Good morning and welcome to the Increase Your Impact podcast. I'm Justin Sua, episode 2047.

I recently heard a quote by Jeff Bezos talking about taking pride in your choices, not your gifts.

This is what he says, quote, this is something that's super important for young people to understand and for parents to preach to young people.

It's really easy for a talented young person to take pride in their gifts.

I'm really athletic, or I'm really smart, or I'm really good at math.

That's fine.

You should celebrate your gifts.

You should be happy, but you can't be proud of them. What you can be proud of is your

choices. Did you work hard? That's a choice. Did you study hard? That's a choice. Did you practice?

That's a choice. The people who excel combine gifts and hard work. And the hard work part is a choice, close quote. I really like that.

One thing that we discuss very often with the coaches and the athletes that we work with is

the importance of making a decision. Decide. You have a choice. You have a decision to make every

single day. How are you going to respond to

whatever happens to you? What's your choice? How are you going to choose to respond to adversity? How are you

going to choose to respond to good? And I think this is a really important thing to remind ourselves about

and remind others about that. We have a choice. A common question that

many of the people I work with that will hear me ask is, what are you going to do about it?

Now, this isn't to minimize a situation. This isn't to say that it's not hard or it's not

difficult. And many times it's devastating devastating but when we ask ourselves a question

okay what are you going to do about it then that puts you in the driver's seat it allows you to

make your next move by design and not by not by default and as you focus on what you can control

and focus on what decision you have right now it nudges you to empower yourself it nudges you

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