My Worst Day: Steve Jobs
An icon’s premature fall, and the 5 lessons we can learn from their climb back to the top.
My Worst Day is a biweekly column dedicated to stories of massive failure and extraordinary success. Combing through interviews, biographies, and historical records, we examine society’s greatest achievers — both modern and historic — and take an in-depth look at the days they thought it would all come crashing down. By studying how these icons navigated and persevered through their worst days, we can all learn the skills we need to do more, be more, and achieve more in our lives.
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward — you can only connect them looking backwards.” -Steve Jobs
September 16, 1985
He knew this day had been coming for months…
In fact, it had been well over a year in the making. The result of an incessant power struggle between a 46-year-old seasoned corporate CEO and the exceedingly bright 30-year-old Co-Founder of one of the fastest growing computer companies in the world. A company that in just nine short years grew out of a garage in Los Altos, California, and into a publicly-traded powerhouse worth several billion dollars.
The CEO was John Sculley. And that founder?
His name was Jobs.
Just 10 months prior, the pair had been all smiles on the November 1984 cover of BusinessWeek — “Apple’s Dynamic Duo” emblazoned in striking bold font above their heads.
But for the last six months, Steve Jobs knew his days were numbered. It wasn’t long after Sculley took over as CEO of Apple Computer that Jobs realized their differences in leadership style and corporate vision would become a massive point of contention. So much so, that fearing what the future had in store for his young company with Sculley at the helm, Jobs developed an elaborate plan in early 1985 to have him removed by Apple’s Board of Directors.
But there was just one problem. Sculley learned of Jobs’ secret plan, and used it as leverage to drive a massive stake between him and the Board.
Jobs’ fear of Sculley was not unjustified. After his high-powered personal computer Lisa was a commercial bust, Jobs was relegated to the head of the company’s low-cost Macintosh Division. It was during this time that he became decidedly anti-corporate, going as far as to fly a pirate flag inside their division’s space at Apple Headquarters. To make matters worse, while the Macintosh was a critical success, it was struggling to find profitability, with high unit costs and slow initial sales driven by Jobs’ unwillingness to compromise on his vision for the personal computer.
Under pressure from the board to get Jobs “contained,” Sculley began to strip him of his powers within Apple Computer, including removing him as Head of the Macintosh Group. Coupled with a new office in a remote part of Apple Computer’s Headquarters, which Jobs dubbed “Siberia”, and he had effectively been banished from the very company he launched in his parent’s garage just nine years prior.
The message from Sculley and the Board was clear: if you won’t play nice, you won’t play at all.
After a grueling summer of fighting and deliberating on how he could regain his power inside Apple, Jobs finally had the realization that his hands were tied. And on September 16, 1985 — after an especially turbulent week of fighting with Sculley and the Board — Steve Jobs had nowhere left to turn, and was prompted to do something he never believed he’d have to do: resign from his post at Apple Computer.
Walking out the door one final time, Jobs wasn’t just saying goodbye to a company. He was saying goodbye to the very essence of what defined him. His personality and soul were so intertwined with the business, that walking away felt like a part of him was dying.
It was a death from which he was unsure he’d ever recover.
Odd Jobs
With magazine cover stories, secret board meetings, high-profile executive clashes, and endless Wall Street speculation, it’s hard to imagine that Apple Computer was still a company in relative infancy, having been founded in 1976, a mere nine years before the fallout. A tale that would grow into Silicon Valley folklore, Jobs and his co-founders — Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne — launched the company from the garage of Jobs’ childhood home on Crist Drive in Los Altos, California.
Jobs’ path to founding Apple Computer Company was decidedly less than linear. Born February 24, 1955 in San Francisco California, Jobs was immediately put up for adoption by his birth mother Joanne Schieble. After her first choice of adoptive family backed out, and Steve was placed with the young blue-collar couple Paul and Clara Jobs, Schieble protested the placement in court, out of fear her baby would not have the upbringing she desired. Eventually she relented and signed the adoption paperwork under one condition: the Jobs family had to promise that Steve would receive a college education.
After relocating the family to Mountain View, California, Steve Jobs lived a childhood not unlike many that go on to become visionaries. With a supreme intellect that left him bored in the classroom, coupled with quirks and diverse interests that made it difficult to develop a robust social circle, Jobs frequently caused disruptions, and was subjected to heavy bullying — especially after skipping the 5th grade, which left him a lonely 10-year-old at Crittendale Middle School.
