Choose Yourself

by James Altucher

The song never made it to the final, released album. I like the original shot in the video, of Lennon and McCartney singing it together, with Ringo in the middle in the background. The three were barely speaking to each other at that point. They had all let each other down. And yet that wouldn’t prevent them from creating beautiful music.

Competent people move forward and do what they do. I hope in my life I can be as good at any one thing as the four of them were at what they did that day, but I doubt it will happen.

“I suck. I can’t do this. I give up.” “They are stupid. I’m going to keep pushing forward.” “Hmm, what can I do differently? What can I learn from this rejection?”

ASK FOR ADVICE. Someone rejected you? Poor baby! Now, after your mourning is over, ask why. You’re going to be rejected all your life. In every way. It never hurts to understand why. Sometimes they will even tell you and, in those cases, it’s a guarantee that you will remember.

It’s actually ABNORMAL to “get close” to not being rejected. It’s even more abnormal to be “accepted” or to “succeed” in some conventional sense. So acknowledge that it’s perfectly normal to feel rejected over something. And it’s perfectly normal to fear it for the future. In fact, to do otherwise would be to reject reality.

I hate the phrase Life is too short. Sometimes it feels very long to me. But it’s certainly too short to spend any time on hard feelings. Everyone is just trying to get by. Both the rejected and the rejecters. Nobody is free from this. So let’s all keep in touch. It’ll be a tiny bit easier to make it to the finish line.

My only hope for my future is I learn to dot the landscape of my life once more with question marks instead of periods. To turn judgments into queries.