Choose Yourself

by James Altucher

“the American Dream” comes from a marketing campaign developed by Fannie Mae to convince Americans newly flush with cash to start taking mortgages. Why buy a home with your own hard-earned money when you can use somebody else’s? It may be the best marketing slogan ever conceived. It was like a vacuum cleaner that sucked everyone into believing that a $15 trillion mortgage industry would lead to universal happiness. “The American Dream” quickly replaced the peace and quiet of the suburbs with the desperate need to always stay ahead.

The 1960s fueled the wealth engine with a stock market boom. And then “The Great Society.” A new marketing slogan! When the stock market stalled, the 1970s introduced massive inflation in order to keep people’s incomes going up. The term “Keeping up with the Joneses” was introduced into popular culture in 1976 to refer to the idea that we are never satisfied anymore. No matter how many material goods we accumulate, there’s always the mysterious “Jones family” who has more. So we need more.

If your body is sick, if you are around negative people who bring you down, if your idea muscle has not been refined into the perfect machine, and if spiritually you haven’t developed a sense of gratitude and surrender, you will have less chances of success in the new Choose Yourself era.

I hate to sound like a weirdo Buddhist, but the only things that really matter in this world are the relationships you have with the people you love, and the meaningful things that you do. Haters don’t fit anywhere into that. Don’t devote any mental space to them.”

Rejection—and the fear of rejection—is the biggest impediment we face to choosing ourselves. We can all put together books about all the times we are rejected. We’re rejected by lovers, by friends, by family, by the government, by the corporate world, by investors, partners, employees, publishers, and on and on.

But the most important thing these rejections gave me was a sense that NEVER AGAIN should I rely on the whims of one person to choose my success or failure in any endeavor.

Often when we attach our happiness to external goals: financial success, relationship success, etc., we get disappointed. Even when things work out, everything cycles, and the happiness is often fleeting. When those goals break, the external pain immediately gets reflected into our internal bodies. Our emotions break. We feel sad, disappointed, and in pain.