Live Life Like A Legend

You were completely insane.

Imagine you’re one of the best players in the country. You only read one tiny chess book and you became one of the best.

I had to read a 1000 and never reached your level.

I’ve played you. It was the scariest most thrilling game. It was like a nuclear war where everything exploded and nothing was left at the end.

I was excited when the game ended. I shouted, “that was the most amazing game I ever played” and everyone else had to “Shush!” me because they were still playing.

I still remember the game, move by move, 18 years later. The utter brutality you tried to inflict on me branded into my brain.

—

Last week you were in a tournament. You had won your first two games. Everything seemed normal. You went to the bathroom.

Coming out of the bathroom you said, “call 911”. Then you fell to the ground and died.

—

You would attack and attack and hammer and crush and surprise until the board was obliterated of all reason.

Nobody played like you. Nobody liked playing you.

You never let up. You never stopped finding the craziest most insane attacks that nobody would even consider. Crazy Creativity.

The best players in the world were afraid of you.

You were an electric charge they were afraid to touch and yet you lit up everyone in your path.

I wish I could do that with all art. With all business. With all my relationships. With my being. That extra push that turns life electric.

You weren’t a regular player. Or a regular human.

One grandmaster said, “He was utterly fearless. He would slash the board to bits.”

You trained your son, a pro kick boxer who said, “He would get mad if I held my hands up. ‘You have nothing to hide from’ he said. We would focus on offense. All out attack.”

You were champion of the US Armed Forces for five years in a row. In an organization of trained killers, you were the most fierce.

One grandmaster said, “HE LIVED LIFE AS A LEGEND. Nobody can explain him. Nobody can understand him.”

—

Your son said, “He was happy in his own skin. He didn’t need possessions. A house, a car, or a garden to feel at home.

“People called him crazy. But you can’t argue with the methods if the result is flawless. He gave me the skill I needed to live a life worth living

“He was happy anywhere. And he was the smartest man I ever met. ”

—

When I knew I was going to play you I was scared. I think I cried. I was afraid to lose.

I was shaking the entire game. I was at the highest peak of my play in my entire life. But I was less than an insect and your plan was to totally destroy me.

WHAT! I was winning at one point. Then you surprised me with a force that pressed on every side of my brain. The world suddenly closed in on me and I didn’t know how or why.

Then I thought I was losing. Then, somehow, winning. Then you surprised me.

Then the win was gone. It was just a draw.

But because you were ranked so high it was the exact game that moved me into the official category of “ranked master” so many years ago.

I never knew you. I only played you. I was only scared of you.

—

I just sat here this morning for three hours and played through 30 of your games. You were ruthless and twisted and brutal and crazy.

We played and you shook my hand and then got up and left. I couldn’t leave the chair. I kept going over the game. Over the game. Over and over.

A crowd gathered and tried to figure it out but nobody could.

You took my sense of GAME (life) to a level I didn’t know I had. I hope I can do a shadow of that for others.

I never knew you. I never spoke to you. I only played you in the most important game of my life.

Goodbye.

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Advice for Amateurs, Addicts, and Orphans

My girlfriend was banging on my office door at 12:30 in the morning but I ignored her and didn’t answer until eventually she left, screaming my name.

A guy named “Seggev” from Israel and I would play one minute chess all night long on “the world wide web”. I couldn’t stop playing him. I couldn’t get up. It was like I was an addict.

I was so tired sometimes I couldn’t tell if I was being checkmated or if I was just having a bad dizzy dream. My heart broke when I lost.

Every two hours or so we would reluctantly agree to take bathroom breaks, 9000 miles apart. Whatever it was I was running from, he seemed to be running away from it as well.

On one of my bathroom breaks I ran into the guy from the office next to mine. It was two in the morning. “Why are you here?” This guy had a new baby at home so of course I meant as a rhetorical question.

“I’m writing some software to catalog pages on the world wide web”, he said. This new thing. “I figure maybe I can get some government funding.” This was 1994.

Good luck with that. I went back to my office. Seggev was already back and challenging me to another game.

When I finally went home at about 6:30 in the morning my girlfriend at the time threw her backpack at me. It was filled with books. “Ow!” “Get out!”

I slept for an hour and then went back to play more chess. I was an addict. I have never stopped being an addict although it took far more dangerous forms later on.

Later it would cost me family, money, my children, my self-respect, and all of my relationships. For now, it was just a baby addiction. Enough to distract.

The computer in the office next to mine was “lycos.cs.cmu.edu”. My friend’s company, Lycos, became the first major search engine. I think he made $200 million. But we weren’t really friends.

The other night there was hail outside and my daughter was up and couldn’t get to sleep. Her mind was racing.

I was tired and I wish I had told her these things. I wish I could go back in time and tell myself these things.

I wish I could go back in time further and tell my mother (who won’t speak to me) and my father (who is dead) these things.

• Fly kites as much as possible. While they are in the air, they keep your feet on the ground.
• NEVER read the newspaper. They sometimes breed the worst horror fiction.
• NEVER do anything you don’t want to do. You will resent it. You will do a bad job. Others will be dissatisfied. And then you will die with regret.
• FREEDOM is something you can have right this second. Else you lose the chance and this moment will vanish while you were waiting in prison.
• DIVERSIFY everything in your life, including the people you listen to for advice. Including me, your father.
• LEARN lots of games. They turn you into a hard-core killer without you ever having to hurt someone.
• This is a cliché, but never listen to anyone who says “You can’t do that”. Those are usually the people who can’t do it. Not you.
• Even though life is short, there’s also no rush. You have to put on a parachute before you jump out of a plane.
• PREPARATION is the key to having good luck. And lots of it. People will never understand the source of your luck but will be amazed at it.
• KINDNESS to others is a greater power than any god people preach to you.
• Every day is an adventure. Every day you can squeeze art out of the day. And art causes delight and that delight compounds every day.

—

Eventually she fell asleep and I went upstairs. I try to close my eyes but I can’t sleep. The rain stopped and the house is dead silent.

I’m sad. Can’t I do more?

There’s going to be a day when she has to do it all on her own. Without anyone to sit quietly with her. To calm her down while her mind speeds faster than she ever thought possible.

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Sitting Will Kill You

I’m going to live to 150. I figured out all the statistics and since I am a certified doctor on Twitter and Facebook I feel qualified to say this.

A few weeks ago, I was wearing my lab coat. Someone started asking me about a pain in his shoulder.

I told him specifically what he should do and he said, “Thank you” and he walked off, rubbing his shoulder but maybe a little more hopeful. Claudia had to run after him to explain I was not a doctor.

But what does she know? Don’t ruin people’s hopes!

One thing I know. I have every reason to believe I will live to 150 years. Maybe more. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

First off, basic use of statistics. I’ve been alive 17,437 days as I write this. On all of those days I have never died. Not once!

So basic statistics: I’m probably never going to die. Just like most people with stable salaries are doing good jobs that will never be eliminated [not].

Second, most deaths can be traced back to specific causes. And if you eliminate those causes, then for each cause they know, on average, how many extra years you will live.

Like, the average non-smoker lives 6.5 years longer than the average smoker.

And obsessive worrying can take…16 years off of your life. WHOAH!

[see graphic for all the things that can extend your life].

And they extend your quality of life. If you have lung cancer or (horrors) lip cancer, then your quality of life is less than people who don’t have those cancers.

So why choose to die at age 150?

Well, nobody knows what happens before or after this tiny glimmer of light we see. Underneath this tiny star at the outer rim of our galaxy.

Right now I’m in a coffee shop. Four policemen are arguing with each other whether or not to put chai in their espresso. The counterwoman complains to her boss he never compliments her. 80s music is playing. Depeche Mode “Master and Servant”.

The man next to me is telling his mistress that he loves her. A man is sweeping outside. A photograph of a woman from the 1920s is hanging on the wall, maybe the owner’s grandmother. A mural of the coffee shop is spread out next to the menu, chalked on a giant black board with intricate chalk drawings of the drinks.

