It’s commencement speech season.

I recently shared ​a series of powerful lessons​ from David Foster Wallace’s This Is Water commencement speech on its 20th anniversary.

Well, as it turns out, 2005 was a legendary year for wisdom from the commencement stage.

Just a few weeks after Foster Wallace’s brilliance, on June 12, 2005, Steve Jobs stepped to the podium to deliver the annual commencement address at Stanford University.

The speech has impacted my life in deep and lasting ways—shaping how I view purpose, ambition, creativity, and mortality.

In honor of its 20th anniversary, I want to share seven timeless lessons from that day (which we can all apply to our lives).

1. Question the defaults

“I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.”

Throughout your life, you will encounter certain "truths" that are only truths in the sense that they've been repeated so many times that people accept them to be true.

It takes courage to question these defaults in a world that profits from your acceptance of them.

But the best things in life sit on the other side of the questions you dare to ask.

2. Let your curiosity guide you

“And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on...Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class...None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 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.”

Make time to get lost in things that have no obvious utility to your life.

It’s hard to explain, but the things with no obvious utility often end up having the most utility of all.

The world is full of entirely unpredictable connections. You never know what small, seemingly irrelevant interest will open the next door.

The universe opens up to those who open up to it.

3. Have faith in the dots

“If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backward 10 years later. Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So 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.”

The idea of “dots” changed how I see everything:

We’re all just laying down dots. Decisions, successes, failures, side quests, chance occurrences, random conversations. They’re all dots.

At the time, they feel disconnected. Random.

But when you look back, you see the thread. The hidden pattern. The impossible perfection.

You never know which dot matters while you’re in it. That’s where the faith comes in. Faith that the actions of today create the meaning of tomorrow.

So keep going. Keep moving. Keep taking action. Keep stacking dots.

The meaning will reveal itself in time.

4. Fall in love with the starting line

“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.”

There’s a beauty in being a beginner. There’s a beauty in the starting line.

No expectations. No legacy. No weight.

Embrace it. Sometimes the best thing that can happen is to begin again.

5. Never settle for less than you deserve

“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.”

If you truly believe you are meant for more, never settle for a life of less.

It will be uncomfortable. It will hurt. You will have to tolerate uncertainty when every force around you tells you to take the easy way out.

But the rewards are worth it.

The life you want is on the other side of the uncertainty you’ve been avoiding.

6. Remember your own mortality

“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.”

This is perhaps life’s greatest paradox:

You have to accept your death in order to live your life.

Our time is finite, but we often fail to recognize it until it's too late. Time is cruel in that way.

Always remember: Later is just another word for never. Later we’ll all be dead.

So go do the damn thing.

7. Stay hungry, stay foolish

“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...Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”

The fight against normalcy is the most important fight of your life.

The world doesn’t need more of the same. It needs more of you. Unique. Different. Unapologetic. Hungry. Foolish. You.

No one can compete with you, at being you.

20 Years of Life Changing Wisdom

In the 20 years since the original speech, Steve Jobs’ words have been embraced by millions around the world.

It was a blueprint for a life well lived.

Whether this was your first experience with the speech—or your 100th—my hope is that these lessons shape your actions in the days, weeks, and months ahead.

Don’t be afraid to live a life that looks confusing to others. Write your own script. Bet on yourself. Live boldly.

And above all else:

Stay hungry. Stay foolish.

You can find a full video and transcript of the speech ​here​.