Choose Yourself

by James Altucher

I’m not even saying it’s the journey that one should love, because some journeys are very painful.

I’ve stumbled and fallen and gotten up and survived enough that I’m sick of goals and purposes and journeys. I want to cut out the middleman. The journey. The desperation and despair that focusing on “purpose“ entails. Forget purpose. It’s okay to be happy without one. The quest for a single purpose has ruined many lives.

My response was that when I was twenty-seven, I had yet to start a business, yet to ever fall in love, yet to write a book, yet to make a TV pilot, yet to fail at twenty businesses in a row, yet to run a hedge fund, VC fund, even become a chess master (which happened at age twenty-eight for me). Most important, I had yet to fail. But I failed so much in my thirties that I practically forgot I was a chess master. As I write this, I’m forty-five and I still have no idea what I want to be when I “grow up.” But I’m starting to finally accept the fact that all I want to be is ME.

1992 I wanted to move into a homeless shelter because I thought that girls who were homeless would be more likely to go out with me. I had this fantasy version of what a homeless shelter would be like.

pseudocide.

The word pseudocide fascinates me. It’s like a “little death,” a phrase often used to describe an orgasm.

You might not be able to live “off the grid”—we are beyond issues of privacy—because your every move is constantly tracked. But who cares? Do you think the government really cares about you?

The key is to make money off the grid, to make money outside the imprisonment of corporate America and out of the reach of the powers that choose or reject us. To be able to work from any location. As we move toward the employee-less society, where ideas become currency and innovation gets rewarded more than manual or managerial services, you will have the opportunity to live a life you want to.

Get rid of it. You ultimately don’t need it. You ultimately will be pushed out of it. We’ve already talked about it. We’re already living it. Cubicles have become commodities. Whoever sits in a cubicle becomes replaceable. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.

But I hope everyone follows the advice of the Daily Practice, where you internally get healthy enough to make the decisions about what is right for your life instead of relying on century-old customs and antiquated ideas about “property rights,” “education,” “jobs,” “politics,” and so on that have kept people enslaved with ancient philosophical shackles.

Now I’ve learned the “Power of No.” If someone asks me to go someplace, have a meeting, have a coffee, get on a call, etc., my first instinct is to say no. Much more value is created when I do the things I enjoy, when I work on my own creativity and continue to build the foundation for health. Rushing around the world trying to capture every piece of business will only result in financial and spiritual poverty. It’s much better to work smarter, not harder.

iv. Give them ideas for how their jobs can even be better. Never forget sales rule #1: Your best future clients are your current clients.

For a while I had a three-strikes-and-you’re-out policy. If a client wasted my time on three deals where I didn’t make money, then he was out. But I broke that rule too many times. Now I basically have a one-strike-and-you’re-out policy.

thing in the morning and find beauty in the silence. The silence is the only place your creative ideas will come from.

DEAL ONLY WITH COLLEAGUES I LIKE. There’s that test: only hire someone you wouldn’t mind sitting next to on a plane ride across the country. Better, then, to be the one hiring than the one trying to be hired. When you are trying to get hired, you put on the mask that says, “I’m the guy who you will like to sit next to flying across country.” I don’t like putting on masks. Nor do I like the people around me to put on masks. It’s very hard to see through all the costumes. People don’t even know they are wearing them; they go through so much of their lives pretending to be someone else, someone who is liked, instead of being who they really are.

NOT BE AT THE WHIM OF ONE DECISION MAKER (i.e., if you have a boss. Or if you have only one big client, who then basically becomes your boss). I hate to beg. I hate to look at someone and think to myself, “If only they say ‘yes’ my entire life will be better.” I hate to be nice to someone just so they like me and say yes to me and whatever I’m offering. I bet there are some prostitutes out there who like their job. I don’t know. But I’m not one of them. I hate having sex with people I don’t love. And that’s what happens when one decision maker has control over your financial future at any moment in time.

BE AROUND LIKE-MINDED PEOPLE. In every business, I’ve loved meeting my competitors. 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. Your sector should be big enough for a hundred competitors. That’s great news. It means you’re probably going to make money.

ONE LAST THING. I’ve discussed the reasons why this major paradigm shift is occurring. It’s not that the system is out to get you. Or the system is imploding. This is not a conspiracy theory about the government or capitalism or the “1 percent.” This is actually a great opportunity for people who can now navigate the rough surf that history is throwing up on our shores.

The entire first decade of this century was spent with CEOs in their Park Avenue clubs crying through their cigars, “How are we going to fire all this dead weight?” The year 2008 finally gave them the chance. “It was the economy!” they said. The country has been out of a recession since 2009. Four years now. But the jobs have not come back.

4) Money is not happiness. A common question during my Twitter Q&A, asked at least once a week, is “Should I take the job I like or should I take the job that pays more money?” Leaving aside the question, should I take a job at all?, let’s talk about money for a second. First, the science: studies show that an increase in salary only offers marginal to zero increase in “happiness” above a certain level. Why is that? Because of this basic fact: people spend what they make.

In other words, don’t stay at the job for safe salary increases over time. That will never get you where you want—freedom from financial worry. Only free time, imagination, creativity, and an ability to disappear will help you deliver value that nobody ever delivered before in the history of mankind.

Lawyers are ranked number one in average pay. They are also ranked as the number-one profession for the percentage of people in that profession who are clinically depressed. Of course, money can solve a lot of your temporal problems, and your worries in the material world. But it tends to magnify the big internal ones as well, the bad qualities.

5) Count right now how many people can make a major decision that can ruin your life. I discuss this in the chapter “And Then They All Laughed.” I bring it up again so you can’t escape it: how many people do you have to kiss ass to in order to achieve career goals? One? Two? The point here is to not kiss ass at all. To know that there are at least twenty people who independently can help you to achieve the success you need.

