The James Altucher Show

Sara Blakely is weird. I wish I could think like she does. I want to be weird like her. "I look at any object and try to think of any use it has other than what people had planned for it." And then she acts on it. She sees a pair of pantyhose, cuts off the feet (why not?) and creates a multi-billion dollar company, Spanx. She sees her 9 month pregnant belly and paints a basketball on it. And then inspires hundreds of other women to do the same. Creates a book out of it: The Belly Art Project, and donates the proceeds to charity. "All my life I was taught how to deal with failure," she told me. "My dad would ask us at the dinner table every night: how did you fail today?" HOW DID YOU FAIL TODAY? She got comfortable with failure at an age when every other kid wants to get an A+ at everything. She got comfortable embarrassing herself. For two years she tried to be a standup comedian. "I wasn't very good at it." Practice embarrassing yourself... Ready. Fire. Aim. She got a huge order from Nieman Marcus even though she didn't have the inventory or the production ready. She said, "YES!". Then she figured out how to get the order filled. Oprah listed Spanx as one of her "favorite things" of 2000. Oprah wanted to film her office. Sara had no office. She said, "YES!". Then she got an office and filled it up with people. Say YES! Then make things happen. Don't argue yourself into failure. Excuses are easy. Saying "yes" and then executing is hard. Get your thinking time. "It takes me five minutes to drive to work," she told me. "But I take 45 minutes. I use that time to think." It's important to think. To be creative every day. This is how she comes up with non-stop ideas to expand her brand, expand her products, and work on other projects. I suspect this is the secret for how she always sees things differently. Being creative is a practice. It's not lightening from above. It's taking the long route when you could've taken the short route. Purpose = Infectious salesmanship. While I was talking to Sara she used the word "empower" several times. Spanx clothes gives women more confidence. Empowers women. The Belly Art Project empowers pregnant women. It seems like there are three parts to a project that leads to master salesmanship. - the higher purpose for it. This gets people excited. - the actual product and its benefits. - execution Combine all three and people will get infected with your passion for your ideas. Sara was unstoppable. Don't volley. Don't engage with the people who want to argue with you. That's time wasted when you can be creative. Don't invite ego in the door. Once you've worked on your project, have passion for it, started it, be willing to take suggestions and listen to people. Ego can kill a project and close the door on good opportunities. Be aware of you mortality. Sara was selling fax machines for five years before fully launching Spanx. She could still be selling them if she never started. If she listened to all the people who tried to dissuade her. If she became afraid of the multi-billion dollar companies that could have easily squashed her. Except they didn't. She was one person and they were billions. But they lost. We are here only this precious small amount of time. Make every moment a work of art. Make every moment move you one step forward towards your dream and purpose. Invent a new undergarment even if you had never made clothes in your life. Get 100s of women to paint their pregnant bellies and then raise money for charity with the idea. "EVERYTHING IS A CANVAS," she told me. Which makes everyone a potential artist. What a great way to look at life. But I can't! Why not? For anything you want to do, for anything that excites you, take the time to figure out the next step. Ready. Fire. Aim. Just why not? Why not? ------------What do YOU think of the show? Head to JamesAltucherShow.com/listeners and... See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

He is exactly one year younger than me, almost to the day. So we could've even grown up together. We had similar interests in music. He could've taught me sewing. I could've taught him how to play chess.   But, to be honest, he worked harder than me. He stood on a corner and sold hats. Then he sold t-shirts. Then he would go to work at Red Lobster all night. Then back to school the next day.   I was lazy as a kid. I couldn't work so hard. Six billion dollars later, Daymond John sits atop the FUBU fashion empire and I think to myself, "He's one year younger than me."   Do you ever feel that: jealousy? Or if not jealousy, then maybe regret? Like there's so many things you could've done...if only...   The good news is, "if only" has two answers: "You didn't do it then." And..."Start today."   