Episode Summary
After my frustrations of yesterday, I have decided to knuckle down and focus on actually DOING something constructive to move myself forward. This is instead of just gathering lots of ideas and following through on none of them.
I am going to use “Choose Yourself” By James Altucher as a starting point. In this episode I pull out some really powerful quotes that resonated with me and summarise the key points I took from his book that I think will help me. These include:
- How I have turned my frustration into action.
- The four components of what James Altucher calls his “Solid Foundation” for a fully functioning life.
- How fear of rejection is the biggest impediment to living a full life and his counter-intuitive suggestion to dealing with that (which terrified me!).
- Why you should only do things you enjoy and what that actually means.
- How making small incremental improvements across each foundation is the key to success
- Practical things you can do to improve your physical life [SPOILER ALERT – there won’t be anything you’ve not heard before]
- How quality relationships are the key to an emotionally fulfilling life
- 3 suggestions for your daily mental practice – here’s where the potential for personal wealth may lie
- The importance of a daily spiritual practice and how that doesn’t have to be one of hours of meditation sitting in uncomfortable yoga poses.
- Why time travel is not good for you.
- How you can being developing a Daily Practice by starting with a simplified version
- How loving yourself can help – a story of how that worked for one of James’ friends
- Why you don’t necessarily need a purpose to have a fulfilling life. [NOTE – despite what he says here, I think I nailed my purpose and probably identified what his is… even if he doesn’t know it!]
- How a realisation that when things are not good and you are in a rut, means you have to start doing something different.
- The relevance of becoming a master salesman, how to have more oxytocin in your life and why I might start introducing people to each other.
Episode Notes
01:53: This episode focuses on the key messages I took out of James Altucher’s book “Choose Yourself“.
Listen to the podcast to get the full run down on the summary. In lieu of you doing that, here are some of the key quotes from the book that really resonated with me.
06:47 This first one comes at the start of the book when he is setting the scene for what he calls his foundations.
If your body is sick, if you are around negative people who bring you done, if your idea muscle has not been refined into the perfect machine, and if spiritually you haven’t developed a sense of gratitude and surrender, you will have less change of success in the Choose Yourself era.
Choose Yourself by James Altucher
07:30 He explains what he calls his “Solid Foundation” for a fulfilling life and expands on it with these two quotes:
To have a fully functioning life, we need a functioning body, a healthy brain, a functioning social life, a functioning idea muscle and a very fundamental sense that there are some things we can’t control.
Choose Yourself by James Altucher
Success comes from continually expanding your frontiers in every direction – creatively, financially, spiritually and physically… Always ask – what can I improve.
The solid foundation consists of:
- Your Physical Body
- Your Emotional Body
- Your Mental Body
- Your Spiritual Body
On Rejection
09:50 James spends a bit of time looking at the problem of rejection. In his mind he feels the fear of rejection is the biggest impediment to leading a fulfilling life.
I can relate to that.
Rejection terrifies me.
His advice to me was counter-intuitive from my way of thinking about the world (which is probably why I have had these challenges). He recommends a “safe” way to move forward:
The only truly safe thing you can do is to try over and over again, to go for it, to get rejected, to repeat, to strive , to wish.
Choose Yourself by James Altucher
I hate this guy already!!! Damn you James Altucher!
10:41 Me on why rejection terrifies me.
On Enjoyment
13:17 James spends a bit of time talking about only doing the things you enjoy. His rationale for that is based on this quote:
The only real fire to cultivate is the fire inside of you
Choose Yourself by James Altucher
His message is that doing anything you don’t enjoy will start to extinguish some of that inner fire which is the only true motivating force you will have.
On His Daily Practice
15:16 I summarise James’s daily practice which consists of doing at least one thing from the following every single day:
The Physical Body – this is about what you eat and drink, the exercise you do and how much sleep you get.
The Emotional Body – this is about being around and developing quality relationships only with positive people.
The Mental Body – taming the mind through focused use. He suggests coming up with 10 new ideas a day on any topic to exercise your idea muscle. He also skim reads chapters from 4 different books to prime his mind before he sits for ideas. Any time you can do anything new to shake up your mind will also help.
15:48 Here are a couple of quotes he uses to illustrate the importance of the mental body.
The mind wants to be the boss
Choose Yourself by James Altucher
You need to tame the wild horse or it will tame you until you are a slave.
Choose Yourself by James Altucher
16:31 I go into some length about the relevance of the Mental Body development to me and the experiences I have had.
18:24 The Spiritual Body – His approach is one of surrendering and accepting. It is also one of gratitude. Here’s a quote that illustrates that:
When you surrender and accept the beautiful stillness around you, when you give up all thoughts of the past, all worries and anxieties of the future, when you surround yourself with similarly positive people, when you tame the mind, when you keep healthy, there is zero chance of burnout.
Choose Yourself by James Altucher
19:07 There is a really powerful point he makes about “time travel”. In line with this last quote he says that the only time is now. When he catches himself upset about the past or worried about the future he stops and brings his attention to now. He says that is meditation. Doing that is being spiritual
20:00 His simplified daily practice is a version of his daily practice to get started. Instead of trying to do lots of things, just start with one. In his book he gives an A-Z of options, all of which he has taken. The include things like having 8 hours sleep (A), expressing thanks to a friend (H) and deep breathing (Z).
On the Importance of Loving Yourself
21:42 – he tells a story of his friend Kamal Ravikant who healed himself by learning to love himself.
When someone is in love, they almost magically look better. I needed to be in love with myself.
Kamal Ravikant quoted in Choose Yourself by James Altucher
On The Importance (Of Not) Of Having A Purpose
22:38 This was an interesting part of his book for me. On the one hand he talked about people like Colonel Sanders, Ray Kroc and Henry Ford not finding their purpose until they were older. On the other he says to forget needing a purpose. As long as you wrap your life and your work around your daily practice, that will be your purpose.
Forget purpose… It’s ok to be happy without one.
Choose Yourself by James Altucher
He does say that asking these two questions guides his life (which I think is his purpose):
Who can I help today?
What life can I save today?
Become a beacon of enhancement…and when the night is grey, all of the boats will move toward you bringing their bountiful riches.
Choose Yourself by James Altucher
On Why Doing These Podcasts Is Important To My Growth
25:28 I get off on a bit of a rant about why the feedback I am getting from doing these podcasts, though uncomfortable, is helping my development.
On the Importance Of Doing Something Different But Something Basic
26:26 I talk about how James described how a friend of his recovered from a massive rut to achieve success after massive failure. Here are two quotes that summarise this better than I could:
Like many people, he realised that he had to do something different in order to get out of the rut he was in
Choose Yourself by James Altucher
My friend realised the first step was to get back to basics. He simply began by jogging and getting better. That sense of self improvement then started to extend out to his relationships, his creativity, his spiritual life and all of this together transformed the way he thought about his business. It’s not that his business got better. It’s that his thinking got better because it came from a foundation of health. And from that foundation, you build the house you want to live in.
Choose Yourself by James Altucher
This quote is I think the essence of why I need to do this – powerful stuff!
A Few Things For The Future
28:40 Whilst I was skimming his book looking for key ideas to develop my daily practice, I came across a few things I know I will have to look at in the future. They were:
- Becoming a master salesman
- Understanding the importance of generating more oxytocin to help alleviate inflammation in my body (apparently the cause of all disease)
- Introducing two people I know to each other on a daily basis as a way of enhancing my network and promoting value to it.
And Finally
31:40 A heartfelt message to you about how I hope my journey will recorded here on this podcast might also help you.
