book-notes

Choose Yourself: Be Happy, Make Millions, Live the Dream

by James Altucher

I, Michael Parker, own this book and took these notes to further my own learning. If you enjoy these notes, please purchase the book!

I Choose Myself: An Introduction

To survive and thrive, you must choose yourself. We cannot afford to rely on others anymore.
It’s one thing to know “The Secret” and bring positivity into your life, but it’s another to actually create opportunities for yourself.

The Economic History of the Choose Yourself Era

The “American Dream” comes from a marketing campaign developed by Fannie Mae to convince Americans, flush with cash after World War II, to start taking mortgages.
The term “keeping up with the Jonses” was introduced in 1976 to refer to the idea that we are never satisfied anymore.
Deflation is scarier than inflation because it’s cheaper for things to wait to buy things. So the government institutes policies that increase inflation, which causes median earnings to decrease.
Chocolate releases phenylephylamine, the same hormone that is released when you fall in love.
Human beings are born pioneers. Corporatism, not capitalism, forced people into cubicles instead of out into the world, exploring and inventing and manifesting.

Permanently Temporary

Removing the middlemen disrupts employment, but increases efficiencies and creates more opportunities for unique ideas to generate real wealth.
If your body is sick, if you’re around negative people, if your idea muscle is weak, and if you haven’t curated gratitude or surrender, then you’ll have fewer chances of success.
The only things that matter in this world are your relationships with the people you love, and the meaningful things that you do.
Choose yourself to become a creator, an innovator, an artist, an investor, a marketer, and an entrepreneur. You must be all these things.

And Then They All Laughed

You can’t hate the people who reject you, nor can you bless the people who love you. Everyone is acting out of his or her own self-interest.
The only safe thing you can do is to try over and over again. Without rejection there is no frontier, no passion, and no magic.
Obsessing over things that we can’t control is useless and takes us out of the game. We have to choose to be in the game.
We were taught at an early age that we’re not good enough, and we find it hard to do something for ourself unless we’re given some implicit permission.

Does One Person Have Control Over Your Life?

Try not to rely on the whims of one person to choose your success or failure in any endeavor.
A ripple that laps on the shore will never be as powerful as the ocean that created it. Be the ocean, so that everything you do emanates out like ripples.

How to Choose Yourself

Only do the things you enjoy. Ninety-nine percent of people and things aren’t worth your time and energy, so don’t bet on them.
When you do something you don’t want to do, you’ll resent people, do a bad job, make less money, have less energy for the important things, and you’ll have wasted time.
The only real fire to cultivate is the one inside of you, which makes the universe bend to you. Nothing external will cultivate it.
We are literally empty. We are made up of atoms, but protons, neutrons, and electrons only make up one-fiftieth of one percent of the space in an atom.
In addition to your physical body, you must keep your emotional body, mental body, and spiritual body healthy and exercise them on a regular basis.
If you eat or drink too late in the day, then you’ll have trouble digesting at night, which hurts your sleeping, which hurts your metabolism the next day.
Surround yourself with people who inspire you. Avoid people who bring you down. By speaking fewer words in a day, you can carefully choose your words and whom you engage with.
Tame your mind through focused use, or it will tame you. So tire it out by thinking of ten ways you can have more time for yourself, ten business ideas, ten anything.
Don’t obsess on regrets in the past or anxieties in the future. The past and future are memories and speculation, neither of which you have any control over.
Realize that almost every time you look back on a particular fear, it was useless worrying about it.

The Simple Daily Practice

You can’t help others if you look in the mirror and hate what you see.
Each day, adopt one good practice. Build up from there.

What If I’m In Crisis?

Turn each obstacle into a moment where you can reflect on the bounty in your life. Even if it’s a rainstorm or a traffic jam.

Choose Yourself to Live

Often we attach happiness to our external goals. When they work out, the happiness is fleeting. When they don’t, the external pain gets reflected into our internal bodies.
The word “mantra” has two parts in Sanskrit: “man” is thoughtfulness with zeal, and “tra” is to protect.
After you upload your PDF to Amazon CreateSpace, they pick an ISBN and send you a proof, which you can approve. Until this point, CreateSpace costs you nothing.
To market your book, give out copies, write on your own blog about how it’s different, write guest posts for other blogs, and use all your social networks.

