Steve Jobs was an imperfect human being, just like the rest of us. But during his short life he managed to achieve more of the things that mattered most to him than most of us do.
So how did he achieve this?
During his famous 2005 Stanford commencement address, Steve told us. He talked about how the biggest challenge of his life turned out to be his biggest opportunity.
When he was 30 years old, he said, the company he had co-founded and then worked in all his adult life unexpectedly fired him. It was:
“devastating”
and for a few months he felt
“a very public failure.”
But then he reflected…
Getting fired from Apple didn’t only turn out to be a good thing, he said:
“Getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me… It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life… It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it.”
Why?
Because:
“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… If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.”
When we face our biggest challenge it forces us to make our most difficult choices, the ones that matter most to us.
Then we can discover:
- What do we refuse to let go of, because it matters most to us?
- What are we willing to let go of, because it matters less?
- What do we truly love?
It’s a cauldron of fire — but it tempers the steel. And it brings us clarity, then focus, then inspiration.
Once Steve Jobs knew what he loved, he gained the inspiration and motivation to turn what was still a tiny, struggling computer company into the most valuable corporation on the planet. Because that was what he longed to do.
And because that was what he loved, it wasn’t ‘work’ for him. It was just him, being himself, doing what he cared about the most, doing what he was here to do, becoming who he was here to become.
When we find what we love we take another step towards becoming antifragile.
Have you found what you love? Are you looking for it?
Adapted from The Churning, Inner Leadership: a framework and a set of tools for building inspiration in a time of change.
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Photo By bangdoll via StockPholio.net