Steve Jobs is rightfully viewed as one of the most (if not the most) innovative and visionary thinkers of the last century, and his idolization around the globe is generally earned and deserved, in my opinion.
It's easy to forget that he sort of killed himself.
Let me be clear: I'm not trying to be insensitive when I say this, and I'm certainly not trying to add insult to what was a tragic premature death after a long bout with cancer. But at the end of the day, it's likely that Steve Jobs would have survived his fight with cancer had he agreed to undergo surgery sooner after his diagnosis. Instead, after he was first diagnosed with cancer, Steve tried to remedy it with diet treatments, spiritualists, and other alternative medicine methods. The results were unsurprisingly disappointing, and he ultimately relented to surgery about a year later. It's widely believed that this delay in getting surgery is what gave the cancer a chance to root itself deep enough inside his body that it could eventually return a few years later to kill him.
So what were Steve's reasons for delaying the surgery? Per his own admission, he didn't want his body to be opened, which I am respectful of, and I'm sure this sentiment is shared by a lot of similarly spiritual people. But it's hard to not feel like Steve was also falling victim to his own "reality distortion field," the well-documented phenomenon where Steve would try to alter reality by simply believing something else. Occasionally this phenomenon resulted in miracles; if Steve told a team of computer engineers that two weeks' worth of coding could be done in 48 hours, those engineers would always somehow find a way to get that code written in 48 hours. But cancer isn't fooled as easily. You can't just believe the cancer will go away. Steve's reality distortion field was one of the leadership weapons that made him the mastermind he was, but it was also the weapon that ultimately killed him.
And that's exactly the larger point here: it's pretty unnerving to think the defining feature that makes someone so singularly brilliant can be the exact feature that leads to that person's downfall. And I think that's probably true for all of us to some degree: our most distinct and valuable traits, when taken in the wrong dosage, can become our most damning qualities.
But because I'm an optimist, I like to think that if that is true, then the inverse has to be true as well: some of your most obvious shortcomings aren't actually shortcomings at all but instead areas of individuality that might ultimately be keys to your success. And that's sort of beautiful in a way. Maybe's Steve's most valuable traits are what led to his death, but maybe your most seemingly meaningless traits are what will lead to your good fortune. Good luck finding those.
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