I wish someone had told me all of these things when I was 30. I would not have read all of those BS self-help books.

People have a hard enough time helping their “self”, let alone writing a book that helps others.

I wish someone had told me these things when I was 32, 40, and 45.

I hope someone will tell me these things when I’m 50, 60, and 80.

I honestly hope I die in my sleep before I’m 80. Maybe a dream of a rainbow. And then death in a final exhale.

– LIFE CHANGES FAST

Don’t hang on to it. Just go where it takes you. Don’t try to control it.

The Universe just spent 13.8 billion years creating you. There’s nothing you can do to try to fight it. It’s a tidal wave of atoms.

Don’t try to have a single career. To have a “purpose”. To “figure out what I want to do”.

Just do the best you can each day. If you don’t know what that means, you have to figure that out for yourself.

If anybody tells you what it means, then they don’t know what it means.

– EXPERIENCES > GOODS

Don’t buy goods. Don’t buy a house. Don’t buy a fancy anything.

Buy (or have) good experiences.

This is how neurochemicals work. You have 4 or 5 that make you happy (oxytocin, dopamine, etc).

They get into your brain, they trigger happiness, and they metabolize very quickly so the happiness goes away and you need more.

When you buy something nice, the neurochemicals spike, and then go away.

When you have an experience, you have days (or months) of anticipation for the experience.

Then you have the experience.

Then you have the memories that can last forever.

That’s a lot of happy chemicals all the time bursting through your head.

If you just use this one rule, you’ll have a happy life.

– LISTEN

You already know all the words in your head.

You only get something new if you listen to the words that are coming out of someone else’s head.

When you talk you subtract. When you listen, you add.

– PRETEND EVERYONE IS GOING TO DIE TOMORROW

People say, as if it were good advice, “Live life like it’s your last day?”

I’m not even sure what that means. Should I have a party every day? Should I eat cake all day long. Because if I knew tomorrow I was going to die then I would eat cake all day today.

Do this instead: Live life like it’s the last day for EVERYONE ELSE.

Imagine now you see someone. You know it’s their last day but they don’t.

So you will treat them really well and feel compassion for them. And then they will treat you well.

What a nice virtuous cycle. One that helps everyone and makes you happy.

Oh, and it’s ok to eat cake sometimes. Eat what your heart wants.

– POLITICS, GOVERNMENT, NEWS IS COMPLETELY UNIMPORTANT

Congress makes minor laws that lobbyists bribe them for.

But you can make a child happy. And Google is making cars that drive by themselves. And writers write poetry, and painters make beautiful art.

Do something stupid and ridiculous that you love. Do something today that tomorrow people will say is great.

The news will never do that. Art and innovation will.

We still remember art from 3000 years ago. But we don’t remember what laws passed that day.

Or what the Kardashians were doing.

– The 5 X 5 RULE

1. You’re the average of the 5 people you spend time with.
2. You’re the average of the 5 thoughts you most have .
3. You’re the average of the 5 types of food you eat.
4. You’re the average of the 5 things you are most grateful for.
5. You are the average of the 5 things you are reading today.

– AUTONOMY

Always take the job, pursue the life, have the friends, that allow you to have as much freedom as possible.

I asked Nassim Taleb on my podcast what job should one have. He said, “night watchman, because nobody is around to bother you and you can pursue all your dreams on the side.”

– FOOD SLEEP MOVE

Every cell in our body changes every seven years. What are the cells made out of? The food you eat.

I’ve seen this happen with my own eyes. I watched someone who only eats good foods and never eat junks. Over the past 7 years she has developed a glow. She stands out in a crowd.

It doesn’t matter what you look like. If you eat well (and you know what that means) then you will get that glow.

Sleep: we know one basic thing: at night when we are tired our brains are not that productive. So what do we do? We sleep.

Don’t fall for “sleep porn” – that the less sleep you have, the more productive.

It’s the reverse.

Sleep rejuvenates the brain. If you sleep 8 hours instead of 2 then your brain is 100x more productive during it’s peak time of the day (about 2 hours after you wake up.

That 100x compounds into amazing.

And movement. Your body depends on oxygen circulating. It circulates better when you move.

Walk 20 hours a week.

– DON’T TIME TRAVEL

We do things. We do more things. We do lots of things. And then…

We regret what we did (time travel to the past)

We are anxious about the future (time travel to the future).

Anxiety never solves the future’s problems but will always drain your strength today.

When I find myself time traveling sometimes I stop and look at rooftops.

Architects save their beautiful flourishes for the rooftops, when the building is done. This brings me back to the present.

Then I think of at least one thing I’m grateful for. Gratitude, regret, and anxiety can’t live in the brain at the same time.

Regret and anxiety resist the universe. Gratitude welcomes the universe inside for the party.

– THE IMPRESSION TECHNIQUE

If you want to impress someone, if you want to be noticed, if you want to make a friend, if you want to feel creative, do this:

Write down ten ideas a day. Sometimes…write down 10 ideas to help someone else and send it to them. With ZERO expectations back.

Do this a lot. It exercises your creativity until you become an idea machine.

It also gets people noticing you and calling you. And when you have no expectations you will find your expectations constantly exceeded.

I do all of the above. And every six months my life changes so drastically I can hardly believe it.

This is not advice. This is what I try to do. Every day I try.

When someone asks me now, “Where will you be in six months?”

I say, “Some place amazing.”

Read More: How To Be The Luckiest Guy On the Planet in 4 Easy Steps. 

The post 10 Things The Aliens Forgot To Tell Us When They Left Us Here appeared first on Altucher Confidential.

