Choose Yourself by James Altucher: Learning to be #1

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About the book

The world is changing. Markets have crashed. Jobs have disappeared. Industries have been disrupted and are being remade before our eyes.
Everything we aspired to for “security,” everything we thought was “safe,” no longer is: College. Employment. Retirement. Government. It’s all crumbling down.

In every part of society, the middlemen are being pushed out of the picture. No longer is someone coming to hire you, to invest in your company, to sign you, to pick you. It’s on you to make the most important decision in your life: Choose Yourself.

New tools and economic forces have emerged to make it possible for individuals to create art, make millions of dollars, and change the world without “help.” More and more opportunities are rising out of the ashes of the broken system to generate real inward success (personal happiness and health) and outward success (fulfilling work and wealth).

Source: https://jamesaltucher.com/about/

Click here to buy on The Book Depository

https://www.bookdepository.com/Choose-Yourself-/9781490313375/?a_aid=stephsbookshelf

About the author

James Altucher is an entrepreneur and angel investor. He’s achieved the rank of chess master and is the author of the Wall Street Journal bestselling book “Choose Yourself.”

He’s started 20 companies, 17 of which have failed. But he’s learned a lot along the way.

If you’ve ever been stuck—in a job you hate, in a house you can’t afford, in a life you don’t want, in your own depressed mind, anything— James wants to help you.

Why? Because he gets it. He’s been there. And he want to tell you how he freed himself so maybe you can start to free yourself, too.

Source: https://jamesaltucher.com/about/

Links

Watch James’ Choose Yourself TED Talk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmndCPvXiik

Listen to James’ podcast: https://jamesaltucher.com/podcasts/

BIG IDEA 1 (5:25) – Everything sucks and everyone’s miserable. 

James is quite the pessimist. They language he uses in his books even in his podcast has a lot of negativity. In his book he mentions that internet searches of wanting to die or wanting to disappear, often return his name.

As mentioned in the intro, the theme of the book is pretty much about everything getting worse. Work isn’t meaningful or guaranteed and everyone you love will leave you. They’ll probably die or just leave you for someone else. Oh, and the robots are stealing your jobs.

This is consistent all throughout the book. So the only thing you can do is to love yourself, choose yourself. By putting yourself first, not in a selfish way, can really turn things around for you.

There are stories in the book about very successful entrepreneurs that you may have heard of who had a lot of challenges, but when they choose to love themselves, things started to improve.

This is more around mindset and thinking about what you are doing every single day or week, who do you surround yourself with and what can you do to choose yourself. Because if everyone else leaves you, then might as well like yourself and do things that look after you!

BIG IDEA 2 (8:05) – Have a daily practice. 

James mentioned about the four elements to look after yourself and build a foundation to build your house of success. The four elements are physical, which about eating well, sleeping well, not feeding yourself junk food, and everything about the physical well-being. 

Emotion – surround yourself with positive people .

Mental health – making your brain work. Constantly learning and improving yourself. How you use your brain to be creative and create content rather than just consuming it. The idea is that you need to use the idea muscle in your brain. This can be done by writing ten ideas down about a topic. 

The fourth idea he mentioned in the book is spiritual – about focusing on the present. It’s about what you can and cannot control. It is thinking about being in the present because you can’t control the future and the past is gone. Dwelling on these things isn’t going to change anything and distracts you from moving forward.

BIG IDEA 3 (12:31) – Choose yourself.

There’s so many opportunities to change things. Even though the book talks a lot about negative things it also has a lot of great ideas and practical things. He gives ideas about step by step guide on how to publish a book, how to make a billion dollars and lots of different business ideas.

All of these ideas you can use to choose yourself; create work that is meaningful and how to look after yourself. The book shows how many ideas you can use to change things if you choose yourself. 

Music By:  Cookie Dough – Instrumental Version Song by Egozi

Click here to buy on The Book Depository

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