Alvin Lai

On my way back home, I've stumbled on the podcast of Steve Job's commencement address at Stanford university while scanning through for a song.

For the 15 minutes waiting for the bus, I went through his speech again and I thought it would be useful for me to jot down the salient points of his inspiring speech.

Here's it. I hope to make a difference like what Steve has done with his life and I believe you can if you'd like to, too.

1. Connecting the dots

   • Follow curiosity and intuition
   • Find out what's facinating, beautiful and subtle
     • Might not have any direct practical application
   • Impossible to connect the dots forward
     • Believe that God has a way for you
     • Trust in something, believing that the dots will connect down
       • the road, will give you the confidence to follow your heart
         • even if it leads you off the well worn path
           • that will make all the difference

2. Love and Loss

   • Still love what I do. Rejected but still in love. Start over.
   • Getting fired - heaviness of being successful replaced by
     • lightness of being a beginner again
       • Less sure about everything
     • Freed and enabled one of the creative periods of his life
   • Awful tasting medicine but the patient needed it
   • Sometimes life hits you in the face with a brick, don't lose faith
   • Only thing that kept him going was that he loved what he did
   • You got to find what you love
   • True for work and lovers
     • Work gonna fill up large part of life
       • Only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe what is great work
       • Only way to do great work is to love what you do
     • Keep looking and don't settle
     • As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it
     • As with any great relationship, it gets better and better as the years go on

3. Death

   • "If you live each day as if it were your last, someday you'll most certainly be right"
   • If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?
   • And if it's no for too many days in a row, I need to change something
   • Remember that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool that I've encountered to
     • help me make the big choices in life
   • Almost everything - all external expectations. pride, fear of embarrassment or failure
     • All fall away in the face of death
     • Leaving what's truly important
   • Remembering that you are going to die is the best way to avoid the trap of thinking
     • you have something to lose
   • You are already naked, there is no reason not to follow your heart
   • No one want to die
   • Death is the destination we all share
   • 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 other's opinions drown out your own inner voice
   • Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition
     • They somehow already know what you truly want to become
       • Every thing else is secondary

Early morning hitchhiking road, the kind you would find yourself hitchhiking on - if you're so adventurous

Stay young, stay foolish.