Woz and I started Apple in my parents’ 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 4,000 employees.

We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just

turned 30.

And then I got fired.

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.

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 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. 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.

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward.

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 would lead you of the well-worn path and that will make all the difference.

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.

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. They somehow already know what

you truly want to become.