I was lucky — I found what I loved to do
early in life.
Woz and I started Apple in my parents’ garage
when I was 20.
We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had
grown from just the two of us in a garage
into a $2 billion company with over 4,000
employees.
We had just released our finest creation — the
Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just
turned 30.
And then I got fired.
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.
So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out.
What had been the focus of my entire adult
life was gone, and it was devastating.
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 of
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. In a remarkable turn of events,
Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and
the technology we developed at NeXT is at
the heart of Apple’s current renaissance.
You can’t connect the dots looking forward;
you can only connect them looking backward.
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 would lead you of the well-worn
path and that will make all the difference.
Sometimes life hits 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 your
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.
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 until you find it. Don’t settle.
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. And most important,
have the courage to follow your heart and
intuition. They somehow already know what
you truly want to become.
