Steve Jobs--How to Live Before You Die

I remember watching on TED videos Steve Jobs' commencement speech at Stanford University about a week before I left for Argentina.  Since I've watched that speech his words really stayed with me and remind me of some of my own motivations for taking a gap year and doing something that I believed in.

In his speech he told three stories about his life that essentially gave his three rules of how to live before you die.

The first story he tells is about how he dropped out of college and audited courses.  Without having to take required classes for a major he enrolled in a calligraphy class at Reed College that ultimately led to the beautiful interface for Apple computers.

• "You cannot connect the dots going forward only looking backwards. You have to trust the the dots will connect in the future, you have to trust in something because that will give you the confidence to follow what is in your heart even when it will lead you off the well worn path. "  

 The second story he told was about being fired from Apple:

• "The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again and allowed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life. When life hits you on the head with a brick you have to have faith in what you love. The only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe to be great work; and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. Keep looking and don't settle."

The last story he told seems eerie now.  When he first found out that he had pancreatic cancer and had to face the fact that  he would only have one month to live.

• “If you live each day as if it was you're last someday you'll most certainly be right... If today were the last day of my life would I want to do what I'm about to do...No one wants to die even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. Death is the destination we all share no one has ever escaped it, and that is as it should be because death is the single greatest invention of life. It's life change agent it clears out to make way for the new... you're time is limited so don't waste it living someone elses life. Don't be trapped by dogma which is living with the results of other peoples 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, everything else is secondary."

• Stay hungry, stay foolish