Graduation day speeches have a very short shelf life, let alone being completely heard. However, I suspect this speech of Steve Jobs at Stanford would have certainly shaken and stirred many graduates. Personally, it has got etched in my memory and I get a new perspective on my own life every time I read this. We read about great entrepreneurs, leaders and change agents and think in awe of them, mainly because of the courage and perseverance with which they almost single handedly built a company from scratch. Their success formula seems non-duplicable and we instantly ascend them to demi-god status. But Steve Jobs seems to be a class apart. Here is a man to whom I can relate to and I feel that believing in oneself is the formula for success. There were three things in his speech which made a lasting impact on me. These three learnings blanketed his life, business and thinking. In turn, they have become my guiding forces as well.
First was his ability to realize the value of love and trust. Trust comes from belief in something. Jobs believed in his capabilities, though he himself wasn’t completely sure what he wanted to do when he dropped out of college. But his ability to follow his gut feel, intuition and his inner voice made him take such a step. I personally have experienced the joy of believing in my gut feel. There is an inner voice which many a times guides me to take a decision even though it may not be economically or otherwise practical. My decision to pursue MBA was guided by my intuition. And this is one decision which I will cherish for the rest of my life as it has been a very potent change agent for me. Another thing that I also believe is that “love is a conscious decision of the mind, not a chance encounter of the heart“. Hence, it is not always necessary to fall in love blindly. One can choose what he loves and pursue it accordingly. And it holds true for personal relationships as well.
Second was Steve’s habit of learning from experiences and to be able to use that learning productively in the future. He states this when narrating the story about connecting the dots, which he could not foresee, but it made sense ten years hence. It is from this habit that he developed a sense of looking out for positives in every event, even though it may be as big as being thrown out of the company he himself founded! I wish to pursue entrepreneurship sometime soon. For that, a key tenet is to see the underlying present currents and predict how they are going to shape up the future, apply my experience and learning to come up with a new innovation. I have learnt to extract and remember just the learning from my bad experiences. But when it comes to good experiences, I remember them in their entirety. This has really changed the way I view life and made me a more humble and modest person.
Third was the acceptance of the fact that death is an inevitable reality that each one has to face. But that should not make one complacent and inert. Rather, it should force one to constantly exert him and stretch beyond limits. From another angle, it presents a view that I should be practical in life. Facts should be accepted as such and self denial should be avoided. I truly believe that I am competing with no one else but myself. Hence, it is in my own interest to constantly challenge my boundaries of imagination and listen to myself. Letting external forces or peers influence my thinking is as good as making someone else decide for me. Traditions and society, at best, tie one down. And to be successful, one needs to think out of the box.