The woman cop is beautiful. If I wasn’t married I’d walk up to her this second and ask her to marry me. Or I’d steal the gun from her holster while she debates if she should do chai or not and I’d aim straight at her face and then just laugh and give it back to her. I like to joke around.

Not every day is wonderful. Last night I had a bad moment. But this moment is pretty amazing. And maybe the next and the next.

[Now “Sweet Dreams” is playing. All 80s, all the time.]

And maybe it’s too early to predict. But at age 150 I’d like to explore the next moment in a new way. Just not on this planet. Or in this universe. Or with this brain. Who knows?

Live long and prosper.

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Ep 139: Lewis Howes’ School of Greatness

Lewis Howes is great.

He has achieved Olympic level successful in many areas of his life and today with the launch of his brand new book, The School of Greatness, he adds Bestselling Author to the list.

On this episode, I ask Lewis what it takes to be great. Without hesitation, Lewis says that it all starts with a vision.

You have to visualize what it is you really want. You have to dream it.

Lewis says that before you can achieve greatness and success you have to understand what greatness and success looks like for you.

Take a notepad and a pen, go out into nature, lay there in silence and write down what your perfect day would look like.

Lewis says that everyone faces some type adversity in their life, but the ones who achieve greatness figure out a way to use the adversity to their advantage.

We discuss some amazing examples of people who have achieved greatness after adversity, like Kyle Maynard.

I hope you enjoy today’s episode as much as I did.

I know you can be great.

Links and resources:

• The School of Greatness – Lewis Howes book that releases today!

• Lewis’ website

• Lewis’ Twitter

“You need vision if you’re going to reinvent yourself.” – Lewis Howes – click to tweet

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Donald Trump, Identity Theft, and The Path to Professional

Inspiration hit me the other day. And it made me act. And it made my life better. And I have to say, I needed it.

It doesn’t have to be life-changing. It can just be…”Ahhh.” And then whatever swamp you might be stuck in that day, gets a little more shallow.

Some people say: it comes from pain and adversity and you work through it to create art.

Ok. That’s bullshit but whatever. It works also. But it doesn’t have to always be the case.

Sometimes inspiration comes from something deep inside, something you don’t understand – maybe an event from the past, or an observation you forgot about but grows and grows every day until it becomes so big it obscures everything you see.

I look at people’s art and when it’s good I see their intensity. I see their love for it. I see the slit wrist and the blood that brought their new creation into the world.

I say “blood” not in a bad way but simply: living creatures (and art and innovation and the future) need blood to live.

This is a long way of saying: my inspiration today is total BS. But I still love it.

I was listening to the comedian Anthony Jeselnik on Marc Maron’s podcast.

Some people like Jeselnik, some people don’t. Some people have no idea who he is.

Fine.

What inspired me was this one statement. First the background: Jeselnik was a writer for Jimmy Fallon’s late late show.

Maron asked him what did you do for the show?

Jeselnik, it should be mentioned, is one of the best classic one-line comedians out there.

If you know comedy you will recognize who he said were his main influences (Steven Wright – who helps write Louis CK’s show, and Mitch Hedberg).

If you don’t follow comedy, ignore the above, so I can keep stealing from the above two guys.

Jeselnik said he wanted to be a novelist at first. He loved writing. Loved the written language. And so on. But didn’t have the patience.

So, he switched to comedy, and started writing for Fallon’s show.

He said, and I’m going to emphasize it as the most important thing I’m writing:

He said, “I wrote 70 jokes a day for Fallon”.

70 jokes! Marc Maron said. I can’t believe it.

Hardly any of them were used, Jeselnik said, but I had to write 70 jokes a day.

And that’s how he got his 10,000 hours.

Mark Maron asked him, what would you do?

We’d just look at the headlines each day and try to come up with punchlines to the headlines for Fallon’s monologue.

Mark decided to test him, “Ok, let’s look at some headlines. Here’s one: Google launches brand new online payment system.”

And without missing a beat, Jeselnik paused and said, “…otherwise known as identity theft.”

BAM!

So I was telling this to Stephen Dubner, who i do a podcast with. And he said, “well, let’s see how good you are.”

So he pulled up some headlines.

“Here’s one,” he said, “Trump says he once got a ‘small loan’ from his father for one million dollars.” GO!

And….I couldn’t come up with anything. The pressure was on.

That’s the difference between being funny and being a professional.

So later that day I spent a bit more time and I made my list of ten ideas, ten punchlines to that headline.

I’m not going to write them here (yet, maybe in comments).

But give it a try, take that headline and tell me 10 punchlines. The KEY THING IS: they can all be bad. ALL OF THEM. The key is doing. If you don’t DO, then you DON’T.

If you don’t DO, then you do DON’T.

Not good or bad. That only unveils itself over time. Kindness, love, comedy, work, knowledge, intelligence, life, all are parts of your soul you get to know over time.

DO.

Tell me your punchlines. And it just rings in my head now, “70 jokes a day”.

Sometimes my life is pretty miserable. Things happen. Life cycles and when it cycles down the only thing to do is wait and appreciate the tiny scraps you can find in the life around you.

Yesterday it was that tiny scrap that brightened my day. And me seeing you. And me talking to you. And you making me laugh.

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The Power of Consistency

I was incredibly jealous. I called Tim Ferriss and I said, “I can’t believe you got Seth Rogen on your podcast. ‘Superbad’ is my third favorite movie of all time, and that’s on a list that has Schindler’s List at number one.”

He laughed and said, “Well now I’m curious, what could possibly be number two.”

“Lawrence of Arabia,” I said and we moved on to other things.

It took me three times to watch Lawrence of Arabia and not fall asleep in the middle.

It’s incredibly long and boring. The first time I watched it (1994) I had spent an entire day watching MTV and then got the VHS (yes) tape for Lawrence of Arabia and put it in the VCR (yes).

Maybe I lasted a half hour that time. The second time maybe an hour. It’s horrible. It’s boring. It’s long.

It’s about an ambiguously sexual and eccentric guy named Lawrence who has no real reason to instigate a bunch of bloodthirsty Arabs to essentially kill everything in their path.

Lawrence has no master. He refuses to listen to his British bosses, the media, the Arabs, the Turks, his friends, nobody.

And in doing so, he becomes the master of all.

Which is to say, he becomes the master of his life. Until 10 seconds before the movie ends when he dies a young death for really no purpose.

So why is it the #2 best movie ever for me and perhaps the movie that has changed my life the most.

The desert.

The desert is the main character of the movie. It is arid, it goes on forever. It will kill you.

Nothing can live there, it’s hot, there’s death at every step, there’s quick sand, there’s snakes, the sun will kill you, and there’s rarely a reason to go into it. And once you are in it, there’s no way out except to keep walking or you will die.

Lawrence has to conquer the desert to win over the Arabs. To develop the military strategy to allow the Arabs to conquer over the Turks. To challenge himself.

The Arabs can’t believe he will do it. As Claudia would say: “he’s too gringo”. He’s not used to the desert like they are.

So he drinks less than everyone else. He shows them he can make it from one side of the desert to the other. He takes on their clothes and their habits and perseveres.

In Shawn Coyne’s book, “The Story Grid” he says that in a thriller there is always an obligatory scene where the protagonist is at the total mercy of the villain.

The villain in Lawrence of Arabia is, of course, not his British bosses (bosses are just pathetic, they are never villains no matter what we think of them) nor are they the Arabs who will kill you without thinking.

The desert is the villain and there are long scenes of just Lawrence and his crew trudging through this enormous sand wasteland under the hottest sun for days, weeks, months. The scenes feel like they take months to finish.

The camera spends minutes pulling back and all you see is the silence and the vastness and the hotness with nothing else happening. Just Lawrence moving forward step by step.

The dialogue in the movie is sparse like the desert. The scenes are all sparse.

When Lawrence is initiated into the ways of the desert, his movements become more careful, his response to his overlords become less caring.

