24. Reinvent Yourself - James Altucher (📱)

08 Jun 2017

Rating 9.5/10

Reading Notes:

We can’t ignore that money is important. Money buys freedom.

Sometimes it’s just as good (often better) to read all of their materials rather than be directly mentored.

Your legacy is not what you do. It’s what the people who you teach do

Susan Cain wrote the book Quiet about unlocking the power of introverts. She has a great new company at QuietRev.com where she helps companies bring out the power of their introverted employees. She gave me a bunch of suggestions. She said, “You need to be by yourself. So excuse yourself for a little bit when you get that feeling and recharge.” She said, “Listen to music or comedy beforehand.” (Yay!) She said, “Establish deadlines in advance so everyone knows that you are planning on leaving early.” She said, “Strike up one-on-one bonding with the people around you rather than trying to impress the whole group.”

Everything I do, everyone I meet, I try to find at least one takeaway. THE PLUS.

NOBODY is 100% original. This is the anxiety of influence.

Almost all of our decisions and even creativity are outsourced to the people around us who influence us: peers, teachers, religion, parents, bosses, etc.

Likability – make yourself trustworthy. For instance, outline the negatives of dealing with you.

The entire purpose of language is to influence. We are not strong animals. We are weak. The language of influence saved us.

Chris Voss the negotiator: You always want to get more information in a negotiation with as little commitment as possible on your side.

“How am I supposed to get you $1 million by tomorrow?” They will keep talking. Outsource the hard things they are asking right back to them.

“Ask them a question like, ‘Do you want this project to fail?’ or ‘Is this situation not going to work out for either side?’” They don’t want to fail, so they will say “no.” Now you can start to find common ground.

MIRROR. Whatever they say, repeat the last one to three words. Do this as much as possible. If they say, “We can’t go higher than $100,000 on salary because that’s what everyone else is making,” just say, “That’s what everyone else is making,” and see what they say next.

SILENCE. Don’t be afraid to go silent. Mirror and then have the confidence to go silent. Nobody wants the negotiation to end. They will keep talking and give you more information. Your goal is you want to get them talking as much as possible. The more information you have, the better. And the more likely they will negotiate against themselves.

DEADLINES DON‘T MATTER. They need you as much as you need them. Most people don’t realize that in the heat of a negotiation. That’s why they are in the negotiation in the first place. If they put a deadline on, don’t feel obligated to meet it. The negotiation won’t end. They still need you.

get your “how”‘ questions ready. Your “no” questions.

“What happens after you die?” “Lot’s of things happen after you die—they just don’t involve you.” Ask at the end of the day, “Who did I help today?” instead of wondering about life after death. That gives you a better life. Nothing will give you a better death.

“‘I’m bored’ is a useless thing to say. You live in a great, big, vast world that you’ve seen none percent of.” Take a walk. Read a book. Write down ideas. Ask someone you love what they are up to.

Blaming and complaining are draining. They never solve future problems and they only drain away energy from this moment.

We want that ugliness and fear that lives inside to be outside. We want to point the finger at it.

We’re as good as our weakest link.

I had always been bad at saying “no,” but then I would blame other people for asking too much of me.

The goal is not to wipe out all of your problems. You can’t. There are no goals. There’s just growth.

Preserve energy for the people that need you. For the actions you can take that require all of that energy.

“Everything that’s difficult you should be able to laugh about.”

You always have two choices. Be anxious, or find joy in the situation in front of you.

The man who has nothing, has nothing to lose. So that’s why I listen. I want to be the man with nothing to lose.

“People don’t remember what they don’t like.”

“To copy others is necessary, but to copy oneself is pathetic.”

Picasso once said, “Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility.”

“Everything you can imagine is real.” Elon Musk wants to die on Mars. “Just not on impact,” he says.

Picasso also says, “I am always doing things I can’t do—that’s how I get to do them.”

“Find the thing you did where you lost all sense of time while you are doing it,” Chip told me.