Eventually, the bullying grew to the point where Jobs told his parents they either relocate him, or he would drop out of school. With the promise they had made to Jobs’ birth mother hanging over their heads, Paul and Clara pooled their life savings, and purchased a small single-family home at 2066 Crist Drive in Los Altos, California.
It was here where Jobs’ love of electronics really began to form. In a neighborhood littered with Silicon Valley tech employees, the Jobs family was one of the few on the street with zero engineering background. To rectify this, Steve enrolled in a high school elective class called “Electronics I”. While Jobs would go on to clash with his instructor, he found the subject matter fascinating. And it was through this class that he made his first real friend in the neighborhood — a fellow electronics enthusiast by the name of Bill Hernandez.
As the pair continued to bond over their love of electronics, Hernandez made a point to introduce Jobs to a neighbor who had just graduated ahead of them at Homestead High School, and was studying Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at The University of California, Berkeley.
The neighbor? A young man by the name of Steve Wozniak.
The Apple Falls from the Tree
Quickly befriending Wozniak, Jobs traveled often to visit him in Berkeley, where he got his first real introduction to college life. Though his relationship with formal education had been less than stellar, seeing life at U.C. Berkeley (as well as nearby Stanford) gave Jobs the push he needed to make good on the promise between his birth mother and his adoptive parents, enrolling at Reed College in Portland, Oregon upon graduation from high school.
Though his intentions were to get a degree, Jobs faced similar problems at Reed that he did in his primary education — most notably a lack of interest driven by his intellect. Coupled with the fact that tuition was well beyond what his family could afford, and he quickly made the decision to drop out. However, as a lifelong learner, Jobs did remain on campus for some time as a non-student, auditing courses that interested him. Most notably, he walked in and fell in love with a calligraphy course — a move that would serve him well years later at Apple.
Moving back to the San Francisco area in 1973, Jobs and Wozniak began spending more and more time together. Wozniak was an engineering mastermind, and would showcase all his latest and greatest creations to Jobs. This included his own version of the Atari video game Pong, which Jobs promptly took to Atari’s headquarters, and leveraged to land himself a job as a technician…no one at the company ever stopping to ask if Jobs had actually built the game himself.
This cycle repeated itself until 1976, when Wozniak showed his latest creation to Jobs: a device he dubbed the Apple I Computer.
Immediately sensing opportunity, Jobs suggested they manufacture and sell the device. The market for personal computers was starting to take shape in America, and Jobs believed first movers like IBM were missing out on a major market segment. In his own words:
“Not only couldn’t we afford the computers that were on the market, those computers were impractical for us to use. We needed a Volkswagen. The Volkswagen isn’t as fast or comfortable as other ways of traveling, but the VW owners can go where they want, when they want and with whom they want. The VW owners have personal control of their car.”
On April 1st, 1976, Jobs, Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne officially founded Apple Computer Company. While Wayne — a 41-year-old Atari colleague of Jobs, would quickly get cold feet and sell back his 10% stake in Apple a mere 12 days later — it didn’t matter. Jobs and Wozniak were ready to bring their version of the Volkswagen to market.
It was time to launch the Apple I.
The Rise
In July of 1976, the Apple I Computer went on sale to the general public. Production of the product was funded with a clever mix of parts financing, as well as the sale of personal possessions, including Jobs’ VW bus, and Wozniak’s prized HP-65 calculator. Through years of tinkering, the duo was already well aware that electronics components did not come cheap. However, this was their first real introduction into the expense required to produce a computer product at scale.
To build a company that was going to change the world of personal computers, their next step was clear: they needed to find more money.
With Wozniak already setting his sights on a much-improved follow up to their first computer, Jobs hit the pavement in search of financing. While the Apple I netted the budding company a tidy profit, it was nowhere near what would be needed to mass produce the technologically superior Apple II Wozniak was designing.
Young, unkempt, and brash, Jobs struggled to connect with traditional bank loan officers and Silicon Valley venture capitalists. However, a failed meeting with one of the original kingpins of venture capital — Don Valentine — led to a fateful encounter with millionaire investor Mike Markkula.