He is his own man because he has survived not only the pain and despair of the desert, but the overwhelming consistency of it. It is everywhere, your whole life has to mold to it or you will be left dead in it.

And that feeling of consistency permeates every aspect of the movie form the dialog to character to the lack of understanding of the people who can’t understand what Lawrence has conquered when fighting his own inner desert.

In your heads, right now, is that desert. The stories we tell ourselves that create not only who we are but who we aren’t: the excuses, the fears, the angers, the anxieties.

We have to cross that desert. To turn a lowly bureaucrat like TE Lawrence into “Lawrence of Arabia”, the man who singlehandedly united an entire empire.

It’s a long journey. It’s painful. I often feel like stopping and saying, “Ok, I need to stop here” knowing that if I do it will be the end of me.

And often I do stop. And it takes a lot of energy to get back on that journey I started so long ago.

People on every side laugh at you for trying. But they don’t know why you are doing things. What motives you have. Only you do.

If you let them dictate your motives you will be stuck behind that desk.

You will avoid the experience, which is so much more powerful than money. You will resent. You will excuse. You will get angry. And eventually, you pass away stuck in a prison where the doors were unlocked all along.

There are times when the people around you start to drop off, or change, or shift their own perspectives and if you stop to try and save them you can end up getting stuck in the quick sand also.

Consistency in words. Consistency in thought. Consistency in discipline.

Sparcity in reaction. The heat wants you to react. The thirstiness, the hunger, the other people mocking you. They all want you to react.

But do you react to them or do you stay true to what you believe in your heart?

Are you more tender to yourself, or to the obligations society thinks you owe it.

Like the sun above, drying out your insides, slowly burning you to nothing.

I spoke to Ev Williams, the founder of Twitter, the other day on my podcast. He also created Blogger.

When there was no money left at Blogger, and no employees left, and no prospects left, he kept going.

Every day he was CEO, customer service, tech development, community manager, business development.

He came through his desert. He got bought by Google. He started Twitter.

He comes from a town of 369 people. “I just wanted to make more friends,” he said, and then he created several of the biggest online communities in the history of the world.

Experience is the desert. Belongings are the chains. Adversity is the desert. Opinions of others is the quick sand.

Consistency of vision is the desert. Unhealthy relationships leads to reacting and anger and fear and regret, which will lead you to “I need a break.”

You can’t take a break in the desert.

Sorry Seth Rogen. And sorry Oskar Schindler. Lawrence of Arabia just maybe moved into number one. I’ve seen it probably 20 times.

And now I’ve probably lived it 20 times. And I’m sure (and afraid) I’m going to live it at least 20 times more.

—

[And by the way, Star Wars is #4 for me and the latest trailer is amazing].

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When You’re Discouraged, Encourage Others

I crashed one car into the other in my garage. It was an accident. I was trying to do something but I forget what now. The details are hazy.

I had two choices. Go back in the house and explain to my wife what happened. I could then play with my two tiny girls while my wife checked the damage.

It was ugly. Both cars had huge dents. Maybe one car wouldn’t drive anymore.

There would be work involved. Payments. Trips back and forth. People with greasy rags circling around and saying, “what the hell happened here?”

Then there was choice #2. Which I took.

Without looking back I walked about 6 blocks towards the river. Waited about 45 minutes. Got on the train into New York City. And checked into a hotel.

I didn’t answer my phone for a few hours. Then I picked up. “I’m sorry, I had to go to work,” I said.

The rest of the discussion I don’t remember. It wasn’t pleasant. I apologized. It was my fault. I know a lot of time and effort would now have to take place.

Anyway, now we’re divorced.

The day we officially separated (a few months after the garage) I put an ad on Cragislist.

I was staying in a hotel on 44th Street. My favorite diner was right next door. It was called “The Red Flame”. I would occasionally have meetings there.

“Is the Red Flame some kind of gay dungeon?” would be the question asked of me 100% of the time by out of town people who I wanted to meet there.

“No,” I said, “but they have a good milkshake.”

I put the ad on Craigslist and said, “I had the flu and when I woke up from a near coma I had psychic powers. Send me a note and I will answer any questions about your future.”

Then I went to the Red Flame. It was Thanksgiving. My favorite waitress served me a turkey sandwich.

“Today’s my last day,” she said. Even though, after four years of her being my favorite waitress I thought I would instantly get divorced and marry her. Also, this is the first time we ever spoke.

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“Be a teacher. I love kids.” And that’s the last time I ever saw her.

When I got back to my hotel room there were about 200 emails. I deleted all the emails from men and started responding to the emails from women.

I became Facebook friends with many of them. Unless they’ve unfriended me they are still my friends. I did try to date at least three of them.

“Are you really psychic?” one asked via email. She couldn’t be sure from my responses.

“I don’t know,” I said but I knew.

I was less than psychic. But I was happy to answer questions. Everybody had guy questions and career questions.

I was going to visit a friend later that night. But she wrote me, “you can’t come over. My daughter googled you and saw that you’re married and said, ‘Mom, why do you always go after married guys?’ ”

“I’m separated,” I wrote back.

“Sorry,” she said.

I spent all afternoon and night emailing back and forth with people. Like I said, I even made a few friends. Did I end up dating anyone? No. Who would date a lying married broke-with-two kids fake psychic.

But I felt connected to people. Maybe for the first time in a long time.

When you are feeling down and discouraged, sometimes the best thing is to encourage others.

Nobody knew who I was and I don’t think anyone believed my ad. But I was sad and lonely and many people wanted to email.

You would think the opposite: only encourage others when you are high up.

It’s the reverse that works.

Dress for the job you want. The reality is: when you’re feeling discouraged, the best way to lift yourself up is to encourage others. Then you see your possibilities, instead of being buried in your miseries.

I didn’t feel very good about myself. I didn’t feel worthy of anything.

But I wanted to connect. “I’m a psychic and I can help.” The discussions lasted all night – I couldn’t stop typing, the emails and responses were coming in so fast.

When I eventually fell asleep I felt better about myself. I had fun. Maybe for the first time in a long time.

When I walked out of that garage, having damaged both my cars in a matter of minutes, I thought, “I’m in trouble now” and I was scared. So I just walked away.

Was it wrong? Was it ethical? No. Nothing I did was. Do I regret it now? Probably. It was a long time ago.

Even the lights in those memories seem overexposed, too bright to look straight at.

I don’t think anyone is perfect. At some point we become someone else’s story: “can you believe he did that?” That’s ok. It happens when we’re feeling messed up.

The only thing consistent from day to day is the blank piece of paper that we start with.

Every day we get to type a new story on it. Make it a real page turner. Make people feel happy.

At some point it will end.

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Financial Fridays: Everything You Need To Know About Economics But… Actually There’s Nothing You Need To Know

I cheated on every economics exam. I was majoring in economics. But so was my girlfriend and she was smarter than me. So cheated off of her tests.

But then it turned out she wasn’t so smart and we both failed.

My parents were so happy I wanted to major in economics. They thought this meant I would be good at business. “You will succeed at everything!” they promised me.

To be good at business you need to start with two things:

1. know how to help people.
2. know how to bribe people.

There’s no economics in there.

I switched majors to Computer Science.

This is a polite way of saying don’t listen to me.

A) WARREN BUFFETT IS A F***KING LIAR

Warren Buffett says the WORST thing is deflation. In other words, when prices get lower, he thinks, the world is over.

I have a saying, “there’s always a good reason and a real reason”.

Good Reason: if prices are lower, people will stop buying because they will wait until prices are even MORE low.

This leads to a death spiral until nobody buys anything ever again and the world, I guess, shuts down then. Puts up a “We’re Closed” sign.

That is stupid. If I’m hungry, I buy something to eat. If I need shelter, I rent an apartment. I don’t starve in the cold until prices get lower.

Some people argue prices have been inflating for 100 years.

This is BS also.

100 years ago, the first school for Dental Hygiene started. The Fones School of Dental Hygiene, in Connecticut.