Well, the market has hit new highs. That’s ok for those guys. I’m sure they all do well on their newsletters. I have no newsletter. I only invest with my own money. I live and die in the markets and I don’t depend on anyone else.

Want To Get The Most Out of Your Investing Strategy? Click Here.

Is there a reason to change my mind? Not really. Eventually, the market will be higher than it is now.

But for the first time in a long time, I’m not a super bull on the overall market (although I like certain smaller stocks, see below).

The overall market (let’s say, the S&P 500) price is a function of supply and demand. I know people know this from Economics 101 and they view this as a micro-economic principle but it’s also macro-economic. it’s not only the price of Oranges determined by supply and demand, the aggregated price of every company in the world is also determined by this.

So what is “Supply” in terms of the stock market? Answer: it’s the total number of shares outstanding.

What is “Demand”? It’s the appetite to buy shares.

Supply is going down. This is both a good thing and a bad thing.

The good: Companies have enormous profit margins and are using their excess cash to buy back shares. This, of course, reduces shares outstanding. When companies with $100 billion in cash like Apple buy back shares, this reduces supply for the big mutual funds, etc.

Also good: When supply goes down, price goes up. This is why the stock market right now is at all time highs.

But then there is the BAD: I am seeing first hand within the private companies that I am invested in: nobody wants to go public. How come? Private markets are valuing companies higher than the public is.

Thats really funny: the PUBLIC is actually smarter than the supposed smart money. Look at Facebook (FB), Groupon, and Zynga (ZNGA) for examples.

And even the companies that want to go public: it’s pretty damn hard. I can’t quote you statistics. I only see this because I’m getting all the calls from brokers. If a broker is calling me to dump their little shitty IPO it means they can’t get institutions in.

How come?

Demand: Everyone is still pretty nervous.

Someone asked me the other day: when will this recession be over?

Guess what? It’s been over for four years.

But people don’t seem to know that?

How come? Because they feel like shit. Because people are getting jobs less than what their skillset suggests they should get. Because people are taking jobs for pay that doesn’t match what they would’ve gotten ten years ago. Underemployment, as this is called, is supposedly around 20% but my guess is it’s more like 30-40%.

Things feel like they suck.

Nobody feels like the stock market is back. Or that housing is starting to creep up. Or that America is starting to insource manufacturing again because globalization has crept up prices  worldwide.

People look at their crappy jobs and salaries and say, “I don’t feel so good”. And so they get a scarcity mentality and don’t want to buy shares.

I don’t blame them.

Meanwhile, supply is going to flatten out. There’s only so much stock that people can buy.

So Demand will probably remain the same, but now Supply will stop going down.

What happens then? Stocks go down. Or struggle to stay afloat.

My solution: I am buying smaller stocks where I am not competing for information against massive hedge funds and mutual funds that do everything they can to cheat the system (insider trading, manipulative trading, high frequency trading, special access to secondaries, etc).

I also invest in long-term demographic trends that I believe in. These companies will do well regardless of the overall stock market. It’s why microcaps always outperform large caps in the long run.

So I’m invested in

Petro River (PTRC)- America is the new Middle East in terms of oil. All of the oil that we stopped drilling for in 1971 because the technology was not there, we are now drilling for. Fracking is here to stay and will drill up the several billion barrels of oil underneath the Mississippi Lime.

Corporate Resources (CRRS) – I’m on the Board of Directors so can’t say much. Needless to say, no company wants to deal with the red tape of Obamacare. It’s a nightmare. Even Democrats now admit it. Google it. I’m not political. I haven’t voted since 1991. But a total of zero companies want to deal with Obamacare. So what do they do? They fire everyone and and outsource to temp staffing companies. That’s why I like being on the board. So I can see first-hand what is happening in this industry.

Trovagene (TROV) and Cancer Genetics (CGIX)- We all know three things about healthcare over the next 10-30 years:

– taxes are going up on medical devices. So this will be detrimental to the 77 million aging baby boomers who have just started retiring.

– “prevention is the cure”. People have ignored this for the past century but they can’t anymore. Lifespans have gone up. People need good diagnostics to prevent cancer and other diseases that are common killers. I can go into details on why these two are the best and I will at some point (I already have repeatedly on TROV when it was half the the price it is now).

– Lifespans are going up. The average lifespan was 61 60 years ago. Now it’s 79 and going higher. So people will need medical care. Since people can no longer afford medical care, they will need prevention. The FDA, drug companies, insurance companies, and the government, have made medical care too expensive. So diagnostics, which are easier to get approval for, are the answer.

Vringo (VRNG), Neonode (NEON) – I own these for the patent plans which I’ve described in multiple articles.

And that’s it. My wife owns a handful of other big cap stocks but in small amounts.

What I don’t do: I never daytrade.  I used to and I used to make a good living at it. But in  the link above I describe why I don’t.

And I will not own the broader market here. It’s a criminal enterprise. That’s a sucker’s game at this point.

The post Why The Stock Market is Too Risky Right Now appeared first on Altucher Confidential.

Example: Greece has not paid a single debt since Rome took over in 146 BC. And yet, everyone keeps asking me about Greece.

News flash: They will borrow more money, and AGAIN they will not pay their debts. Nor should they.

Greece is a subsidized beach resort, healthy food, etc but they aren’t a real country – (sorry in advance to anyone offended by this) and then in three years, for less than the cash Google has in the bank, the entire world will figure out another way to bail them out.

That’s all you ever need to know about Greece. By the way, when I was living in Astoria, New York (all Greeks) I learned the rules to the three ways they play backgammon there.

We would play all night in the local Greek-owned pool hall. I did this for 18 months. This has now made me an expert on Greek culture and news. It was probably the best 18 months of my life. The one and only time I had no worries, nothing to do. Just play.

