TWO Key Takeaways to Learn from Steve Jobs

1. Life is what you make it out to be

If you don’t know anything about Steve Jobs other than generic public knowledge, here’s a quick run down of his background:

• He was born out of wedlock, to graduate student parents who gave him up for adoption thereafter.
• He was adopted and raised in a working class family. His foster father fixed cars for a living.
• His biological parents wanted a girl, not a boy.
• He dropped out of college, after only 1 semester. His highest qualification was high school.
• While he was attending Reed (his college), he would be “sleeping on the floor in friends’ rooms, returning Coke bottles for food money, and getting weekly free meals at the local Hare Krishna temple”.
• In 1985, he was fired, very publicly, from the very company he founded (Apple), after losing a power struggle with the board of directors. (He would then later return as CEO (in 1997) after Apple bought over NeXT, the company Steve founded after leaving Apple.)
• In 2003, he discovered he had cancerous tumor in his pancreas. He would then engage in a long battle with cancer for the next 8 years, till his recent passing.

Most people who didn’t know Steve would assume he probably had a privileged life, had a silver spoon in his mouth, and had his path to success laid out before him.

But it wasn’t the case, as you could see above. He was born out of wedlock. He wasn’t the child his parents wanted. He was given up for adoption. He was fired from the company he created. He was publicly humiliated during that time. And he was diagnosed with a rare form of pancreatic cancer, which ultimately took his life.

While he was not necessarily dealt with the best cards, it didn’t matter a single bit. Rather than complain or let himself be paralyzed by the situations, he made the best out of what he was given – then went to create the kind of life he wanted, eventually becoming the CEO of one of the most valued companies in the world, a billionaire many times over, and one of the most respected people in the world today.

When life gives you a curveball, what do you do? Do you (a) sit and whine about it (b) make the best out of it or (c) throw the curveball back at life and create your home run? Most people do (a) – these are the whiners. Some people do (b) – these people generally do good, but that’s about it. Few people do (c) – these are the true winners.

You always have a choice in how you live your life. Don’t victimize yourself because no matter how bad things may seem at the moment, there are hundreds to hundred thousands of people out there who are worse off than you. When you rise above what you are given, that’s when you soar.

2. Dream big – very big

Before Apple’s rise in the last decade, Microsoft was the undisputed giant in the world of personal computers. Before iPod, mp3 players were known only as mp3 players. Before iTunes, it seemed almost unlikely for anyone would pay for music online, when music piracy was so rampant. Before iPhone, Nokia was the long-time market leader for mobile handsets. Before iPad, there didn’t seem to be a need for tablet computers – PCs and laptops seemed to do the job just fine.

In each situation, no one would have ever thought things would change.

But the status quo was broken, each time, with exceeding results. With each product release, Steve Jobs (and his team) revolutionized the industry and created a new movement – from personal computing, to mp3 players, to music distribution, to mobile phones, to tablet computers.

iPod became integral to the lifestyle of masses, became synonymous with mp3 players, and paved the way to the collapse of CD sales. iTunes became the #1 music vendor in US in 2008, with 10 billion song downloads as of 2010 (after just 7 years of being online).  iPhone created a demand for touchscreen phones, broke Nokia’s long-time market leadership and changed the game of the mobile phone industry. iPad 2 sold more than all other tablet PCs combined since the iPad’s release (in 2010) and is expected to account for 83% of the tablet computing market share in US by 2011 (source).

These happened because Steve allowed himself to dream big – to see beyond what was in the present, to think outside the box, to go where no one had ventured before.

“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.” – Apple’s Think Different commercial

How do you set your goals? Do you base them on what has already been achieved out there? Or do you base them on your boldest, grandest, deepest heart’s desire? The latter is how you’re going to create a movement and shake the world. What are your biggest, wildest dreams? Set them and go for them.

This post was originally published October 7, 2011. (sharing from https://personalexcellence.co/blog/steve-jobs/)