Amount of bad smelling breath per dollar has gone down 99% since then. That’s deflation.

Try kissing a man or woman with bad breath. That’s more important to me than the dollar.

ALWAYS look for Warren Buffett’s real reason.

Real reason:

He doesn’t like prices to get lower because he has $50,000,000,000 invested in stocks and those stocks only make money for him when prices go higher.

That’s 1 good reason and 50 billion real reasons.

B) SUPPLY AND DEMAND IS BULLSHIT

Price is determined by situation.

If you want to buy a house and you look at two exact houses in the same area you would think they have the same price.

No.

What if one house had an owner that just died. Now his or her three children don’t want to own the house.

They want to dump it so they can split the money up. So the price is cheaper than the house next door with the stable family with 2 kids and a dog.

If you want to make money, look at SITUATIONS more than supply and demand.

The reality is: we don’t know the supply of an object. Nor the demand. Nobody ever does. Maybe it’s a rough guideline.

Death, divorce, debt lead to cheap prices. Those are three types of situations.

And price is determined by many more factors:

I was shopping for a coat the other day. In one high-end store, a nice coat was $7,280.

In the store next door a coat that seemed just as good was $150.

What’s the difference? Not supply. Marketing.

Sixty years of marketing have created artificially high prices (inflation) because marketers have figured out the science of mass hypnosis.

That’s why good marketers get paid a lot of money. Because their slave owners make even more money.

If there was never any marketing, then prices would be 1/50 what they are now.

Unless a coat was made out of solid gold it’s not worth $7,280. Or unless you personally slaughtered the cow and then crafted the leather to make the coat it’s not worth that either.

C) TAXES

This is a hot-button issue.

I don’t care about the difference between the richest and the poorest. This effects 1% of the people in the United States.

The other 99% lives on my street.

Believe it or not, the name of the street I live on is “Main Street”.

The street I lived on before this one was “Wall Street.”

I mean this very literally. I lived on THE Wall Street on the corner of Wall and Broad, right across from the stock exchange.

And then I moved 70 miles north. Now I live on 24 Main Street in a town of population 1000 along the Hudson River. I live three houses from the river.

If the rich are taxed more I can guarantee you my neighbors on Main Street won’t make that extra money.

Some of them are illegal immigrants. Some of them are mentally ill. There’s been two suicides on my street in the past five years.

But the river is beautiful. And I walk by it and my mind drifts when I wonder, “are ducks really monogamous?”

I do care that money I worked really hard for is taken from me and used to buy bullets. Lots of bullets.

When the local high school goes on a class trip to Washington DC, my money is being used for half those kids to lose their virginity.

I do care that Kevin Spacey takes my money and throws Katie Mara in front of a train. That happened.

Democracy is rule by majority. But I’m in the minority and I also hope my opinion can be validated but it isn’t.

The way I can be validated is if I vote with my money – where I want it to be spent.

For instance, I’d rather use money to hire people or invest in platforms like prosper.com to help other small business owners hire people and innovate and be successful.

Or Patreon to support artists I believe in. Or kickstarter, to support projects by broke but extremely creative and exciting innovators. Or gofundme to support my friends’ charitable efforts.

I don’t want my money to buy a bullet for some 18 year old to kill some 14 year old. Another kid in Africa who just wanted to live.

And yet I have no choice because I’m in the minority and probably always will be.

D) THERE IS ONLY ONE ISSUE THAT IS IMPORTANT FOR THE US ECONOMY

This is the most important thing in this post by far. Ignore the rest of this post. But please PAY ATTENTION to this part.

I should have put this first because it’s the only issue I care about. And most people aren’t aware of this issue.

United States companies have $2.5 trillion in cash sitting in other countries.

Apple, for instance, has $158 billion overseas they are afraid to bring back.

They are afraid to bring it back to the United States because then it will be taxed.

Think of it: $2.5 trillion being left out of our economy because of fear, just sitting in foreign banks, making those banks money.

That’s $2.5 trillion that can be used to hire people, create innovation, fund educational programs, start companies, etc.

If the money comes back it can be taxed as high as 50%.

So the answer is simple:

Tax holiday. January 2, 2016, bring all the money back and you only get a 5% tax.

That’s an extra $125 billion to the US government for basically free.

And then there’s something VERY IMPORTANT. It’s called the money-multiplier.

When you have a dollar, you buy a donut. Now the donut man buys a newspaper for the same dollar. The newspaperman buys a coffee.The coffee man buys a hooker.

One dollar is used on average ten times, equals about $10 in economic growth.

$2.5 trillion dollars equals $25 trillion in economy growth. That’s about $12 trillion in taxes, almost wiping out the entire US debt.

On top of that we can forgive all the student loan debt, stop wars, and give everyone free healthcare.

BAM! THIS SOLVES ALL THE PROBLEMS IN THE ECONOMY.

So why don’t politicians do this rule.

Because the bottom one percent will say the top 0.000001 percent are making more money, which may not even be true.

Politicians, as usual, are afraid.

I can tell you: most of the top 0.00001 percent are not very happy people anyway.

I’d rather have the $25 trillion in economy growth.

My girlfriend broke up with me so I couldn’t cheat off her tests anymore and I had to switch majors.

She lectured me on what “love” is and walked out and I never saw her again.

Then I was a horrible computer programmer. And then a mediocre businessman. An ok hedge fund manager. A better writer. A horrible husband. An ok father. And I don’t like being told what to do.

I don’t know why I just wrote that paragraph. Perhaps it’s to say, I don’t have a clue.

I hope I know a little more about what love is.

Or at least kindness. And tenderness. And gratitude.

And when I talk to you, I hope I make you laugh, and I hope we like each other. But I’m nervous.

This is more important to me. I think I love you.

And THIS is how introverted people can really scare people at cocktail parties.

The post Financial Fridays: Everything You Need To Know About Economics But… Actually There’s Nothing You Need To Know appeared first on Altucher Confidential.

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Ep. 138: Bryan Johnson: Braintree – Everyone Has a Pebble in Their Own Shoe

If you’re running your own business, then you know that you have to care about what you’re doing if you want to be successful.

Making money can be a goal, but it can’t be your only goal. You have to work toward something greater than just turning a profit.

On today’s podcast I talk with Bryan Johnson, someone who knows full-well how much you have to care if you want your investments to pay off. Bryan has found the perfect balance between being financially successful and changing the world.

When I invited Bryan to that first interview two years ago, it was because he had established Braintree, a payment platform for many online businesses and entrepreneurs. It was immensely successful. (I actually put the interview in my book Choose Yourself!)

But I’m bringing him back this time around because a lot has changed in two years.

Bryan sold Braintree to Ebay for $800 million, and has since used that money to start a venture capital fund for what he likes to call “save the world” companies.

Bryan is looking for engineers, creators, and financiers who are creating platforms, companies, and businesses that could benefit the lives of billions of people.

He talks about what kinds of fields and platforms he’s interested in on today’s show, and he explains the passion that’s driving him.

“I have a burning desire to devote my life to improving the lives of people,” he says when I ask him what inspired his approach to business. “But I didn’t know what that meant at 21. So I decided I’d become an entrepreneur, retire by 30, and then spend the rest of my life with an abundance of time and money trying to do some good.”

That definitely explains why he sold Braintree, but he also gives insight into what made this first business venture so successful and how he used it to kick start his true goal for helping people.

Combining business with philanthropy is Bryan’s main focus, and he is actively seeking those who are creating new technologies that people desperately need, such as synthetic biology for combating diseases like Alzheimer’s.

On today’s podcast, Bryan goes into what it takes to get into the “ecosystem of contribution” and how you can contribute to his charitable cycle by:

• Learning Bryan’s three goals when it comes to running a successful business.

• Looking at our planet Earth as its own technological platform.

• Focusing on what makes you – and your business – happy and helpful.

• Learning how to avoid snobbery in small business.

If you’ve got a humanitarian approach to business like Bryan, and are actively looking to engage with the game-changers who are focusing their efforts on building a better world, then this podcast is for you.