Having made his millions young from stock obtained working at Intel and Fairchild Semiconductor, Markkula understood the vision of Apple. So much so that he came onboard as a partner and helped the company incorporate, becoming Apple Computer Inc. on January 3, 1977. With an $80,000 equity investment and co-signing a $170,000 bank loan, Markkula became an equal 33% partner in Apple with Jobs and Wozniak, and the company had the funds they needed to kickstart a tidal wave of incredible growth.
Coffers freshly filled, Apple Computer Inc. got to work on production of Wozniak’s Apple II, introducing it to the public on April 16, 1977 at the West Coast Computer Faire. The computer was a radical improvement on the Apple I, as well as most other personal computers of the day, and would eventually go on to sell nearly 6 million units.
By 1980, Apple Computer Inc. was well on its way to becoming the Volkswagen of personal computers.
Though several rounds of fundraising helmed by Markkula were helping the company achieve impressive year-over-year growth, with two major new products now going after IBM and the business market — the recently launched Apple III and a secretive new device Jobs was calling Lisa — it was time for the young company to transition itself into a serious, adult corporation.
Apple did just that on December 12, 1980, with an Initial Public Offering that raised the most capital since the 1956 IPO of Ford Motor Company. At 25-years-old, Steve Jobs owned over 10% of a multi-billion dollar company, with a personal net worth in excess of $200 million dollars.
He was the wunderkind of Silicon Valley and the personal computing word. But as he would soon learn, from great heights come great falls.
The Fall
The next three years moved quickly at Apple. Under the guidance of Markkula, who was appointed CEO shortly after the company went public, Jobs spent the first few years of the decade focused on his Lisa project, which was to be a business super computer, and one of the first of its kind to use a graphical user interface (like the kind we now take for granted today).
Shortly before Lisa went to market in January of 1983 — and subsequently became a disastrous failure for Apple Computer — Jobs and Markkula had begun courting new potential CEO candidates. With Markkula looking to retire from the day-to-day of running the company, and Jobs still seen by the Board of Directors as too inexperienced to run the entire operation himself, they needed someone who understood their vision, and could guide the next wave of growth.
The pair eventually landed on a candidate by the name of John Sculley, who at the time was serving as President of Pepsi, where he had gained massive notoriety and praise for his marketing abilities by helping launch the iconic “Pepsi Challenge”. Sensing his initial hesitation to join Apple, Jobs famously quipped to Sculley:
“Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?”
Sculley decided on the latter, and took over as CEO of Apple Computer Inc. on April 8th, 1983.
When he wasn’t courting Sculley to join Apple, Jobs had spent the remainder of his time working on a new project titled Macintosh, having transitioned off Lisa in 1982. The Macintosh was to be Apple’s answer to the IBM Personal Computer, which had debuted in 1981, and quickly found success in both personal and business settings.
Introduced to the world on January 22, 1984 with the iconic Ridley Scott directed Super Bowl commercial 1984, the Macintosh went on sale two days later, and was an immediate hit with the critics. While initial sales were strong on the back of the 1984 commercial, numbers slowed into summer, and gave Sculley his first major test as CEO: how to keep the company afloat while growing the Macintosh personal computer market.
With Jobs fully committed to Macintosh and graphic user interfaces as the future of computers, it’s no surprise that he became resentful of any time or resources spent outside of this division. It is here where he really began to clash with Sculley, who was spending a great deal of time and focus on growing the still very profitable Apple II line of products. As a result, Jobs’ Macintosh Division distanced itself from the rest of Apple more and more every day, furthering the rift between him and the CEO.
The fighting finally came to a head in spring of 1985, when Sculley — backed by the Board of Directors — hatched a plan to remove Jobs from the Macintosh Division entirely, and put him in charge of “New Product Development,” which would essentially render Jobs powerless. To combat this reorganization, Jobs retaliated with a secret plan of his own: get Sculley fired. However details of the plan were soon leaked, and Jobs was confronted for his treasonous act.
With the CEO and the Board of Directors turned against him, and his Co-Founder no longer by his side (Wozniak having departed in early 1985, he too having issues with the current direction of the company), Jobs had nowhere else to turn. After an incredibly tense summer and much soul searching, it was finally time for Jobs to turn the page.