Want To Get The Most Out of Your Investing Strategy? Click Here.

But…Donald Trump. This news story fascinates me.

I was just in a coffee shop. John McCain was giving his “FIRST RESPONSE EVER” to Donald Trump’s remarks on the TV above the cashier.

About a dozen people were crowded in to listen. What would he say? Would he trash Trump? Would he take the high road?

Entertainment!

Because the human mind is prepared to have up to 150 friends (the so-called “Dunbar Number”) and most of us are not at 150, so we replace them with who we see on TV or in magazines. John McCain.

Or, for the guy sitting next to me at this moment: Kim Kardashian is his VERY close friend.

My Dunbar friend at the moment, based on the book I am reading: Bill Murray. I hope one day I meet him and he likes me.

But back to Donald Trump.

Claudia has explained to me the news because I asked her why she was so upset the other day.

He said two things that are super-idiotic. I don’t even think Trump truly believes what he says. Which I’ll explain why in a minute.

A) He said, “Mexicans and other South Americans [meaning: Claudia] are sending their murderers and rapists here to the US.”

Which has been non-stop laughs for me ever since. When I wake up in the morning I get to shake Claudia awake and say, “Hey, what’s a dirty rapist like you doing in my bed?”

B) He said John McCain is not a war hero because the “real heroes came home”.

Or something like that. There is zero chance I’m going to read exactly what he said so Claudia could be totally lying (which is possible, being a criminal, murdering rapist).

Ok: so first things: clearly the above two statements are moronic.

It’s like saying “Bill Cosby is a Mexican”. Or it’s like saying one of the bravest guys ever (whether you believe in his politics or not, which I don’t) is not a hero.

But I think something very insidious is going on and not a single person has noticed this.

Donald Trump is being an idiot on purpose.

Now, he might actually be an idiot. This is possible. BUT IF he weren’t, then he knows exactly what he is doing. A true game player MUST look at all sides of a story.

Note that after he said these statements his percentage in the Presidential race went from 0% to 12%.

By the way, it’s NEVER going to go higher than 12%. But he knows that.

He also knows he has zero chance of winning the Republican nomination for a billion reasons.

So he did a classic marketing strategy. He did the Nigerian 419 scam.

The Nigerian 419 strategy is to have a misspelled email from the son of some deceased Prince who needs all your bank info in order to release $20 million that he will eagerly split with you.

Then he steals all of your money.

Why is the email misspelled? After decades of Nigerians sending the exact same email, why is it always mis-spelled? And, by the way, the OFFICIAL LANGUAGE OF NIGERIA IS ENGLISH.

There’s a simple reason. Anybody in the top 90% of rational people know that a misspelled email coming from a Nigerian prince is a scam.

The Nigerians don’t want to deal with those 90%. Even if you sent a perfectly spelled letter with a much more realistic story, those 90% will figure it out. Then the scammer will have wasted his time. He doesn’t want to waste time.

He needs to find the 10% that will respond to him really quickly. (Btw, I’m assuming “he” but can also be a “she”). And the 10% that will work.

Does it work? Of course it does. 419-ers made $13 billion last year. And every year.

This is what Donald Trump is doing. And I’m not kidding. I really think he is doing this.

He is saying the most stupid, most outrageous things because he’s immediately filtering out the 90% that will never like him anyway.

The 12% that are left have managed to jump over AMAZING hurdles to keep liking him. Who could possibly like him after this?

There are clearly ZERO other candidates for these 12%. Trump represents exactly what they are thinking and he used the fastest approach possible to identify those 12%.

Because of the Idiot 12% – In the first weeks of February, Trump will come in a respectable, 2nd or 3rd in Iowa, New Hampshire, and definitely South Carolina (which after 150 years finally admitted they belong in the United States and slavery is bad).

Then he will drop out of the race and form a third party. Once he forms a third party, he will be able to raise a ton of money, appease his ego, scam people for the next decade, and enter the next stage of his insane career.

Not to mention drain votes from Republicans, giving himself a target to attack for the next eight years (Hilary Clinton) by effectively deciding the Presidential race.

Which is his goal from the beginning.

Most people do the right thing and ignore the Nigerian 419 scam.

The best strategy, which nobody will take (including me by writing this), is to just ignore him.

But we won’t. We irrationally need a Donald Trump. Because evolution tells us we need people to gossip about.

The post Is Donald Trump Pulling A Nigerian 419 Scam? appeared first on Altucher Confidential.

My guest today, author Oliver Burkeman, has a strong opinion on the power of positive thinking: he can’t stand it.

In his book, The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking, Oliver writes in a humorous and thoughtful way about how self-help books are ineffective.

Oliver believes we should coexist with both our positive and negative thoughts, be attached to neither, and take the actions we need to take without giving into emotions.

His approach is partly Stoic: he believes that telling people that everything will work out doesn’t replenish their optimism tanks. He also believes it can be paralyzing for people to think that whatever success they are seeking must be realized.

We talk a bit in-depth about one of Oliver’s favorite quotes from Shoma Morita:

“Give up on yourself. Begin taking action now, while being neurotic or imperfect, or a procrastinator or unhealthy or lazy or any other label by which you inaccurately describe yourself. Go ahead and be the best imperfect person you can be and get started on those things you want to accomplish before you die.”

Oliver and I discuss some of the books we enjoy like: Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle, and The Art of Taking Action by Gregg Krech, among others.

We also take a look at the self-help books we don’t find helpful.

Oliver’s book is an insightful and creative look at the negativity of positive thinking.

