We are our choices. Build yourself a great story.
Jeff BezosRead
The special ops guys and the firefighters around the world have this great phrase. They say, 'Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast,' and that is true. Everything I've accomplished in my life has been because of that attitude.
Interpretation
Taking your time to do things carefully leads to greater efficiency in the long run.
The quote emphasizes the importance of a deliberate and careful approach to tasks. Jeff Bezos reflects on how a mindset focused on smooth and steady work, rather than rushing, has contributed to his successes. It's a reminder that patience and precision often yield better results than haste.
In practice
In a team meeting to discuss project timelines, you might say this quote to encourage careful planning over rushing.
We are our choices. Build yourself a great story.
Work hard, have fun and make history.
If you're not stubborn, you'll give up on experiments too soon. And if you're not flexible, you'll pound your head against the wall and you won't see a different solution to a problem you're trying to solve.
But there's so much kludge, so much terrible stuff, we are at the 1908 Hurley washing machine stage with the Internet. That's where we are. We don't get our hair caught in it, but that's the level of primitiveness of where we are. We're in 1908.
Because, you know, resilience - if you think of it in terms of the Gold Rush, then you'd be pretty depressed right now because the last nugget of gold would be gone. But the good thing is, with innovation, there isn't a last nugget. Every new thing creates two new questions and two new opportunities.
When you are eighty 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.
I don't care how much power, brilliance or energy you have, if you don't harness it and focus it on a specific target, and hold it there you're never going to accomplish as much as your ability warrants
Why give up before we try Feel the lows before the highs Clip our wings before we fly away I can't say I came prepared I'm suspended in the air Won't you come be in the sky with me
Can't nobody touch me right now. Maybe next month all of this will be over. But this month I'm takin' every movin' target out.
Failure is delay, but not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead-end street.
But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you've got going on at home that's no excuse ... Where you are right now doesn't have to determine where you'll end up. No one's written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.
When you raise your opinion of yourself and what you are capable of it has a decided influence on what you do.
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