Anyone can be successful for themselves, but being successful for the sake of others is truly admirable and Bryan’s approach will no doubt help you build a better business for yourself and your clients.

Resources:

• Bryan Johnson
• The OS Fund
• Braintree

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.

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The Ultimate Guide To Reinventing Yourself

I wrote this post for myself.

Why? Because I knew I would need it. Because I know that this idea for reinventing myself has worked over and over for me.

Because I knew I would need guidelines to look at when I was most scared.

Because for the next 60 years I will reinvent myself many times.

Since I first worked on these ideas, I’ve seen many things happen.

I’ve seen these guidelines work for others. And I’ve seen them working for me again. And I’ve interviewed 100s of others to see how they reinvented themselves.

Because I was curious.

Any advice it seems I give is really just me saying my autobiography.

Here are the rules:

I’ve been at zero a few times, come back a few times, and done it over and over. I’ve started entire new careers. People who knew me then, don’t me now. And so on.

I’ve had to change careers 15 times.

Sometimes because my interests changed. Sometimes because all bridges have been burnt beyond recognition, sometimes because I desperately needed money.

And sometimes just because I hated everyone in my old career or they hated me.

Sometimes because I fell in love. Love is a map that changes.

There’s other ways to reinvent yourself. Take what I say with a grain of salt. This is what worked for me.

Now that I’ve interviewed 100s of people for my podcast, I’ve also seen what reinvention looks like at every stage of life, in every career, in every part of the process of well-being, which is hopefully my goal.

A) REINVENTION NEVER STOPS

Every day you reinvent yourself. You’re always in motion. But you decide every day: forward or backward.

B) YOU START FROM SCRATCH

Every label you claim you have from before is just vanity. You were a doctor? You were ivy league? You had millions? You had a family? Nobody cares.

You lost everything. You’re a zero. Don’t try to say you’re anything else.

B1) SURRENDER

Don’t regret the storm that left you deserted here.

Don’t be anxious about the life in front of you, although it’s hard.

Surrender to the current moment. Serve the moment. It’s the only master you need to listen to.

C) YOU NEED A MENTOR

Else, you’ll sink to the bottom. Someone has to show you how to move and breathe. But don’t worry about finding a mentor (see below).

D) THREE TYPES OF MENTORS

– Direct. Someone who is in front of you who will show you how they did it. What is “it”? Wait.

By the way, mentors aren’t like that old Chinese guy in “The Karate Kid”. Ultimately most mentors will hate you.

– Indirect. Books. Movies. You can outsource 90% of mentorship to books and other materials. 200-500 books equals one good mentor. People ask me, “what is a good book to read” and I never know the answer. There’s 200-500 good books to read.

I would throw in inspirational books. Whatever are your beliefs, underline them through reading every day.

– Everything is a mentor. If you are a zero, and have passion for reinvention, then everything you look at will be a metaphor for what you want to do.

Don’t be stuck inside of yourself. Look at everything. See what it has to offer. Even if it is nothing, that’s something.

E) DON’T WORRY IF YOU DON’T KNOW YOUR PASSION

You have passion for your health. Start there. Take baby steps. You don’t need a passion to succeed.

Do what you do with love and success is a natural symptom.

When I love, I’m happy. When I debate, and wonder, and want, and control, and believe, I’m not as happy.

F) TIME IT TAKES TO REINVENT: FIVE YEARS

Since I first wrote this I’ve probably seen 500 examples of this.

All the same: five years.

Here’s a description of the five years:

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

Year Two: you know who you need to talk to and network with. You’re Doing every day. You finally know what the monopoly board looks like in your new endeavors.

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

Year Four: you’re making a good living

Year Five: you’re making wealth

Sometimes I get frustrated in years 1-4. I say, “why isn’t it happening yet?” and I punch the floor and hurt my hand and throw a coconut on the floor in a weird ritual.

That’s ok. Just keep going. Or stop and pick a new field. Changing is never bad. It means you learned enough from one thing and now you are ready for the next.

Life is not made of consistency. That’s how you die one day at a time. Life is made of changes, memories, and evil plans, and the pleasure that comes from freedom.

It doesn’t matter. Eventually you’re dead and then it’s hard to reinvent yourself.

G) IT DOESN’T TAKE LONGER THANT FIVE YEARS AND IT WON’T TAKE LESS

Many people look for life hacks. That’s fine. But there are no shortcuts. People ask, “if you can tell yourself at 20 what to do, what would you say?”

I would say, “age until you are my age and that’s ok and then you will know the answer.”

H) IT’S NOT ABOUT MONEY

But money is a decent measuring stick.

When people say “it’s not about the money” often they are really saying, “I’m really scared it’s ALL about the money.”

“What about just doing what you love?” they say.

There will be many days where you don’t love what you are doing. If you are doing it just for love then it will take much much longer than five years.

Happiness is just a positive perception from our brain. Some days you will be unhappy. Our brain is a tool we use. It’s not who we are.

I) WHEN CAN YOU SAY, “I AM AN X!” WHERE “X” IS YOUR NEW CAREER?

Today.

J) WHEN CAN I START DOING X?

Today. If you want to paint, then today buy a canvas and paints, start buying 500 books one at a time, and start painting.

If you want to write do these three things:

• Read.
• Write.
• Take your favorite author and type your favorite story of his word for word. Wonder to yourself why he wrote each word. He’s your mentor today.

If you want to start a business, start spec-ing out the idea for your business.

Reinvention starts today. Every day.

K) HOW DO I MAKE MONEY?

By year three you’ve put in 5000-7000 hours. That’s good enough to be in the top 200-300 in the world in anything.

The top 200 in almost any field makes a living.

By year 3 you will know how to make money. By year 4 you will scale that up and make a living. Some people stop at year 4.

In the meantime, don’t be afraid to take any jobs for money. Learning from different fields, even ones you hate, is what makes the unique intersection of YOU.

Don’t hate yourself for doing things you hate.

L) By year 5 you’re top 30-50 so can make wealth.

M) HOW DO I KNOW WHAT I SHOULD DO?

Whatever area you feel like reading 500 books about. Go to the bookstore and find it. If you get bored three months later go back to the bookstore.

It’s ok to get disillusioned. That’s what failure is about. Success is better than failure but the biggest lessons are found in failure.

When you make mistakes fast, your brain learns. But when you get stuck, with no ideas, and no health, and nothing to push you forward. You atrophy.

Changing fast, creates more intersections, makes you the best in the world at those intersections.

Very important: There’s no rush. You will reinvent yourself many times in an interesting life. You will fail to reinvent many times. That’s fun also.

Many reinventions makes your life a book of stories instead of a textbook.

Some people want the story of their life to be a textbook. For better worse, mine is a book of stories.

That’s why reinvention happens every day.

N) THE CHOICES YOU MAKE TODAY WILL BE YOUR BIOGRAPHY TOMORROW

Make interesting choices and you will have an interesting biography.

N1) THE CHOICES YOU MAKE TODAY WILL BE IN YOUR BIOLOGY TOMORROW

Environment, culture, food, sleep, move === how you feel today. How you see the world today. How you see yourself today.

O) WHAT IF I LIKE SOMETHING OBSCURE?

Like biblical archaeology or 11th century warfare?

Repeat all of the steps above and then in year 5 you will make wealth. We have no idea how.

Don’t look to find the end of the road when you are still at the very first step.

Dorothy couldn’t see Oz when she first walked on the yellow brick road.

P) WHAT IF MY FAMILY WANTS ME TO BE A DOCTOR?

How many years of your life did you promise your family? Ten years? Your whole life? Then wait until next life.

The good thing is: you get to choose.

Choose freedom over family. Freedom over preconceptions. Freedom over government.

Freedom over people-pleasing. Freedom over societal morals.

We only have this life to be free.

Q) MY MENTOR WANTS ME TO DO THINGS HIS WAY!

That’s fine. Learn HIS way. Then do it YOUR way. With respect.