Finding Your Purpose in Life

When Colonel Sanders was 25, he still had yet to be a fireman, a streetcar conductor, a farmer, a steamboat operator, and proprietor of a service station where he sold chicken. He started franchising at age 65.
The word “purpose” implies that somewhere in the future is something that will make one happy. But you have the tools to be happy now, even without knowing your purpose.
Stan Lee invented the Marvel universe at age 44. Peter Roget authored the thesaurus at age 73. Charles Darwin wrote Origin of the Species at age 50. Henry Ford invented the Model T at age 45, and assembly line at age 60.

How To Disappear Completely and Never Be Found

You probably can’t live “off the grid” but you can live a life of unexpected surprise, where every day is an adventure.
The word “pseudocide” means a faked death in order to mislead others.
When you’re young you think you can climb the perilous mountains of your goals. When you’re older, you may realize that it’s a long fall if you fail.
Throw away the baggage and the grudges from the past that, a thousand years from now, will mean nothing.
Spiritually, we need to recognize the importance of wanting less in our lives. Technologically, we have the tools to live anywhere we want.

Just Do It

Most people, entrepreneurs or not, waste time. For example, you likely won’t make any money by traveling.
Make your clients happy. Do what they say, on time, and then do a little extra to surprise them. Make them your clients for not just one month, but for life.
Only deal with clients you like. Work your way from a three-strike policy to a one-strike policy.
Being an entrepreneur means that you’re going to create something in a way that a customer can’t get anywhere else. And they will pay money for it.
If your physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual bodies are healthy, then solutions and opportunities will appear almost magically in the face of your problems.
Only hire someone you wouldn’t mind sitting next to on a plane ride across the country.
Every day you must come up with ideas to transform your business.
Meet your competitors. If your business has no room for competitors, then you’re in the wrong business. You learn from them and build your tribe.
Be an expert. If you start a business and you have a service or product that people prefer over competitors, then you’re an expert in your space.
Corporations don’t like you. Use a corporate job as a rest stop on the way toward figuring out how to innovate, and move onto bigger and better things.
People spend what they make. Safe increases in salary over time will never buy you freedom from financial worry.
Build up a list of 20 people who can help you achieve the success you need by helping them first. Create value for yourself by creating value for others.
Inflation will carve out the bulk of your 401(k). The only real retirement plan is to start a business or platform or lifestyle where you can put away big chunks of money.
Abundance comes only when you are moving along your themes, when you are truly enhancing the lives of people around you.

Let’s Get Specific: What Should I Do?

You don’t have to come up with something new. Just do the old thing slightly better than anyone else, offering better sales and better service.
Get a customer. The path of getting VC money, quitting your job, building a product, and having millions of customers is a myth.
Blogging is about trust, which leads to opportunities.
When you are a small business, there is no excuse for having poor customer service. It’s the most reliable touch point to keep selling your service to your customers.
The real, true secret for keeping customers is by selling your customers’ services.
Books give you credibility, which give you opportunities in consulting, speaking, other media, other writings, and an email list you can sell other products to.
Most ideas people have are bad ones. So every day, read for two hours and write down ten ideas. At the end of the year, you’ll have one idea that’s a home run.
Meditation or being spiritual simply means staying in the present. Don’t become upset about the past or worry about the future. That’s time traveling.

It Doesn’t Cost A Lot To Make $1 Billion

Corporate America doesn’t solve problems. These companies are machines that keep churning out the same product, with minor tweaks, forever.
Don’t think of selling as dirty in some way. The only way to get anywhere is to come up with good ideas and then have a strong ability to sell them.
To prepare, know every product in the industry, try them all out, understand how they are made, and then make a product that you would use every day.
If you have something that’s worthwhile, don’t be afraid to cold-call. If there’s a need, people would love to meet you.
Never ask permission; ask for forgiveness later. Nobody questions anything if you have confidence, intelligence, and are proud of your product.
Take advantage of publicity. If you don’t promote yourself, then nobody will. Have no shame.
You must study success, not be envious of it. If you are envious, then you will distance yourself from success and make it that much harder to get there.

