Choose Yourself

by James Altucher

The way you get back to basics is by doing your Daily Practice and focusing on the Four Bodies (do one from each, every day): The Physical Body: Am I eating well? Am I exercising? Am I flossing? Am I sleeping enough? There are really no shortcuts. The only people I know who claim they sleep “three hours a day and still have a ton of energy” are 100 percent bipolar. No joke. The Emotional Body: Am I surrounding myself with people who love me? Am I not engaging with the people who put me down, even if they are co-workers? Am I not gossiping? Am I expressing gratitude to the people who are good to me? I bet this seems corny, right? You’re probably asking yourself, what does this have to do with a million dollars? Last year, my friend from Miami (the one with the mansion) made several million dollars in his business. A few years ago, he was broke, living in his parents’ basement. He was overweight and unhealthy. He was in a bad relationship. And his ideas were stale, left over from the last time he made a million (which he of course then lost). What changed? Like many people, he realized that he had to do something different in order to get out of the rut he was in. There’s a saying, “It’s your best thinking that got you here.” So the first step is to literally throw away your “best thinking.” My friend realized that the first step was to get back to the basics. He simply began by jogging and eating better. That sense of self-improvement then started to extend out to his relat...