Hopefully nobody has a gun to your head. Then you have to do it their way until the gun is put down.

R) MY SPOUSE IS WORRIED I WON’T BE ABLE TO HELP WITH SUPPORTING THE KIDS?

Then after you work 16 hours a day, 7 days a week being a janitor, use your spare time to reinvent.

Someone who is reinventing ALWAYS has spare time.

Part of reinvention is collecting little bits and pieces of time and re-carving them the way you want them to be.

S) WHAT IF MY FRIENDS THINK I AM CRAZY?

One thing I notice about friends is that they change. Some stay with you, some drift away.

When you reinvent yourself, you’ll be constantly changing the people around you. This is natural.

T) WHAT IF I WANT TO BE AN ASTRONAUT?

That’s not a reinvention. That’s a specific job.

Broaden it out.

If you like “outer space” there are many careers. Richard Branson wanted to be an astronaut and started Virgin Galactic.

U) WHAT IF I LIKE TO GO DRINKING AND PARTYING?

Read this post again in a year.

V) WHAT IF I’M NOT KEEPING HEALTHY, WRITING DOWN IDEAS, BEING AROUND GOOD PEOPLE, AND NOT BEING GRATEFUL?

Read this post again in two or three years when you are broke and jobless and nobody likes you.

W) WHAT IF I HAVE NO SKILLS?

Read “B” again.

X) WHAT IF I HAVE NO DEGREE OR A USELESS DEGREE? Read “B” again.

Y) WHAT IF I HAVE TO FOCUS ON PAYING DOWN DEBT OR THE MORTGAGE?

Read “R” again.

Mort = death. Gage = Pledge. Mortgage = Death pledge.

That’s where they want you. A pledge till death. But don’t listen to them.

Z) HOW COME I’M ALWAYS ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN?

By definition, if you are a little bit weird and a little bit creepy, and a little bit scared, and a little bit happy, then you are an imposter in everyone else’s life.

Now is the time to live your life.

Albert Einstein was on the outside looking in. Nobody in the establishment would even hire him.

Everyone feels like a fraud at some point. When you feel like that, say, “this is the moment I’m being born.”

AA) I CAN’T READ 500 BOOKS. IS THERE ONE BOOK I SHOULD READ?

Give up.

BB) WHAT IF I’M TOO SICK TO REINVENT?

Reinvention will boost every healthy chemical in your body: serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin.
Keep moving forward and you might not get healthy but you will get healthier. Don’t use health as an excuse.

Finally, reinvent your health first. Sleep more hours. Eat better. Exercise. These are key steps in reinvention.

CC) WHAT IF MY LAST PARTNER SCREWED ME AND I’M STILL SUING HIM?

Stop litigating and never think about him again. Half the problem was you, not him.

I lost a lot of money a few months ago on something that wasn’t my fault?

Or was it – for burying myself so deep into something no good.

It doesn’t matter. Opinions are for delayers. You and I are reinventers.

DD) WHAT IF I’M GOING TO JAIL?

Perfect. Reread “B”. Read a lot of books in jail.

EE) WHAT IF I’M SHY?

Make your weaknesses your strengths. Introverts listen better, focus better, and have ways of being more endearing.

FF) WHAT IF I CAN’T WAIT FIVE YEARS?

If you plan on being alive in five years then you might as well start today.

Important: the best reinvention happens when you celebrate every small success every step of the day.

Today, for instance, I’ve had a small success. Today I’m going to celebrate. Else, what if I die before I appreciate myself?

GG) HOW SHOULD I NETWORK?

Make concentric circles. You’re at the middle.

The next circle is friends and family.

The next circle is online communities.

The circle after that is meetups and coffees.

The circle after that is conferences and thought leaders.

The circle after that is mentors.

The circle after that is customers and wealth-creators.

Start making your way through the circles.

HH) WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I HAVE EGO ABOUT WHAT I DO?

In six – 12 months you’ll be back at “B”.

It’s a cliche. But “beginner’s mind” is the mind of reinvention.

II) WHAT IF I’M PASSIONATE ABOUT TWO THINGS? WHAT IF I CAN’T DECIDE?

Combine them and you’ll be the best in the world at the combination.

I want to write a novel. I want to do stand-up. I want to help people.

What if I write a funny novel that shares my experiences and helps people?

JJ) WHAT IF I’M SO EXCITED I WANT TO TEACH WHAT I AM LEARNING?

The only way to really learn is to teach. I write about reinvention and interview 500 success stories because I want to learn. But then I teach what I learn.

That cements the learnings. Teach what you learn and you’ve just learned more.

KK) WHAT IF I WANT TO MAKE MONEY WHILE I SLEEP?

In Year 3, start outsourcing what you do.

The first time I realized I could do this, my life changed.

It’s like suddenly I was 50 people combined into one.

LL) HOW DO I MEET MENTORS AND THOUGHT LEADERS?

Once you have enough knowledge (after 100-200 books), write down ten ideas for 20 different potential mentors.

None of them will respond. Write down ten more ideas for 20 new mentors. Repeat every week.

Put together a newsletter for everyone who doesn’t respond. Keep repeating until someone responds. Blog about your learning efforts. Build community around you being an expert.

MM) WHAT IF I CAN’T COME UP WITH IDEAS?

Then keep practicing coming up with ideas. The idea muscle atrophies. You have to build it up.

It’s hard for me to touch my toes if I haven’t been doing it every day.

I have to do it every day for awhile before I can easily touch my toes. Don’t expect to come up with good ideas on day one.

NN) WHAT ELSE SHOULD I READ?

AFTER books, read websites, forums, magazines. But most of that is garbage.

OO) WHAT IF I DO EVERYTHING YOU SAY AND IT STILL DOESN’T WORK?

It will work. Just wait. Keep reinventing every day.

Don’t try and find the end of the road. You can’t see it in the fog.

But you can see the next step and you DO know that if you take that next step eventually you get to the end of the road.

The only thing worth thinking about is taking the next step.

PP) WHAT IF I GET DEPRESSED?

First, let me hug you.

Second: eat, move, sleep.

Be around people you love. Laugh. Write down ideas.

When you are depressed, all of this is hard. It’s hard for me. But that’s when it’s most important to do it.

The sharpest sword is made by fire, not water.

QQ) WHAT IF I GET SCARED?

Being human means feeling fear.

Fear can always be felt somewhere on the body. Find it. Say hi to it.

Eat. Move. Sleep. Take the next step.

Be around people who love you. And who you love.

Write down ideas. Because ideas are the helicopters to take you out of your fear.

Be grateful for what you have. Else, you’ll always be searching for things you may never have.

SS) WHAT IF IT SEEMS LIKE NOTHING EVER WORKS OUT FOR ME?

Spend ten minutes a day practicing gratitude. Don’t suppress the fear. Notice the anger.

Anger is never inspirational but gratitude is. Gratitude is the bridge between your world and the parallel universe where all creative ideas live.

Can I tell you something stupid I do? When I get that “nothing ever works out for me” feeling (which is often, no matter what my successes are), I it my chest and say out loud,

“Abundance!”

Like I said, it’s stupid. But for me it works.

TT) WHAT IF I HAVE TO DEAL WITH PERSONAL BS ALL THE TIME?

Find new people to be around.

Someone who is reinventing herself will constantly find people to try and bring her down. The brain is scared of reinvention because it might not be safe.

Biologically, the brain wants you to be safe and reinvention is a risk. So it will throw people in your path who will try to stop you.

Learn how to say “no”. Even it’s so hard at first.

Learn how to Ask. Even if it’s so hard at first.

UU) WHAT IF I’M MOSTLY HAPPY AT MY CUBICLE JOB?

Good luck.

VV) WHY SHOULD I TRUST YOU – YOU’VE FAILED SO MANY TIMES?

Don’t trust me.

WW) WILL YOU BE MY MENTOR?

You’ve just read this post.

