I was lucky —I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I
started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation —the Macintosh —a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
我很幸运，在人生早期就找到了喜爱的东西。20岁时我和Woz在我爸妈的车库里建立了苹果公司。我们很努力地工作，10年之后苹果电脑由最初车库中的两个人变成一家有4000多员工、价值20亿美元的公司。那个时候我们最棒的产品Macintosh刚刚推出一年，而我刚刚30岁。
然后我就被解雇了。随着苹果公司的发展壮大，我们请了一个在我看来非常有才能的人来和我一起管理公司。第一年一切都非常顺利。但是后来我们对于未来的看法出现了分歧，最终我们之间起了争论。争执发生之后，我们的董事会站在了他那一边。于是，30岁时我被炒掉了。一直以来都是我成年生活核心的东西，忽然不复存在了。那感觉相当可怕。
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down -that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me —I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
有几个月的时间，我完全不知道该干什么。我感到自己辜负了前辈企业家的期望——就像接力棒交到我的手里，而我却丢掉了。我遇见了DavidPackard和
BobNoyce并试着为自己没有振作起来而道歉。我成了一名众所周知的失败者。我甚至想过离开硅谷。然而有一种东西慢慢照亮了我：我仍然热爱着我做过的事情。苹果的风云变幻并没有让它有些许改变。我被逐出门，但是我始终心存热爱。我决定重头再来!
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. 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.
我当时并没有意识到，实际上被苹果解雇是当时发生在我身上的最好的事了。事业成功所伴随的那种沉重不见了，取而代之的是重回起跑线的那种新手的轻盈。对于一切我都不再确信无疑。我获得了解放，进而开始了我一生中最富有创造力的时期。
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world’s first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we
developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
在那五年中，我创立了一个名为NeXT的公司，然后又建立了Pixar公司，同时与一位迷人的女士共堕爱河，她后来成为了我的太太。Pixar创作出了世界上第一部电脑动画电影《ToyStory》“《玩具总动员》”。而现在它已经是世界上最成功的动画工作室。再后来，经过一次戏剧性的收购，苹果公司买下了NeXT，我重返苹果。我们在NeXT开发的技术现在成为苹果复兴事业的核心，Laurene跟我也组建了一个美好的家庭。I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. 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. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
我十分坚信如果我没有离开苹果，这一切都不会发生。这是种剧毒的药，但是我这个病人却恰恰需要。有时候，生活会给你当头棒喝，一定不要失去信仰！我知道，唯一支撑我前进的东西就是：我爱我所做的事。你必须找到你所爱的东西。这是一条适合于工作和爱情的信条。
你的工作将构成你生活的大部分，而唯一能让你真正从工作中得到满足的办法就是爱你所做的事。假如你还没有找到它，继续找吧。不要停下脚步。同所有与心灵相关的东西一样，当你找到它时，你会知道的。而且就像那些美好的爱情一样，它会随着岁月的增长而越加醇美。所以继续寻找你所爱的，别停下。