Links and resources mentioned in the show:

Oliver Burkeman’s website

Oliver’s book, The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking

 Susan Jeffers’ book Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway

A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle

The Art of Taking Action by Gregg Krech

Thanks so much for listening!

If you enjoyed this episode of The James Altucher Show, please leave a review or a rating on ITunes. I read every review and it helps to make the podcast better.

image credit: Christopher Lane for The Guardian

The post Ep 122 – Oliver Burkeman: The Positive Power of Negative Thinking appeared first on Altucher Confidential.

Maybe I just want to be her for a day. What if we could do that?

Just agree to switch places with people all day long. And we can never return to the same body twice. I think I just solved war and poverty with that idea. I hope someone invents this.

If there is anything I’ve consistently studied in life, it’s what it takes to master any field.

Get Your Free Side Income Idea (That Anyone Can Do At Anytime)

One thing I know for sure: talent helps, but it can also hurt.

20 years ago I knew an 11 year old kid who, at that time, was probably one of the best chess players in the world.

I never saw someone so talented. He could destroy grandmasters at blitz chess. At age 12. I was really jealous of him. I was a 27 year old failure and he was at the beginning of magic.

In every other way he was a little kid but when he was analyzing chess games it was like speaking to the most mature adult I’ll ever speak to.

Then…he disappeared. He stopped playing.

I asked around why. He couldn’t handle losing at all. His talent convinced him he should always be better than everyone else. One loss and his view of himself was crushed. Talent destroyed him.

Talent is the tiniest of sparks. A spark lights the fire. But you have to feed the fire more fuel to keep it going. Else it dies out.

How many of us have had that spark. And then years of being beaten down have put out the fire?

Me!

Being beaten down and asking, “why is this happening AGAIN!?”

Serena Williams is the perfect example of someone who had talent, but definitely worked for 30 years at honing that talent into a skill.

If she had never worked at that talent, she would be a mediocre tennis player at best.

When Serena was three years old her dad gave her her first tennis racket.

He home-schooled her. He moved to Florida where they could practice tennis year-round. He coached her every day in tennis and had her playing in the junior circuit before she was ten years old.

She’s 33 now. She just won Wimbledon. She’s won every major tennis tournament this year. She’s the best female tennis player of all-time.

When you get a chance to view someone who is the best out of seven billion people at something, you get a tiny glimpse at the potential of the human species.

The top 1% means you are in the top 70 million people. That seems doable.

That’s why I like to listen to what Serena Williams has to say. What has she seen. What has she felt? What does she know?

Because now I want to know. A glimpse of the world using her eyes.

Here’s some quotes from Serena that I’ve learned from:

A) LUCK? “Luck has nothing to do with it, because I have spent many, many hours, countless hours, on the court working for my one moment in time, not knowing when it would come.”

We often daydream, and think, and plan.

But the only thing that gets results is action. Not a single ounce of greatness in history ended with thoughts. It happened with hands. With actions.

B) SATISFACTION? “I can’t become satisfied, because if I get satisfied, I’ll be like, “Oh, I’ve won Wimbledon, I’ve won the U.S. Open. Now can I relax.” But now people are really going to be fighting to beat me.”

When I sold my first business I automatically assumed I was this amazing genius.

So I started throwing my money at everything. How could I lose? I invested in businesses, I started new businesses, I bought apartments,

I lived large but it turned out I was very small and didn’t know it. I had no real meaning in my life.

I had given up on the task of learning how to be a better human. I thought the game was finished and I had won.

It’s only when I lost everything when my real learning began.

C) WHAT’S IMPORTANT: “Tennis is just a game, family is forever.”

In every area I’ve studied I’ve noticed something: when some people stop performing at their peak levels, they kill themselves.

I study writing a lot. At one point I realized that almost all of my favorite writers killed themselves. This scared me.

Another time I mapped the rate of suicides versus the stock market. There was almost a perfect correlation.

I wanted to talk about this on a radio show. But they said “no”. They said, “talking about suicide leads to suicide”. I asked, “But how do you stop suicides then?” They never asked me back to the show.

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, “diversify my celebrations.” Celebrate the small. Not always the big.

“Meaning” is not just a victory. Meaning is a way of life.

A shortcut to meaning is to just every day ask before you go to sleep, “Who did I help today?”

D) GROWTH: “I’m feeling OK. I’m still not where I want to be at, but I’m definitely feeling better than I was.”

Many studies have shown that when you compliment children on “growth” versus specific accomplishments, they perform better in the long run.

I used to think too much about my accomplishments. “What’s my rank?”

Accomplishments disappear so fast. And then the people that latched onto you when you made those accomplishments also disappear. And you feel like a lonely failure.

Not a single person I was friends with in 1998, when I sold my first business, I’m friends with now. They all left me. Or I left them. Hard to say.

Someone asked me yesterday where I expect to be in five years.

I never think about it. Not once. 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.

My spark maybe lit the fire. But only that 1% growth every day is the fuel to keep the fire going. Else, I burn out.

E) LOVE: “I think you have to love yourself before you fall in love. I’m still learning to love myself.”

Me too.

It’s a practice. Not a thing.

F) IDEA SEX: “I don’t want to end my career and then start something. I’d like to do something while my career is still hot and I’ve always enjoyed designing.”

Try it. Do two things at once.

Serena wants to be a fashion designer.

Serena would have been noticed on the tennis court no matter what. But she’s also known for her colorful outfits on the tennis court. Who knows? Maybe she will become one of the great fashion designers.

But it also underlines the importance that there is never “one thing” that we were all put on this Earth to do.

We were put here to try. Nobody will grade us.

G) HATERS: “Honestly, I don’t read the press. I don’t know what they’re saying.”

Nobody escapes the HATERS. Why?

