When life feels chaotic and unmanageable, it often feels easier to just procrastinate or ignore snowballing problems. But one of the wealthiest and most successful people in the world says that’s not the real cure for anxiety and stress.
“I find if I’m stressed about something it’s usually because I’m not doing anything about it,” Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said in 2017 during a visit to the Museum of Flight in Seattle. “I’m listening to my body as a signal that something is wrong, and I find that the stress goes away the second I take the first step.”
Bezos, who has a net worth of $234 billion and is the world’s fourth-richest man, undoubtedly experienced stress while building what is now the No. 1 Fortune 500 company. After all, he started Amazon in a rented garage and had to take 60 meetings to raise the first $1 million in seed capital for his nascent company in the mid-1990s.
But instead of letting the stress get to him, he chooses to turn his anxiety into motivation.
“If I’m stressed about something, I’m trying to figure out why [I am] stressed,” Bezos said. “I’m listening to my body as a signal.”