There's never any rush. If today is the day you can start enjoying something, start making money from it, start combining all of your interests into career that lasts one, five, ten years....then today is the day you should do it.   I've interview Daymond before. We covered a lot of his background and how he started when I interviewed him about his book, "The Power of Broke."   But on this interview I learned some new things.   1) DON'T QUIT YOUR DAY JOB.    Many people are unhappy in their jobs. I hear it every day from people. I get emails every day about it.   But you can't start a business in a second, or a month, or even a year.   Daymond worked at Red Lobster for SIX YEARS while he was getting FUBU off the ground. He didn't want to take a chance.   Why not? One might ask.   It's scary. If you leave a job for a new business and it doesn't work out, how will you pay your bills? I stayed at my job at HBO for 18 months after I started my first business before I would make the leap. I was really scared.   You don't leap until you can take away as many of the risks as possible.   2) DON'T DO THE COOL THING   While Daymond was working at Red Lobster and selling hats on the street, his friends were losing their lives selling drugs.   I was reading recently about Charlie Munger, Buffett's #2 man at Berkshire Hathaway and one of the richest men in the world.   He started a hedge fund in 1973. The worst time ever to start a fund. And, if I remember correctly (I refuse to Google), he was down 20-30% the first year. And then 20-30% the second year. And then he fought back and ended up making money for his investors.   Another man, probably in a very similar situation, was Bernie Madoff. We don't know exactly what happened but the theory is that when he was down he was too ashamed to tell anyone and turned it into a massive fraud.   Character is destiny. The choices you make today are your biography tomorrow.   Daymond refused to let the opinions of others veer him off his path. He worked hard, stuck to his uncool job while he pursued his passion. And made it work.   3) COMMUNITY   Critical to Daymond's success. Make the company more than just about you. Make it about the community. Then it has a life larger than "Daymond John." You create something people are willing to share.   How did he do this? Name - "FUBU" means "for u, by us". BAM! Friends - Daymond got his friends to wear it. Then their friends wanted to wear it. And so on. That's real marketing. Don't even think of advertising your product unless PEOPLE ARE FIRST DYING TO SHARE IT. Authority - LL Cool J grew up down the street from Daymond. Daymond didn't know him but he started pursuing him, asking him to wear a FUBU product in one of his videos. LL probably didn't even know who this kid was. But then he saw other kids wearing the clothes. And he responded to the name. So he started wearing FUBU in his videos. BAM! Shows - Daymond started going to all the Hip hop fashion conventions. The Magic convention in Las... See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

I heard an eight-year-old kid tell another eight-year-old that he's not welcome in his home. He said "Trump or Clinton?"   "Clinton."   And that was that. They kept walking. Kept debating and I bet nothing happened. I bet they're still friends.   Some people are either all talk or afraid.   Or both.   I try not to be either. I try to listen, come up with ideas, and be grateful. Because if I listen, I learn. And then I can say two sweet words, "thank you."   How many people said, "If Trump becomes president, I'm leaving the country." Or the other way around?   There's only one reason why I'd ever even consider packing. And Bobby Casey spelled it out for me.   "Americans don't understand how insanely expensive it is to live in the U.S.," Bobby said on my podcast.  He sold everything he owned and left the country in 2009. Right after the market crashed. Now he works all over the world. And helps people get off the grid.   I wanted to know how he did it.   And why...   "I hated my customers," he said. "I hated my employees, I hated my job, I hated my business."   "But what made you think you could sell all your belonging and travel the world forever?"   "Weren't you scared you would run out of money?"   "I just knew I'd work it out," he said. "I'd make some money."   I couldn't do it. It's easy to be uncertain when you're level of unknown isn't going to erupt your central nervous system.   But Bobby had motivation.   "My happiness and my quality of life is much more important than cashing out on a business," he said. "I didn't care. I wanted to be happy again."   So he got rid of everything. He gave away motorcycles. (He had 27). Then he bought two one-way tickets to Prague. One for him. And one for his 9 year old son.   "We'd never been there."   