6 Lessons to Learn from Steve Jobs

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I am not a great techie and am not considered part of the digital generation but I realized that Steve Jobs has taught this generation much about life in ways we might never realize. What we can all learn might go like this:


1) Education can impart knowledge but it can never give you the will to run with it.  
Steve was a college drop out and although he never stopped learning, he did not allow the walls of any institution to limit where his ideas could take him.


2) Your true fire is never dampened by circumstances only redirected.  
Steve did not allow obstacles or conventionalism to stand in the way of what he was passionate about. He got fired from the company he started and although he felt like a total failure, he never lost his vision for what he loved.

3. Where you come from is not as important as where you are going.
Steve was adopted by a father who never graduated high school and a mother who never finished college and although they promised his birth mother they would send him to college, he realized after attending Reed College for 6 months that he was not interested in the courses he was required to take and was spending all of the money his working parents had. He chose to drop out and elected to

4. Sometimes our rivals become our greatest supporters
 In 1998, Job's found his company on the brink of its demise and had to turn to Microsoft for rescue, he realized that regardless of competition, sometimes both parties profit more from connecting than diverting.

5.We can plan for the future but not plan the future. 
In spite of all the technology available, Job's cancer was not curable. He could create and alter the things humans can change but could not escape from the divine plan for his life.Jobs talks about connecting the dots for your life looking backward rather than forward which is the only way mere mortals recognize what was meant to be.

Image by Mr. Babyman via Flickr

6. One idea put into action really can change the world. 
Whether Steve's ideas, your ideas or my ideas, the potential to make an amazing difference is available to all of us.


From digital pictures and music to surfing the web in the palm of our hands, Steve Jobs was relentless in making the universe... "a small world, after all." 

Maybe you have the spark that will ignite the fire that will change the future for many. We are all given a chance to change the world, perhaps the real question should be.


Image by Ricky Romero via FlickrWhat are you doing with your chance?