The death of Steve Jobs rocked the world as he was considered one of the world’s most innovative men. Under his leadership, Apple has never been short of creating beautifully designed products that has wowed the world and also becoming of the world’s most valuable company (US $341 Billion as of 10 August 2011).

When I first heard the news that he passed away, in my mind I was asking my friends, “Are you kidding?” A quick search on the Internet yielded much talk about his demise and even apple website created a webpage for him.

Here are some life lessons that I have personally learnt from him:

 

1. Its not about how well you start in life

Steve Jobs was born out of wedlock and put up for adoption for birth. In fact, he mentioned in one of his talks that he was so poor that he had to sleep in the floor of friends’ rooms during his college days. In addition, he earned little money for food after returning Coke bottles. Furthermore, he had to walk seven miles every week across town to the Hare Krishna temple for the Sunday feast. If such a person like Steve Jobs could face adversity and still make it in society, what is our excuse?

 

2. Education level is not the most important.

For the man who ran the most valuable company in the world, interestingly, he actually did not finish his degree education. In fact, he dropped out of Reed College after only one semester. Steve mentioned that his short stint in college was an impactful one because “If I had never dropped in on that single calligraphy course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts.”

A little known fact about Steve Jobs was the fact that he was listed as either primary inventor or co-inventor in 338 US patents or patent applications related to a range of technologies from actual computer and portable devices to user interfaces (including touch-based), speakers, keyboards, power adapters, staircases, clasps, sleeves, lanyards and packages.

 

3.  It’s not what life throws at you but how you make out of it.

The experiences faced by Steve were also rather dramatic and could be a potential storyline of a soap opera. In 1985, two years after recruiting Apple’s new CEO, John Sculley, Jobs was literally kicked out of the company out of the company he founded. This was due to deterioration in Job’s working relationship with Scully and resulted in an internal power struggle that Jobs lost. However, Jobs claimed that being fired from Apple was the best thing that could have happened to him. He said, “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.”

The time away from Apple also gave Jobs time to start a new company called NeXT, which was to develop high-end computers at expensive prices. The company did not do so well in sales but it influenced future software developments, particularly the MAC OS X.

In 1986, Jobs bought The Graphics Group from Lucasfilm’s computer graphics division for the price of $10 million. The company decided that it would give up selling its unprofitable Pixar Image Computer and concentrate its efforts into computer-animated films. This company was later renamed as Pixar.

Pixar’s partnership with Disney was a commercial success and it bought many great films such as Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, Ratatouille, Wall-E and Toy Story 3. Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, WALL-E, Up and Toy Story 3 each received the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

None of this would have happened if he were not fired from Apple.

 

4. Live each day as if it was your last.

When he was much younger at the age of 17, he read a quote which affected him a lot, “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” Since then for the past 33 years, Jobs looked into his mirror every day of his life to ask, “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” If the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, he knew that he needed to change something.

He also mentions in his address to Stanford students in 2005, “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. 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.”

Jobs also reminded them that “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life” and “have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.”

We are constantly being surrounded by people telling us what to do with our lives and also we may also at times in our lives, want to live the lives of other people. Live a life that you really want and have courage to live it.

 

5. Connect the dots in life.

Jobs reminds us to connect the dots in life. Every thing that has happened in our lives happened for a reason. We have to “trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” Perhaps you have gone through many things in life and wondered why it had to happen? It could be repeating another semester in school, studying the wrong course, wasting 3 years in a company that didn’t improve your career or getting a lousy boss that treated you like dirt. All these ‘negative’ incidents in your life could actually be the turning point of your life from that point on!

It is my firm belief that every thing that happens to us right now is to prepare us for the future. In one of my blog articles, I mentioned about how at the age of 17, I started off as a volunteer of a youth organisation and did a lot of program planning and emceeing. I wouldn’t dare to say that every program I ran was incredibly successful but learnt a lot from the ones that failed or didn’t generate interest from participants. Later did I know that all these were necessary to prepare me for the role as a trainer and then much later to transit into being a public speaker.

Everything happens for a reason, the only thing we need to do in our lives is to make sense out of our experiences and try to connect the dots.

 

 

6. To be a trendsetter, you can’t rely on focus groups.

Steve Jobs was one of the few people that didn’t really believe in focus groups. This was contrary to most business philosophies that you had to ask people on what they wanted in their products.

“None. It’s not the consumers’ job to know what they want.” – Jobs responding to whether he did market research for the iPad.

However, most people in life don’t know what they want, especially if they have never seen it or even conceptualised a new product before. Steve relied a lot on his intuition about how people liked things and the way they operated them. This sense of intuition that he had was really ahead of his time as he could see into the future and helped created demand for products that were in his head.

For example, before the launch of iPad, most people were skeptical of Apple’s ability to compete in the market and its lack of experience in producing such devices. Even the internet was flooded with comments on the name of the iPad. However, when it was launched, it created a storm of people who wanted to own a piece of  it. It was one of the best selling products Apple has ever created and is believed to dominate the market share for the next 5 years.

 

7. Always acknowledge the work of your staff in front of the rest.

In most of the Macworld keynotes of Steve Jobs, I recall watching many times where Jobs will usually ask everyone in the hall to give a huge round of applause for his staff who has worked so hard to make things happen. He even thank their families, loved ones, spouses, partners for being there to support his staff in their work.

In a lot of the team building activities that I run with my corporate clients, I ask members of the team to publicly acknowledge and give each other praise. This meaningful activity has helped team members to express what they always wanted to say but yet have no opportunity for it. This also created a moment where some people actually cried and hugged each other. It created a sense of belonging and appreciation for the work that they have done.

