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Think Different – Break the Mold and Achieve What Others Think is Impossible · Motivational Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: I'm honored to be with you today for your commencement
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: from one of the finest universities in the world. Truth
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: be told, I never graduated from college. This is the
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today, I
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it,
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: no big deal, just three stories. The first story is
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: about connecting the dots. I dropped out of Read College
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: after the first six months, but then stayed around as
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: a drop in for another eighteen months or so before
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: I really quit. So why'd I drop out? It started
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: before I was born. My biological mother was a young,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: unwed graduate student, and she decided to put me up
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: adopted by college graduates. So everything was all set for
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: his wife, except that when I popped out, they decided
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: at the last.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: Minute that they really wanted Earl.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: a call in the middle of the night, asking, we've
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: got an unexpected baby boy.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: Do you want it? They said? Of course.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: My biological mother found out later that my mother had
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: never graduated from college. And that my father had never
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: my parents promised that I would go to college. This
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: was the start in my life, and seventeen years later
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: I did go to college, but I naively chose a college.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: It was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: my working class parents savings were being spent on my
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: college tuition.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: After six months.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: I couldn't see the value of it. I had no
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: idea what I wanted to do with my life, and
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: no idea how college was going to help me figure
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: it out. And here I was spending all the money
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: to drop out and trust that it would all work out. Okay,
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: it was pretty scary at the time, but looking back,
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: it was one of the best decisions I ever made.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: The minute I dropped out, I could stop taking the
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: required classes that didn't interest me and begin dropping in
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: on the ones that looked far more interesting.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: It wasn't all romantic.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: the floor in friend's rooms. I returned coat bottles for
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: the five cent deposits to buy food with, and I
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: to get one good meal a week at the Hari
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: Krishna Temple. I loved it, and much of what I
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: Meet College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: instruction in the country. Throughout the campus, every poster, every
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: label on every drawer was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes,
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: to do this. I learned about seraph and san serif typefaces,
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: about what makes.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: Great typography great.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: science can't capture, and I found it fascinated. None of
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: this had even a hope of any practical application in
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: my life. But ten years later, when we were designing
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: and we designed it all into the mac. It was
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: Since Windows just copy the Mac, it's likely that no
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: personal computer.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: Would have them.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: If I had never dropped out, I would have never
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: dropped in on that calligraphy class, and personal computers might
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: I was in college, but it was very very clear
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: looking backwards ten years later. Again, you can't connect the
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: So you have to trust that the dots will somehow
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: connect in your future. You have to trust in something,
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever, because believing that the
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: dots will connect down the road will give you the
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: off the well worn path, and that will make all
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: the difference. My second story is about love and loss.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: I was lucky. I found what I loved to do
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: early in life was and I started Apple in my
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: parents' garage when I was twenty. We worked hard, and
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: in ten years Apple had grown from just the two
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: of us in a garage into a two billion dollar
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: company with over four thousand employees. We just released our
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: finest creation with Macintosh a year earlier, and I just
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: turned thirty, and then I got fired. How can you
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: get fired from a company you started well? As Apple grew,
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: we hired someone who I thought was very talented to
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: run the company with me, and for the first year
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: or so things went well. But then our visions of
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: the future began to diverge, and eventually we had a
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: falling out. When we did, our board of directors sided
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: with him, and so at thirty, I was out, and
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: very publicly out. What had been the focus of my
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: really didn't know what to do. For a few months,
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: I felt that I had let the previous generation of
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: entrepreneurs down, that I had dropped the baton as it
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: was being passed me. I met with David Packard and
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: Bob Noys and tried to apologize for screwing.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: Up so badly.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: I was a very public failure, and I even thought
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: about running away from the valley. But something slowly began
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: to dawn on me.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: I still loved what I did.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: The turn of events at Apple had not changed that
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: one bit. I'd been rejected, but I was still in love,
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: and so I decided to start over. I didn't see
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: it then, but it turned out that getting fired from
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: It freed me to enter one of the most creative
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: periods of my life. During the next five years, I
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: started a company named Next, another company named Pixar, and
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: fell in love with an amazing woman who would become
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: my wife. Pixar went on to create the world's first
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and his now the
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: most successful animation studio.
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: In the world.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought Next, and
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: I returned to Apple and the technology we developed it
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: Next is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance, and
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: Loreena and I have.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: A wonderful family together.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine,
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life Sometimes
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: life's going to hit you in the head with a brick.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: kept me going.
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: Was that I loved what I did. You've got to.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: Find what you love, and that is as true for
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: work as it is for your lovers. Your work is
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: going to fill a large part of your life, and
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: the only way to be truly satisfied is to do
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: what you believe is great work. And the only way
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: to do great work is to love what you do.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: If you haven't found it yet, keep looking and don't settle.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: you find it, and like any great relationship, it just
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: gets better and better as.
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: The years roll on.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: So keep looking, don't settle. My third story is about death.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: When I was seventeen, i read a quote that went
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: something like, if you live each day as if it
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: was your last, someday, you'll most certainly be right. It
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: made an impression on me, and since then, for the
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: past thirty three years, I've looked in the mirror every
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: morning and ask myself, if today were the last.
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: Day of my life, what I want to do?
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: What I am about to do today, and whenever the
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: answer has been no for too many days in a row,
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: I know I need to change something. Remembering that I'll
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: encountered to help me make the big choices in life.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: Because almost everything, all external expectations, all pride, all fear
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: of embarrassment or failed, these things just fall away in
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: Remembering that you are going to die is the best
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: have something to lose. You are already naked. There is
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: no reason not to follow your heart.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: No one wants.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: To die, even people who want to go to heaven
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: don't want to die to get there. And yet death
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: is the destination we all share. No one has ever
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: escaped it, and that is as it should be, because
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: death is very likely the single best invention of life.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: It's life's change agent. It clears out the old to
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: make way for the new. Right now, the new is you,
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: so dramatic, but it's quite true. Your time is limited,
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: other people's thinking.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: Don't let the noise of other's.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: Opinions drownd out your own inner voice, and most important,
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: else is secondary. Stay hungry, stay foolish,