“Remember the equation from Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. “Despair = Suffering - Meaning. Find the things that bring you meaning. Suffering is always there in this world. But if you have meaning, you will have less despair. You will find your calling.”

Here are the qualities of a zero. *LISTEN to what people tell you. Maybe they experienced something you have never experienced. Our brain can curate the experiences of others so maybe it can help us live our own lives better. *OBSERVE what people do. We have what are called “mirror neurons.”

If I watch someone over and over firing a gun, then my mirror neurons kick in and I might be able to do it myself if asked.

When you compare, you despair. When you are humble, you learn. When you get curious, you get better.

“Continually investing in the success of others is what will eventually lead to success for yourself.”

*DON’T BE ENTITLED. I admit, sometimes I get angry feeling like a zero. I want to be a +1 all the time, at everything I do. I get competitive. I want to be the best at this, or the best at that. RIGHT NOW.

One thing I know for sure is that feeling entitled to anything will automatically put a ceiling on what you get out of life.

Every attempt at art depends first on connection. Every business depends on connection.

The only skill for survival and success is having that ability to connect.

My eight greatest teachers in life were perhaps the many girls in high school who said “no” to me when I was desperate to go out with them. Who knows what would’ve happened to me if everything were easy then. Maybe I would not have been able to handle it when things became really hard later.

Every day, don’t try to jump into another box. Just try to think a little bit more outside of the box society has put you in.

ALWAYS TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR OWN LIFE Wayne says that if something isn’t working in his life, he always tells himself, “It must be because I haven’t used enough determination or I haven’t been fearless enough or I haven’t been willing to do whatever it takes to make it happen.”

Here are some things that are hard in life: being honest, being kind, and trying to add value to others. These things take time and energy. When you are around people who steal your energy, those things become even harder. As a wise man once said, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”

“The first step is to establish that something is possible; then probability will occur.”

“I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better. I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.”

On his favorite book when he was a teen, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: “It taught me that the tough thing is figuring out what questions to ask, but that once you do that, the rest is really easy.”

Sergey Brin, for instance, used to interview every potential Google employee. He explained later that he knew within seconds whether he would hire someone and would then spend the rest of the meeting trying to learn at least one new thing from the interviewee so the meeting wouldn’t be a total waste of time.

Nobody can tell you what to do. No matter what they pay you. No matter what obligations you feel you owe them. Every second defines you. Be who you are, not who anyone else is. An entrepreneur, for instance, has investors, customers, partners, employees, competitors. Everyone wants their inputs heard. But only you can act to change the world with your ideas.

The brain has a tendency to believe things even more if they are repeated, regardless of whether or not they are true. This is called an “availability cascade.”

When people associate the worth of their lives with any one activity, it’s deadly. We have to celebrate what we’re good at. But also celebrate other things in life the love of another person. Our friends. Something funny. I always have to tell myself to diversify my celebrations. Celebrate the small. Not always the big.

Someone asked me recently where I expect to be in five years. I never think about it. Not ever. I only try every day to improve 1% my physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health. The results will take care of themselves. This is the ONLY way today to plan for a successful tomorrow.

it also underlines the importance that there is never “one thing” that we were all put on Earth to do. We were put here to try. Nobody will grade us.

Every single day, art and innovation are right outside the emotional prison of your comfort zone.

What are your emotional anchors? The events that staple the timeline of your life to something that totally destroyed who you thought you were? They can be small moments or big moments. These are the moments where you choose yourself.

“The most important thing in life,” she told me, “more important than anything else by far, is friendship.”

People often say a lie: “Solve other people’s problems and you will be successful.” This is never true. Never. Show us how you solved your problems. Even if you never solved them, still show how you tried. You can give us permission to be confused just like you were.

Sometimes the sooner you charge in a business, the quicker you put a ceiling on your potential for expansion.

The only successes were when I really liked the entrepreneur. And all of the failures came when I thought the idea was more important than the person.

“Being broke is temporary but poverty of mind is permanent. You have to avoid poverty of mind.”

In chess there’s a saying: “Only the good players are lucky.”

