Steve Jobs on the value of death - Part 7
"Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice."
Last post on Steve Jobs and the value of death, we talked about battling living with the results of other peoples' thinking.
Let's separate in this post the difference between living based on the ideas of other people, and hearing our "inner voice."
One weakness in todays saturated media marketplace, is there are so many thoughts, ideas and agendas out there, that they not only are hard to break through to differentiate our company or a product within the company, but it also presents a real danger in clouding out our own inner thoughts, as outward stimuli threaten to overwhelm us.
We go back to the principle of death here, along with its reality, to show how we can overcome this very real threat to hearing from within, regardless of outward noise.
Again, facing our mortality is a tool to discipline us to focus, at the same time, the principle of death, which is the practical outworking of facing our mortality, allows us to "deaden" that which isn't important, and to sift through input to reach our own inner voice first.
I think it's important to hear from within, before we listen to input from without. With no inner compass, we have no way of making a determination on whether something presented to us is valuable or not.
Not only that, if we don't listen to our inner voice, we can be carried along on the river of opinion and the flood of possibilities, while having no firm basis for making a decision.
The most important thing in all of it, is to not lose our ability to listen quietly within. To lose that, is to lose our direction. If we lose our direction, we could end up anywhere, whether it's good for us or our company's.
A practical step in this is to take those times where we have quiet, or use tools like music in the background, or whatever works for us, to reconnect with our inner voice. It's surprising how focused and ready we become after doing this on a periodic basis.
The principle is to allow ourselves to die to outside voices and opinions, while allowing our inner selves to be renewed on a continuous basis.
Other Steve Jobs Resources:
You've got to find what you love
Steve Jobs, Business Personality
Steve Jobs' Greatest Presentation
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