On September 16th, 1985, he handed in his resignation letter. The Steve Jobs era of Apple was over.
At least for now.
As he left Apple Computer’s Headquarters for the final time, Jobs turned out onto Mariani Avenue in Cupertino, California to begin his 20-minute drive home. But before he did, he had one quick detour to make. Jobs needed to stop by the Secretary of State Office.
He had Articles of Incorporation to file…
What’s NeXT
Founded immediately upon his departure from Apple, NeXT Computer was going to be Jobs’ second act in Silicon Valley. With several high-profile Apple employees following Jobs out the door and to his new venture, the team got to work on designing their first product: The NeXT Computer.
Though he himself had dropped out Reed College in a matter of months, Jobs’ fascination with higher education never waned. A chance meeting with Stanford Professor and Nobel Laureate Paul Berg at an event years prior left Jobs intrigued about the potential of computers in the classroom. At Apple, he had helped launch the company’s University Program, which offered discounted computers to students, faculty, and institutions across the world. But, per feedback from Berg, current computers were limited as to what they could perform in an educational capacity. The real opportunity lied in a super computer that could bridge the gap between textbook learning and cost-prohibitive lab time, of which Berg claimed students never received enough.
Jobs had obsessed over the idea of a high-performance machine while working on Lisa at Apple. Now, armed with Berg’s feedback, as well as information collected from meetings with other institutions, Jobs set NeXT’s corporate strategy around high-performance machines targeting the educational market. But the true magic of NeXT would be the price point. Apple’s Lisa retailed for $9,995 (over $25,000 in today’s dollars). While The NeXT Computer was to be powerful, Jobs and company also wanted it to be affordable enough for students to purchase. As he would later state:
“I want some kid at Stanford to be able to cure cancer in his dorm room.”
The NeXT Computer was introduced on October 12, 1988, and went on sale in early 1989. It was followed up shortly with a second-generation model known as The NeXTstation, which debuted in 1990. While the commercial success of the NeXT computers that Jobs had hoped for never materialized — due in part to the failure to bring the costs down low enough for mass market sales — there was a silver lining: the robust NeXTSTEP operating system developed for these machines was incredibly ahead of its time.
Though unbeknownst to Jobs, NeXTSTEP was attracting the attention of one of the biggest names in computers, and it was only a matter of time before he received the call he had spent years waiting for.
Thankfully, waiting wasn’t hard to do, as Jobs had plenty to fill his time. In an effort to double-down on his post-Apple disruption of the computer industry, Jobs invested in a little-know computers graphics company being spun-off from LucasFilm.
At the time, the company was known simply as The Graphics Group. But soon, with Jobs at the helm as CEO, it changed its name to the one we know and love today.
Pixar.
The Return
By 1995, things were looking very much up for Jobs. It has been just 10 years since departing Apple, yet he was now the CEO of the most promising animation company in Hollywood. On November 22nd, Pixar released its first full-length feature film: Toy Story — a film that was met with immediate critical and commercial success, eventually going to gross nearly $400 million. Piggybacking on the successful debut of Toy Story, Pixar went public in an IPO just one week later.
By end of trading on November 29th, 1995, Steve Jobs had become a billionaire.
All the while, Jobs still found time to run NeXT. The company had shut down its hardware division after the failure of its first few units, opting to focus exclusive on its software and operating system. With its diverse range of applications, NeXT was powering all sorts of computer programs across companies and institutions worldwide. And it was only a matter of time before hardware companies came knocking on Jobs’ door looking to add NeXT to their arsenal.
The company that knocked the loudest? Apple Computer Inc.
On December 20th, 1996–11 years and 91 days after Steve Jobs first walked out the door — Apple Computer went public about its deal to purchase NeXT, and with it, welcome back Jobs. As then CEO Gilbert Amelio explained to the press:
“Today Apple welcomed back its most talented visionary, Steve Jobs. Someone who can inspire a new generation of customers and software developers and show that Apple remains the industry home for innovation and excitement.”
By February 1997, the deal was done. Jobs decline to take part in any cash offering. He wanted skin back in the game. And so instead, he walked away with 1.5 million shares of Apple Computer Inc.
It was time to pick back up where he had left off. It was time for Jobs to usher in a new era of Apple.
