today I want to tell you three stories from my life that's it no big deal just three stories the first story is about connecting the dots I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit so why did I drop out it started before I was born my biological mother was a young unwed graduate student and she decided to put me up for adoption she felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates so everything was
all set for me to be adopted at Birth by a lawyer than his wife my biological mother found out later that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school she refused to sign the final adoption papers she only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would go to college this was the start in my life and 17 years later I did go to college and all of my working-class parents savings will be spent on my college tuition after six months I couldn't see
the value in it 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 so I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out okay it was pretty scary at the time but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made the minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me and begin dropping in on the ones that looked far more interesting it wasn't all romantic I didn't have a
dorm room so I slept on the floor and friends rooms I returned coke bottles for the 5 cent deposits to buy food with and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hari Krishna temple and much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on 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 you have to trust
in something your gut destiny life karma whatever because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn path and that will make all the difference my second story is about love and loss 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 10 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 and so at 30 I was out and very publicly out what has been the focus of my entire adult life was gone and it was devastating I really didn't know what to do for a few months 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 has 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 in 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 Apple bought next and I returned to Apple and the technology we developed it next is at the heart of Apple's current Renaissance 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 sometimes life's going to 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 this tree 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 if you live each day as if it was your last someday you'll most certainly be right for the past 33 years I've looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself if today were the last day of my life what I want to do what I am about to do today [Music] you [Music]
