VLT-Website-Heading

What matters more than your talents

Sep 20, 2010 8:58:00 AM / by Vu Long Tran

Each of us has our own talents, strengths and weaknesses in a variety of different areas and honed to varying degrees depending on our own commitment, dedication and ambitions.

Jeff Bezos presented a presentation at Princeton University on TED.com titled, 'What matters more than your talents' in his presentation discusses  how you use the gifts that you have and he asked us whether we should 'pride in gift or pride in choices'. That is, would be take pride in our gifts that we have or will we take greater pride in the way we use our gifts.

He mentions that it is often 'difficult to be kind than to be clever', as sometimes in our own personal point scoring, we can forget the person behind whom we may be being clever to. So it is important to always consider and feel the potential outcomes of what you have to and can say.

He also notes that 'our character is reflected not in the gifts we're endowed with at birth, but by the choices we make over the course of a lifetime', as '...in the end we are our choices...'. Which takes us to the other saying that, it's not only about the 'destination, but the journey' as well, as we must be wary that the things we do today in pursuit of any ambition we may have, will influence others with whom we share the world with.

I find it great how he highlights how we have a choice in the actions we have in influencing the world that we live in.

If you're interested in watching his speech you can view it at: https://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_bezos_gifts_vs_choices.html, Enjoy :)

Vu Long Tran

Written by Vu Long Tran

Solutions Engineer APAC. ex-@Forrester consultant. Writing on #cloud #howto guides and #tech tinkering!