The Legacy
It took almost no time at all for Steve Jobs to wrestle back the reins of Apple. By July 1997, CEO Gilbert Amelio was out. And by September, Jobs was named Interim CEO — with the “Interim” part dropped shortly thereafter. What followed was one of the most incredible corporate turnarounds in history. Under this new Steve Jobs era, Apple became a powerhouse of innovation.
First, Apple redefined the personal computer with the 1998 release of the iMac. Then came the iBook in 1999. Then on October 23rd, 2001, Apple redefined how we consume music with the introduction of the iPod. By 2003, iPods were being loaded with songs downloaded directly from Apple’s iTunes store, which was being run on new generations of iMac’s, iBook’s, and PowerBooks. 2004 through 2006 brought on several new popular versions of the iPod, along with the now ubiquitous MacBook.
And on June 29th, 2007, the world was forever changed with the introduction of the iPhone.
Of course, the rest is history. When Steve Jobs took over as CEO in 1997, Apple Computer Inc. had $7 billion in annual sales. By 2007 — the year the iPhone was released — this number had ballooned to $27 billion. And by 2011, the year Jobs stepped down as CEO to focus on growing health concerns, that number had skyrocketed to $121 billion.
In 2018, Apple did $265 billion in revenue. It was also in this year that they became the first company in history to achieve a trillion-dollar valuation.
Unfortunately, Steve Jobs was not around to see these last incredible feats, with his life being cut tragically short after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. He passed away on October 5, 2011 at just 56-years-old.
When Jobs founded Apple Computer in 1976, his vision for the market was clear. “We needed a Volkswagen,” he proclaimed. A computer for everyone. And he never lost sight of this vision. Even during the turbulent 1980’s, when he was forced out of his own company, Jobs still knew deep down that his mission to create that computer for everyone would one day be accomplished.
Upon Jobs’ return to Apple in 1997, The Volkswagen Beetle had become the best-selling car of all time. Not to be outdone by his own metaphor, by the time Jobs’ was done with Apple, he too could claim similar accomplishments. As of today, the iPod has a firm grasp on its title of best-selling portable music device of all time, and the iPhone is now several years into its reign as the best-selling smartphone of all time.
It took 35 years — 24 with Apple and 11 apart — but Steve Jobs passed away having realized his vision. And in the process, created a world that will never be the same.
The Lessons
The incredible tale of Steve Jobs offers many life lessons. Though you may not be looking to launch the next technology revolution, there are still many takeaways that can be applied to all our lives.
Here’s a look at five of the most important:
1. Be Clear on Your Vision and Purpose
When Jobs left Apple in 1985, his options were, quite literally, endless. He was just 30-years-old, brilliant, famous, and worth several hundred million dollars. Life could have become an endless string of parties, vacations, luxury homes, yachts and the like. He could have lived out his days in maximum pleasure and comfort, without a care in the world.
For many, this might seem like the ideal path. That the whole point of putting in crazy hours and effort is to eventually cash in and live the “good life”. But Jobs was not driven by money — at least not exclusively. Money was a by-product of doing what he loved, and pursuing it with relentless passion. As he later expanded on his feelings at the time of his 1985 departure:
“I even thought about running away from the Valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me. I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. And so, I decided to start over.”
When he left Apple in 1985, Jobs had cemented his status as a Silicon Valley pioneer. But inside he knew this wasn’t enough. His vision for the computer industry was so far from being realized, and he couldn’t rest until this vision came true. He was focused on creating the “Volkswagen of computers” — and so he passed up forced early retirement, and instead got right back to work with NeXT.
It was this work at NeXT, and his relentless pursuit of his vision and passion, that would eventually open up the door back into Apple, and allow him to begin his reign as one of the most iconic visionaries of all time.
The lesson from Jobs here is that once you identify your vision and purpose, you must stay true to them. Because when times get tough (and they will get tough), it’s these values that will keep your ship sailing in the right direction, and power you through your darkest days.
2. Connect the Dots by Moving Forward
During his infamous 2005 Stanford Graduation Commencement Speech, Jobs told graduates:
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward — you can only connect them looking backwards. 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. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”
There are times in everyone’s life where they can’t make rhyme or reason of certain events. For Jobs, it was being forced out of the very company he had started in his garage. And even though he couldn’t understand why it was happening, he knew that if he just forged ahead, he could one day look back and have it all make sense.