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10 Ways To Supercharge Your Superhero Hormone

One of them is dead. The other disappeared and is probably dead. One, I think, committed suicide but I’m afraid to ask her brother if that’s true.

Another went crazy and I had to block him on my Facebook page. And the other I lost track of.

They were my best friends growing up.

In college I can’t remember who any of my friends were. In graduate school I had a “best friend” but then I didn’t go to his wedding and I felt too ashamed to call him about it and now we don’t talk anymore.

I don’t keep in touch with anyone from my first job. And of all the people in my first business, only one keeps in touch with me. And of the 500 or so people in my second business, one keeps in touch with me.

I haven’t been very good at bonding. I haven’t been very good at friendship. And although I like to think I might have been kind at moments it doesn’t seem to have borne any fruits in my current day.

Oxytocin is the bonding hormone. It’s the neurotransmitter that shoots through your brain when you bond with someone, when you kiss someone, when someone trusts you, causing among other things, happiness.

I was always so focused on fake external goals that I never focused on how I could clean my own internal, to make my life better. I lacked oxytocin.

Oxytocin also has benefits that can make your life better. It’s sometimes considered the “super hormone”. It’s sometimes called “the love hormone”.

• When oxytocin is flowing through you, it’s easier to become intimate with loved ones. People WANT to be intimate with you.
• It gives you more confidence and self-esteem.
• It reduces inflammation.Which is not only good for healing visible wounds but on a cellular level inflammation is linked to heart disease, cancer, strokes, Alzheimers, Parkinsons, etc.
• It reduces obesity
• It’s a natural anti-depressant.In other words, the more oxytocin you can regularly trigger, the happier you will be. Oxytocin metabolizes quickly. So the happiness only lasts a short while.Which is why you have to do continual things that help you increase your base level of oxytocin.
• You get natural increases in desires to be generous and kind.

People ask me, “isn’t ‘choosing yourself’ selfish. Shouldn’t you focus on helping others?”

The best way to change the outside world is to do the simple things it takes to make sure you are flourishing in your inside world.

The simple tricks it takes to increase your oxytocin will make you generous, kind, healthy, intimate, and more empathetic to those around you.

This is one way to make more use of your brain. To gradually transform into a superhero.

You can only live inside yourself. You can’t live inside somebody else. But if the place where you live is a beacon, then all will feel warmth from the light.

Try this: hug someone for six seconds. Oxytocin is triggered. Do you feel the difference?

I’m an oxytocin addict now. All day long I research new ways to naturally increase it in my body.

Here are some of the things I do.

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Let’s Start Judging Everyone Around Us

A friend of mine ran over someone, then drove away from the crime. He was drunk.

Later he was arrested. It was on the news, which is how I found out.

I asked him what happened and he said he would tell me sometime. I asked him what was going to happen to him. “I’m going to go to jail.”

A few months earlier we were in the same city and got together. He had a drink. We played a game or two of chess. He seemed happy. He had a girlfriend. He was going to ask her to marry him.

I didn’t ask him after the accident if he still had the same girlfriend or if he was going to get married. His life was on a different track now.

Sometimes I’m on my usual train ride and I see those stations that we pass at blinding speed and I sometimes think, what’s at this station?

What happens if I get out over here?

If I leave the station and walk onto the streets and rent an apartment and work in the hardware store and just never go back to where the train was going or where the train was coming from.

If I make new friends and we play dominos on the sidewalk and listen to music coming out of our open cars. What happens if I just disappear?

A new life. An alternate life I can get lost in and start over.

My friend and I agreed to meet again. I was going to his city in a few months.

But I didn’t show up and he called me a few times and I didn’t answer. I don’t know why. I felt bad about it. I got busy and I didn’t call him back and I didn’t meet him and he was getting angrier and angrier on the phone.

That was it.

About a year or so later I got a call from him. He apologized for getting angry. I apologized for not meeting him that time. I still don’t know why I didn’t meet him.

Sometimes I’m afraid of dealing with uncomfortable things. And I feel worse and I don’t respond and that makes me feel even worse. And then the situation usually goes away and I forget it.

I didn’t ask him if he had gone to jail or if he was going. That also seemed off-track.

He apologized and he thanked me for all I did for him and for standing by him when everyone who had been his friend started trashing him all over social media after his accident.

Good people sometimes do bad things. I shouldn’t say “sometimes”. I should say “often”. I should say I often do bad things. Since I can’t speak for others.

A few weeks ago I had a great guest on my podcast. He’s building rockets to go to the moon to find minerals that can solve all the energy problems on the planet Earth.

Someone wrote me. This someone said, “How could you even talk to him? He did this, this, and THIS, in 1998.”

That was 17 years ago, I said.

“I lost a lot of money because of him back then.”

He’s trying to save the entire world right now, I said.

“Still!”

—

Recently a friend of mine was a little upset at me. I’m not sure why.

She wrote a post, “Maybe instead of ‘choosing ourselves’ we should be out there helping more people and not being selfish.”

I didn’t argue with her.

But only someone who is happy and strong can help people who are unhappy and less strong. You ONLY get energy from your own inner well-being.

Inner well-being comes when you aren’t sick. When you are around people who love you. When you are creative. And when you are grateful. This is choosing yourself.

Judging others is the opposite of choosing yourself. It’s trying to force a world where they are chosen by you. That won’t work.

People do things and I have to surrender to what they did. Everyone around us deals the cards. But only I get to play the cards I was dealt. Nobody can play them for me.

I wrote to her a few months later when other people were saying bad things about her. Because that’s the way it goes – everything cycles if you wait.

I told her I really admired her last book and she was doing good things for people.

I guess deep down I wanted her to like me. And she did. She wrote back and said, “I really needed to hear that right now. Thanks.”

There’s a huge gap between where we are in life right now and all of the dreams and visions we have for ourselves.

That gap makes us human. The job of being human never ends because we are always looking for ways to close that gap.

And along the way we get scared. What if I never close that gap? What if I never become the person in my dreams?

And then we get angry because anger is the winter coat that keeps the fear warm in the coldest storm. It’s a blizzard and as we take one step at a time we can’t even see two feet in front of us.

—

I didn’t ask my friend if the guy he ran over was ok.

I didn’t ask my other friend if the accusations against her were true.

And I didn’t ask my other friend about 1998. In 1998 I did some bad things also. I’m glad nobody is emailing me about them. Except the woman I loved then who didn’t love me back.

We’re most human when we love each other and support each other and don’t provide judgments.

I’m just trying to survive this life from beginning to end. I only have this life. I can’t compare it with an alternative life where all my desires are met.

This is it. I can’t waste it on craving the dreams that are too far away.

That’s the fastest way to get burnt out and run out of energy. Which is the fastest way to die because it’s difficult to refuel.

Only then, when it’s too late, will I realize I won’t get another chance. Other than the magnificent choices I can make today.

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I Give Myself Permission To…

Oh, I can’t do that. It would be rude.

Oh my god, there’s that awkward silence.

My parents really want me to at least finish school so I can have “security”.

I can’t quit this job right when they are going into the busy season.

If I leave my job to start a business I might go broke!

I can’t, I shouldn’t, I’m afraid, I’m shy, I have to explain, I don’t want to stress them out, I don’t know, I’m afraid to say ‘I don’t know’. I don’t want to hurt them if I say “No”.

This is not an advice post. This is a ME post. These are all the things I say to myself at least one a week.

I was just told that out of the 600 trillion years left in the universe, I won’t be here for most of them.

Who will give me permission to do these things before my tiny visit here is over? Before my ticket expires? Before the ride has ended.

As a side note, I give myself permission to have one sentence paragraphs.

And grammar mistakes.

I also give myself permission to:

1) LEAVE EARLY

“But you just got here!”

I have to go. I have to sleep.

2) SAY NO

“But we were counting on it!”

Me: “…………………………..”

3) DO SOMETHING I LOVE EVEN IF IT DOESN’T PAY THE BILLS

Most people seem to be able to predict the future. They say, “if I do X, then Y will happen.”

