Many people in the world, regardless of their social class, can inspire and give honest life advice. Sharing a piece of the life that they’ve gone through and the pain they’ve experienced.
In a 3-minute read of Jeff Bezos’s inspirational speech, founder of Amazon and one of the most influential people in the world, he gave his thoughts about making choices and how our choices can reflect the path of our success.
A Short Verbatim Transcript of Jeff Bezos Motivational Speech:
“If you don’t love your work, you’re never gonna be great at it. If you could get your work life to be where you enjoy half of it, that is amazing! Because very few people ever achieve that. Because the truth is, everything comes with overhead. Everything comes with pieces you don’t lie. Every job comes with pieces you don’t like. That’s just how… that’s part of it. You have to figure out how to set up your life in such a way that you can minimize things.
And I find people don’t dislike hard work. What people dislike is being out of control, like they can’t control their life, they can’t control their environment. This happens to me when I get over-scheduled. I hate being over-scheduled. I want some time to be able to think and free myself.
We all have the same amount of time in the world, nobody has more time than everybody else. And when you become a very successful person, one of the things, you start to get over-scheduled.
If you don’t love your work, you’re never gonna be great at it.
The other thing I would suggest to any young person, even before they start their career is to really think about their choices because I find young people… and I… when I was young, I made this mistake too.
You can get very fixed on your gifts. so everybody has gifts. You have gifts and you have things that you didn’t get gifted. Maybe you’re extremely beautiful, maybe you’re extremely good at mathematics, maybe you.. there are lots of things that you can be given, but those things can confuse you because they’re not the things that construct your life; It’s your choices that construct your life.
You can celebrate your gifts, be proud of them. Be happy of them. Actually don’t be proud of them, be celebratory of them, but you can’t be proud because they’re gifts, they were given to you. You didn’t earn them. You can only be proud of the things you earn!
And so, as I got older, I started to realize, I wasn’t proud of my gifts. I was always good at school. The school was always easy for me, and I was always proud that I was a great student. I got A’s in all of my classes, I was great at math.
All of that, and I thought that’s who I was, but that’s not true. Those are the things that are gifts. What was hard for me is deciding to work hard, deciding to use my gifts in a certain way, to challenge myself, to do things that I didn’t think I can do. To put myself in uncomfortable situations.
You can choose a life of ease and comfort or you can choose a life of service and adventure. Which one of those when you’re 90 years old are you gonna be more proud of?
Tomorrow, in a very real sense, your life, the life you author from scratch on your own, begins.
How will you use your gifts? What choices will you make? Will inertia be your guide or will you follow your passions? Will you follow dogma or will you be original? Will you choose a life of ease or you a life of service and adventure? Will you choose to wilt when you’re wrong or will you apologize?
Will you guard your heart against rejection or will you act when you fall in love? Will you play it safe or will you be a little bit swashbuckling? When it’s tough, will you give up or will you be relentless? Will you be cyclic, or will you be a builder? Will you be clever at the expense of others or will you be kind?
Tomorrow, in a quiet moment of reflection, narrating for only yourself, the most personal version of your life’s story. The telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made.
In the end, we are our choices! Build you a great story.”
My Two Cents on His Speech
Many people who have heard of Jeff Bezos’ speech have learned several things about leading a successful life. I want to share two eye-opening statements that grabbed my attention and acknowledged the honesty of what he said.
“If you don’t love your work, you’re never gonna be great at it”.
I experienced how awful it is to accept a job that you don’t like. It’s more than about the payment that I am receiving and the dissatisfaction I felt while doing the tasks. I have no motivation to finish everything, and the results are awful.
Simply because it’s human nature to enjoy the things that we like! And there’s nothing wrong with that. This is why many people grow old, hating their jobs until the day they retire. Some might have learned to love their jobs onwards, yet some decided to seek the things they were truly passionate about.
But to each of his own. Meaning to say, I’m not going to force you to do anything. It’s your decision that will make a huge difference. After all, it’s not that easy to quit a job and find another one. Or maybe, you just haven’t realized that it’s just a matter of time until you get used to it.
“You can choose a life of ease and comfort or you can choose a life of service and adventure”.
Now, here’s an ironic part of what I am about to say. Jeff Bezos encourages you to choose the latter, “choose a life of service and adventure.” Work hard, exert all the effort that you can, experience the ups and downs in your life until you’ve reached the top.
But as for me, I “choose a life of ease and comfort” since nobody’s going to tell themselves that they should’ve worked more while lying on their deathbed. Yes, you could’ve given more to the world, but not to the point that you’re going to sacrifice your peacefulness and contentment.
At this point, you have to think about the whole theme of Jeff Bezos advice – building an excellent story for yourself by choosing from the series of possibilities you have.
It doesn’t matter what everybody thinks. What matters the most is how you believe things will turn out once you choose a particular path. How will it make you feel? How can it affect the most important people in your life, whether that’s your family, relative, or closest friends?
It’s all about a matter of choices and choosing what’s right for you to lead the definition of a successful life you longed for.
