Reinvent Yourself

by James Altucher

Have humility. Learn from everyone you can. Even if it’s just one takeaway.

Be grateful for the many lessons you get, and realize that everything is a lesson. *Only be around people you love and who inspire you. *Life is a billion times smaller than the point of a needle. Don’t waste it doing things you were told to do. Do the things you love to do. *Health is the most important thing, else your body today won’t let you enjoy tomorrow. *Every day, be creative. Creativity is a muscle. *You’re going to make mistakes, but 80% is always good enough. Keep learning the next thing. *Life will constantly hit you until you are senseless. Don’t forget these are lessons.

And finally, the amateur learns to laugh every day. That’s...

Children laugh an average of 300 times a day. Adults on average…five times a ...

The greatest artists (Picasso is a good example) reinvented themselves every five years. The best businesspeople (Steve Jobs, Elon Musk and Richard Branson are all great examples) reinvented themselves every few years.

Five years and you need to start learning

new skills, practicing new efforts, trying on new ...

All the people I’ve ever had on my podcast—200 successful artists, billionaires, astronauts, athletes, writers, entrepreneurs, inventors—ha...

So reinvention occurs every day. It’s not something you wake up every five years and say, “OK, today is Reinvention Day.”

So reinvention is: *Defining freedom in different ways (reducing expectations, increasing sources of income so no one source controls you). *Improving relationships. Plus, minus, equal: Finding mentors to teach you. Finding the next generation to teach. Finding friends who build you up and challenge you. This is your “scene.” Everyone going through reinvention needs a scene. *Habits. It’s the 5x5 rule. You are not just the average of the five people around you. You’re the average of the five habits you do, the things you eat, the ideas you have, the content you consume, etc.

even more work and research.

My two themes: *At the end of the day have I done my own daily practice. Without following my own advice, the advice becomes worthless. *And have I continued to develop my PLUS, MINUS, EQUALS. They compound exponentially into an exponential life.

NOBODY is 100% original. This is the anxiety of influence.

Let me summarize the seven aspects of influence: 1.Reciprocity – if you give someone a Christmas card, they will want to return the favor. 2.Likability – make yourself trustworthy. For instance, outline the negatives of dealing with you. 3.Consistency – ask someone for a favor. Now they will say to themselves, “I am the type of person who does James a favor.” 4.Social Proof – if you are trying to get someone to do X, show them that “a lot of your peers do X.” For instance,

if you are at a bar and you are a guy trying to meet women, bring your women friends and not your guy friends with you. 5.Authority – “four out of five dentists say…” 6.Scarcity – “only 100 iPhones left at this store!” 7.Unity – you and I are the same because: location, values, religion, etc.

You always want to get more information in a negotiation with as little commitment as possible on your side.

If one side says, “Show up with $1 million tomorrow,” you can say, “How am I supposed to get you $1 million by tomorrow?”

If one side says, “We can only go as low as $36,000 on this car,” you can say, “I can’t go higher than $30,000. How am I supposed to come up with the $36,000?” And just see what they say.

Ask “open-ended questions” starting with “how” or “what.” Ask a lot of them. Be prepared in advance with your “how” questions.

“Ask them a question like, ‘Do you want this project to fail?’ or ‘Is this situation not going to work out for either side?’” They don’t want to fail, so they will say “no.” Now you can start to find common ground.

“What happens after you die?” “Lot’s of things happen after you die—they just don’t involve you.”

Ask at the end of the day, “Who did I help today?” instead of wondering about life after death.

That gives you a better life. Nothing will give yo...

“‘I’m bored’ is a useless thing to say. You live in a great, big, vast world that you’ve seen none percent of.” Take a walk. Read a book. Write down ideas...

Whatever opinion you have, just sit back and smile and rest a little bit. The problem you are worried about will get solved. Or it won’t. Chances are there’s

nothing you can do either way. So enjoy the bacon.

Blaming and complaining are draining.

They never solve future problems and they only drain away energy from this moment.

We want that ugliness and fear that lives inside to be outside. We want to point the finger at it. So we say, “He did it. He’s an idiot! This phone sucks! My house is...