Becoming a Master Salesman

A bad salesman is a good negotiator. When you’re negotiating, you have to say “no” a lot. When you’re selling, you’re always trying to find the “yes”.
It’s more important to build relationships than to kill everyone and take every last dime in a negotiation.
When you add value to people’s lives, the opportunities that come back to you cannot be quantified.
To sell to a client, love them, love all their products, and infuse yourself with knowledge of their products.
Recommend your competition. If you become a reliable source, then everyone comes back to you; if your knowledge has value, then they only get that by having access to you.
If you do what you love, then you’ll get the knowledge, you’ll get the contacts, you’ll build the site with features no one else has, and you’ll win the customers.

How to Become an Idea Machine

Even if you come up with ideas every day of your life, your idea muscle will atrophy if you give it a two week rest.
Thinking of the next step, what might be too big of an idea for you might not be too big for someone else. They might easily know, and not be afraid of, what the next step is.
If you think you can do something, if you have confidence, if you have creativity, then the big ideas become smaller and smaller.
To help generate ideas, do some activities outside your routine to re-energize some other parts of your brain.
Ideas mate with other ideas to produce children. So read ideas by others, and compare your new ideas to your old ideas.
List your childhood passions. Ideas only bloom from the things you are passionate about. Don’t forget to let these ideas mate with each other.
You can find good ideas by searching for phrases like “I wish I had” or “I just paid someone to” or “is the worst product” on Twitter.
Search for something you know nothing about on YouTube, and let the videos serve as a kernel of idea generation.

Ten Ideas to Start You Off

If you want an idea to help a million people, then after creating the idea you need to know what the next step is.
Robots are replacing the middle class. Everyone else will be an entrepreneur or a temp staffer.

Don’t Have Opinions

Opinions are a way of clinging to the past: To a some belief system from our parents, our education, our corporate masters, or our peer group.
Nobody is going to change his or her mind. Everyone comes to an argument with his or her viewpoint firmly established.
Only worry about your happiness, which doesn’t have to be limited by anyone else’s stupidity unless you allow it to be.
Instead of responding to a comment online with an opinion that no one will care about in a hundred years, do something productive with your time.
Some people argue because they are lonely. But there are better ways to combat loneliness than to hold onto an opinion that is shared by others.
You’re always wrong, because there are no correct opinions. And no matter how much you know, someone else knows more, and they aren’t afraid to flaunt it.

How to Release the God Hormone

Cortisol is the hormone that triggers the fight-or-flight response. It inflames the vagus nerve that hits almost every organ between your brain and your stomach.
Oxytocin reduces your cortisol levels and suppresses the inflammation of the vagus nerve.
To release oxytocin, give money away, hug, like things on Facebook, laugh, walk, call a friend, listen to music, eat, and breathe deeply.
Trusting someone else doesn’t release oxytocin, but being trusted by someone else does. You’ll also be viewed as more charismatic.
A release of oxytocin can have an effect for up to two weeks.
When you expect nothing, you get the immense satisfaction of getting everything you want.

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Mediocre People

Procrastination is your body telling you that you need to back off a bit and think more about what you’re doing.
Many entrepreneurs try to do everything when it would be cheaper and more time efficient to delegate, even if there are up front monetary costs.
Procrastination can also mean that you’re a perfectionist, and filled with shame issues. This will block you from building and selling a business.
Mediocre entrepreneurs fail a lot, so they build this incredible skill of dealing with failure really well, which translates into monetary success.
Many people network too much, when entrepreneurship is hard enough. Work, and then relax when you can.
If you’re a poor negotiator, you’ll get the occasional loss leader, and then ultimately the big fish gets reeled in once enough people say yes.
Being mediocre doesn’t mean you won’t change the world. It means being honest at every level, which is the most effective habit for massive success.

