Ideas, including good ones, come naturally to human beings. As Robert Tucker said: “Anyone who has ever taken a shower has had a good idea.” But good ideas are only the starting point for innovation.

No less an authority than Joseph Schumpeter put it this way: “to carry any improvement into effect is a task entirely different from the inventing of it, and a task, moreover, requiring entirely different kinds of aptitudes.” In other words, it takes work to turn good ideas into something helpful and profitable.

How important are your thoughts? What impact, if any, do your thoughts have on your life? Can one new thought make any difference?

James was a junior tennis champion. He was 16 years old and was hoping to enter the professional circuit. He came from a “tennis family.” He was four years old when he had his first lesson. He won his first competition when he was seven years old. There wasn’t enough cabinet space to display all the trophies he had won since then. The media often billed James as a “future star” of tennis. He was usually seeded number one for the competitions he played in. A lot was expected of James.

Ultimately, each one of us experiences spirituality according to our individual values. In other words, if your highest value is your family and your children, then you’ll feel that your highest calling is to raise a magnificent family. President Kennedy’s mother, Rose, provided an obvious example when she said, “I looked at child rearing not only as a work of love and duty, but as a profession that was fully as interesting and challenging as any honorable profession in the world, and one that demanded the best that I could bring to it.” Raising her children was her spiritual quest.

To be soulcentric is to seek out the ways soul attempts to guide our relationships and individual development. It is to envision the principal goal of maturation to be the conscious discovery and embodiment of our human soul - our unique place in the more-than-human world of mountains, rivers, critters, farms, businesses, and schools.

To be egocentric is to treat the self as an isolated, competitive entity, an autonomous agent with minimal relationship or obligation to other people or the larger world. In an egocentric society, how can you, as a soulcentric parent of pre-teens, optimize the social, psychological, and educational environment in which your child learns and grows?

Talking about commitment usually evokes various responses. The compassionate samurai believes that it means doing what he says he’s going to do. The average person believes in this concept . . . some of the time. He believes that he should do what he says he’s going to when conditions are optimal or conducive for keeping his word. But honestly, commitment doesn’t have conditions. A compassionate samurai follows through whether it feels good or not; average people do what they feel like doing.

Happiness will always bring out the best in you. You were born to be happy. Happiness is natural. It suits you completely. You look good and you feel good when you let happiness ooze from within you. Your step is light, your mind is free, and your spirit soars when you let happiness happen. The whole world responds well to you.

When you’re truly happy, you’re radiant and you function fully. Above all, you are loving, for the essence of happiness is love. You’re also naturally kind, generous, open, warm, and friendly. This is because where there’s true happiness, there is no fear, no doubt, and no anxiety. You’re unrestrained and uninhibited. You are fully present, here and now, and not lost in some past or future.

You are a special, unique person, and you have a meaningful contribution to make to the world. Every person is born with a purpose. There is a reason you are here; you have a role to play that no one else on the planet could fill. The special contribution you came to make is your life’s work. When you are doing that work, you are following your higher path, and your life will be filled with increasing joy, abundance, and well-being.

The secret of success is focus. It is the one secret that ties everything together. According to the law of attraction, what you focus on is what you get. Therefore when you focus on all the qualities of success, you attract them to you. The more you do actions that lead to success, the more success you experience. The success of anything you do begins with focus. That’s when you call all your powers together for the accomplishment of a thing. Focus is an act of will which is the faculty that rules everything.

When you are a creator of your reality, you’re the one who initiates and creates things. Instead of waiting for things to happen, you go ahead and begin them. When others look to someone to follow, you lead the way. You start the ball rolling instead of waiting for someone else to make it roll. You take control of situations and direct them the way you desire them to go. You become the cause of events and experiences. You have the power to move the world at will because you make decisions and follow them.

When my mother was a young woman, she suffered a severe case of rheumatic fever that caused her to gradually lose her hearing in both ears. By the time I was born, the loss was pronounced, so I grew up with a mom who was nearly deaf. She took it all in stride and used to tell us, “It’s not a problem for me because Divine Spirit gives us two ways to listen-with our ears and, more important, with our heart.” In my family, the second approach was emphasized. “It’s interesting,” my mother would say, “that when you use your heart, your ears work better, too.”

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005. You can watch the full length video here.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.