Billionaire Jeff Bezos Told Kids Anxiety Shrinks Once You Face Your Problems — ‘I Find That The Stress Goes Away The Second I Take The First Step’
- Personal Finance
ThePostMaster- 0
- 6 minutes read
Stress advice usually comes from people trying to escape it. Jeff Bezos built one of the largest companies in the world while living with it. That made his answer feel unusually direct when a student asked him how he stays motivated when times are rough.
Amazon’s founder and then-CEO spoke at Seattle’s Museum of Flight during the opening of its Apollo exhibit in 2017, where students asked questions about setbacks, pressure, and uncertainty. One student asked what motivates him “when times are rough.” Bezos did not point to meditation, balance, or motivation speeches. He pointed to action.
“I find if I’m stressed about something it’s usually because I’m not doing anything about it,” Bezos said. “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.”
Don’t Miss:
The answer landed because of who was giving it. Bezos is no longer Amazon’s CEO today, but he remains the company’s executive chairman, and the business still reflects the problem-solving culture he helped build. His perspective comes from decades of high-stakes decisions, public scrutiny, and the pressure that comes with running a company operating at global scale. That context makes the simplicity of the advice stand out.
What he described was not a trick for eliminating anxiety. It was a reframing of it. Stress, in his view, often shows up when something important is being avoided. The longer a problem sits untouched, the larger it feels. Taking action changes that dynamic because it replaces uncertainty with movement.
Bezos told students that working through problems with others helps accelerate that shift. “As long as I have allies, there’s nothing more fun than getting in a room with a group of inventors and saying, here’s the problem, let’s invent a solution to it,” he said. Once the focus turns toward solving something, he suggested, the emotional weight tends to change as well.
Trending: Own the Characters, Not Just the Content: Inside a Fast-Growing Pre-IPO IP Company
Billionaire Banter Hits Different
The idea is easy to understand and harder to apply, especially outside a billionaire’s world. For many people, stress comes from bills, job insecurity, or financial pressure that cannot be solved overnight. That reality makes the advice less about instant solutions and more about direction. Even small steps can reduce anxiety because they move attention away from worry and toward progress.
That is partly why the message resonates beyond entrepreneurship or business leadership. The advice was delivered to kids learning how to cope with uncertainty, but the principle applies broadly. Anxiety often grows in silence and inactivity. Engagement, even imperfect engagement, can make problems feel more manageable.
See Also: Motley Fool’s analysts have built a new lineup of passive ETFs — explore which “Foolish” strategy fits your investment goals.
In practical terms, that can mean different things depending on the source of stress. For financial anxiety, it may start with understanding the numbers instead of avoiding them, building a plan, or speaking with a financial advisor to turn uncertainty into concrete options. The action itself does not erase the problem, but it changes the relationship to it.
Bezos’ point was not that stress disappears. It was that stress can be useful. Treated as a signal rather than an obstacle, it becomes a prompt to move forward. And as he told the students that day, the moment action begins is often the moment the pressure starts to loosen its grip.
Read Next: Why Billionaires Like Warren Buffett Prefer Real Assets Over Speculation—Institutional Real Estate Is Now Accessible to Individuals
Image: Shutterstock
