Choose Yourself – by James Altucher

The world has changed. Full-time work is paying less and less, we’re starting to see more part-time and temporary work arrangements, inflation keeps going up, retirement will soon be dead… It’s time to Choose Yourself. No one else is going to do it for you.

James talks about his daily practice to improve his physical health, emotional health, mental health and spiritual health. This book also talks a lot about the need to choose yourself and become an entrepreneur. This is a solid book for anyone who is an employee stuck in the ‘prison’ (his words) but wants to look out into the garden and see that there is more to life.

“Be Happy, Make Millions, Live The Dream”

Choose Yourself (dot point) Summary

Chapter 1: I choose Myself an Introduction

Been broke many times. Failed big time and lost all of his money

• Failed 18/20 businesses
• Changed careers 5-6 times software, to finance to media
• If I was going to thrive and survive no one else was going to do it for me. We can no longer afford to rely on others to repeat the same mistakes from the past. The middle class has caved in and jobs are disappearing and every industry is in the process of transformation
• Since choosing himself, his life has transformed like magic

Chapter 2 The Economic History of the Choose Yourself Era

‘The Gutenberg printing press was the first crack in the prison. It allowed people to start breaking out of solitary confinement cells by spreading ideas across large distances, and allowing those ideas to mate with one another.’

• For our entire lives, we have been fooled by marketing slogans and masters of the universe who created them
• The figure of median annual earnings since 1970 adjusted for inflation, going down.
• The reason it’s going down is due to increased efficiencies, technological innovation and the fact your bosses hate you
• It’s not just your boss, it is his boss, and his boss all the way up. Who is at the top, we will never know
• Graph of the middle class to upper class, discrepancy getting bigger
• The whole point of choosing yourself is to build your own platform, have faith and confidence instead of a rigged system, ride the surf as the ocean crashes on the beach

How to Choose Yourself

ONLY DO THINGS YOU ENJOY

Excuse – “I would love to but I have to pay the bills”

Only think about the people you enjoy, only read the books you enjoy, only go to events that make you laugh or fall in love, deal with people only who love you back

• Every time you say yes to something you don’t want to do, you will resent people, you will do a bad job, you will make less money, a % of your life will be used up
• Every time you say yes to something you don’t want your fire goes away

The Emotional Body

• Surround myself with only positive people who inspire me
• Avoid people who bring you down, not in a cruel way

The Mental Body

• Tame the wild horse or it will tame you until you are a slave

The Spiritual Body

• Most people obsess about regrets of their past or anxieties in their future.
• The past or the future do not exist.
• When I walk through New York City, everyone seems to have glazed eyes. They are walking in the past of the future, they are time traveling. Does this person love me? Will I go broke? …..
• BE present!

Finding Your Purpose in Life

“I am 25 and still yet to find my purpose” his response

• When Colonel Sanders was 25, he had yet to be a fireman, a streetcar conductor, a farmer, a steamboat operator, a proprietor of a service station, where he sold chicken
• Colonel Sanders started franchising at 65 when it all happened/found is purpose
• You can find the tools to be happy right now. I still don’t know what my purpose is and may never know. That makes me happy. Maybe I will have lots of adventures between now and the day I die
• Raymond Chandler most successful noir novelist ever wrote at 52
• Stan Lee created Marvel at 44
• Jack Cover invented the taser at 50
• Peter Roget was a doctor who retired early 70’s. He became obsessed with words with similar meanings. He started the Roget’s Thesaurus when he was 73
• James Altucher at 27 had yet to start a business, to fall in love, to write a book, to make a TV pilot, to fail 20 businesses in a row, run a hedge fund, become a chess master and had YET to fail

How to Disappear Completely and Never be Found

• With your current identity can you live as if you’ve already disappeared.
• The key is to make money off the grid, make money outside the imprisonment of corporate America.
• To be able to work from any location
• As we move toward an employee less society where ideas become currency and innovation gets rewarded
• What if you need a job? “Get rid of it. You ultimately do not need it. You will ultimately be pushed out of it. We’ve already talked about it. We’re already living it. Cubicles have become commodities. Whoever sits in one is replaceable.

Just Do It

I like to… (as an entrepreneur)
MAKE MY OWN HOURS – Most entrepreneurs waste time. They do not all work 24 hours a day.

HELP PEOPLE – Your employees, your clients, charities (give more)

DEAL WITH CLIENTS I LIKE – fire people he doesn’t like

BE ARTISTIC – Create stuff that wasn’t there before

MAKE LOT OF MONEY – There is more money floating around than ever before. 50 trillion in transactions across the world every year, reach out and touch a bit

DEAL WITH COLLEAGUES I LIKE -Too many people go around with a mask pretending to be someone else instead of being who they are

COME UP WITH IDEAS

1. The middle class is dead
2. You’ve been replaced (technology, outsourcing, temp staffing)
3. Corporations don’t like you. The whole point is for cheap labor, get as much out of you to pay as little as possible
4. Money is not happiness
5. Your retirement plan is for shit – The whole myth of savings is gone. Inflation will carve out the bulk of it in order to pay for the ridiculous debt. In order to have cash in you need to keep doing stuff you don’t like to do. Then suddenly your 80 and living a reduced lifestyle. ‘

• The only retirement plan is to Choose Yourself. Start a business or a platform or a lifestyle where you can put big chunks of money away
• The only skills to be an entrepreneur is to fail, have ideas, sell those ideas, execute and persist as you fail you learn and move to the next adventure

8. Excuses – for each excuse he can’t handle. “OK, I agree with you”. If someone insists to be in prison even though the door is unlocked he isn’t going to argue.
9. Abundance will never come from your job

• Only stepping out the prison imposed on you from your factory will allow you to achieve abundance. You can’t see it now, it is hard to see the gardens when you are locked in jail. Abundance only comes when you move with the themes when you are truly enhancing the lives of the people around you

How to be an Idea Machine

Our thoughts can make our ideal reality possible. If you can think of it, have the creativity, big ideas become smaller and smaller. Until there is no idea too big. Nothing you can’t at least attempt.

Henry Ford “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re probably right”

1. Every day read chapters or books skim at least 4 topics
2. Write down 10 ideas
3. Activate other parts of the brain, do different shit
4. Collisions, have idea sex
5. List your childhood passions

How to Be Less Stupid

Subtraction not addition is what makes the brain more clear.

Paranoia takes 50% intelligence.

Our goal is to be conscious. To be the one who is aware of our actions and reactions around us. Otherwise, we get stuck in the same no passing lane everyone else is driving in

Don’t be perfect!