James Altucher
Whenever things are good, I always worry about what could go wrong.
You can't make money without selling something real. You can't make something real without first imagination manifesting itself in your head. You can't have imagination without surrendering yourself to an idea that you want to create something of value to other human beings.
Take control of who you report to, what you do, what you create. Or start a business on the side. Deliver some value, any value, to anybody, to somebody, and watch that value compound into a career.
Read every book, blog, website, whatever, about what you want to be an expert in.
Whether you're an entrepreneur, an employee, a student, a homemaker, a writer, it's time to start forgetting about all the ways the world has promised you safety and comfort.
My feeling, based on my own experience, is that aiming for grandiosity is the fastest route to failure.
I find that many entrepreneurs are trying to do everything when it would be cheaper and more time-efficient to delegate, even if there are monetary costs associated with that.
I made so many mistakes in my first successful business I'm almost embarrassed to recount them.
You can only make money doing what you love.
Don't sweat it if you are stuck in the corporate job right now. But begin to plan ahead. I know from much personal experience that it takes 1-3 years to transition from total scratch to making a living from home in any career you want.
Mistakes I've made in the past make me afraid to try new things in the future. I want to be perfect.
I want every idea I have to make me money. I want every post I write to have 10,000 Facebook likes. I want every talk I give to have people laughing at all the right jokes. I want everyone to like me all the time.
I can tell you this: Everything in my life that I am happy about it is the product of a huge mistake.
Poker is a charismatic game. People who are larger than life play poker and make their living from playing games and hustling.
My grandfather was an illegal immigrant for the 60 or so years he was in the United States. I had another great-great-grandmother on my mom's side who snuck in in a suitcase.
America is a country of fighters. People who fought their way in and then continued fighting.
I keep track of my blog stats, Facebook subs, my Amazon rank, Twitter followers, Facebook likes per posts, my chess ranking. I get stressed when they all don't go up.
The best, very best scammers will always ask for your advice. This is their favorite technique. It makes them vulnerable. It flatters your ego.
It's hard to know which stars in the sky will turn into black holes. And which ones will open up worm holes into entire new universes.
When I was 7 years old, I plagiarized, word for word, stories from science fiction magazines so my teachers would think I was smart.
When I was 22 years old, I thought girls would like me if I wrote a novel. I spent so much time writing that I was thrown out of graduate school.
Read every sentence you write out loud. If it sounds boring, kill it.
Here's what a phone is: It's a computer that has a little app on it that allows me to dial numbers and then talk to someone.
I am a sore loser. It's not that I'm so competitive with others. But I'm competitive with myself. I like to do better than I did before.
Every game, and almost every life situation, has short cuts: ways you can get better without learning the entire literature of the game from beginning to end.
You're the average of the five people you spend your time with.
Investing is for wealth preservation, not wealth creation, so first you have to make wealth.
Be honest about mistakes. Even if you are afraid of what people think.
Help is a conversation. If one side talks too much, the other side will get bored. So make sure you help back when you can.
We are incredibly poor predictors of our future.
When I was 22, I was thrown out of graduate school and then fired from three jobs in a row at higher and higher salaries where I saved nothing.
Buying coffee on the street instead of in a Starbucks is the poor man's way to get rich. In other words, you will never get rich by scratching out ten cents from your dollar.
Being a leader doesn't mean you are the guy who runs things.
Being a leader doesn't mean you created something or you did something great in the past or some other person has given you any kind of authority.
I always imagine a good leader is surrounded by people who call their mothers at the end of the day and tell them, 'Mom, you can't believe what I did today. Let me tell you about it.'
If two people believe in the same story, they might be thousands of miles apart and total strangers, but they still have a sense they can trust each other.
The reality is: when you're slouched over, not only are you not using the full potential of your brain, but you look untrustworthy.
Most people don't have the power of persuasion.
You can say no to people who make you feel bad about yourself. To people who backstab you or make you feel anxious in any way.
Life is better when your sinuses are clean, when your arteries are clean, and when your digestive tract is clean.
Nobody is more worthy of love in the entire universe than you. I wish I had reminded myself of that more.
Every tomorrow is determined by every today.
I've had lots of ups and downs. I've had situations where I've gone against the rules, and I've lost everything.
If you spend a lot of energy on things that are wastes of time, then you waste energy, get sick, and die faster.
The universe wants us to have fun doing more than one thing in life. That's how it learns. You don't have one purpose in life. You have maybe 500 or so.
When the lights come on inside of you, everyone in the world can see a little better.Collection: Light
Your competition is not other people but the time you kill, the ill will you create, the knowledge you neglect to learn, the connections you fail to build, the health you sacrifice along the path, your inability to generate ideas, the people around you who don’t support and love your efforts, and whatever god you curse for your bad luck.Collection: Love You
Life is too long to reject the opportunities in front of you every day.Collection: Opportunity
Reading is the best return on investment. You have to live your entire life in order to know one life. But with reading you can know 1000s of people's lives for almost no cost. What a great return!Collection: Reading