The rest of his family moved a few weeks later. He has three kids.   "What about friends? And school?" I asked.   "My daughter, she's 20, she's a rapper in London. She did two years of virtual school. And she can make friends anywhere. It's her personality type." His other two kids enrolled with locals.   I had 100 questions. "How'd you get the confidence? What type of freelance work did you do?" "How did you make ends meet?"   He broke it down for me. And told me all the ways he saves money living abroad.   "I did the math on this," he said. "You won't believe this, but I pay $42 a year for a 10,000 euro deductible health insurance plan."   Anything after 10,000 euros, he's covered. "I could get airlifted to John Hopkins if I wanted and that would be covered."   "You can make about $150,000, tax-free, as an American living abroad." Here's how Bobby explains it on the podcast...   If you make $100K (gross) in the U.S, then you're probably netting less than $60K. Abroad, you can make the same $60K (net), live tax-free (if you qualify for the "foreign earned income exclusion"), get a housing allowance, pay $42 a year for health insurance, and basically never feel broke again.   I was getting depressed. Because I know I'm not going to move. It's part of being human. Everyone I look up to, Scott Adams, Dan Ariely, Nassim Taleb, they all say the same thing: people are irrational creatures. Even the idea that we're being rational, is irrational.   Every time Bobby spoke, I had 10 new questions.   I thought I'd never understand. But then he gave me his secret. And it answered all my questions.   It was so simple. I couldn't believe it.   Bobby and his son were walking around Estonia. They left Prague, bought a house and had no plans.   Someone overheard them speaking English.   "You're American?"   They started talking. "What are you planning to do for your kids for school?"   Bobby had no idea.   "I have a son who's your son's age. We found a really good school up the hill. There's a meeting tonight for foreigners who want to enroll their kids."   That was it. Then Bobby told me his secret..."I... See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Social media is a bloodbath.   Trump. Hilary. Walls. Genitals. Crooked this or Deplorable that.   There's two things I know:   1)  I choose whether I am happy with a situation or not. Whether I am "free" or not. Nobody else can choose that for me unless I give them permission.   If a situation (call it X) happens that I don't like, I ask myself: is the world better with X and me in it. Or with X and "no me".   All I can do is have impact on the people around me. And if it's worthwhile impact, if it's the sort of impact that helps people and creates positive change, then those people around me will share it with the people around them.   That's how things get done. That's how one "votes" with their life every single day. No excuse.   2) I'm not the smartest person in the room.   If a situation happens that I don't understand, I don't pretend to understand it. I don't go ahead and act like I understand it.   I have no clue.   So I ask the smartest person in the room. I ask the people who know more than me. I ask people I respect who might have opposing views.   The world has many opposing views. And I admit that I don't understand all the facts. I ask people who have more facts than me. Who have studied more than me.   Do I automatically agree with them? It doesn't matter. They feed my brain. I know they will because I already trust them to think carefully about an issue and I trust their years of experience.   Then I think. Then I decide.   Does it change what I do?   No.   I do what I do. I try to keep having impact in the way that I know best. I want to be a free person. This doesn't mean rich. Which often entangles me too much in the addiction of having more and more.   Nor does it mean have everyone love me. Because that is also is something outside of me that is out of my control.   Freedom means I can make choices. Freedom means I can make as many choices as possible to live the life I want to live.   I wanted to learn more about what a Donald Trump presidency might mean. There is so much blood shed trying to force me to have one opinion or the other, I decided to call one of the smartest people I know.   Ken Kurson shed some light for me on things that were confusing me. Do I have to agree with everything? No. I am free not to.   But I learned. Which is always the best thing I can do.     ------------What do YOU think of the show? Head to JamesAltucherShow.com/listeners and fill out a short survey that will help us better tailor the podcast to our audience!Are you interested in getting direct answers from James about your question on a podcast? Go to JamesAltucherShow.com/AskAltucher and send in your questions to be answered on the air!------------Visit Notepd.com to read our idea lists & sign up to create your own!My new book, Skip the Line, is out! Make sure you get a copy wherever books are sold!Join the You Should Run for President 2.0 Facebook Group, where we discuss why you should run for President.I write about all my podcasts! Check out the full post and learn what I learned at jamesaltuchershow.com------------Thank you so much for listening! If you like this episode, please rate, review, and subscribe to "The James Altucher Show" wherever you get your podcasts: Apple PodcastsiHeart RadioSpotifyFollow me on social media:YouTubeTwitterFacebookLinkedIn See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

