That was a line from Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford commencement address and an exceptionally powerful idea – he gave this speech a year after his terminal cancer diagnosis.
You can watch his commencement speech here or read the transcript.
If you don’t, take this part with you: “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.”
While a good commencement speech, it comes second to a speech that I’ve shared before (probably several times) but that has had the greatest impact on my life – The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. (transcript)
Brick walls are there for us to show how much we want something. They’re there to keep other people out.