Choose Yourself by James Altucher

You choose that life by doing the best you can right in this moment. Right now. By being bold in this moment. Right now. There is no other moment to wait for.

The reality is that companies don’t need to hire as much anymore because technology has reached its manifest destiny from the pulp science fiction novels of the 1930s. Essentially, robots have replaced humans. (The dream has come true! Cubicle slavery is finally over!) I saw this coming years ago. I used to work in the technology department at HBO right when the Internet was spreading across corporate America. It occurred to me then that nobody would need technology departments anymore. For one thing, at least one-third of the programmers were working on networking software. Well, the Internet is one big networking protocol. So all of those people can be fired. Another one-third of the programmers were working on user-interface software. Well, the web browser solves the entire user interface issue, so all those people can go, too.

This is just one example. But across every industry, technology has replaced not only paper (“the paperless office”), but people. Companies simply don’t need the same amount of people anymore to be as productive as they’ve always been. We are moving toward a society without employees. It’s not here yet. But it will be. And that’s okay.

But the most important thing these rejections gave me was a sense that NEVER AGAIN should I rely on the whims of one person to choose my success or failure in any endeavor.

Here’s an exercise I do that can help in this regard: I try to be quiet. Instead of speaking the average 2,500 words a day that most people speak, it would be nice for me to speak just one thousand words a day when possible. This forces me to carefully choose my words and who I engage with.

Come up with ten ideas a day.

a book: love yourself like your life depends on it

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. That’s the age he was when he found his “purpose“ in life.

Harry Bernstein was a total failure when he wrote his bestselling memoir, The Invisible Wall. His prior forty (forty!) novels had been rejected by publishers. When his memoir came out, he was ninety-three years old. A quote from him: “If I had not lived until I was 90, I would not have been able to write this book, God knows what other potentials lurk in other people, if we could only keep them alive well into their 90s.”

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.

Trust that when the foundation is built, the rest will follow.

NOT BE AT THE WHIM OF ONE DECISION MAKER

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.

When I was building a trading business, I must’ve read more than two hundred books on trading and talked to another two hundred traders. No style of trading was off limits. This helped me not only build a trading business, but build a fund of hedge funds, and ultimately build stockpickr.com. I felt like I knew more about trading and the top investors out there than anyone else in the world. Creating value was almost an afterthought. When I was building websites, I knew everything about programming for the web. There was nothing I couldn’t do. And the competition, usually run by businessmen and not programmers, knew that about me. And they knew that I would always come in cheaper.

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Develop your idea muscle.

My successful investments all involved situations where I made sure the CEOs and other investors were smarter than me. One hundred percent of my zeros as an angel investor were situations where I thought I was smart. I wasn’t. I’m mediocre.

If we truly want to learn, we never learn when we are talking. We only learn when we are listening.

For the past 10 years I have been strengthening my ‘It doesn’t affect me when people pass judgment’ muscles, since I know that what I do is from an authentic space of love and devotion to make a positive difference in the world. I came from a childhood of foster homes and poor health, so just to be alive now is a miracle every single day. The fact that I can put my leg behind my head and balance on my hands is even more miraculous than you may imagine, given that 10 years ago I was in a terrible car accident

that cost me the curve in my cervical spine. After every doctor I saw told me there was nothing I could do to reverse that, I sought alternative options. Now, after almost a decade of self-sought healing, I am able to do some very miraculous things with my body that most people, as you commented, may only dream about.

Besides the physical miracle of my personal healing experience, the fact that I can be living my dreams and doing what I love as a career is even more inspiring to me. There was a time when I was the one sitting in a cubicle working an office job and hating my life. Judging myself and everyone around me and focusing on the negative. It took a tremendous leap of faith to decide what I loved to do and move toward making a career out of it. Then it took another 5 years of personal development inner work to get to the point that I could get past my limiting belief

systems that held me back from my power and authentic self-expression. The rest of it was a steep learning curve of how to operate a business as a single woman in a male-dominated world; navigating these waters has not been an easy task.

Despite all of the challenges, it was the best decision of my life. The ROI has been paid to me with dividends of joy and not money, but I’ll take that to the bank and cash it any day over doing something that kills my spirit just to pay the bills.

And that is what inspires me even more. That I know, in my heart and soul, that EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE.

We rob ourselves of our joy and happiness when we stop and check in with what everyone else is thinking and saying about us.

Years ago I read an interview with Gabrielle Reese where she was asked how she deals with the pressures of being a pro athlete, SI model, mother and wife of Surf God Laird Hamilton. She said, “In life, you will always have 30 percent of people who love you, 30 percent who hate you and 30 percent who couldn’t care less.” When I heard that, my entire worldview changed.

I’ve seen it in action repeatedly: no matter who you are, no matter what you do, no matter who your audience is: 30 percent will love it, 30 percent will hate it, and 30 percent won’t care. Stick with the people who love you and don’t spend a single second on the rest. Life will be better that way.

The only superpower you really need is the one to constantly cultivate the attitude that forces you to ask, from the minute you wake up, to the minute you fall asleep, “What life can I save today?” It’s a practice. Often we forget it. We resist it. Instead of saving lives, we worry about saving ourselves too much. “How will I pay the bills?” “What do I do about my boss saying bad things about me?” And so on.

Instead, superpowers are given to you if all day you try to save at least one life. Try it. Wake up tomorrow and say, “I’m going to save at least one life today.” Even helping an old woman across the street counts. Even responding to an e-mail and helping someone make an important decision saves a life. Even reaching out to a distant friend and asking, “How are you doing?” can save their life. You can save a life today. Don’t let the sun set without doing that. You are Superman.

If a painful memory arises, don't fight it or try to push it away--you're in quicksand. Struggle reinforces pain. Instead, go to love. Love for yourself. Feel it. If you have to fake it, fine. It'll become real eventually. Fell the love for yourself as the memory ebbs and flows. That will take the power away.

And even more importantly, it will shift the wiring of the memory. Do it again and again. Love. Rewire. Love. Re-wire. It's your mind. You can do whatever you want.[...] The result are worth it. I wish that for you.

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.

Master the form you wnat to operate in, get experience, be willing to be imperfect, and then develop the confidence to play within that form, to develop your own style.