"We all lived through it. But one fun or interesting realizations I came to in reporting the book was... Can we curse on your podcast?"   "Yeah. Anything goes."   "... Is just how much shit happened in the world between 1999 and 2015."   Chris Smith is the author of The New York Times bestseller, "The Daily Show (The Book): An Oral History as Told by Jon Stewart, the Correspondents, Staff and Guests."   He interviewed 144 people, including the host Jon Stewart, Craig Kilborn, Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, Samantha Bee and so many other people.   "You know, Jon Stewart's a guy who had an upper-middle-ish class upbringing in New Jersey, went to William and Mary, came into comedy sideways. He wasn't sure exactly what he was going to do after college."   I needed to know how Jon Stewart did it. How he redefined Late Night. How he broke out and rose to the top of comedy. And how he used humor to disrupt it all - mainstream media, mainstream politics, the news.   "He would wear the same thing in the office everyday: a pair of work boots, a pair of chinos, the same t-shirt, the same Mets hat. And well, they'd rag on him about being a slob. There was-and not to get cheaply psychological-something Jon was communicating... He was simplifying a lot of the extraneous stuff and getting to work."   Here's what I learned from Chris Smith about comedy, change and the combination that changed the world:   1) Ask the right questions Jon showed up every day and asked, "What was in the news? What's funny about it? What's our point of view?"   Everyday, I ask, "Who can I help today?" It keeps me open to the day. It gives me a fresh perspective. That's part of reinvention.   Always looking. Always starting over. Always asking, "What's missing here?" And then filling that gap.   2)  Change the format Jon did a "Bush vs. Bush" segment.   First you see a clip of Governor Bush talking about Iraq and saying, "We're not here to nation-build." Then you see Bush as president saying the complete opposite. "We're going to nation-build in Iraq."   Jon didn't point out the hypocrisy. He could've. But that wouldn't have been funny.   Instead, he played dumb. He pretended he didn't know it was the same person contradicting himself.   That's what made it funny.   He removed knowledge from the situation. And got the attention of millions. Eventually, making real change. They even had an effect on some big issues.   "They made an eight or nine-minute mock detective movie. They took one veteran and tried to trace his paperwork through the Veterans Administration. They kept running into ridiculous roadblocks, but it was also moving. It gave you a sense of how much this guy was going through to get medical care," Chris said. "That ended up shaming the Veterans Administration and changing a lot of those rules and regulations."   He also transformed media.   "Loosely," Chris says.   But, in old media you couldn't find the truth like you can today. It would take weeks of research. Now with the Internet you can search and find anything. And turn it around in 24 hours.   Chris talked to Anderson Cooper. He said the mainstream media world was always aware of "The Daily Show." They didn't want to get made fun...   "And, inevitably, you did."   3) Ignore the traps "You've got, in many cases, a lot of ambitious, competitive, eccentric people," he said. "You put them in a room and give them a deadline and that can lead to a lot of clashes." But Jon didn't get stuck in the trappings of show business.   Which is easy to do in any career.     But if you use your idea of how things could be to fuel creation, you get a leg up.   You get "The Daily Show."   4) Live in two worlds "What about when you were writing the book? Did you ever wish you were them? Did you ever feel like, 'I'm covering them, but I want to be them'?"   I knew my answer. And Chris's answer was more or less the same.... See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