Was he sure that he was on was the right path? Of course not — you can never be 100% sure. But as long as you keep walking forward and discovering new roads, you’ll eventually look back and realize that all the wrong turns and detours led you down life’s most wonderful path.
Without Jobs’ removal in 1985, he never would have had the complete creative freedom he did at NeXT. A freedom that allowed him to push the boundaries of what was possible in computing, and create an operating system that — once purchased by Apple — would become the base of the now iconic MacOS operating system used by millions around the globe.
Though his removal was a self-described “awful tasting medicine,” looking back, all the dots eventually connected. He just had to keep moving forward…
3. Love What You Do
“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.”
At the age of 30, Steve Jobs was worth over 200 million dollars. By 40, he was worth a billion. Yet as mentioned above, he kept coming back. He just couldn’t give up innovating or finding creative problems to solve. It was in his DNA.
From the outside, there is only one plausible explanation: Steve Jobs was in love with his work.
As one of the wealthiest men on earth, he could have walked away on any given day, at any given second, and lived a life most could only dream of. Yet day-in and day-out he returned to work and gave it his all. Whether it was at NeXT, Pixar, or Apple, Steve Jobs couldn’t stop.
He was absolutely in love with the problems he was trying to solve.
Are you in love with what you do? Would you keep coming back even if you were worth billions? If not, you need to reevaluate where you spend your time. Because as Jobs showed us, the only way to do work that truly matters is to love what you do.
4. Let Curiosity Drive Your Learning
Unfortunately, much of our formal education system these days revolves around a “Will this be on the test?” mentality. But Steve Jobs showed us that wonderful things can happen when you open up your mind, and let curiosity drive your learning.
Remember the calligraphy class Jobs audited after dropping out of Reed College? Well years later, while working on the Macintosh, Jobs thought back on all the interesting and beautiful scripts he learned in this class, and used them as inspiration to build an entire font book for the computer — the first of its kind have one, and something that still exists on every single computer to this day.
Without letting his curiosity drive him to that class, he would have never had the background he needed to spark this idea, and forever change the way we interact with computers.
Let your curiosity guide you from time to time — it may just lead you to some incredible places.
5. Identify and Act on Opportunities When They’re Presented
Success is a two part equation: identifying opportunities when they present themselves, and acting on them.
Throughout his life, Jobs had an incredible eye for opportunity. But most importantly, he acted on the opportunities he saw. When his family moved to a community of Silicon Valley tech engineers, he didn’t use his blue-collar parents as an excuse not to learn the local trade; he elected to take “Electronics I” at his high school — a move that led him to befriending classmate Bill Hernandez, and eventually Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak.
When most electronic enthusiasts would have been content building their own computers at home as a hobby, Jobs recognized the fast-growing personal computer market, and leveraged the skills of his close friend Wozniak to start a company that could build them at scale.
When Apple needed funding to produce the Apple II Computer, Jobs attended failed meeting after failed meeting. Instead of throwing in the towel, he kept going. In the end, it was one of these failed meetings that led him to Mike Markkula, and eventually to the funds needed to create one of the first mass success stories of the computer era. A success that turned Jobs into a millionaire in the process.
Even though computer animation in the late 1980’s was much too cost-prohibitive to create a full-length feature film, Jobs knew that the fast-evolving technology would catch up, eventually allowing movies to be animated entirely by computer. So he made an early investment in a small company that went on to become Pixar. An investment that eventually turned him into a billionaire.
The list goes on and on…
Every one of Jobs’ major accomplishments was a combination of identifying an opportunity and taking action. And it serves as a reminder to us all: it’s not enough to just SEE the opportunity…we have to SIEZE it as well.
My Worst Day
In 2005, Jobs shared some thoughts about the day he was forced out of Apple:
“…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.”
For Steve Jobs, life was a blank canvas on September 16th, 1985. He literally could have painted any picture he wanted. Thankfully — both for him and for us — he chose to finish painting the picture that deep down he knew he was destined to create.
As the rise, fall, and redemption of Steve Jobs teaches us, always remember that on your darkest days, you’re still the one holding the brush. Even if you have to start over, never be afraid to paint the picture you were born to paint.
References
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