This book is special to me as it is about someone that I consider one of outstanding human beings; and it is free of charge given to me.
Physically this book fascinates me like other books as all writers want to wrap their writing in pretty covers. I love books, good books and when I finished reading this particular book, there was such feeling described as “accepting who I am and all what have built me and what I can materialize from my dreams through what I can do”.
Well, talking about the book physical. I like books with good covers although I don’t judge books by their covers. A picture of the young Steve Jobs pasted on a grey background shows a clean cover – simple clean design. The pictures in the book are all with black background that make all of them focused as a center of attention of the page. The rest of the touched paper is all good to me.
This review is not really about the content of the book itself so you might find it irrelevant. Yet I believe it gives people perspective. So, don’t be either disappointed or helpless.
The review is about what I can relate between what Steve Jobs said with what I perceive or feel about things in life or simply about life.
Undeniably many of the statements made by Steve Jobs represent what I’ve faced in life. Although what Steve Jobs said were not really about what have happened in my life, I freely relate those with my perception or assumption but never about conclusion. Although of course my life scale is none compared to his, I happily take a ruler and measure mine next to his; we’re both human beings anyways.
If people consider me self-centred for making the review about myself, I accept it wholeheartedly.
Let’s get the ball rolling.
Disclaimer: I will not put the pages on which the statements are located; you can read the online version of the book in below link and find them anywhere.
What he said and my hobby reading
When I was going to school, I had a few great teachers and a lot of mediocre teachers. And the thing that probably kept me out of jail was the books. I could go and read what Aristotle or Plato wrote without an intermediary in the way. And a book was a phenomenal thing. It got right from the source to the destination without anything in the middle.
What he said and my spiritual life
“I’m stupefied to sort of summarize [my trip to India]. Anyone would have a hard time summarizing a meaningful experience of their life in a page. I mean, if I was William Faulkner, I might be able to do it for you, but I’m not.”
What he said and my friendship with my best friends
We’re sort of like two planets in our own orbits that every so often intersect each other. There’s a bond there that will last as long as we both live.
What he said and what I appreciate in true leaders
I want to commend everyone for their efforts throughout this difficult time. As always, I am very proud of this team.
What he said and how I see other human beings
In most cases, strengths and weaknesses are two sides of the same coin. A strength in one situation is a weakness in another, yet often the person can’t switch gears. It’s a very subtle thing to talk about strengths and weaknesses because almost always they’re the same thing.
His mother loves him.
And that’s a really wonderful thing.
I love and admire my species, living and dead, and am totally dependent on them for my life and well being.
What he said and my job
But here’s the key thing: let’s say I could move a hundred times faster than anyone in here. In the blink of your eye, I could run out there, grab a bouquet of fresh spring flowers, run back in here, and snap my fingers. You would all think I was a magician. And yet I would basically be doing a series of really simple instructions: running out there, grabbing some flowers, running back, snapping my fingers. But I could just do them so fast that you would think that there was something magical going on.
What he said and my own self
We started with nothing. So whenever you start with nothing, you can always shoot for the moon. You have nothing to lose.
You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
What he said and how I motivate myself
It’s been an amazing journey so far, yet we have barely begun.
What he said and the reason why I want to build my base home
Deciding what building to build was really hard. When you are in rented buildings, it is easy because they don’t define who you are—they define who the landlord is! But when you decide to design your own building, you have to ask the question, “Who are we?” Because you want to capture some of the soul of the company in the building and reflect who we are.
What he said and how I sense this very life with 6 senses
“Speech at Palo Alto High School”….
Think of your life as a rainbow arcing across the horizon of this world. You appear, have a chance to blaze in the sky, then you disappear.
The two endpoints of everyone’s rainbow are birth and death. We all experience both completely alone. And yet, most people of your age have not thought about these events very much, much less even seen them in others. How many of you have seen the birth of another human? It is a miracle. And how many of you have witnessed the death of a human? It is a mystery beyond our comprehension. No human alive knows what happens to “us” upon or after our death. Some believe this, others that, but no one really knows at all. Again, most people of your age have not thought about these events very much, and it’s as if we shelter you from them, afraid that the thought of mortality will somehow wound you. For me it’s the opposite: to know my arc will fall makes me want to blaze while I am in the sky. Not for others, but for myself, for the trail I know I am leaving.
Now, as you live your arc across the sky, you want to have as few regrets as possible. Remember, regrets are different from mistakes. Mistakes are those things that you did and wish you could do over again. In some you were a fool (usually concerning women). In others you were scared. In others you hurt someone else. Some mistakes are deep, others not. But if your intent was pure, they are almost always enriching in some way. So mistakes are things that you did and wish you could do over again.
Regrets are most often things you didn’t do, and wish you did. I still regret not kissing Nancy Kinniman in high school. Who knows what might have happened? Maybe she regrets it too …
Third, we are all going to die. You are going to die…. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And I wish that for you.
You can’t plan to meet the people who will change your life. It just happens. Maybe its random, maybe its fate. Either way, you can’t plan for it. But you want to recognize it when it happens, and have the courage and clarity of mind to grab onto it.
And if you can remember that your life is a story in the making, it will help you make those important decisions. When you have to decide between taking the prestigious job that pays well, or the offbeat job with no future that makes your heart sing, just imagine yourself looking back on your life in 50 years and you’ll know what path is yours. You will give yourself the right advice. You will intuitively know if something is part of your story or not.
I’m 50 years old now, and my story is entering its third act. I can tell you with certainty that those times when I have followed my gut, heart and intuition …
Again, 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. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path. And that will make all the difference.
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. Everything else is secondary.
Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact—and that is: everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you….
And you can change it.
You can influence it.
You can build your own things that other people can use.
….
Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.
Thank you.
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To me personally what he said in this book are those lessons learnt by him through his life and at the same time a bunch of lessons to be learnt by the readers. Some specific information can be extracted to be insight then to be wisdom through reflection. Immediate wise words can be absorbed as life supplies to travel this life further.
Truly an enlightening compilation about someone that might have been misunderstood by many yet at the same time admired for what he had done to most.
Thank you, Steve. You are in my pray. Always.
Salaam.
💕
Note: A book review I wrote earlier and saved as personal note, now to be shared.
rike jokanan 
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