I wish I was as smart as Steven Johnson. I asked him, "What is your one favorite thing that everybody thinks is bad for you that is actually good for you?" He didn't want to tell me. "My kids might listen to this later," he said. But he told me... He's the author of "Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation," "Everything Bad is Good for you," and the recent "Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World"- how the idea of "play" more than anything else, is what created the modern world. "I regret saying this a little, but, the assumption that video games are just a terrible waste of time and that this generation is growing up playing these stupid games is really... it's so wrong," he said. He was talking about using play for education reform. "If you think about it, we walk around with a bunch of assumptions of what a learning experience is supposed to look like: listening to a lecture, watching an educational video, taking an exam to test your learning." I was gonna puke.  "I've been watching my kids play Battlefield 1, which is set in WWI. And it's amazing." "I sit and watch my kids play and ask what they're thinking about. Because as a grown up who doesn't play the game you can't process it. There's just so much going on in the world. They're playing this multiplayer game, in this incredibly vivid landscape with a million data points streaming across the screen." His doesn't understand it. And his kids don't understand how he doesn't understand it...  "Didn't you see the signal I got? And how this one piece of the interface was telling me to do xy and z?" "All I can see is there's a gun and a Zeplin. I'm 48," he said. We're the same age. "Does that make me middle aged?" "We're old." Kids are basically gonna destroy us. We're the one's who are going to end up in diapers. They started off there, we end up there. Unless... We play, too. So here's what Steven found out. One would ask, that sounds ridiculous: how did "play" create the Industrial Revolution. Or all the wars of the past 500 years. Or all the innovations we've seen with the Internet, which was initially funded by the military. What does "play" have to do with it? Everything. And that's what makes Steven Johnson so infuriating. He'll take two concepts that seem like they have nothing to do with each other and he'll say, THIS caused THAT! And I'd shake my head and cry and ask, "How is that even possible?" And then he'll show me. Because he traces his curiosity. It's like when you start clicking all the hyperlinks in a Wikipedia page. And seeing how everything is connected. Steven connects the dots and puts them in a book for you. If I were to recreate a robotic Steven Johnson (hmmm, actually, maybe he is a robot. Or at least has a Cylon brain or maybe Bradley Cooper's brain from Limitless) I'd have to feed in 10,000 books or so, and this ability to find every possible cross connection between every two ideas mentioned in the books. And then he spits it out in his masterpieces. As I told him in the beginning of the podcast: I enjoy a lot of books. A lot of books are great even. But your books and only a few others are among the only books where I read it and I feel like my IQ is going up. I made up a game in fact, based on his books. Maybe someone should make the card game for this. Here's two random concepts. Tell me how they are connected. Example: The lengthening of shop windows in London in the 1600s and the rise of American slavery in the 1800s. I'm not making this up. One really caused the other. Steven calls it "the hummingbird effect." It's different from the butterfly effect where the flapping of a butterfly's wings can cause a hurricane. That's chance. The hummingbird effect is traceable. "It has to be 2-3 steps removed," he said. "And you have to be really rigorous about when it just doesn't work." You play to find the links. I told him this... See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You know that game where you flip a card, see the face and turn it back over, then try to find the match?   That's the game we're going to play...   Write down your values. I told Jairek mine. I had three.   Jairek is a life coach. And Tony Robbins is his dad. But that doesn't matter. Because Tony didn't invest in his son's strengths. He invested in weakness.   "I didn't really have an understanding of what real hard work was," Jairek said.   So in college, Jairek went to Canada and stacked lumber.   "You've known me a long time," I said. "What's a weakness I have that you think I can work through?"   "I'll tell you how we find those," he said.   Step 1: Review your values   Jairek said, "Let's do this right now. If I were to ask you what's most important to you in life, what would you say?"   "Humans..." That was number one. Connecting with people I care about.   "Being an honest person who acts with integrity."   "And creativity."   