I have been inspired by some very amazing stories growing up and even now, I still get inspired because history has a way of helping up function today and then for tomorrow.
The Below Story is about one of the world's most iconic genius, though complicated to some, nonetheless, a genius who's work and philosophy changed the way we interacted with technology.
Read and learn your lesson.
Love and Loss. - The Steve Jobs Story.
"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 $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired.
How can you get fired from a company you started?"
"Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out.
When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had 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 felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly.
I was a very public failure, and I 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 had not changed that one bit. I had 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 of 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. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT.
I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance, and Laurene and I have a wonderful family together."
"I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was an awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. 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. And that is as true for your 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."
"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 until you find it. Don't settle.”- Steve Jobs 1955-2011 (Steve Jobs gave this as his second story of his Commencement Address at Stanford University on June 12, 2005.)
I never met Steve Jobs and up till this moment as I write on his piece, I still do not own an apple product, not even an iPod and that is stating it personally. But impersonally, I have used lots of Apple products and have been able to share in the joy of friends, colleagues and family members who have owned and used the Apple products and from their excitement and the satisfaction they get from the use of the various Apple products they own. I still believe I will get one very soon and am working hard to get couple of them and I know I will be glad.
Read my words and you will see that the world has been blessed from the experimentation of the thoughts of crazy men who defiled the status quo to become the brains behind the world’s most innovative products that started out in a garage and in less than 10 years was worth over $2 billion with 4000 employees.
It is a miracle that was worked out from the innermost desires of a man’s crazy thought and drive that proved beyond all understanding that he had to be really crazy to dream that one day, the computer which was seen as being impossible to downsize will become personal and in turn make way for a revolution of the way we think and act at home and in the work place.
Bottom line and story point is: "dream and dare to be different without being afraid to start where you are. Pretend you are on the race tracks ready to take part in a 1500 meters race knowing well you can never be overly attired to participate, do your counts and take a run for the goal because on the race tracks, we are not properly turned out and yet we strive to win the race half naked so why can’t you do the same for your life’s goal?
Give it to the men and women who have against all odds stepped out half naked into the tracks and fields of life to partake in the race of their lives and feel sad for the men and women who could have done better on the tracks and fields of life but chose to be overly attired for a race that requires some form of nudity to be able to win the gold because without some form of nudity, the athlete will be hindered and restrained in his strive to win the prize.
Be crazy, be mad and when you fail the first time and the second time and even the tenth time, start again and by all means let your start over be on something never seen or imagined before.
Image source: Youtube