How to Be Less Stupid

Subtraction, not addition, is what makes the window to the brain more clear. Fewer thoughts makes you calm and contemplative.
Don’t be ashamed of imperfections. People sense and appreciate honesty, and honesty about imperfections creates enormous opportunities.
Our mind does one thing over and over that leaves us less intelligent: It puts us in a fantasy world that includes our worst-case scenario.
If you truly want to learn, then don’t talk, but listen. We only learn when we are listening.

Honesty Makes You More Money

Dishonesty works until it doesn’t. Everyone messes up. And when you’re dishonest, you are given only one chance and then it’s over.
Honesty compounds exponentially. More people trust your word and spread the news that you’re a person to be sought out, or given opportunity.
Give credit. Hoarding your ideas for the moment when you can shine will only leave you alone in a dimly lit room.
Direct people to your competitors. Just because you don’t know the answers doesn’t mean you can’t be the source of knowledge.
Encourage people in your network to connect with each other. Because of the network effect, this increases the value of your network.
Make no excuses. Excuses are easy lies we tell ourselves to cover up failures.
Acknowledge even the smallest accomplishments of the people around you. Everyone wants to be perceived as special.
Always help people grow into their own potential. Employees help you build your business; when they leave, be grateful for the work they did.

You’re Never Too Young to Choose Yourself: Nine Lessons from Alex Day

You can choose to call anyone you want. If they want to talk to you, great.
Everyone will say you can’t, especially when you’re young. But if you pick and choose how to work with the entrenched system, you can.
Persistence is more important than industry validation because it’s not the industry that is buying what you’re selling.
Focus on what you can do for your art or business right now instead of trying to aim for things ten years from now.
To help with knowing if you’re good or not, you need a mentor.
Pick a social media outlet and master it. It’s not enough to master your art form. And talk to your big fans.

The Curious Case of the Sexy Image

Some people won’t like you no matter what you say or do. When someone is negative, put them in that bin, and move on with your life.

What I Learned From Superman

If you ask yourself what you can do to save the world, then you will find answers and opportunities.
The only superpower you need is the one to constantly cultivate the attitude that forces you to ask “What life can I save today?”

Gandhi Chose Himself to Free an Entire Country

Be who you are, not what anyone else is, or who anyone else wants you to be. Only you can act to change the world with your ideas.
It is only through silence and contemplation that the hidden shades of reality can be seen and the right action can be taken.
Don’t give advice on things you don’t know about firsthand.
Nothing is more important than cultivation of the self. If you divide the world into “us” versus “them,” you lose touch with who you really are.
Society is made up of individuals, so the only way to improve society is to come at it form a place of deep, individual satisfaction.

Nine Things I Learned from Woody Allen

If you learn from people, you will appreciate them more, and they will appreciate you more. Everyone loves to teach.
Productivity is a consequence of steadiness. Work a little every day.
Avoid outside stimulants. Constantly checking your email and social media cuts into your productivity.
Vonnegut said to be experimental, first you have to know how to use all the rules of grammar. You have to be an expert first in tradition.
Most of success is just showing up. Don’t wait for people to show up at your door. Instead, go to their door.
Study the history of what you want to master, including every nuance, and draw inspiration from other art forms.

Competence and the Beatles’ Last Concert

Competent people move forward and do what they do.
A creator can never rest. Every moment is the audition. Every time you create is a time when you’re potentially disruptive, playful, unique, and vulnerable.

What to Do When You Are Rejected

The three responses to rejection are to surrender, to ignore it and push forward, and to alter your approach.
If you don’t like the people rejecting you, expand the universe of decision makers.
Don’t give up if you’re rejected, but change up. Don’t limit yourself to one domain; this can also release you creatively.
Establish your brand, or your cadre of followers on social media. They establish your authenticity, regardless of who is rejecting you.
Acknowledge that being rejected is the status quo. It’s actually abnormal to “get close” to being accepted, and even more abnormal to be accepted.
Stay in touch and don’t burn bridges. You can cross them again to meet opportunities.

Surviving Failure

Diversify. You get over “this” by having lots of “that”s.
When you’re a kid everything has a question mark at the end of it. Only later do they turn into periods. Or exclamation points.