Exercise: think of two people in your network who don’t know each other but you think can add value to each other’s lives. Introduce them. Do this every day. Get better and better at it. The more value you bring to the people in your network (even if it doesn’t directly bring value to you in an immediate way), the greater the value of your network. And then the greater value you will have.

6) Is your job satisfying your needs? I will define “needs” the way I always do, via the four legs of the Daily Practice. Are your physical needs, your emotional needs, your mental needs, and your spiritual needs being satisfied?

Your hands are not made to type out memos. Or put paper through fax machines. Or hold a phone up while you talk to people you dislike. One hundred years from now, your hands will rot like dust in your grave. You have to make wonderful use of those hands now. Kiss your hands so they can make magic.

Your life is a house. Abundance is the roof. But the foundation and the plumbing need to be in there first or the roof will fall down and the house will be unlivable. You create the foundation by following the Daily Practice. I say this not because I am selling anything but because it worked for me every time my roof caved in. My house has been bombed, my home has been cold, and blistering winds have frostbitten my nerve endings, but I managed to rebuild. This is how I did it.

7) Your retirement plan is for shit. I don’t care how much you set aside for your 401(k). It’s over. The whole myth of savings is gone. Inflation will carve out the bulk of your 401(k). And in order to cash in on that retirement plan you have to live for a really long time doing stuff you don’t like to do. And then suddenly you’re eighty and you’re living a reduced lifestyle in a cave and can barely keep warm at night.

What is your other choice? To stay at a job where the boss is trying to keep you down, will eventually replace you, will pay you only enough for you to survive, will rotate between compliments and insults so you stay like a fish caught on the bait as he reels you in. Is that your best other choice? You and I have the same twenty-four hours each day. Is that how you will spend yours?

Make the list right now. Every dream. I want to be a bestselling author. I want to reduce my material needs. I want to have freedom from many of the worries that I have succumbed to all my life. I want to be healthy. I want to help all of the people around me or the people who come into my life. I want everything I do to be a source of help to people. I want to only be around people I love, people who love me. I want to have time for myself. THESE ARE NOT GOALS. These are themes. Every day, what do I need to do to practice those themes? It starts the moment I wake up. “Who can I help today?” I ask the darkness when I open my eyes. “Who would you have me help today?” I’m a secret agent and I’m waiting for my mission. Ready to receive. This is how you take baby steps. This is how eventually you run toward freedom.

Some people would simply like to quit their current crappy jobs and make a good living. Some people would simply like to quit their jobs and make a million dollars. In that Facebook movie (you know, the Justin Timberlake vehicle), JT says, “A million’s not cool. A BILLION is cool.”

You don’t have to come up with the new, new thing. Just do the old, old thing slightly better than everyone else. And when you are nimble and smaller than the behemoths that are frozen inside bureaucracy, often you can offer better sales and better service. Customers will switch to you. If you can offer higher touch service as well, they will come running to you.

B) Introduce two people. Every company is for sale.

C) Write a book. I

E) Financial Repair.

Rent-to-own.

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.”

The Mental Body: People have lots of ideas, but they are mostly bad ones. The way you get good ideas is to do two things: 1) Read two hours a day. 2) Write ten ideas a day. By the end of a year, you will have read for almost one thousand hours and written down 3,600 ideas. One of these ideas will be a home run. How will you know which one? Or two? Or three? Well, because you are doing your Daily Practice and focusing equally on the other three bodies, which are essential for health.

Finally, try to label your thoughts: “future” or “past.” If you can do that, you stand a pretty good chance of remaining in the present.

Corporate America doesn’t solve problems. These companies are machines that keep churning out the same product, with minor tweaks, forever.

She solved a huge problem for women. If you want to create $1 billion in value, you need to find a problem that nobody has solved. Right now, this second, there are about 1 million problems that, if you solved one, someone else would say, “Holy shit! That’s so easy. Why didn’t I think of that?” And yet, these problems, right now, remain unsolved.

To succeed at something: Know every product in the industry Know every patent Try out all the products Understand how the products are made Make a product that YOU would use every single day. You can’t sell it if you personally don’t LOVE it

Build your product Sell it to a customer Start shipping Then quit your job.

Never ask permission, ask for forgiveness later. Sara didn’t like how Spanx were being displayed at Neiman Marcus. So she bought samples of her own product at Target and displayed them right next to the cash register at Neiman Marcus.

ramifications.

He made the very good point that if you don’t promote yourself, nobody else will.

You can’t have any shame. I have a lot of shame in promoting myself, which I have to get over. She had no shame. Not to over-repeat a catchphrase, but Sara didn’t wait for anyone to choose her. She chose herself in every way.

Good for her. Don’t be a hater! Ninety-nine percent of people are haters. Bless that which you want. If you want to be successful, you need to study success, not hate it or be envious of it. If you are envious, then you will distance yourself from success and make it that much harder to get there. Never be jealous. Never think someone is “lucky.” Luck is created by the prepared. Never think that someone is undeserving of the money they have. That only puts you one more step removed from the freedom you aspire to. I can tell right away that when someone is so envious and jealous, they will never get the freedom they want but will spend the rest of their life trying.

In an interview with Forbes she said, “I feel like money makes you more of who you already are. If you’re an asshole, you become a bigger asshole. If you’re nice, you become nicer. Money is fun to make, fun to spend, and fun to give away.”

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t think about money. But it does mean if YOU ARE thinking too much about money while building your business, then either you are not very passionate about the business or you aren’t helping people with your business. Those two thoughts alone will crowd out the thoughts of your own personal bank account.