Many people say, “Why did this have to happen to me?” Or “Why did I lose that job when I was good?” These are lousy questions. You will never get an answer that makes your life better.

You have to ask good questions. “What can I do to improve?” or “How can I find a better job?” or “How can I be grateful that I lost this job?” Because inside of every problem is the seed of a “difficult gratitude problem” and it always improves your life to solve those problems.

But it’s by helping others and accepting help that we grow as a society. Sometimes people think “choosing myself” is a selfish concept. But it’s the only way you build the strength to help others. It’s the only way you surrender, not to some man-made force, but a force inside yourself that is perhaps the most powerful there is.

Einstein said, “Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”

“If you’re changing the world, you’re working on important things. You’re excited to get up in the morning.” To have well-being in life you need three things:

A) A feeling of competence or growth.

B) Good emotional relationships.

C) Freedom of choice.

I wonder what my life would be like if I started doing all the things I’m afraid to do. If I started defining my life by all the things I have yet to do.

“Nobody remembers your bad stuff. They only remember your good stuff.”

“If you say you want to automate cars and save people’s lives, the skills you need for that aren’t taught in any particular discipline.

Too often we get labeled by our degrees and our job titles. Larry Page and Elon Musk were computer science majors. Now they build cars and spaceships.

Escaping the labels and titles and hopes that everyone else has for us is one of the first steps in choosing ourselves for the success we are meant to have. We define our lives from our imagination and the things we create with our hands.

Learning to find happiness with less is true wealth. Ultimately we are the sum of our experiences and not the sum of our belongings. There is nothing wrong with making money but it is only one small part of living a life of comfort, of compassion, of calm.

Too many people forget that but the only way to really communicate effectively is through story.

the benefits of choosing yourself is that other people’s lives are saved while you avoid waiting for someone else to choose you.

Too many people say, “I have an idea. Now I need funding.” Don’t do that anymore. Stop it! Say instead, “I’m already doing this. Here are the 10 or 20 things I’ve done so far. Here are the results. Are you in?”

“If everyone would just help ONE person today then the world will be a better place tomorrow.”

Always think at the end of each day, “Who did I help today?”

there are only two types of decisions: decisions made out of fear and decisions made out of growth.”

When I made a fear-based decision it was always because I was giving power to someone else. I’d make a fear-based decision out of insecurity. Out of a feeling of scarcity. Out of giving too much power to others so they would control my life. The growth-based decisions all resulted in miracles I could not have imagined. With growth-based decisions you feel it in your body: an expansion of your chest, ideas in your mind, a feeling of competence increasing. A feeling of freedom expanding. A growth-based decision becomes the story of your life later. A fear-based decision turns into regret.

Everyone wants the keys to your self-esteem so they can lock you in your own jail.

Success is every day, feeling contentment. Contentment is every day:

*Improving your relationships

*Improving your competence in something you love

*Improving your freedom

“Nothing is permanent in this world, not even our troubles.”

Talent is a spark that lights the fire. But the fire needs constant fuel to get bigger.

THREE TYPES OF MENTORS

1.DIRECT. Someone who is in front of you who will show you how they did it.

2.INDIRECT. Books. You can outsource 90 percent of mentorship to books and other materials. 200-500 books equals one good mentor.

3.EVERYTHING IS A MENTOR. If you are a zero, and have passion for reinvention, then everything you look at will be a metaphor for what you want to do.

TIME IT TAKES TO REINVENT YOURSELF: FIVE YEARS

Year One: you’re flailing and reading everything and just starting to DO.

Year Two: you know who you need to talk to and network with. You’re Doing every day.

Year Three: you’re good enough to start making money. It might not be a living yet.

Year Four: you’re making a good living.

Year Five: you’re making wealth.

Success is better than failure but the biggest lessons are found in failure.

Spend 10 minutes a day practicing gratitude. Don’t suppress the fear. Notice the anger. But also allow yourself to be grateful for the things you do have. Anger is never inspirational but gratitude is. Gratitude is the bridge between your world and the parallel universe where all creative ideas live.