So here's the card game... Imagine you have all the cards face down on the carpet. Every card has a match.   One shows your values. The other shows your time. You have to match them up to win.   Because values = time.   People say, "Time is money."   No.   Time is values.   But pretty much everyone struggles with this. I struggle with this. Jairek gave an example but it made me wonder maybe your brain's idea of values is wrong.   Maybe your "values" are really your expectations... In my life, misery sinks in when expectations are higher than reality.   I don't know.   The example Jairek gave was a guy who spent all his time doing business. His values were family and God. So I asked Jairek, "Could your brain be wrong?"   Maybe this guy's calendar was right. Maybe he really valued business...   I'm not in his head. I don't' have a life coach. I have a therapist.   So if you're reading this and thinking, "No he doesn't," then you know what's true for you.   Step 2: Find a match   Log your time. Look at your day and your week. Jairek's clients log their lives for seven days. But he also needs to know your thoughts. Which is harder to measure. "I don't have a sensor for that yet," he said. "It's subjective."   Jairek has helped thousands of people.   One client said, "Honestly, I wake up and the first thing through my head is, 'Am I going to close that deal today?' It's always combing through my mind. Even at dinner. I'm thinking about the paperwork. My mind's constantly turning. I'm not able to let go of what's going on.'"   His home life was suffering.   So Jairek asked, "What's your ritual to turn it off at the end of the day and walk away without having all those thoughts processing in your head?"   Most people don't have a ritual. That's the problem. "You need to disassociate from work," he said. "Get it out of your nervous system."   So here's the formula: disconnect, then connect.   Part A) Disconnect:   "Some people go for a walk, other people breathe for 20 minutes. It's different for everybody. You have to figure out the routine."   Sometimes I'm emailing about work at midnight. That's how habits start. They creep in when my guard is down, when I'm not connected to anything I love.     Part B) Connect   Jairek switched his coaching methods a few years ago. He used to coach on performance. Now it's relationships. Because it's the relationships in our lives that increase our performance.   "Right now, if you're at work, and you think about your kids, your heart's probably not gushing over them," he said."   "No, usually they suck and I'm annoyed at them." I had plans to see them in a few hours.   Then Jairek hypnotized me.   "What's the most precious and beautiful moment you have with one of your kids?" he said. "Go back way in the distance. Remember one of your earliest moments with them that just lit your heart up. And as a dad made you prouder than you could have ever imagined."   He had... See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Mike Massimino failed his PhD the first time. Failed the astronaut test the first three times. Failed to get the highest evaluation when he walked into space the first time. And almost destroyed the Hubble Telescope on the last attempt the US was going to make to fix it. But he did it. He did it all. Two things I noticed about him. One thing is he kept saying things to me like, "I wasn't the smartest in X but..." He said that about his classmates. He said that about his neighbors. He said this about his fellow co-workers. He said this out in the middle of outer space. 350,000 miles away from home. In my podcast, years later, he was still saying that. He's a liar. He got his PhD from MIT in "robot arms on Mars". He went into space twice. He fixed the Hubble telescope so now we can see images like this: By the way, he failed the astronaut exam because his vision wasn't good enough. He then figured out how to TRAIN HIS EYES TO HAVE BETTER EYESIGHT. I never even heard of that before. He passed his next exam with 20/20 vision. Clearly he was good enough. In fact, he is the best at everything he has ever done. Humility without negativity (negative might be: "I'm not good enough so I will give up.") seems to be key. In other words: Humility With Forward Action. Second, he told me something very interesting. In his lab at MIT there were ten other students. Four of them became astronauts. Do you know how hard it is to become an astronaut? Out of the 1000s of people who used to apply each year, less than 10 would get in. These 1000s who applied were DESPERATE to get in. And they couldn't. And yet FOUR from this one single lab flew into outer space. If he had been hanging out in a bar instead of a robotics lab, I doubt he could say, "Me and 3 of my friends went into space". Life and it's outcomes are contagious. Be where, and with who, you will inherit the