 

8. Show passion in what you are doing

Steve has always showed passion in what he does. In all his keynotes, he always  talks about Apples products and “hopes that you will love it as much as we do”. You realise that they are not sharing just a product, but a labour of love that resulted in a product.

 

9. Set out to change the world

“I want to put a ding in the universe.” – Steve Jobs

 

“People sometimes have goals in life. Steve Jobs exceeded every goal he ever set for himself.” - Steve Wozniak, Apple co-founder, on Steve Jobs

 

“Here’s to the crazy ones,

the misfits, the rebels, the trouble makers,

the round pegs in square holes.

The ones who see things differently.

They’re not fond of rules,

and they have no respect for the status quo.

You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.

About 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 people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world,

are the ones who do.”

Apple’s 1997 ‘Think Different’ ad

 

I believed that Steve completely managed to fulfill his wish of changing the world. Many of us today are living so much differently with how much he influenced society with its gadgets.

My question to you is whether you have found your purpose in living and made up your mind to change the world. Well, if you think you are crazy enough to think you can, you might just be the one to do it.

Change the world, one step at a time.

 

 

 

 

 

Popularity: 11% [?]

I see dead people every day in my life.

They are dead and they still walk among us.

I am not joking and really mean it.

The living dead that I am referring to are people who just exist in today’s society with no aim or purpose in their lives. They are living, but yet dead at the same time (ironic isn’t it?). When you ask them what makes them excited or passionate, a large number of people have forgotten about it. They cite reasons that when they were younger, they had dreams. Some even had ambitions. The sad thing is that after many years of working and climbing the corporate ladder, they looked back and asked themselves “Am I happy and is this life?”

In the book Halftime, it describes that for most people in the first half of their lives, they really work hard to pursue success. Everyone has a different idea of what success looks like. For some it will be money or career, while others it could be about places they have travelled or people they have met.

However, when they enter the second half of their lives, they look back at the work of their hands and ask the following fundamental questions:

“What have I done so far?” and the usual “Am I contented with it?”

They realise that their lives are no longer about pursuing success, it is about pursuing significance.

Here’s my story and journey of how I started my entrepreneur journey:

I started off my career working in an engineering company that was extremely established in Singapore. I was into building automation and served as a project engineer handling building projects. It was something that I could do, in fact, it was something that I was trained well for. I mean, my early years in life was spent on preparing for a job in the engineering sector.

Until something happened.

At the age of 26, I started to ask myself a question which all adults actually ask at one point in their lives and that is “what do I really want to do with my life?” It was astonishing simple but yet, it could not be answered at all. I was dumb folded.

This question kept ringing in my head. I actually ignored it, thinking that it will go away. It did go away, only to resurface again a week later, then another week and a couple of days later. It just kept coming back. For some adults, they ignored it to a point where their dreams were drowned by the immediate concerns of providing for the family. I acknowledge that all of us have a responsibility to fulfill to our families, but what has happened to our dreams in the process? Can there be a way to fulfill both at the same time?

It took me a year of soul searching and to constantly ask what I am passionate about? And I finally found it. I discovered that I really love to teach and inspire people towards fun, loving and supportive relationships. Not only I found it, I took massive action towards it. I started asking myself how can I do more of what I am passionate about? Are there groups that I can join to do just that? Is there a career decision that I have to make for that to happen? Can I change my attitude towards life and start taking personal responsibility for all the results that I have been getting? Will I make a firm decision to change my life right now?

Fast forward into the present now. I have traveled to 7 countries so far, conducting training and giving talks on motivation, mindset change and building teams. At a young age, I have spoken to CEOs, directors and people twice my age. I have given keynote speeches in conferences and learning seminars. I have personally trained or spoken to 5400 people. Everything started because I started to find out what makes me excited and alive.

So, my question to you is what makes you excited? What makes you feel alive? Will you take some time to list them down? Don’t do it for me, but do it for yourself!

Do read my questions that I have posted earlier here and reflect on it.

Take time to clear the clutter off your mind and another 30 minutes to reflect upon it. Do share with me on what you have discovered!

Popularity: 15% [?]

When it comes to working in teams, most people often hesitate in asking for help. In fact, some leaders often think of the many reasons why their staff do not want to take up certain projects or additional work.

In my work with people, my experience tells me that unless I can share the reason for doing things with other people and delegate work out, I can never truly be transformational in what I do. The role of a leader is to create a team and galvanize them towards an objective. However, in most cases, whenever we think of the people we need to spearhead certain initiatives or even join our team, we can sometimes give a lot of reasons why he/she is not willing to take it on. We say NO for them.

Statements like the following:

“I’m sure that she will be great for this role, however she has just completed a major project and I don’t think she will take up a new role right now.”

“It will be great to have him on our team, but there’s just no way he will come in. Our remunerations will never be close to what he’s getting.”

I understand that those above are real concerns, but if we do not ask, we will have totally closed the door for that person to work with us. In fact, there are many instances when I am surprised over and over again that people do want to give more of their time, money or effort to something they believe in.

Here’s a conversation I had with whom someone I wanted on my team:

“Glad to have been able to know what you are passionate about and the marvellous skills that you possess. Right now our aim is to develop and mentor new members. Personally, they are a great bunch. However, if I have you helping out in the mentoring process, I know they will surely soar in their work scope. There’s no promise of more incentives, but I can guarantee that this will be an extremely fulfilling work because you will be able to teach and impact lives.”

Guess what? This lady with superb counselling skills joined us and played a pivotal role in building the team.

Never say NO for other people. Give them a reason, share with them your vision and they might just surprise you with a big resounding “YES, I’m willing to be involved!”

Popularity: 6% [?]