{"id":514582,"date":"2026-06-02T11:35:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T11:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/514582\/"},"modified":"2026-06-02T11:35:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T11:35:11","slug":"jeff-bezos-25-year-old-stress-cure-is-to-make-the-first-phone-call-or-send-the-first-email","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/514582\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeff Bezos’ 25-year-old stress cure is to ‘make the first phone call, or send the first email’"},"content":{"rendered":"

With economic uncertainty, AI anxiety,<\/a> and a brutal job market<\/a> weighing on workers everywhere, Amazon<\/a> founder Jeff Bezos has a counterintuitive theory on coping with stress\u2014and thinks most people get it completely wrong.<\/p>\n

Back in 2001<\/a>, the then-new tech billionaire, fresh off Amazon\u2019s 1997 IPO, took to the stage at the Academy of Achievement Summit in San Antonio to lay out a take on what actually causes stress. And in his eyes, it has nothing to do with workload, grueling hours, or needing a holiday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can be working incredibly hard and loving it,\u201d Bezos said. \u201cAnd likewise, you can be out of work and incredibly stressed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The culprit, Bezos argued, isn\u2019t your workload. It\u2019s inaction.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople get stress wrong all the time, in my opinion,\u201d he added. \u201cStress comes from ignoring things that you shouldn\u2019t be ignoring.\u201d<\/p>\n

Feeling stressed? Here\u2019s Jeff Bezos\u2019 25-year-old fix<\/p>\n

The fix, Bezos says, is simple\u2014and it doesn\u2019t require even solving the dilemma that\u2019s making you lose sleep. You just need to do something, anything, to chip away at it.<\/p>\n

\u201cStress primarily comes from not taking action over something that you can have some control over, so if I find that some particular thing is causing me to have stress, that\u2019s a warning flag for me,\u201d Bezos explains. \u201cWhat it means is there\u2019s something that I haven\u2019t completely identified, perhaps in my conscious mind, that is bothering me, and I haven\u2019t yet taken any action on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAs soon as I identify it and make the first phone call, or send off the first email\u2014whatever it is that we\u2019re going to do to start to address that situation\u2014even if it\u2019s not solved, the mere fact that we\u2019re addressing it dramatically reduces any stress that might come from it,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

In other words, the relief doesn\u2019t come from resolution. It comes from motion.<\/p>\n

And he made his point with a concrete (and eerily prescient) example: two people can both be out of work, but the one grinding through job applications and interviews will feel far less stressed than the one sitting at home spiraling. Same situation. Completely different headspace.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re out of work, but you\u2019re going through a disciplined approach\u2014a series of job interviews and working to remedy that situation\u2014you\u2019re going to be a lot less stressed than if you\u2019re just worrying about it and doing nothing,\u201d Bezos said.<\/p>\n

Fortune contacted Bezos for comment.<\/p>\n

\u2018Bezos is right, and it lands even harder in 2026\u2032<\/p>\n

The Amazon and Blue Origin founder\u2019s advice feels more relevant now than ever, as young people stare down an uncertain economy<\/a>, a wave of AI-driven redundancies<\/a>, and the worst job market we\u2019ve seen in 37 years.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cBezos is right, and I think it lands even harder in 2026 than it did when he first said it,\u201d Lewis Maleh tells Fortune. As CEO of the executive recruitment agency Bentley Lewis, he sees it play out constantly. \u201cMost of the stress I see in candidates isn\u2019t about uncertainty or workload. It\u2019s about the gap between what they know they should be doing and what they\u2019re actually doing. Inaction is the real tax.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the millions of unemployed young people\u2014or NEETs<\/a>\u2014Maleh shares some tangible steps they can take to regain some sense of control.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re waiting to hear back after an interview, the worst thing you can do is sit with your phone,\u201d he says. \u201cReconnect with five people in your network who already know your work. Write something publicly that puts your thinking into the world. Take a course. Pick up a freelance project. Most of the relief comes from the action itself, because action restores agency, and agency is what kills stress.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve got a job, but you\u2019re feeling stuck and stressed as a result, Maleh says \u201capply less, network more.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cMost senior hires are made long before a role is ever posted,\u201d he explains, adding its why instead of shooting out hundreds (or even thousands) of applications into the job ad abyss, workers can take charge by deciding who they want to work with and \u201cwork backwards from there.\u201d Pluck up that conversation with an old colleague, train up for the next role you want, and post all about it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cMake yourself easy to refer,\u201d he adds. \u201cBecome the obvious answer to a question people are already asking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ultimately, whether you\u2019re pining for a new job, promotion, or change of direction in your career, the responsibility for making it happen sits with you. And as Bezos put it 25 years ago, taking ownership for your own success is a lot less stressful than waiting for someone else to fix it\u2014and even less stressful than doing nothing at all.<\/p>\n

\u201cBe the CEO of your career,\u201d he adds. \u201cNo one else is going to run it for you. Not your employer, not the market, not a recruiter, and certainly not LinkedIn\u2019s algorithm. The moment people stop outsourcing responsibility for their own trajectory is usually the moment the stress starts to lift.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With economic uncertainty, AI anxiety, and a brutal job market weighing on workers everywhere, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":514583,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[276],"tags":[1463,86515,294,2965,18,233,525,135,19,17,9791,3521,167,502,86514,173,2297,27011,5660],"class_list":["post-514582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-amazon","tag-and-wellness","tag-billionaire","tag-blue-origin","tag-eire","tag-employment","tag-fitness","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jeff-bezos","tag-lifestyle","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth","tag-personal-health","tag-stress","tag-unemployment","tag-view-from-the-c-suite","tag-work-life-balance"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116680309376406496","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=514582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/514583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}