27 May Jeff Bezos Says 10 Choices Lead to a Life Without Regrets
No one will ever live a “perfect” life. No one will ever be happy all the time. We all make mistakes and we all feel bad at times. But happiness (and success) is making more good decisions than bad; feel positive emotions more than negative ones.
Part of that will lead to fewer regrets; and having fewer regrets will also lead to more happiness…
via Inc.com by Jeff Haden
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is widely respected for a number of qualities. Patiently building a company with a juggernaut of a flywheel. Turning an internal initiative into Amazon Web Services, a subsidiary that does over $17.4 billion in revenue. Knowing how to hire the right people. Making smart expansion decisions.
In short, for being unusually smart.
But, as Bezos learned as a 10 year-old during a road trip with his grandparents, intelligence alone won’t make you successful — or help you live a life you’ll look back on with few regrets.
According to Bezos, cleverness is a gift. “You can seduce yourself with your gifts if you’re not careful,” Bezos said to Princeton graduates in 2010, “and if you do, it’ll probably be to the detriment of your choices.”
Research shows we more often regret things we didn’t do than the things we did, even if things we did turned out badly. Makes sense: With time and effort, you can fix almost any mistake. But you can’t go back and do the things you dreamed of doing, but didn’t.
In fact, this study takes that idea even further, probing the kinds of regrets we have about the people we don’t become — which is a natural extension of the actions we didn’t take.
As Bezos said, “When you are 80 years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life 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.”
What choices will make the biggest impact on your life story — and whether you look back on that story with regrets?
These are the questions Bezos says to ask yourself…
… keep reading the full & original article HERE
#happiness #positivepsychology #regrets #success #happy