Choose Yourself

by James Altucher

don’t blame them. I never blame anyone but myself. Every second I am manipulated and coerced and beaten down it’s because I’ve allowed it.

Credit card debt went from $700 billion in 2005 to $2.5 TRILLION in 2007.

ZERO sectors in the economy are moving toward more full-time workers.

The reality is that companies don’t need to hire as much anymore because technology has reached its manifest destiny

Come up with ten ideas a day.

This is how we form a better society. First we become better as individuals. You can’t help others if you look in the mirror and hate what you see.

If you have a story to tell or a service to offer (it doesn’t matter what), love yourself enough to choose yourself.

A lot of people say to me, “I’m twenty-five years old and still have no idea what my purpose in life should be.” When Colonel Sanders was twenty-five, he still had yet to be a fireman, a streetcar conductor, a farmer, a steamboat operator, and finally proprietor of a service station, where he sold chicken. The chicken was great and people loved it but he didn’t start making real money until he started franchising at the age of sixty-five.

Forget purpose. It’s okay to be happy without one. The quest for a single purpose has ruined many lives.

And ultimately, a happy you will be the greatest contribution you can make toward a happy society.

Never forget sales rule #1: Your best future clients are your current clients.

The reality is there’s no such thing as competition. The world is big enough for two people in the same space. If it’s not, then you are in the wrong business.

Make the list right now. Every dream.

There’s a saying, “It’s your best thinking that got you here.”

Note: what might be too big for you (thinking of the next step) might not be too big for someone else. They might easily know, and not be afraid of, what the next step is.

So the question is not, when is an idea too big? It’s how do I make all ideas smaller and achievable?

Every day, read/skim chapters from books on at least four different topics.

Write down ten ideas. About anything. It doesn’t matter if they are business ideas, book ideas, ideas for surprising your spouse in bed, ideas for what you should do if you are arrested for shoplifting, ideas for how to make a better tennis racquet, anything you want. The key is that it has to be ten or more.

The purpose is not to come up with a good idea. The purpose is to have thousands of ideas over time. To develop the idea muscle and turn it into a machine.

Brene Brown has written an excellent book called The Gift of Imperfection,

A simple example: you are late for a meeting but there’s traffic. You can think, God damn this traffic. Why am I always in traffic? Or you can be thinking about something smart: like how good bacon tastes. Can I make a better bacon? Or how would I start a helicopter airline to take me from one side of the city to the other. These seem like dumb thoughts. But they are much better than “God damn this traffic!”

Try this exercise: pretend everyone was sent to this planet to teach you. Famous people, dead people, your neighbors, your relatives, your co-workers. This will give you a strong feeling of humility. And guess what, you will learn from people, you will appreciate them more, and they will actually appreciate you more. Because everyone loves to teach.

leave off at the point right when you are most excited to continue. Then you know it will be easy to start off the next day.

It reminded me of something Kurt Vonnegut, considered an experimental writer in his own right, once said: “To be experimental, first you have to know how to use all the rules of grammar. You have to be an expert first in tradition.”

So what can we learn from Woody Allen? Wake up early. Avoid distractions. Work three to five hours a day and then enjoy the rest of the day. Be as perfectionist as you can, knowing that imperfection will still rule. Have the confidence to be magical and stretch the boundaries of your medium. Combine the tools of the medium itself with the message you want to convey. Don’t get stuck in the same rut—move forward, experiment, but with the confidence built up over experience. Change the rules but learn them first.