greatest possibilities, the greatest encouragement, the greatest knowledge, the greatest joys and friendship These are the viruses you want to infect you. Those are the people and places that will propel you into outer space. And by "outer space", in this one case I am talking metaphorically. Be the person the people around you expect you to be. I learned this from Mike because I was curious and I reached out to him and wanted to ask questions. Learning something from the people you admire is really the point here. If you do it just once a day you'll learn 365 incredible things a year. This will make your life a dream. And then you'll dream of things you never knew existed. . ------------What do YOU think of the show? Head to JamesAltucherShow.com/listeners and fill out a short survey that will help us better tailor the podcast to our audience!Are you interested in getting direct answers from James about your question on a podcast? Go to JamesAltucherShow.com/AskAltucher and send in your questions to be answered on the air!------------Visit Notepd.com to read our idea lists & sign up to create your own!My new book, Skip the Line, is out! Make sure you get a copy wherever books are sold!Join the You Should Run for President 2.0 Facebook Group, where we discuss why you should run for President.I write about all my podcasts! Check out the full post and learn what I learned at jamesaltuchershow.com------------Thank you so much for listening! If you like this episode, please rate, review, and subscribe to "The James Altucher Show" wherever you get your podcasts: Apple PodcastsiHeart RadioSpotifyFollow me on social media:YouTubeTwitterFacebookLinkedIn See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It's the most commonly believed lie. It will make you lose all your money. It'll make you wake up in your 40's or 50's and wonder what you're going to do about retirement. It will make you develop your worst possible habits.   For me, it was drinking. And waking up face to floor. I was ugliest when I was unhappy. That's true for everyone.   Unless you hide it with plastic surgery and cocaine.   The point is I care about myself now. And not a lot of people say that.   But it's important.   I should care about me more than anyone else... even my daughters. But sometimes I mess up. Sometimes I love them more than me.   Even on airplanes, they say, "Put your mask on before assisting others." If you put a mask on your baby before you put a mask on yourself, your baby will never know who you could've been.   If I don't put my oxygen mask on first everyday, then my kids, my friends, everyone I meet, won't know who I really am.   They won't know me at my best. They'll know me passed out on the floor because I tried starving myself for three days (it was a fast. I was trying to detox my body. Again this goes back to caring about yourself. Molly, Josie, I swear, I had good intentions.)   Let me get back to the most commonly believed lie.   It's called the sunk cost fallacy. This is when you stick to what you're doing because you already invested your whole life in it.   For example, you won't quit your job (the job you hate) because that's what you went to college for or because you've been doing it for 20 years and change is scary.   I studied computer science. I went to graduate school for it.   But now I do what I love. Because I gave up.   I had to give up on life's little stresses and jump head first into an even bigger stress. It took me one step closer to bottom. And one step closer to the lifeboat.   I have a friend. She's 52. Or 53, divorced. She has a "low-level" job. Or that's what she says.   She thinks her goals are out of reach. She says, "I can't do it." And she believes it. So I asked my friend Susan David, (she's a Ph.D) "How can you help someone like that? How can you help someone struggling with life's circumstances?"   But I was asking the wrong question. Because she told me the stress people experience everyday isn't (usually) caused by massive life events.   "There's a particular kind of stress that, in psychology, we call allostatic stress," Susan said, "It's the everyday stress."   I was interviewing her about her book, "Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life."   She gave 50 or 100 tips to do exactly what the subtitle of her book says, "Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life."   1) Accept it "Accept that you aren't where you want to be," Susan said. "Be with those difficult emotions."   She said we get stuck in two ways. One is "bottling." The second is "bruting." Bottling is when someone traps emotions inside. They ignore their feelings.   Bruting is when someone obsesses about emotions. And try to determine what happened and why...   They both cause high levels of anxiety.   