Reinvent Yourself

by James Altucher

YOU HAVE TO TELL A STORY.

YOU HAVE TO SOLVE A PROBLEM.

HONESTY. Blogs from day one are personal and honest. The best ones bleed all over the screen. A good story has an underdog. A good blog has someone that the predators have targeted. Does the blogger come out alive? Does the reader find catharsis with the bloggers rescue?

“I’m the most brilliant man there is. And this is not being vain. It would only be vanity if you can find someone more intelligent than me!”

So I re-read the Foundation series by Asimov. The premise is that with the use of statistics (he called it “psychohistory”) you can gather up all the prior history and use it to predict the future.

People discover their lives through the words of their friends. Everyone needs someone to turn to. To touch in some way.

“The most important thing in life,” she told me, “more important than anything else by far, is friendship.”

People often say a lie: “Solve other people’s problems and you will be successful.” This is never true. Never. Show us how you solved your problems. Even if you never solved them, still show how you tried. You can give us permission to be confused just like you were.

How do you show us? Write something. Create something. Build something. Talk to people. It doesn’t matter.

Don’t lecture me. Show me. Don’t give me rules. Give me permission.

For a particular example, see his novel “Women,” which details every sexual nuance of every woman who dared to sleep with him after he achieved some success.

Seth Godin has great advice about speaking at conferences: If you speak at a conference, either do it for free because you love it, or charge FULL RETAIL.

Sometimes the sooner you charge in a business, the quicker you put a ceiling on your potential for expansion. This is true whether your business is drugs or Facebook.

“We were out on the streets selling hats and every day we’d try new prices, new styles, new sizes. We’d see what would work and then double down on what worked and stop doing what didn’t work.”

Here is what the sharks (or any investors) want to really understand: Do you have a great product? Do you know what the size of your market is? Do you have some sense of a business model? And, in some cases, do you have big breasts?

You might not have a dime of sales but if you show that people are interested and that your product is special, you’ll get an offer.

You have to ask good questions. “What can I do to improve?” or “How can I find a better job?” or “How can I be grateful that I lost this job?”

Because inside of every problem is the seed of a “difficult gratitude problem” and it always improves your life to solve those problems.

We’re so conditioned to read from people who pretend to “know” that we forget the beauty of “I don’t know.”

What a weird thing for someone to not know. Einstein said, “The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious.”

Every day there’s a new question. What can I possibly do to justify why I am alive? Every day, a new answer to explore. Is this it?

So now Alphabet is aligning itself with this strategy: a holding company that owns and invests in other companies that can solve billion-person problems.

“If you’re changing the world, you’re working on important things. You’re excited to get up in the morning.”

At the very least, when I wake up I try to remember to ask: who can I help today?

It’s only the people who push past the “good enough syndrome” that we hear about: Elon Musk building a spaceship. Larry Page indexing all knowledge. Etc.

Does the employee at night go home and call his or her parents and say, “Guess what I did today?!”

If each employee can say, “Who did I help today?” and have an answer, then that is a good leader.

But give yourself time in your life to wonder what is possible and to make even the slightest moves in that direction.

Sometimes I want to give up on whatever I’m working on. I’m not working on major billion-person problems. And sometimes I think I write too much about the same thing. Every day I try to think, ‘What new thing can I write today?’ and I actually get depressed when I can’t think of something totally new. But I am working on things that I think can help people. And if you are outside of people’s comfort zones, if you are breaking the normal rules of society, people will try to pull you down.

He gave me valuable advice: “Nobody remembers your bad stuff. They only remember your good stuff.”

If you ask every day, “How did I help people today?” then you will have more traffic and money than you could have imagined.

“Invention is not enough. Tesla invented the electric power we use, but he struggled to get it out to people. You have to combine both things: invention and innovation focus, plus the company that can commercialize things and get them to people.”

microcosm

“If you ask an economist what’s driven economic growth, it’s been major advances in things that mattered—the mechanization of farming, mass manufacturing, things like that. The problem is, our society is not organized around doing that.”

“What is the one-sentence summary of how you change the world? Always work hard on something uncomfortably exciting!”

When you are at the crossroads, and your heart loves one path and doesn’t love the other, forget about which path has the money and the work, and take the path you love.

What are 10 things that can be invented that people would use twice a day?

“I think it is often easier to make progress on mega-ambitious dreams. Since no one else is crazy enough to do it, you have little competition. In fact, there are so few people this crazy that I feel like I know them all by first name.”

But it’s only when everyone thinks you are crazy that you know you are going to create something that surprises everyone and really makes your own unique handprint on the world. And because you went out of the comfort zone, you’re only competing against the few other people as crazy as you are.

Goals are a myth. Our ancestors for 200,000 years didn’t have goals. Every day started from scratch: hunt, forage, eat, sex, sleep, wake up to a new day. Then we were told to find our “goals.” And now everyone says, “I’m 17 years old and feel like I’ve accomplished nothing in life. What should I do?”

Learning to find happiness with less is true wealth.

Ultimately we are the sum of our experiences and not the sum of our belongings. There is nothing wrong with making money but it is only one small part of livin...

For 5,000 years or longer, humanity has driven forward with storytelling. Too many people forget that but the only way to really communicate effectively is through story.

“There is no such thing as a boring person: everyone has stories and insights worth sharing. While on the road, we let our phones or laptops take up our attention. By doing that, we might miss out on the chance to learn and absorb ideas and inspiration from an unexpected source: our fellow travelers.”

“When most people think about taking a risk they associate it with negative connotations, when really they should view it as a positive opportunity. Believe in yourself and back yourself to come out on top. Whether that means studying a course to enable a change of direction, taking up an entry-level position on a career ladder you want to be a part of, or starting your own business—you’ll never know if you don’t give it a try.”

“I’ve always had a soft spot for dreamers—not those who waste their time thinking ‘what if’ but the ones who look to the sky and say ‘why can’t I shoot for the moon?’”

Every day I wake up and it’s a constant battle in my brain against obstacles. Usually not business obstacles but emotional ones. Fears. People. Ideas. Hopes. This is life. A stream of obstacles and fears in a tough world.

Suffering will always happen. 2.Suffering will cause you to react. 3.You can remove yourself from the suffering by noticing your reaction instead of being a slave to it. Too often we are slaves to fear instead of masters of growth. 4.Noticing your reactions to suffering, anger, pain is the key to well-being.

“My grandma told me there are only two types of decisions: decisions made out of fear and decisions made out of growth.”

I’d make a fear-based decision out of insecurity. Out of a feeling of scarcity. Out of giving too much power to others so they would control my life. The growth-based decisions all resulted in miracles I could not have imagined. With growth-based decisions you feel it in your body: an expansion of your chest, ideas in your mind, a feeling of competence increasing. A feeling of freedom expanding.