal and only spend on what is necessary and of value. That is why they are able to accumulate and multiply their wealth so much faster. Over the last 7 years, I have saved about 80% of my income while today I save only about 60% (because I have my wife, mother in law, 2 maids, 2 kids, etc. to support). Still, it is way above most people who save 10% of their income (if they are lucky). I refuse to buy a first class ticket or to buy a $300 shirt because I think that it is a complete waste of money. However, I happily pay $1,300 to send my 2-year old daughter to Julia Gabriel Speech and Drama without thinking twice.
When I joined the YEO (Young Entrepreneur’s Organization) a few years back (YEO is an exclusive club open to those who are under 40 and make over $1m a year in their own business) I discovered that those who were self-made thought like me. Many of them with net worth well over $5m, travelled economy class and some even drove Toyota’s and Nissans (not Audis, Mercs, BMWs).
I noticed that it was only those who never had to work hard to build their own wealth (there were also a few ministers’ and tycoons’ sons in the club) who spent like there was no tomorrow. Somehow, when you did not have to build everything from scratch, you do not really value money. This is precisely the reason why a family’s wealth (no matter how much) rarely lasts past the third generation. Thank God my rich dad (oh no! I sound like Kiyosaki) foresaw this terrible possibility and refused to give me a cent to start my business.
Then some people ask me, ‘What is the point in making so much money if you don’t enjoy it?’ The thing is that I don’t really find happiness in buying branded clothes, jewellery or sitting first class. Even if buying something makes me happy it is only for a while, it does not last. Material happiness never lasts, it just give you a quick fix. After a while you feel lousy again and have to buy the next thing which you think will make you happy. I always think that if you need material things to make you happy, then you live a pretty sad and unfulfilled life.
Instead, what makes ME happy is when I see my children laughing and playing and learning so fast. What makes me happy is when I see by companies and trainers reaching more and more people every year in so many more countries. What makes me really happy is when I read all the emails about how my books and seminars have touched and inspired someone’s life. What makes me really happy is reading all your wonderful posts about how this BLOG is inspiring you. This happiness makes me feel really good for a long time, much much more than what a Rolex would do for me.
“The tragedy of human life is not in not reaching your goals, but is in having no goals 2 reach.”
Its true…I feel, we all are running blindly for something we have never ever even thought about. In fact we are running behind our needs not our goals…
Just think…how many days in your life u feel were special…be it your birthday…or d first day of college…or anything. 10? Ok 20? At most 30…JUST 30 days…why…because something went wrong. We no more feel that joy of getting something; we no more have that sparkle in our eyes…no more that harmony in our life.
When I was a kid, I dreamed many great dreams. Often, I Visualized myself as a sports hero or as a business tycoon. I really believed that I could do, have and b whatever I wanted 2 b. I also remembered d way I used 2 feel s a young boy growing up. Fun came in the form of simple pleasures. I honestly don’t think I have felt that kind of freedom and joy 4 yrs. What happened? Perhaps I lost sight of my dreams when I became an adult and resigned myself 2 acting d way adults were supposed 2 act.
“We never grow old, v r old when we stop growing.”
We r lost somewhere in our LIV FAST,DIE EARLY life style…2 simplify…just think…out of your busy day…how many r such activities u feel u enjoyed n wish 2 do again…generously…such occasions r not more than twice a week..d day v laugh 2 our fullest v r forced 2 think when v had such experience d last time…it’s sad…what went wrong was, growing as a child n form a child 2 an adult…we often were mistaken in setting our priorities…v thought v liked what v needed n don’t even know what v liked.
Things have changed and we have changed a lot more. v no more ask questions 2 ourselves…v no more feel like 2 learn…think f a cup filled with coffee 2 brim…irrespective f d fact…how much n however u try to add more coffee 2 it…it will simply tickle down. The same is with us…v have filled our mind with silly worries and negative thoughts. People who think d same thoughts every day, most of them negative; have fallen in to bad mental habits. Rather than focusing on all d good in their lives and thinking f ways 2 make things even better, they r captives of their pasts….d cup is full…2 learn n live d cup needs 2 b empted…just throw away all your worries…know yourself n what u need…learn 2 LIVE. Just forget all worthless worries…n make your each day special. Take your problems s opportunities…every setback offer an equivalent benefit. So it’s like that old age saying about seeing d cup as half full rather than half empty.
“The difference between stumbling blocks and stepping stone is the way you use them.”
By controlling d thoughts that you think n d way u respond 2 d events f your life, u begin 2 control your destiny. Chinese character 4 ‘Crisis’ is comprised of 2 sub-characters: 1 that spells ‘danger’ and another that spells ‘opportunity.’ There are no mistakes in life only lessons. There is no such thing as a negative experience, only Opportunities 2 grow, learn and advance along d road of self-mastery. From struggle comes strength. Even pain can b a Wonderful teacher.
Jst think about it in your own life. Begin 2 live out of d glory of your imagination, not your memory.”
Hi, this is Nikhil Mehta, an engineering student from Nagpur, Orange City, hoping to pursue his degree with a decent score and a good job, in a good firm, getting settled at a nice place with a good wife n two cute kids. Sounds good??? May be to you and a thousand others….but to me it sounds horrible. This is what I call is a simple, monotonous, boring, awful life. Ok, you have nice job with a six figured salary and a smooth life but what then??? I mean this kind of life has nothing to do with what I and many of us had dreamt about…
“TO BECOME FULLY ALIVE A PERSON MUST HAVE GOALS AND AIM TO TRANCEND HIMSELF.”
We run blindly fulfilling our needs, compromising with our dreams.we live in a marvellous age, live in it, too many of us just exists in it.
Ever thought about what life means to you, are you living the way you always wanted, may be the answer is no, sad. Many of us portray ourselves the way others expect us to be, forgetting who we really are, what we really wish. We are unable to differentiate between our needs and wishes. Discover the real you.
“HE WHO WALKS IN ANOTHERS TRACK, LEAVES NO FOOTPRINT.”
How many things you do, that u love to do??? Or how many things you know you love??? Know yourself. For me I like blogging, I do (this isn’t my first blog). I am a Yamaha lover and I own one. I say I am happy with my life, coz I be the one I am and live the way I feel like. I do have a clear sketch of lifestyle I want. I always wanted to be an entrepreneur, and I will be just because I believe, when I know what I want, and when I am determined…I am destined to be what I always wanted.
Emptyminds 