【正文】 from college and that my father had never graduated from high refused to sign the final adoption only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to 17 years later I did go to I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my workingclass parents’ savings were being spent on my college six months, I couldn’t see the value in had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked far more wasn’t all didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5162。you can only connect them looking you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my second story is about love and was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion pany with over 4000 had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned then I got can you get fired from a pany you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the pany with me, and for the first year or so things went then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling we did, our Board of Directors sided with at 30 I was very publicly had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was really didn’t know what to do for a few felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I turn of events at Apple had not changed that one had been rejected, but I was still in so I decided to start didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my the next five years, I started a pany named NeXT, another pany named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would bee my went on to create the worlds first puter animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the 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 Laurene and I have a wonderful family ’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed life hits you in the head with a ’t lose ’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I ’ve got to find what you that is as true for your work as it is for 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 the only way to do great work is to love what you you haven’t found it yet, keep ’t with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find , like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll keep ’t third story is about I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, 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 that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in 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 that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to are already is no reason not to follow your a year ago I was diagnosed with had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my didn’t even know what a pancreas doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your means to say your lived with that diagnosis all that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with had the surgery and thankfully I’m fine was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death