“Self-love is a good thing but self-awareness is more important. You need to once in a while go, ‘Uh, I’m kind of an asshole.’” If you’re great at ideas, or great at execution, but you eat poorly and are constantly sick, then you’ll be constantly sick and never get anything done. We’re as good as our weakest link. Find the parts of your life where you can jump on the steepest learning curves and make that jump.

The key to the Tao of Louis C.K. is to not expend extra energy on things that don’t matter, things that you can’t change, things that you’re being stupid about, things that won’t be issues a billion years from now. Instead, figure out the real issue: How do I talk to my kid, for instance? How do I talk to my wife? How do I avoid the people who are bringing me down? How do I stop wasting time thinking about these topics that are draining my energy?

Preserve energy for the people that need you. For the actions you can take that require all of that energy.

7.“Everything that’s difficult you should be able to laugh about.” You always have two choices. Be anxious, or find joy in the situation in front of you. Why waste any seconds of a preciously small life being anxious and afraid? Everything has joy. When I wake up in the morning, I try to practice this first thing:...

I let that feeling soak into all the cracks, all the places where I might be anxious or ...

“Life’s too short to be an asshole.” The universe spent 14 billion years to get us to this perfect point, exactly as it was supposed to be. Who am I to say, “You should be different,” or “I’m better than you so I want THIS.” Because, in another flicker of time, we’re just gone. And everyone left will be happy about it.

“If a person is offended, then to them it is offensive. If someone else is not offended, then to them it isn’t. They are both 100% right. For them.” It’s never my business what other people think. If you ever want a lesson on this, look at any YouTube video and look at the comments. Was it really worthwhile for those people to post hateful comments? Did they really change the world for the better by posting on a YouTube video among thousands of other comments? Are they happy now?

10.“I don’t worry about how I’m doing, I just do what I’m doing.” Doing my best in any situation is all I can do. If I worry about it while I’m doing it, I won’t do my best. The next day I will do my best also. If it doesn’t work then OK, it’s a perfect opportunity to learn. As Mac Lethal said to me, “Nobody remembers your bad stuff, just kee...

“Unless your work gives you trouble, it is no good.”

There’s magic in taking what’s been done a billion times before and doing it your way.

“Try many things. One thing I realized is that quantity equals quality. People think it’s one or the other but it’s not. When you have a quantity of ideas and things you are trying, you will find quality.”

LISTEN to what people tell you. Maybe they experienced something you have never experienced. Our brain can curate the experiences of others so maybe it can help us live our own lives better. *OBSERVE what people do. We have what are called “mirror neurons.” If I think I’m a +1 at firing a gun, I might shoot myself and kill myself. If I watch someone over and over firing a gun, then my mirror neurons

kick in and I might be able to do it myself if asked. Although I hope nobody asks me. *BE HUMBLE. Some people are great people. They are kind. They are humble. They are productive. They are competent. They get things done. Then they get AMAZING things done. When you compare, you despair. When you are humble, you learn. When you get curious, you get better. How did they get this way? Oh! They read some books. They wrote some books. They had some ideas. They worked hard every day for years. They saved some lives. OK, now I’ve learned from them. Maybe I can do some of that also. One-tenth of that

if

I’m l...

BE CURIOUS. A zero starts with: *What are they doing? *How are they doing it? *How can I help? *How can I get better? *How can I be competent? Then build trust? Then build excellence? *HAVE THEMES INSTEAD OF GOALS. Chris Hadfield wanted to be an astronaut for 21 years before he became the commander of the International Space Station for 166 days. Sometimes he had disappointments along the way. “If I had only focused on big successes,” he said, “then I would be disappointed most of the time. You have to focus on the small successes and make sure to celebrate them.” He had a theme of being competent. Of hel...

I have to keep quoting Chris. “Continually investing in the success of others is what will eventually lead to success for yourself.”

One thing I know for sure is that feeling entitled to anything will automatically put a ceiling on what you get out of life.

E) ALWAYS TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR OWN LIFE

Wayne says that if something isn’t working in his life, he always tells himself, “It must be because I haven’t used enough determination or I haven’t been fearless enough or I haven’t been

wi...