So I had to stop asking, "Why?"   2) Choose "want-to" goals I have four main values. They're in my daily practice.   Values are the things you want to do versus the things you have to do. Because "have to" goals are less likely to be successful.   So I asked Susan, "What if you don't know what your values are?"   "We often turn around and say, 'How did I get here?'   "I was just going on with flow. I was just doing what everyone else told me to do. I went to college. I got a job. I got a house... How did I get her?' This is a really difficult place for people to be" she said. "What's really critical for all of us to realize is values are not some abstract idea. Values are ways of living, ways of being."   Figure out your values. Susan says, at the end of the day ask yourself, "What did I... See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Kamal was totally lost. His father had died. His job over. His relationship gone. He felt adrift, depressed, broken. He was so lost he wandered the world trying to find his way back. Twenty years later he wrote the novel about what happened - REBIRTH. The novel is about how he discovered for himself the ancient art of the pilgrimage. How to be a wanderer. How to be lost in a world with too much GPS raining down. Would a pilgrimage, a wandering, solve his problems? I read Kamal's book. The book comes out today. I had him on my podcast (also out today). I wanted to find out how even in our daily lives we can go on a pilgrimage. Even if I'm in a cubicle, can I break free, can I become a wanderer Sometimes I also feel stuck. But I don't want to go away for months at a time. I want a pilgrimage in my life right now! From what I can gather from reading the book, REBIRTH, and talking with Kamal, a pilgrimage has several parts: A) SEEKING AN ANSWER Something happened. Something confusing. Something that wasn't in the plan. You have to get off the regular path. Try a new one. Try one that takes a bit of courage and discipline. To meet stranger along the way B) IT TAKES TiME I'm not a believer that you have to go to a far location. But take time for yourself each day to do something you've never done before. Think about things you never thought about before. Find the places in your life that you never looked before. They are there every day. The pilgrimage awaits. Do a dare you never would have dared to before. C) STRUGGLE Maybe some people find life easy. I don't. Life is filled with worries about money, about relationships, about (for me) kids, about decisions, about the people who hate you, who annoy you, who scare you. Anxieties, regrets. Every pilgrimage begins with the struggle. And every journey is a struggle. The struggle doesn't stop. It just changes. It changes into one where you are lost to one where you have vision. Where the struggle is not being trapped in the vision of others but for the unique impact that you want to create. D) BENEFITS OF A PILGRIMAGE: - You see more clearly: Everything you see on a pilgrimage is different from "normal life". Enjoy them. Learn from it. Even a single day, a single meeting, can be a pilgrimage. What is your takeaway from it. - You meet people. I like to pretend everyone has a fortune cookie to give me. A little bit stale, a little bit crunchy, with a folded message inside. Read it. - There's an end. We've made pilgrimages too easy. We can go to a museum and see 2000 works of art. It used to be that people would travel a 1000 miles to see one painting hanging up in a chapel. Then you can really appreciate what you see. The more you appreciate the people, the things, the emotions around you, the more you are a pilgrim. - Come back changed. A pilgrim doesn't just fly a plane from LA to NY. A pilgrim changes because of the journey. You do that by using your senses: listen more, see more, taste more, observe more. The convenience of modern society comes at a price. It's too difficult now to be a pilgrim because everything is two taps away on our phone. There is an "otherness" to being disconnected for a bit. To search. To wander. And finally, to give up looking. To surrender to the results. ---- It's freeing to give up, even for a few minutes, everything you ever knew. To become a Wanderer. To look around and see everything as if it were new. REBIRTH, by Kamal Ravikant, got me thinking about these things. He went on his pilgrimage. He met people. He went on an adventure, a journey, and reading his book showed me how. I need to leave. To struggle. To find an answer. And then to completely give up all hope of ever finding one. To find again the beauty of being completely lost. If I get lost enough, maybe I can find something worth looking for. ------------What do YOU think of the show? Head to JamesAltucherShow.com/listeners and... See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.