Jeff Bezos:

Long-term thinking is a lever. It lets you do things that you could not do or couldn’t even conceive of doing if you were thinking short-term.

If everything has to work in two to three years, then that limits what you can do. If you can give yourself the breathing room to say, “Okay. I’m okay if it takes seven years.” All of a sudden you have way more opportunities.

Jeff Bezos:

In what ways does the world pull at you in an attempt to make you normal? How much work does it take to maintain your distinctiveness? To keep alive the thing or things that make you special?

We all know that distinctiveness – originality – is valuable. We are all taught to “be yourself.” What I’m really asking you to do is to embrace and be realistic about how much energy it takes to maintain that distinctiveness. The world wants you to be typical – in a thousand ways, it pulls at you. Don’t let it happen.

You have to pay a price for your distinctiveness, and it’s worth it. The fairy tale version of “be yourself” is that all the pain stops as soon as you allow your distinctiveness to shine. That version is misleading. Being yourself is worth it, but don’t expect it to be easy or free. You’ll have to put energy into it continuously.