Because they hate themselves. There’s no other answer.

Everyone wants to be a critic. There are critics and then there are the people who do the exact things the critics want to do.

H) “There’s always something you have to give up for success. Everything comes at a cost. Just what are you willing to pay for it?”

This is the talent versus skill question. Talent lasts for five seconds. Skill requires a price. Serena now has spent 30 straight years practicing tennis.

Just because you pay a price doesn’t mean the price was too expensive. It’s what she wanted to pay. But nothing is free.

I) ACTION!: “Nothing comes to a sleeper but a dream. Our Dad used to say that.”

Dreams are in the head. But action creates growth, creates skill, creates excellence.

Edison didn’t dream about a lightbulb. He tried 10,000 experiments before one worked.

Henry Ford didn’t just dream about making a car. He started three car companies and made the assembly line before he finally had success.

Steve Jobs didn’t dream about the ipod. He bought one of the first Sony Walkmans and took it apart and figured out how to do it better.

Thinking keeps the adventures of life bottled in your head. Action makes you a hero.

J) SMALL IMPROVEMENTS: “I’m feeling OK. I’m still not where I want to be at, but I’m definitely feeling better than I was.”

She’s best in the world but “still not where I want to be at”.

That’s funny.

You can’t congratulate yourself on your wins. Just like you can’t despair over your losses.

Success is not one event. Too many one-hit wonders realized this too late.

When two people meet they fall in love. They are very excited. They get married.

Then the work begins of deepening love. It’s only when it hurts, real growth begins.

—

I wish I could be as good at any one thing as Serena Williams is at tennis.

But I can learn from her and appreciate from a distance. I love watching her play. She moves like a god.

If I spend my life aiming for that 1% improvement every day then I may never be the best in the world at anything. But I know I will be the best James at everything.

The post 10 Ways I Learn From Serena Williams appeared first on Altucher Confidential.

It was after I ran over a guy. It was in 1985 or 86. I forget. I was 17 or 18.

I remember it was raining. I remember the car spinning. I remember I went through a windshield.

Supposedly when you go through a windshield it shreds everything in your genital area. I don’t think this happened to me but I haven’t undressed in a locker room since.

I wasn’t hurt at all. The other guy was.

Flash forward. In court, the lawyer said, “the judge will ask you what happened. Just say it was raining and you put your foot on the brake but the car didn’t stop.”

I knew that didn’t happen. I had been daydreaming and I went through the stop sign. Period. But the lawyer told me to say it and my dad told me to say it so I said it.

After the court hearing, the guy I hit followed us all the way home.

My dad and I drove around and around our block for about an hour until the guy drove off.

My dad is dead now. We talked a lot about our lives in that one hour. I loved spending quality time with him.

– – –

The other day I wrote about a friend of mine. He was suspected of something in 1991 so the government investigated him.

1991 is 24 years ago. The government dropped all charges. He had done nothing.

Someone wrote me. “How can you write about X! He did Y in 1991! You should write Z about him! He’s a Q!”

We’re all Qs at some point in our lives. At least everyone I know has been a Q.

Question: Are you a Q?

– – –

Why did the guy write me so upset about something that happened in 1991?

I had written about the perjury thing in 2010 and someone wrote an entire news article calling me a “white collar criminal”.

Why? It was 1986. If he had just asked me I could have told him about many worse things I did as late as 2006. Heck, I might have even thrown him a 2010 bone.

People like to be angry. They love it. Anger is like crack but better.
For 2,000,000 years anger lets mammals say, “I am BETTER than you”.

I get angry. If Claudia doesn’t look both ways before crossing the street and almost gets hit by a car I get angry at her. “What’s wrong with you!?”

Or if one of my kids is looking the other way while I’m talking to her I’m all like, “LOOK AT ME when I talk to you.” I need to be LOOKED AT!

Anger is the clothing for our naked emotions. Naked emotions are ugly.
That’s why we have nightmares about running around naked. The cinematographers of dreams know who we really are.

– – –

Anger can be clothing for:

FEAR: Like, if X is better than me then I won’t get as much food. Or if Claudia is crossing the street then I’m afraid she will get hit and then, selfishly, I might be lonely.

ENVY: Why should Y be getting all the toys! Don’t you know he did something 25 years ago! He should be banned from all human society!

People admit to being angry. But they won’t admit to being envious. The naked emotion underneath. This lets them have “righteous anger”.

STATUS ENVY: Why do people even like Kanye West? They should be liking me instead!

Just like people eat their fears when they binge on junk food. People binge on junk status when they are afraid they don’t have enough status and they want more.

Celebrities are great to binge on with junk status. Why is Queen Elizabeth a queen! I should be a queen!

COMPLAINING: Claudia hates to lose at ping pong. We used to play in an outdoor deck at our last apartment.

If she lost even one point (I’m sorry, Claudia, that I have to out you here) she would scream so loud that people 15 floors higher would open their windows to see why a wild giraffe just died.

But complaining is draining. It takes up mental energy. It might take up vocal energy. It takes up physical energy (Claudia would jump up and down and scream).

She was such a loser back then.

So much better to just stop and say, “That was no good. If I had not tried to slam it then I would have gotten that point.”

Conserve energy on the inside. Win on the outside.

Anyway, what does it matter: Six years later, Claudia beats me in ping pong now. I don’t even understand how. I used to beat her 21-0. Now she can beat me.

I should junk status-binge on her. Like, by writing how much she used to complain.

BLAMING: Blaming is draining also.

That excuses me from ever figuring out the real reason for my loss. It’s his fault anyway!

This happened to me in 2001. Everyone told me to blame my stock broker and sue him.

