Tag: Amazon

I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. — Bronnie Ware, Top 5 Regrets Of The Dying

When it comes to the decision to quit Medicine…it is going to hurt a lot.

This isn’t going to be a “sharp scratch”.

The moment you tell your parents or guardians or society that you don’t want to follow the plan you’d previously agreed to…the one they’ve helped you pursue your whole life…there’s going to be conflict.

Painful conflict.

And a brutal emotional and psychological battle between their expectations and your exasperations.

This is going to hurt a lot, particularly since it involves people you love.

But as painful as this confrontation might be, it’s a fun day-on-the-beach when compared to what you’re left with if you don’t have this confrontation:

Regret.

If only, what if, woulda, coulda, shoulda.

The sort of regret that will haunt you every step of the way into your 80s and taunt you on your death bed.

And when asked about the things they regret most, virtually every “senior citizen” mentions regret over things they didn’t do rather than things they did do.

Jeff Bezos used this insight as part of his “regret minimization framework”…and was inspired/compelled to quit his job as a successful stock analyst to start a company called Amazon.com

Here it is in Jeff’s own words:

The framework I found, which made the decision incredibly easy, was what I called — which only a nerd would call — a “regret minimization framework.” So I wanted to project myself forward to age 80 and say, “Okay, now I’m looking back on my life. I want to have minimized the number of regrets I have.”

I knew that when I was 80 I was not going to regret having tried this. I was not going to regret trying to participate in this thing called the Internet that I thought was going to be a really big deal. I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried. I knew that that would haunt me every day, and so, when I thought about it that way it was an incredibly easy decision. — Jeff Bezos

The excruciating pain of disappointment and failure hurts way less than the agony of regret.

Either way, there’s pain. But you get to choose:

To disappoint them for a moment (and maybe delight them for a lifetime)…or just keep going through the motions to keep them happy, and live with terrible regret for the rest of your life.

The choice is yours.

Choose to live life with as few regrets as possible.

And a bonus video from Bronnie Ware, author of Top 5 Regrets Of Dying People:

Thanks for reading this article! If you’re ready to find your personal Escape Velocity…where you make the transition from being stuck, to living a life of happiness, freedom and fulfilment…click here for more info.