I wanted to share with you an excerpt that I read today from Steve Job’s commencement address to the Stanford University graduating class of 2005. He spoke based on his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer and encouraged his listeners.
“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.”
We are each given our own life and it is a gift. A gift to use, enjoy and share. How then does it happen so often that we end up giving away our lives? Perhaps it is because we have focused on wanting to please our parents, our teachers, our friends, our pastor, our spouse, our boss. We are so good at knowing how to meet the expectations of others, yet struggle to know what we genuinely want or need for ourselves.
We give our lives away when we settle for imitating other people. We throw away our authenticity when we lack a clear picture of who we are and we agree to pursue the goals that other people set for us. We are dishonest with ourselves when we go along with the demands of the group (or the one) who think their idea of fun/success/urgency should be our idea of fun/success/urgency. We turn our back on the gift of life when we become involved with immature people who, depending on us for their well being remain emotional infants unwilling to assume responsibility for themselves. Rather than moving them toward maturity, our good intentions and self-sacrificing actions are poured into their bottomless pit of neediness. We forfeit our lives when we refuse to make time to meet our physical needs, when we ignore the signs that we are running on empty emotionally, and when we resist the stillness and the quiet that allows us to connect spiritually.
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| Find a place of stillness and quiet |
We do all these things because it seems easier. We postpone having the difficult conversations and delay making the decisions that may offend people or cause them to become angry. Embarking on a journey to a more authentic life is daunting. It requires silence and time. We need to think and to filter out all the noise and rubbish that people want us to believe and buy into. We need to establish our own true north. We can begin by asking ourselves a few questions: What kind of person do I want to be? What is important? Who do I enjoy being with? What brings me satisfaction? What makes me feel peaceful?
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| Follow your own path |
With a long weekend ahead of us, maybe you can carve out a little “you time” to realign with your authentic self, finding” the courage to follow your heart and intuition.”
Thank you for stopping by My Turquoise Kettle Life.
Have a wonderful day,
Sandra
I really like this post. I recently wrote a post that also quoted that commencement speech, though a different part of it. I think that speeck was simply fabulous.
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