But the first rule of making money is to never blame anyone else. Take up all that energy inside of yourself and learn from it. Else it’s like you’re peeing everywhere.

When a dog pees it marks its territory. But he who pees everywhere, has territory nowhere.

Very quotable.

Listen: Energy flows from inside to outside. My inner energy, to my imagination, to my ideas, to my actions, to the world.

The more energy you store up on the inside, the more impact you can have on the world.

Anger blocks that. It’s like a clot in the blood, blocking the flow to the heart, the source of all your life.

– – –

When the aliens dropped us off on Earth for our vacation here they handed out a small piece of energy to each one of us.

When it’s not blocked and we share it to help people or to do good or to be healthy, then it comes back even greater.

When Google helps people by telling them a good website to go to, the people come back to google and even tell their friends. Then Google has more energy and becomes a bigger website and ultimately a $300 billion company.

When I create more energy I can tell you that my life feels incredibly lucky. Good things happen.

For everyone who wants to envy, or blame, or is afraid, or is complaining or blaming, I hope they stop. Or, at least, I hope they realize what they are doing .

Maybe I say this selfishly. Because I don’t want anyone to pee on me.

But, whatever. People do what they do.

When we all go back to the mothership, we have to give all of our energy back anyway.

Does it matter if some have none and others have everything.

(Yes. Yes it does).

Claudia, you just got LUCKY the last time we played ping pong! Stop talking about it already. You won’t like me when I’m angry!

Read More: How To Be The Luckiest Guy On the Planet in 4 Easy Steps. 

The post Anger Hides These Five Emotions appeared first on Altucher Confidential.

I’ve had people even show up unexpectedly at my house ready to argue with me.

Maybe the worst was exactly four years ago today. I wrote an article on July 4 on why I was against all wars.

I don’t know enough to have a real opinion. All I know is that there is nothing that I would ever feel strongly enough about where I would allow my 16 year old daughter to take a gun to another country and shoot other little kids.

That’s what war is. That’s what all wars have been. The history books with the justifications get written later.

I was afraid to publish the article anywhere. So I went to a website devoted to yoga. I figured, “All of these people will love me.” Because I wanted to be loved.

There were about 500 comments to the article. Maybe more. One person wrote, “if you were in front of me I’d cut off your penis and force you to eat it.”

Or people were saying, “you’re worse than Hitler.” Or people were saying, “you are the worst scum of the Earth.”

And it wasn’t just strangers. After a few months I realized one of my best friends wasn’t calling me back. Finally I got ahold of him. I said, “what’s going on?”

He said, “I read that article. You must be for slavery.”

I said, “We’ve known each other 20 years. Why didn’t you pick up the phone and just ask me? Of course I am not for slavery or anything even remotely close to that.”

But he said, “Let’s just wish each other well and not speak anymore.”

Another time I wrote an article about my family. I wrote about my father and my fears of how I was making the same mistakes he made in life. The article was about my own fears.

My sister wrote me and said she would sue me unless I took it down. She said, “I never want to speak to you again for the rest of my life.”

So now I haven’t spoken to one of my best friends, or my sister (who had really been my best friend all my life) in years.

Yesterday, someone wrote me and said I was probably the dumbest person alive. I get those at least once a day. Two days ago it was more like ten emails saying that.

It’s very painful to get hate mail. From friends or even from people you don’t know or from relatives. No matter who it is. I don’t like it.

So I had to learn to deal with it.

Here’s how:

A) LIVE LIFE LIKE IT’S YOUR LAST DAY

This doesn’t mean, “Ok! Eat cake! Party all day!”

This means, when I see my wife, or my friends, or my children, or people who I love, it may be the last time I see them or speak to them.

Will I spend those moments agonizing about people who hate me, people stuck in my head shouting at me in my imagination?

Or will I give the people I love my full attention. Because I will miss them. Because nothing is better than being around people you love.

It’s my choice always in those moments and I know exactly what I will choose.

B) THIS TOO SHALL PASS

Whenever there is “outrage porn” directed in my attention I learned one rule: if I don’t deal with it for 24 hours then it goes away.

If I respond to one hateful comment. Or one outrageous statement against me. Or one completely insane outburst, then I have to restart the clock and it’s another 24 hours.

For those people, it’s just a game of reaction-reaction.

I’d rather play games I enjoy.

C) THEY ARE JUNK STATUS BINGING

When someone lashes out at me, I quickly realized what was happening, as painful as it was at the moment.

They were afraid.

I only know this because I look at when I get angry at something. It’s usually not because what the other person did. It’s usually because they said or did something that triggered some fear inside of me.

My fear of not being liked. My fear of losing some status. My fear that if I lose status maybe once again I will l go broke, or lose my marriage, or go homeless, or start drinking and taking drugs. Or whatever has happened to me in the past that gives fuel to my own fears.

I don’t like fears that are touched. So I clothe it in the armor of anger and I lash out.

And that’s what other people do. To me, to you, to everyone. We are all victims on both sides of this.

Sometimes the most confident-seeming people are the ones the most afraid, the ones with the most armor surround them, the ones who need to be cradled the most but prevent that by lashing out at those around them.

When someone is afraid and angry like that, they want to feel they are better than you. So without earning that “better” status (whatever that might mean), they try to get status over you by trashing you.

This is similar to “eating our fears” when we binge on junk food. Ultimately, we are tribal animals, and all mammals earn their rank in the tribe and know very well where they sit on that ranking.

With outrage porn, it gives people a chance to think they can move up or down in status by junk-trashing you.

And when I get offended by it, I also have to be aware of the same thing. They are dealing with their fears but I’m also dealing with mine.

