I was lucky I found what I loved to do early in life Woz and I started Apple in
my parent's garage when I was 20 we worked hard and in ten years Apple
had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a two billion dollar company
with over 4,000 employees we just released our finest creation the
Macintosh a year earlier and I just turned 30 and then I got fired how can
you get fired from a company who 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 30 I was out and very publicly out what had been the focus of
my entire adult life was long and it was devastating I really didn't know what to
do for a few months I felt that I'd let the previous generation of entrepreneurs
down that I 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 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 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 Laureen 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 sometime life sometimes life's gonna 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 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 that's a characteristic that I see in almost
everybody that I respect they all think that everything they do sucks or at
least they have very very high standards and are often disappointed by their own
work well you know I think I have some of that but I also have that idea of
like it's something that my I don't think I've talked about my dad with you
but um he was my wrestling coach in high school he was also my science biology
and environmental studies teacher really was my teacher oh what a drag
went to school your dad being the t doesn't but I learned a lot because he
was no joke he didn't pull any punches for me he you know he drove me as
hard if not harder than his other students he didn't show any favoritism
but one of the things that was always his thing on the mat and I'm kind of
paraphrasing but basically you you either win or you learn mm-hmm
especially in that high school college setting you're learning about
yourself if you if you went out there and you got your ass handed to you then
you just got beat and didn't learn anything well yeah you're a loser you
take the moment reflect on it build on what you did wrong and you now you're
actually in a way you've won you know more about yourself you know about
your limitations or what you need to improve and expand your talents
or your limitations so I guess whenever I'm doing a thing
I'm always looking at it from a learning perspective so there aren't necessarily
mistakes unless they're fatal and then you wouldn't know anyway so whatever
that really is the right way to look at everything you win or you learn yeah you
know you have great experiences because you're successful or you have
beneficial experiences because you realized what went wrong yeah but you
just one more wrinkle one more piece of information or one more experience that
you can add to your database of knowledge and it'll make you better at
everything you do don't stay in tomorrow you got to at some point move from
tomorrow to right now move from the action that you're gonna do on Monday to
right now not even today because that gives you all the time until the end of
the day you've got to move your clock when you think about here's one thing I
need to do I need to schedule more appointments I'm gonna do that right now
right now the first available moment I have to do it I'm going to do it right
now I'm gonna start right now I'm gonna get moving right now because a lot of
you are listening to this stuff and that's great listening is great
understanding is even better action is even better than understanding you can
have the most knowledgeable person in the world but if they keep saying
tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow they're never going to get the results
that they're looking for so guess where most of the learning and most of the
real understanding comes from in the doing love yourself a hundred percent
not worrying what other people think is the greatest form of self love when self
love is absent you will always be worrying what other people think people
that love themselves we see them all the time in the world
and they're smiling they're letting go of fear letting go and they are soaring
to phenomenal heights we've all gone into the streets and we've seen people
singing or playing the guitar in the middle of the road the more your
self-love increases the more your self-expression increases and that is
the secret hug yourself when you're in that moment failing and you have to keep
going what do you say to yourself what if a lot of times I'll be the tours at
Mile Run or something like that and I'm all jacked up body's broken mines broken
spirits broken I started to say what if I can pull this off when I first walked
into the Navy Seals recruiters office he looked at me and said there's only been 35
African Americans in 70 years make it through you know what I said to myself what
if I can be the 36 it's the what if I can pull off a miracle what if I can
become someone that no one thinks I can be and just that just me talking about
that I have the hair going up on my arms because it makes me just like what if I
can be that guy that people who call nigger and this and that and now I'm
speaking at Toms Ferries event what if
that's it thinking completely different is the key if everyone is competing on
one level you got to think on another like for instance like I'd always wanted
to get in television but TV is so it was always so crowded everyone's
trying to get in on Friday night on NBC so what do you do when everyone I've
always heard this advice and it made sense only recently everyone is doing
the same thing everyone's competing in the same room you have to think much
bigger there's a lot less competition up there there's nobody up there actually
so find the hole to fill it yeah I can't get my show on TV I know I'll own a
network then I can put on any show that I want and how many other people are
going up for network you know many other people applied for that network company
it was a lot and then it wasn't a lot a hundred people in the whole country the
whole country a hundred people threw in an idea for network and showed a
presentation a lot less people that you meet in this room so any think about
that think about how can I show somebody how can I get someone's attention
everyone else is at the festival don't go to the festival go some do you think
of something I mean go to the festival think also something else beyond that
don't rely on the festival because then you're just crossing your fingers you
got to hit it from other ways and that promotes much bigger thinking I always
say aim high because if you aim just at the festival you might hit it and you
might just hit lower but if you aim really high you might still just hit the
festival but least now you got a chance to hit there there or like I think
you've got to find what makes you tick and I think greatness comes from when
you marry your passion with your job because I don't really think I have a
job I just I love what I do and I always say that to kids I talk to a lot of
kids who're at university and say how do I make a lot of money I said forget a lot
of money part find something you're gonna be great at and let the money
follow you so what what is it about people who find their passion who work
hard and never make a dime well they make a few dimes but not enough they
never get there you know if any it's it's interesting because we have this
conversation I live in a very affluent area and I
have these quarterly dinners or used to with my neighbors so at one point I
had twenty guys they were all worth hundreds of millions of dollars and we
asked that same question can you always be successful even if you love what you
do and all the other stuff and the reality is as my dad said if you work
hard right you will never be poor in life but just because you work hard
doesn't mean you'll be rich sometimes you need to get lucky but but the
reality is that the harder you work it's true the luckier you get
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