I have been meaning to write a blog on Steve Jobs since he passed October 5th, 2011. A lot has been written about him since late last  year, but I wanted to apply some of his wisdom to quitting drinking.

If you don’t know Steve Jobs he was the CEO of Apple and considered one of the greatest visionaries of our generation. Having worked in computers and technology most of my adult life I have grown to respect Jobs and how he pushed the boundaries of innovation. He will also go down as one of the best marketers of our time.

Shortly after his death I was talking to Josh Kaufman, author of The Personal MBA (great book!), and he highly recommended that I go listen to the commencement address Jobs delivered to Stanford graduates in 2005. The full text and video can be seen at the following link – Stanford Jobs Commencement Address.

Within minutes of listening I was riveted to what he had to say. The speech is full of wisdom and because I thought it really applied to quitting drinking and overcoming adversity I wanted to share some big “quit drinking” ideas I got from it.

The way he delivered his message was by telling three short stories from his past and what he learned from them. Teaching through story telling is an art, and he mastered it in this speech.

Here are 3 big quit drinking ideas I got from those stories. All of the quotes below are from Steve Jobs speech.

Big Quit Drinking Idea #1

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.”

This quote came out of his story about how he dropped out of college and just decided to start taking a calligraphy class at another nearby college. He elaborated by saying…

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them.

He ended the story with the following lesson…

You have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

I take a lot of different lessons away from this first story he shared, but there is one that really stands out for me. Your struggles, challenges and your “mistakes” are hard to understand in the moment, but with time comes clarity.

I can look at my past in two ways. How did I waste all of those years drinking alcohol to excess almost every night? Where would I be today if I quit drinking a lot younger like I should have?

OR, I can look back and say wow, those experiences helped create who I am today. And who I am today is someone that knows what it is like first hand to really struggle and eventually overcome a major dependency to alcohol. And with that knowledge I can help others do the same.

To me when I look back at all those years struggling I can now “connect the dots” and see it was all for a reason instead of looking back on it with regret, shame and embarrassment.

Big Quit Drinking Idea #2

“Getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me.”

If you know the Steve Jobs story then you know he was fired from Apple and went on to fund Pixar (the pioneer of computer generated films) and NeXT (which was later ironically bought by Apple).

In this story he shared that…

The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

He followed up by saying…

It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.

There are at least a couple pieces of wisdom from this story. A big one is don’t give up. Find what you love to do and actually do it.

And really this couldn’t be more relevant to quitting drinking. To me I couldn’t do what I love to do until I quit drinking. And I couldn’t quit drinking UNLESS I didn’t give up.

Don’t get me wrong, I gave up the attempt to quit drinking A LOT, but thankfully it was always temporary. I would come back with a new idea or approach and added leverage and was able to finally figure out the answer on how to quit drinking for good.

Big Quit Drinking Idea #3:

“If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?”

Here is the rest of the quote that Jobs shared during this story in which he tells about when he was diagnosed with Pancreatic cancer.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Now this of course can be misinterpreted by those of us that love drinking . Because if you are actively drinking most likely if someone said, “live like this is your last day”, you are going to make the choice to drink.

The big takeaway for me in this is the regular “check-in” he did with himself about what he would do if it was his last day alive. Early in sobriety I used to regularly ask myself if I was moving further or closer to my next drink. If the answer was closer too many days in a row I knew I needed to make a change.

What about you? What big ideas can you take away from these quotes to make a positive change in your life?

Your Sobriety Coach, Dave Andrews