So now I say, “thank you”. Because it is ONLY in those moments where I can relax and release and let go. These are the moments we are given to spiritually grow.

D) HAVE A VISION

Every day I get emails from people who are in pain. People who feel stuck in life. Stuck in their careers. Stuck in their passions or their relationships.

Or even worse, lost and perhaps suicidal. People who were climbing a ladder and for a moment, at least, have lost their grip in the dark and don’t know how to find it again.

I’ve been on that ladder many times. I’ve also lost my grip. I’ve fallen all the way down.

I like to think that I want to help. But I don’t know if that’s possible. You can’t tell people how to find light when the room is pitch black.

All I can do is tell what works for me. How I have gotten back onto that ladder and kept climbing. What practices and methods have worked for me that I have to stick to every day. Or else.

I never write to hurt anyone. I only tells what happens to me. I never give advice. I only say what has worked for me.

When you write and work from the heart, from your own personal vision, that is your safety net.

Don’t go from your safety net into someone else’s spider web. They will poison you and then suck the blood out of you.

Ultimately we’re a single drop of water that is dropped into the middle of a deep ocean.

What happens to that single drop of water then? It disperses throughout the ocean, rippling to all shores. If the ocean is your safety net, no storm can rock you for long.

E) COMEDY

Laughter cures all. Laughter is a very primal sound we make. It is older than human language – perhaps millions of years older.

What does it signify? It signifies that there was danger, but now the danger is over. There is relief. There is joy. There is celebration.

And yes, there are fart jokes.

When I feel my body reacting to someone else’s opinion of me (I feel it in my chest, my stomach, my head), and I want to react, I want to argue, I want to make the call and find out why, who, when, WHY – I watch comedy.

I laugh. It’s ok. This is more important for my survival than arguing. And, in fact, medically that’s true also. Anger will cause stress, inflammation, heart attacks, strokes.

Laughter has been demonstrated to be life-healing. It’s an inner massage of the body.

And given all of our choices in our short lives, while we are all trapped here together spinning through space at 4000 miles a second until we flame out into a mist of nothingness, what would you rather do – laugh or cry?

– – –

People say, “it’s none of my business what other people think of me”. This is one of those statements that are both True and Not-True. Intellectually it seems true.

But we’re not all intellectuals. Sometimes we feel that animal urge to respond, to react, to cry, to be in pain.

So this is all a practice. A practice for growth. And the people who lash out with their opinions about us are our greatest teachers.

Sometimes it feels horrible. But running a marathon is hard. Flying through space on a tiny planet is so hard it’s a miracle.

Don’t waste the miracle living inside other people’s fears. Be the drop of water that disperses through the infinitely wide ocean.

And, in the worst case, listen to fart jokes a lot.

Read More: How To Be The Luckiest Guy On the Planet in 4 Easy Steps. 

The post How Do I Handle It When People Trash Me? appeared first on Altucher Confidential.

A lot of people call Jim Kwik a brain expert. On today’s show, he gives us a sneak peek into his seminars that teach people how to optimize their brains to be more productive and powerful every day.

“With great power comes great responsibility.” Jim reverses the iconic saying to put normal people in control of their own accelerated learning: With great responsibility comes great power.

When you take control of your own learning techniques, you are capable of great things.

What if you were born with superpowers but nobody showed you how to use them? You may not feel like you can excel at accelerated learning, but that does not mean you aren’t capable.

Jim reveals that even he experienced learning difficulties as a child after an accidental fall when he was in kindergarten.

“It took me two years longer to learn how to read,” he says, and because of these difficulties, he was able to find new ways to learn and excel.

Your brain never stops learning.

You may have been told that your memory is fixed, like your shoe size, but that is not the case. Learning new things creates more brain cells and will help you live a longer life.

But how can you continue to learn new things? Jim breaks down a few of his techniques and key anecdotal lessons, including:

• How to distance yourself from your own self-talk and break the trance of “I can’t.”
• How to ask new and exciting questions in order to learn new things.
• How to take an active approach to learning in order to get the most out of your experiences.
• How to incorporate EFT, or emotional freedom techniques, into your learning style.
• How to improve memory through the location method.

Jim takes the time to share a few of his tricks and techniques for boosting charisma to improve your memory and conquer your fears of public speaking.

He reminds us to be present in the moment in order to find the motivation we need. This will also help us remember the new information and recall it from memory just as easily.

Unleash your cape…

Links and Resources

• For free seminars on speed-reading and memorization, check out Jim Kwik’s site www.freememoryseminar.com. The three videos will start you on your way to memory improvement.
• Follow Jim Kwik on Twitter @JimKwik 
• See the photo of Jim and the X-Men on his Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/jimkwik

Thanks so much for listening!

If you enjoyed this episode of The James Altucher Show, please leave a review or a rating on ITunes. I read every review and it helps to make the podcast better.

The post Ep 121 – Jim Kwik: Brain Coach and Superhero appeared first on Altucher Confidential.

Brett McKay is the founder of The Art of Manliness, a website dedicated to delivering inspiring, actionable, and life changing advice to both men and women. A lot of times men just need a little more help being organized and getting their lives together than women do. As James says, “Women just grow up faster.”

Brett’s wife Kate is also his business partner.While there are many advantages to having your spouse involved with your business, it also introduces the difficulty of separating work time from personal time. Even during dedicated work time it sometimes is hard to clearly define roles and responsibilities in the business. This is a theme that spans most business relationships, but generally your business partner isn’t also the person you share a bed with each night.

Brett keeps it simple by living by the mantra that both you and your spouse should “Seek to Serve Each Other.” This doesn’t need to be an equal relationship all the time. Go out of your way to be generous and giving to your loved ones.

