When you think of Steve Jobs, you probably think of Apple, and all the revolutionary products the company has brought to market in recent decades. However, the former CEO of Apple left a lot more behind than just a line of exceptional tablets and phones. He was a born visionary, one of the most influential men of this century, choosing to see the world in a different light, and striving for excellence in everything he did.
He always lived life according to his ideals, not the ones the world had already decided on. He followed his heart, leaving no stone left unturned. We could learn a great deal from the powerful lessons he left behind, and use his inspiring words in our own lives today.
Here are 11 life changing lessons to learn from Steve Jobs:
1. Live life by your own rules.
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s 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.”
“If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you’ve done and whoever you were and throw them away.”
2. Always follow your heart, no matter where it takes you.
“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. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.”
“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”
3. Give your best effort in everything you do in life.
“Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.”
4. Don’t let money define your existence.
“Bottom line is, I didn’t return to Apple to make a fortune. I’ve been very lucky in my life and already have one. When I was 25, my net worth was $100 million or so. I decided then that I wasn’t going to let it ruin my life. There’s no way you could ever spend it all, and I don’t view wealth as something that validates my intelligence.”
“My favorite things in life don’t cost any money. It’s really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.”
“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful, that’s what matters to me.”
5. Don’t ever stop dreaming big.
“For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”
“I want to put a ding in the universe.”
“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”
6. Use your failures to drive you towards success.
“Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith.”
7. See the silver lining in every dark cloud.
“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.”
“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.”
8. Believe in what you’re doing so much that other’s opinions are irrelevant.
“I have a great respect for incremental improvement, and I’ve done that sort of thing in my life, but I’ve always been attracted to the more revolutionary changes. I don’t know why. Because they’re harder. They’re much more stressful emotionally. And you usually go through a period where everybody tells you that you’ve completely failed.”
9. Don’t give up your faith in people.
“I’m an optimist in the sense that I believe humans are noble and honorable, and some of them are really smart. I have a very optimistic view of individuals.”
10. Never stop being curious.
“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while.”
11. And at the end of the day, keep it all into perspective.
“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.”
“Things don’t have to change the world to be important.”
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