Choose Yourself

by James Altucher

Now, every day when I wake up I am grateful. I have to be. And I have to count the things that are abundant in my life. Literally count them. If I don’t they will begin to disappear.

How do you surrender? By trusting that you’ve done the right preparation. You’ve done all you can do. All that is within your power, your control. Now, give up the results. The right thing will happen.

I’m not selling anything (well, this book in your hands, but if you know someone who can’t afford it, then please let me know and I will send it to them for free).

He said the way you get people to floss is to just ask them to floss one tooth. That’s it. Suddenly, they are “flossing.” Their brains say, “I’m the type of person who likes to floss.” Maybe after a day or two they start flossing two teeth. “And why stop there?” Ramit said. “After a few weeks, they’re flossing all of their teeth because their brain sees it wasn’t as hard a habit as they thought.”

external changes flow from the inside.

Sometimes it’s enough to just climb out of bed. To be grateful for the abundance already in our lives.

Your body is getting constantly mugged right now, triggering that fight or flight. So you have to work it off somehow. Exercise, eat well, and sleep. Else your body will be upset and then you will feel worse.

We all want to de-clutter. To throw things out. But a minimalist lifestyle is bullshit unless you can do it across every sheath in the daily practice: not just physical, but also emotional, mental, and spiritual. More important is to throw away the baggage, the grudges from the past that, a thousand years from now, will mean nothing. Give up on the ambitions for the future that are more trouble and anxiety than they are worth. To de-clutter your brain. To be free. To suffer a “little death” or to be “born again.”

But you have to make sure if you are being exploited that you learn how to exploit back. You use the corporate job as a rest stop on the way toward being healthy, on the way toward figuring out how to innovate and take advantage of the mythical safety net to move onto bigger and better things.

Luck is created by the prepared.

Brene Brown has written an excellent book called The Gift of Imperfection, but I’ll summarize it here: perfectionism is sometimes the most dangerous set of thoughts you can let make their home in your head.