The Art of Manliness is currently publishing blog posts, podcast episodes, and videos about how to live well as a man in the modern world. As opposed to many of the existing Men’s publications, The Art of Manliness is geared toward slightly older, professional men, and isn’t focused on how to have six-pack abs or toe-curling sex for 5 hours every day. There are professional tips, parenting tips for men, and what some may call “Old Fashioned” advice that men can take to live a better, more fulfilling life.

The site is currently experiencing revenues in the high six-figures-per-year range, and has been publishing consistently this entire time. As James has recounted before, it often takes 4 or 5 years to change your life, “Choose Yourself,” and create the reality that you want.

Brett gives advice on how to grow a site like he has with today’s social media and sharing tools. He is a big advocate of “Guest Posting” on other blogs as a way to increase your reach online. The age of the solo blog is slowly going away. Today, sites like The Art of Manliness, with guest contributors, allow for a diverse set of voices and perspectives that one single person could never give. To make it easier on the site you’re looking to guest post on, do most of the work for them. This includes image formatting, sizing, tagging, and including a scope of what type of post you would like to submit for that site.

Digging into some of the more popular posts on the site, James and Brett discuss a few key topics:

· Regarding Minimalism, Brett and James discuss how trying to be minimalist often leads to an obsession with the things you do have. Instead of just focusing on having things, even if it’s fewer things, both advocate spending your time and money on experiences. This has been scientifically proven to increase happiness and is a great way to parent, as well as live your life if you don’t have children.

· The concept of Antifragility applies not only to the financial markets, as originally described by Nasim Taleb, but also to many aspects of everyday life. Health, fitness, engineering, women’s health and vitality, and even society in general all experience aspects of Antifragility. We can all do things today to increase our Antifragility and be less susceptible to the trials of life. The redundancies in our lives can also increase Antifragility.

· The Art of Manliness closely mirrors a lot of the topics that James has written about time and time again, including Integrity. Until very recently the term Manliness meant not only physical strength but to be a man of virtue. This theme holds true through all of Brett’s website, and is helping to bring back a better way of life for men.

· Bringing back some of the older-style manly characteristics includes being decisive and leading in relationships. Gender roles can often get complicated by stereotypes and social norms but the fact remains that in most relationships there needs to be a leader. And many times modern women are looking for the men in their lives to be that leader.

In parting, the one piece of information that Brett thinks that women need to know about men is that most men are very attuned to status. How people perceive men is something very important to many, regardless of what they may say.

You can reach out to Brett directly on Twitter @ArtOfManliness or check out TheArtOfManliness.com for much more of Brett’s writings.

Resources:

Brett McKay: The Art of Manliness Book Collection

Nassim Taleb: Antifragile

Scott Eyman: John Wayne The Life and Legend

Thanks so much for listening!

If you enjoyed this episode of The James Altucher Show, please leave a review or a rating on ITunes. I read every review and it helps to make the podcast better.

The post Ep 120: Brett McKay – Art of Manliness appeared first on Altucher Confidential.

When I was in college I never worried about money (well, I needed $20 per day to live until I was about 25 years old.). When I worked my first few jobs I never worried about money.

Only when I made money, did money become this giant storm cloud in my life. It was like this torrential nightmare.

When I say “made money” I mean: I finally had more than 2 months worth of rent and living needs in the bank. Then it meant: I needed to have infinite money.

Before that I was “creative”. All that means is that I got to interview prostitutes and drug dealers for a living.

One transvestite prostitute told me she/he was abused her entire childhood in juvenile detention centers. And now she can only go out at night. And she doesn’t know where to go.

I admit, I was grateful to be interviewing and not the interviewee.

Then I made some money and that was my new drug. No longer asking people questions. Instead, just hoarding. Or losing. Or somewhere from one end of that to the other.

“Money is like your religion,” said my now ex-wife.

For about 12 years I was deeply unhappy. Everything I did I would do for money. My net worth was my life worth.

Every night I called my business partner and we would go over all our opportunities to make more money. Finally, I was broke for the last time.

I had no more money and I had no more friends and no more family.

But I loved going to the museum every day. I would walk there and look at books of photographs.

A photograph would make me think about a life that wasn’t mine. The life of the subject of the photograph and the life of the photographer.

One was living a life worth being documented and the other was doing the creative act of documenting the life. I was jealous of both.

I had a life worth nothing. There was no frame around it.

And every thought and action I had ever had up until this point had led to…right where I was. Scared and miserable and tired.

Sometimes people say to me, “you always write this. I got it.” Ok, but there are many ways to slice a pie, and all of them taste good.

Sometimes people say to me when I write something inspirational, “easy for you to say, you have…” It’s ok. I get it.

Everything we see and read and hear is clouded by the meager experiences we have.

There is no reality but the one we choose to paint with the palette of those experiences.

People think, I can only appreciate the things that are more important than money when I actually have money. Else, what good are they?

What good are they? What good is life without the money to pay for a single second of it?

But, and I’m only writing to you, trust me when I say it’s the reverse. You only get the money, appreciate the money, keep the money, grow the money, when you always put the things more important than money first.

This sounds nice and flowery. And someone can think, I wish it were true.

It’s true.

Else, on this tiny spinning piece of mass, the breath of life is wasted on us and will be left unheard.

When we turn back into the midst of nothingness, all that is left are the tattoos we drew on the souls of others – children, friends, lovers, the stranger in the street who smiled at us. The art we created from our imaginations and not from our fears or angers.

I regret being worried for so long. But maybe the regret was my teacher. I don’t know.

It’s easy to say. But I’ll never know.

The post 10 Things More Valuable Than Money appeared first on Altucher Confidential.