James Altucher

Choose Yourself!

Love yourself, follow your heart and be happy.

  • Use ads to see what market wants, responds to
  • Being human is going from success to failure and to success and again, and to make the gap smaller
  • We have to choose ourselves for success
  • You have to build up and practice, can’t lift 500 pounds after lifting 50
  • Does one person have control over your life?
  • In general, putting up masks does not help in the long run
  • Moving from one addiction to another, until burnt out (overworking, drugs, sex, etc)
  • We have 3 bodies to take care of
    • Physical body
      • Eat well
      • Sleep well, 7-9h a night
      • Shit everyday
      • Sports, do whatever you need to do
    • Emotional body
      • We are bombarded by negative emotions all the time
      • Be aware of having emotional body
      • Be around only positive people
      • Avoid people who are constantly draining your energy
      • Put a quota on how much you can complain/ feel anxious about that person
    • Mental body
      • Mind always wants to think
      • Usually when thinking too much is the most unhappy time, and not thinking is happy time
      • Every morning come up with 10 ideas
      • Come up with enough ideas that the brain hurts
    • Spiritual body
      • People are stuck in the past, regrets (none of that actually exists, its only in the mind)
      • (Exercise) Look at the rooftops of buildings, find the art
      • Surrender, you have no control of it (past), accept the stillness
    • Body cycles through good and bad moods
      • Delay thinking and making decisions when in bad mood, wait for good mood
    • Simple daily practice
      • Sleep 8 hours
      • Eat 2 meals
      • No TV
      • No junk food
      • No complaining for 1 whole day
      • No gossip
      • Return an email form 5 years ago
      • Express thanks for friends
      • Write down a list of ideas
      • Read something spiritual
      • Wake up in morning and say you want to save one life and look out
      • Think of people who you are grateful for
      • Forgive someone
      • Don’t say yes when you want to say no
      • Don’t have sex with someone you don’t love
      • Shower and scrub
      • Deep breathing
  • Don’t attach happiness to external goals, financial success, relationships
    • We get disappointed, hyppiness is cyclic, fleeting
    • We cling to past happiness
  • To break the breakdown, he thought he was about to die, He loved himself
  • Need to love yourself
  • Mantra -> protect your thought
  • If a painful memory arises, don’t fight it, your in quick sand
  • Instead go to love, feel the love for yourself even if it’s a lie. Love, Rewire
  • Why have a purpose? It’s bad
  • Assumes that you have to find something to make you happy, and be unhappy until then
  • Choose to be happy right now
  • All I want to be is me
  • Drop customers who you don’t like
  • Do not be at the whim to one decision maker
  • After certain salary the marginal happiness decreases
  • It’s ok to take baby steps
  • When you’re time traveling then stop
  • Label thoughts if they are past or future to remain in present
  • Selling is a lot more important than negotiating. Get sales than trying to get best price and no sale happening.
  • Don’t sell to customers that you don’t like
  • How to become an idea machine

    • Idea muscle needs to be exercised every day
    • Read or skim chapters of books of 4 different topics
    • Write down 10 ideas about anything you want
    • do something random (new)
    • Compare new ideas with old ideas
    • Don’t pressure yourself
    • Shake things up from time to time
  • Don’t have opinions

  • Don’t educate people

  • I’m always wrong

  • look back on your life as if already old
  • Be calm at all times
  • Accept everything that you’re doing