I read about Steve Jobs’ speech that he delivered at Stanford University in 2005 for the graduation commencement. In his speech, Steve recounts three important personal stories in which he had learned essential things that have led him to his success and failures.
After reading Steve Jobs’ outstanding Stanford Commencement speech, I found his words and stories to be very inspirational and motivational. I can somehow relate myself and my story with all his realization about the things that had happened in his life.
Since Steve Jobs have sited three important personal stories about his life in his speech, I have also decided to site different reflections with each story.
“The first story is about connecting the dots.”
“ …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. ”
– Steve Jobs.
What Steve Jobs said was true. Everything that happens in our lives happens for a reason. Every thing in this world is interconnected with each other. Relating this to Steve Jobs’ story, he had realized that dropping out from college has given him the opportunity to study and learn calligraphy.
“ Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying amount of the space between different combinations, about what makes a great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found fascinating. ”
He had not realized the importance of calligraphy in his life. Not until such time when they were designing the Macintosh computer. “ …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. ”
It may sound coincidental, but I would rather believe that it was fate. It was all meant to happen.
God does not want us to suffer. He only does things that are quite different and hard for us to understand ( at first ). But if we will just try to understand God’s ways, it does not matter whether we are having good or bad experiences; then, we will be able to appreciate our lives’ worth even more.
“ …I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. ”
Currently, I am experiencing the same thing as what Steve had experienced before when he was in college. I am still searching for the things that I wanted to do with my life. And as of now, studying for college thingy does not help. And I think it will never help me find the things that I wanted to do with my life. But I will never stop looking; I will find it one way or another.
“My second story is all about love and loss”
The second story was all about how he was able to handle the failure and rejection that he had got from the company which he founded. He also emphasized about the importance of finding the things that we love
“ …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 had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over. ”
not rejection be a hindrance to doing the things that we really love. Though we may experience failure, we must choose giving up as an option.
“ 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. ”
With Steve’s statement, we can see how he had realized the positive side of failure. Steve also said from his speech that “ It was an awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it ”. The medicine that he was referring to was his failure and he was the patient.
After he had experienced the taste of fame and fortune, he became a monster who slowly tortures his own dominions. And he needed that “ medicine ” to make him realize that he was becoming very sick because he was not able to handle success the right way. But because he had already found his love, and he had too much love for Apple, he was able to rise and make his way back to his success had started.
“My third story is all about death”
This time, the story was all about how he had fought cancer and his realizations about how important time is.
“ 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. ” After reading and reflecting from this statement of Steve’s speech, I have realized that I was too scared of making mistakes. I was using too much of thinking, that I almost forgot about my heart’s desire. I was always thinking of what others want me to say and do, that I stopped considering my own happiness. I was too scared of loosing something or someone if I was going to choose my happiness than them. Maybe, too much of something will not do any good to us.
“ Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. ”
Sometimes we tend to idolize a person too much that we wanted to live the same life as theirs. Let us find our purpose and happiness. By doing such, we will be able to find contentment among ourselves.
“ …death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.”
It is true that death is inevitable. That is why we must find what we love to do, then do the things that we love. Life is short; let us not make it shorter.
We must not let our bad experiences and failures pull us down. Rather, we must take it as a compliment from God. He has chosen us to face different life challenges to help us grow and be a better person. Because God knows we can surpass everything as long as we have faith in Him. We must also learn to be contented of the things that God has given us. Because He only gives us what we truly deserve.
God has us only one life to live, so we must live it to the fullest.
Live, Love, and Laugh, these may seem very simple but these three are very essential to life. These are the things that we often forget or take for granted. So let us continue living, loving, and laughing. God bless us all.
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