When we focus on pleasing others, winning approval, and fulfilling other people’s expectations at the cost of our own purpose, we run the risk of living someone else’s life. What do I mean by that? It begins with a quote…
Quotes can be powerful sources of inspiration, reminding us of important truths in short, pithy sentences. Lately I’ve been ruminating on this quote on living authentically from Steve Jobs, taken from a commencement speech given at Stanford University.
“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 know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
Steve Jobs
Why have I been pondering this particular quote? Because I ran across it in the book Authentic: How to Be Yourself and Why it Matters. The author, psychologist Stephen Joseph, states:
“Steve Jobs may not have known it, but his words echo the best thinking today among positive psychologists about how to live a good life and what it means to be authentic.”
Stephen Joseph
I don’t know about you, but I want to live a good life! And in Authentic, Joseph explains why a good life is one that is authentic. He claims that those who live healthy, meaningful, satisfying lives are those whose choices are marked by authenticity rather than inauthenticity.
Which brings me back to the quote from Steve Jobs. Here are five nuggets of truth I’ve taken from the quote.
Our time is limited, yet it’s easy to waste it
Wasting time is easy. We can all come up with a list of trivial activities we spend more time on than we’d like. However, the most insidious time-wasters are the activities that don’t seem like a waste of time. Some examples: We fill our day with busywork while avoiding the one task that’s important. We spend hours (or days, or years) doing things to keep others happy at the expense of our own dreams, work priorities, and health.
This is the kind of wasted time Jobs is warning us about. How much of your precious time and life are you wasting?
We don’t want to live someone else’s life
You and I were not put on this earth to live someone else’s life. We weren’t born to fulfill someone else’s dreams instead of our own, or to accomplish the goals someone else thinks important instead of the ones that make our hearts sing.
However, we only get one shot at living our life. If we don’t hold fast to our values, priorities, and dreams, we can find our choices being dictated by someone else. There are plenty of domineering, ambitious people in our world who are happy to take over our decision-making so that we spend our time and energy doing what they deem important.
Bottom line: When we base our decisions on what will please others, we are living someone else’s life.
We can become trapped in other people’s thinking
By the time we get to adulthood, we have spent years having our heads pumped full of other people’s thinking. People such as parents, teachers, coaches, friends, coworkers, authors, movie directors, musicians, podcasters, and many more. While some of these thoughts are inspiring and useful, others are unhelpful or downright toxic.
Jobs is urging us to question the validity of every belief that passes through our heads. We must ask, “Does this statement align with the reality of my personality, gifting, calling, interests and priorities?” “Does this opinion enable me to grow and thrive, or does it hold me back?”
If we are not proactive at weeding out the unhelpful thinking, we allow our lives to be mired in a swamp of limiting beliefs.
We live in a noise-filled world
Our modern world is filled with noise, both literally and metaphorically. These definitions of noise from Meriam-Webster.com apply to both types.
Noise: 1) any sound that is undesired or interferes with one’s hearing of something. 2) irrelevant or meaningless data or output occurring along with desired information
In order to discern the difference between other people’s unhelpful thinking and the beliefs that are vital to who we are and what we want to accomplish, we must learn to filter out the noise—i.e. all that is unwanted or irrelevant, the stuff that interferes with out ability to hear our inner voice of authenticity.
What kinds of noise do we face? The messages, values, opinions, beliefs, fears, statistics, etc. that fill the airwaves, crowd the shelves, and bombard us everywhere we turn. We must intentionally seek times and places where we can temporarily escape the noise in order to think clearly.
It takes courage to follow our hearts and live authentically instead of living someone else’s life
Once we filter out the noise of other people’s opinions and listen to our heart, we must find the courage to act.
Living authentically isn’t easy. It requires the courage to be vulnerable, to admit our imperfections, and to own our mistakes.
Living authentically takes effort. In our noisy, imaged-driven world, it takes daily, intentional effort to remain on the course we have chosen, especially when our choices conflict with the wishes or beliefs of others.
But in order to reap the benefits of a happier, more meaningful life, we must hold fast to our values and priorities, stay tuned to our true self, and act courageously. As Jobs said, “Everything else is secondary.”
Are you wasting your life?
I hope you will decide today that you are not going to waste your single, unique, precious life! Instead of listening to the noise of other people’s thinking, take time today to tune into the still small voice that can guide you to your true calling.
