Some Words To Live By

I’m a bit tardy on the following blog.  I meant to write it a while ago, but I’ve been quite busy lately.  Anyway, better late than never.  

So my daughter started college a few months ago. The years flew by with the blink of an eye.  I remember as if it were yesterday, when as an infant, she would vomit all over the baby sitters every time my wife and I went out for dinner.  It was a few years later, at 4 years old, when she was misbehaving and I told her “go straight to your room.”  She replied “I can’t go straight to my room Daddy, I have to make a right turn to go up the stairs and then I have to make a left turn at the top of the stairs!”  I knew then I was in big trouble.  I just didn’t know how much.

There are hundreds of other stories of course – but I’ll spare you the sometimes gory and mostly comical details.  Driving her to college the morning of “move-in day”, I had a knot in my stomach.  How can she possibly be going off to college?  How have the past 18 years flown by so quickly?  There were so many things I wanted to tell her that morning…things I had failed to truly get through to her the prior 18 years because she was still my little girl, not the teenager she had become.  Sure, I think I did a fairly solid job of teaching her right from wrong, but there were decades-worth of information I’ve gleaned over my many years of life which I wanted to somehow transmit telepathically into her brain.

We’ve both never been great at communicating with each other.  Teenagers never want, or need, to listen to their parents.  We are the last people on their list in terms of “go-to” resources.  They’ll ask their friends, they’ll post questions on Facebook or even Yahoo answers, but their parents?  No way.

So I decided to post a few things on my blog because I know she’d rather read my blog than listen to me lecture her.  So here you go sweetie, in the form of my Top Ten.

10) Work hard in school and take pride in whatever you do.  When I was in college, I didn’t take it nearly as seriously as I should have.  Take advantage of it and get everything out of it that you can.  You don’t realize until way later in life the value of a college experience.

 

9) Learn a useful skill while you’re in school, one which will allow you to create value in some form or fashion in the future.  But whatever you do, make sure you love it.  In the long run, you’ll be happier and you’ll be more successful if you’re doing something you want to do, every day.

8) Always go after what you want in life.  Be determined.  People who are successful don’t accept “no” for an answer.  They never give up and they don’t waste time on nonsense.  Have a laser focus on all of your goals.

 

7) Be generous.  I’ve always told you this, but now you need to remember this every day.  Give, don’t take.

6) Be self-sufficient.   Don’t depend on anyone or anything.  If you can take care of yourself, you can take care of anything.

5) Guys in college (and many even out of college) want one thing.  If they tell you otherwise, they’re lying.  I know some women want the same thing, just not as many.  Just be smart.

4) Be competitive.  Life is a game.  Play to win.  You should always want to win, but you should always be a gracious loser as well.

 

3) Be happy.   If you have your health, you have no reason not to be happy.  All problems work themselves out eventually, even things beyond your control.  So don’t stress out over them.

2) Don’t drink or party (too much).

1) And as always…be passionate!  

Thank you Steve

Anyone who knows me well knows there are two modern day individuals who I have come to respect more than any other.  I will save a blog for one of them for another day.  Today, I’d like to write about an incredible individual who was taken way before his time.

Steve Jobs passed away this week after a long battle with pancreatic cancer.  Steve was a hero and a mentor to me, even though I never met him.   He exemplified the purpose of my blog as well as anyone.  You’ve no doubt read or heard countless stories of his hundreds of admirable traits, as well as some of his feared traits (from ex-employees.)  However, in my opinion, no word embodied Steve Jobs more than “passion.”

Passion is defined as any powerful or compelling emotion or feeling.  Steve epitomized passion.  He loved Apple, in my opinion, like no other CEO has loved their company.   He was almost psychotic about creating the right products for the consumer…products which people love to use, are easy to use, which give them immense utility and helps them solve problems.   As one simple example, we are still in the first inning of the App revolution, which will add never-imagined-before utility to consumers and businesses worldwide.

If I’ve tried to teach my kids anything at all for the past decade, it’s that they should be passionate.  It doesn’t matter if they’re working, singing, doing their homework, working on becoming a better athlete or cooking a meal.  If you’re passionate about everything you do throughout life, it will be a life well worth living.  As Confucius once said, “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”  Steve said it best when he gave the commencement address at Stanford University in 2005.  If you haven’t heard it by now, you’ve probably been living under a rock.  You can read it by clicking here.

Peter Lynch has often been quoted saying, “invest in what you know”.   I’m not sure if someone else said “invest in what you love”, but after losing money for years on almost every stock I have ever purchased, I recently started following both of these philosophies.  Although the stock market is in the tank, I’m (relatively) confident knowing over time, investing in what I know and love will serve me well.  Why am I telling you this?  Because I love and I know Apple.

How much do I love Apple and their products?   Let me count the ways.  Over the past 10 years, I have purchased nearly 100 Apple products (not just for myself and my family, but for dozens of gifts for others).  Specifically, I have purchased two imacs, a macbook, 8 iphones, 3 ipads, 3 ipods, 2 ipod mini’s, 3 nano’s, 58 shuffles, 1 itouch, 1 Apple TV (although I admittedly returned this due to frustrations with my wireless cable connection) and many Apple accessories.  If that’s not love, what is?  And best of all, I never had to pay for any of these products (well, kind of.)  The few Apple shares I have purchased over the years have self-funded my Apple product purchases.  Invest in what you know and what you love.  Too bad it took me 20 years to figure this one out.

The people who work for Apple should all be proud of what they’ve created.  Their products have made my life so much more enjoyable and efficient and I would imagine they’ve also made millions of other lives better as well.  I don’t go anywhere without my iphone, I don’t run without my shuffle, I don’t wake up in the morning without turning on my ipad.  There is not a single day in my life when I am not using an Apple product.  Every company should strive to replicate perfection like Steve Jobs and Apple has for years.  Every company should be passionate about their products as well.  Thank you Apple.  And thank you Steve, for being so passionate.  You will be sorely missed.