What Jeff Bezos’ Story Can Teach You About the True Meaning of Perseverance
Having a purpose beyond yourself in life makes all the difference in the world.
Perseverance is the essential quality that you will have to demonstrate throughout your life to turn your most ambitious ideas into reality. You must have heard this thing hundreds, if not thousands, of times.
The reason you hear so often about the importance of being persistent is that it is a reality.
We all fail many times in our lives. If you don't have the will within you to keep going, you won't be able to get up and try again in another way. Under these conditions, your chances of success will be more than reduced.
Nevertheless, I still have the feeling that some people have a hard time perceiving the real meaning of perseverance. It's a big word that we can read in all the articles on personal development and to which we adhere of course, but it's harder to put it into practice day after day.
Discovering the stories of people who have succeeded in giving real meaning to this perseverance obviously helps to stay motivated all along the way. This is my deepest conviction, and that's why I'm going to go back with you to the story of Jeff Bezos.
Jeff Bezos reveals his life purpose in 1982 during his high school graduation speech
The year is 1982. More precisely, it is June 20, 1982. A young high school student, like hundreds of thousands of others in America every year, graduated at the top of his class. This high school student is named Jeff Bezos.
Jeff Bezos has the honor of delivering the graduation speech for his class.
In front of more than a thousand people, Jeff Bezos gave a speech that surprised many people at the time. During his speech, Jeff Bezos details his ambitions for the future:
“I want to build space hotels, amusement parks, yachts and colonies for two or three million people orbiting around the earth. The whole idea is to preserve the earth. The final objective is to get all people off the earth and see it turned into a huge national park.”
Eighteen and a half years old, young Jeff Bezos is not lacking in enthusiasm.
Jeff Bezos wants to colonize space, and becoming a millionaire doesn't change his goal
Many of the people attending the speech thought that Jeff Bezos was just a young high school science fiction fan with a somewhat fanciful character. Jeff Bezos' ambitions at the time indeed stand out from the rest of his classmates.
While many just want to get a good job and start a family, he just wants to colonize space!
Throughout his life, this goal, greater than anything else in his eyes, will guide him. After graduating from college, Jeff Bezos went to work in the financial world on Wall Street. In the mid-1990s, Jeff Bezos had a comfortable life that many of his classmates at Palmetto High School in Miami would envy.
Jeff Bezos is a millionaire, but that's not enough for him.
Jeff Bezos leaves his comfortable life at 32 to launch what will become a Web giant a few years later
Jeff Bezos has a bigger goal to accomplish: colonizing space. Many would have given up on this dream a bit once their fortune was made. Indeed, Jeff Bezos could have been content to live this comfortable life. However, Jeff Bezos is not like everyone else.
At the beginning of 1994, Jeff Bezos learns that the use of the Web has increased by 2,300% in one year. This pushes him out of his comfort zone and into an idea he's been obsessed with for a while:
“I came across the fact that Web usage was growing at 2,300 percent per year. I’d never seen or heard of anything that grew that fast, and the idea of building an online bookstore with millions of titles — was very exciting to me.”
Jeff Bezos knows that to achieve his dream of colonizing space, he must first amass a considerable fortune. The rise of the Web seemed to him to be able to change his life so that he could later pursue his lifelong dream.
So he moved to Seattle with his wife to found Amazon. He invests all his money and will make this startup an incredible global success over the next 25 years. In 2021, Amazon is a Web giant that seems to have no limits. Its market cap is more than 1,600 billion dollars.
Now the richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos leaves Amazon to fulfill his lifelong dream
Jeff Bezos has been the richest man in the world for several years. Many would stop there.
But Jeff Bezos is not like everyone else as you already know by now. In 2000, Jeff Bezos took advantage of his new billionaire status to start moving forward with his life's dream. For this, Jeff Bezos created Blue Origin. This is the company that is to help him achieve his lifelong dream.
Throughout the last two decades, Jeff Bezos has never stopped developing Blue Origin using the money he could generate from the sale of some of his Amazon shares.
If Amazon is his greatest success, Jeff Bezos intends to change things. He wants the world to remember him as the one who first colonized space. This goes through Blue Origin. This is the reason why Jeff Bezos decided at the beginning of 2021 to leave his position as CEO of Amazon.
He wants to be able to focus 100% on Blue Origin to make his lifelong dream a reality. If no one thought he could do it in June 1982, everyone now thinks that Jeff Bezos will manage to make this crazy dream of a young high school student a reality in the years to come.
Final Thoughts
The story of Jeff Bezos is there to show us that having a purpose beyond yourself in life is essential to moving forward and achieving great things. It allows you to be persistent no matter what. Jeff Bezos has never given up in his life no matter what failures he may have encountered.
Having that goal to work towards necessarily helped him to have that winning mentality. Defining the goals that drive you to take action in life is, therefore, necessary to really put into practice daily this perseverance that you so often hear about.
Some reading
Bitcoin Empowers Individuals to Take Power in the Face of Irresponsible and Reckless Governments - Bitcoin is a major paradigm shift.
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The Story of the Wise Man Sissa Will Help You To Understand the Magic of Compound Interest - Master this magic or accept to be mastered.
On the Danger of Having a Plan B if You Want to Success - Having no other option but to succeed will make all the difference.
12 Ways To Not Be Too Hard on Yourself - Be your best ally rather than your worst enemy.