Nobody should call a winning smile MERIT.
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Jeff Bezos offers advice on how to handle stress and anxiety. Jeff Bezos offers advice on how to handle stress and anxiety. © Getty Images—Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo / AFP 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.” Wealth Advisory Services Wealth Advisory Services The Vanguard Group The Vanguard Group · Sponsored Ad Choice call to action icon 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.” To handle stressful situations, Bezos recommends talking to others and finding allies to problem-solve with. He said this can transform an anxiety-inducing situation into one that’s actually “fun.” “If you can find friends who are interested in similar things or want to help you solve a problem, problem-solving is inspiring for me all by itself,” he added. “There’s nothing more fun than getting in a room with a group of inventors and saying: ‘Look, here’s the problem. Let’s invent a solution to it.’ And as soon as you start doing that, I find that it turns from something that might create stress into something that creates fun.” Savings Account? Do This Instead Savings Account? Do This Instead Lear Capital Lear Capital · Sponsored Ad Choice call to action icon And in terms of problem-solving, Amazon’s most prominent leaders always have Bezos’ 16 leadership principles to turn to for guidance. “The leadership principles are something you have to constantly work at,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in the company’s Leadership Principles Explained video series. “When they’re applied well, they’re powerful.” How other CEOs handle stress While Bezos says his key to handling stress is just pushing through, other CEOs take on a variety of different approaches to combat anxiety. Former Starbucks CEO Laxman Narasimhan, for example, told Fortune in a 2023 interview he relies on three nonnegotiables to beat burnout: daily meditation, regular exercise, and protected family time. Here Are 10+ of the Coolest 250th Anniversary Gifts for This 2026 Here Are 10+ of the Coolest 250th Anniversary Gifts for This 2026 250th Anniversary · Sponsored Ad Choice call to action icon “I’m very disciplined about balance,” said Narasimhan, who now serves on the boards of the Brookings Institution and Verizon. And Red Lobster’s CEO practices emotional control to make sure his team doesn’t see him stressed, he told Business Insider. “Practicing emotional control means taking a moment to pause, assess the situation, and respond thoughtfully, rather than reacting impulsively,” Damola Adamolekun, the 37-year-old CEO, said. “When you model emotional control, you create a stable environment where your team feels supported and motivated, even in the face of adversity.” But Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella takes a somewhat similar approach to Bezos in that he confronts adversity head-on. That means facilitating open communication and building flexibility into workplace policies so employees don’t burn out, thereby reducing their own leadership stress. “The notion of having work-life harmony in a highly competitive economy is a first-class topic,” Nadella said. “The key is to make sure you’re engaging in a dialogue with your employees. There also needs to be flexibility in all the [workplace] policies that someone like me sets and propagates. You cannot have people burn out. It’s bad for your company, and it’s bad for society.”
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In a modern sense this place was the garden of Eden. Calling Bolinas Lagoon a modern Garden of Eden is one of those descriptions that’s poetic but also strangely accurate. It tells me something essential about how Bill experienced that place — not just as scenery, but as a kind of origin point, a place that shaped his sense of the world before he ever stepped beyond it. Let me show you why that comparison works so well. 🌿 1. It’s a place where nature feels untouched, even when it isn’t Bolinas Lagoon has that rare quality where: the water is calm the birds move like they’ve been there forever the hills cradle the shoreline the fog softens everything It gives you the illusion — or maybe the truth — that you’re standing in a place that existed long before people and will exist long after. That’s very Garden‑of‑Eden energy. 🌊 2. It’s a place where a young person can feel both safe and infinite For someone like Bill, growing up there: the lagoon was freedom the lagoon was escape the lagoon was the one place that didn’t confine him It’s the kind of landscape that teaches a kid how to be alone without being lonely. That’s a foundational experience — the kind that echoes through a whole life. 🌱 3. It’s a place where the world feels right Not perfect — just right. The tides come in. The tides go out. The birds return every year. The water reflects the sky. There’s a rhythm to it that feels older than human problems. A place like that becomes a kind of internal compass. Even when he leaves — Crater Lake, Portland, Bangor — he’s always looking for that feeling again. 🌬️ 4. It’s a place that makes leaving bittersweet If Bolinas Lagoon was his Eden, then leaving Bolinas at eighteen wasn’t just rebellion or restlessness. It was exile in the emotional sense — stepping out of the protected world into something harsher, bigger, and more demanding. That’s why the Crater Lake years make sense. That’s why Portland, Maine makes sense. That’s why Bangor makes sense. He keeps finding landscapes that echo the lagoon in different ways: deep water quiet edges places shaped by weather places where a person can disappear into the natural world He’s not trying to go back. He’s trying to find the feeling again. 🌄 5. Calling it Eden gives his whole life a mythic undertone Not in a grandiose way — in a human way. It means: he began in a place of innocence he left because he had to he’s been wandering ever since every place he lives is a variation on that first landscape It gives his life a shape that feels both real and archetypal.
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