I’ve never been able to do that. Mostly it’s been, “If I do X then Y will happen” and then Z happens.

Now I try to say, “If I do X, then I have no clue. But X is what I want to do.”

A lot of research shows that activities you do with internal motivation (e.g. “I want to help people”) make three times the money as activities with external motivation (e.g. “I need to pay my bills”) in the long run.

Plus when you do things that add to your freedom and improves your relationships with others, well-being is the result.

4) SAY, “I DON’T KNOW”.

If you say, “I don’t know” on TV then they will never ask you back. I know this for a fact.

What does that mean? It means everyone on TV is supposed to be perfect, supposed to fight, and supposed to have all the answers.

They even tell you on a little earpiece, “Jump in now and argue!”

I used to go on TV and then take a five hour shower afterwards and still not be clean.

As long as you behave the opposite of people on TV, then you will be happy in life.

Another question to ask is: “what do you really know anyway?” Most truths today are lies tomorrow.

Better to watch water in a river.

5) NOT CALL SOMEONE BACK

You don’t have to. They’re going to die someday and so are you.

Once we both die, all is forgiven.

It’s not like we’re going to meet in hell, being tortured in the seventh circle and he’s going to say, “YOU! You didn’t call me back!”

6) TRUST

If you improve 1% every day in physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health then that’s 3800% a year.

In a weird sort of math that means you’re somehow 38 times better in one year.

Even if that doesn’t make sense, you get the idea.

That’s like becoming superhuman.

Trust that what you know then, will solve what you need now, even if you can’t even imagine how that’s possible.

Without Trust, you Rust.

7) NOT FAIL AND NOT SUCCEED

People say “fail fast” or “success is the goal” or “fail forward”.

There’s a sense that failure is good. Or that success is a must.

There’s a sense that there’s a river, and on one bank is failure and on the other bank is success.

Just go down the middle of the river. You’ll get to the end faster than if you bounce off the banks.

Both success and failure are myths.

8) NOT GIVE AN EXPLANATION

If you say no to something, people sometimes want to know why.

I used to explain. Meaning: I used to lie. “I broke my leg”. Or, “My father died”. I used that one once. Then he did die.

Now I try (please let me get better at it) to do this:

“……………………………………………………………….”

9) TO ASK

If I’m curious, I give myself permission to ask.

If I’m willing to deliver value, I give myself permission to ask.

If I’m afraid to ask, I MUST ask.

In fact, I must ask fast. Before the fear wins.

10) TO CHOOSE MY FIVE

We’re the average of the five people we choose to spend our time with.

I can choose whoever I want. If I don’t choose, then on my deathbed I will wish I chose.

11) TO BE SILENT

The average person speaks about 10,000 words a day.

When there’s that awkward silence, we all tend to fill it.

But before wisdom comes stillness. Before stillness, comes silence.

I love going on silent retreats. After even a few days you feel that every word you say has more power.

Value is often a function of supply and demand. Reduce the supply of your words and the value of each word goes up.

12) HURT SOMEONE

Sometimes I don’t do things because I’m afraid of the effect it will have on others.

I don’t want to hurt anyone and often I don’t.

But what someone else feels is ultimately none of my business.

And I can’t usually perceive my own best interests, let alone someone else’s.

So do what you think is right, not what you think will avoid pain.

An example is: if a child needs boundaries they might feel upset at first about it, but in the long run (maybe – what do I know?) it’s for the best.

This reminds me: I want to write a book on parenting. But what do I know about parenting, is the first argument against.

Nothing. Who cares? Who knows anything anyway?

13) SLEEP

Sometimes I’m invited out. “Hey, would you like to come meet Richard Branson today?”

But I like to sleep. So I will.

14) NOT ALWAYS TELL A STORY

For example, this post.

I can tell you this: if you don’t give yourself permission, certainly nobody else will.

 

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Einstein’s Secret of Productivity

A producer at [well known television show] said to me, “whatever you do – don’t ever ever say ‘I don’t know’. If you say that, we’ll never ask you back.”

Then, thrust into a dark room, miked up, camera pointing at me, the producer in my ear, “anddd…GO!” and six of us arguing about the worst, most obscure issue. “Can the economy pick up an elephant and throw it into the sun?”

I don’t know.

People ask me, “How can you stay informed if you don’t read or watch news?’

Other people don’t ask. They just say, “And this is what is wrong with society. People like him don’t stay informed. If everyone did that we’d go back to the Dark Ages.”

Claudia said to me, “Don’t put ‘I don’t know’ in your articles so much. It sounds false.”

I don’t know.

We’re so conditioned to read from people who pretend to “know” that we forget the beauty of “I don’t know.”

Marie Curie didn’t know why some rocks gave off light. So she discovered radioactivity.

The Wright Brothers didn’t know how to fly in the air. So they took the science of riding a bike (a bike is allowed to wobble) and added wings and made a plane.

Andy Warhol didn’t know what art would stand out against his peers. So he painted a soup can.

Many people don’t know when the baby has consciousness and when it doesn’t. So the past 20 years has seen a massive evolution in brain science.

Einstein didn’t know what it would be like for a man traveling at the speed of light, looking at a man standing on Earth.

What a weird thing for someone to not know. Einstein also said, “The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious.”

The “mysterious” gave him a simple equation to define all of time and space.

That one quote made me research all his other quotes. Not about science but about all the things we don’t know. [See graphic].

When I interview people on a podcast, I never know. I want to know. These people of such a variety of backgrounds: writers, artists, entrepreneurs, musicians, astronauts, and on and on.

I want to get at their secret. To peel back the layers. To grasp a little bit of their heart and feast on it.

What was that moment? The moment where they heard the CLICK – where the lock was picked – and they entered that velvet room.

The room that always seems hidden from me and I keep looking for it.

When I begin a relationship, I don’t know anything. And I’m insecure. I have to learn to be comfortable with not knowing.

The layers of a person never end. We each just have to decide when we stop peeling. We’ll never know what’s at the core.

How often do we just sit and dwell in not knowing. To be comfortable with not knowing.

Scott Adams, the cartoonist of Dilbert, told me he likes to argue both sides of an intense issue. Then both sides hate him (“How can you defend the other side??” each side says).

I’m jealous of the people who seem to know. They walk around confident, they smile, they are sure of their opinions.

They will die comfortably, wrapped snugly in opinions that carried them from birth to death.

After my divorce, I moved back into The Chelsea Hotel in NYC, where I had lived before I got married.

The Chelsea is known for its drug dealers, its artists, its hookers, its people who got lost for a moment or a decade and found themselves at its doorsteps just to ride out the storm.

Everyone there had a story. But nobody would tell it. Everybody was up to something. None of it was good.

We were all broken. Passing our time enough to get bandaged up again to face the real world.

What am I trying to say? I’ve reached for the sun and fallen to the Earth. I tried to know. I tried to shout, “here i am!”

Every day there’s a new question. What can I possibly do to justify why I am alive? Every day a new answer to explore. Is this it?

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

I don’t know. I don’t know.

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Ep 137: Ev Williams – Co-Founder of Twitter Speaks About What’s Next

Today’s guest changed my life. Seeing as he helped to invent Blogger and Twitter, he probably changed your life too.

The Internet’s last decade and a half of development as a forum for writing has taken place in large part on platforms built in part by Ev Williams.

Evan “Ev” Williams is on the show today to talk about his new blogging platform, Medium, and how he worked his way up to the top spot he is now.

“I worked my whole life basically broke and in debt,” he tells me, and this may be a familiar situation for you.

Struggling to realize your dreams, working hard to create something new the public wants – we’ve all experienced these efforts in one way or another, and some of your attempts may have been more successful than others.

The hardest part about running your own business is not only having the confidence to take the risks, but also to pull yourself together if that risk should fail. Even success can come with its own stress.

Working to create Blogger and Twitter led Ev to a ton of success in media, but he talks about the strange kind of success Google brought him and how you don’t always necessarily know what to do with it.

In fact, he didn’t handle success very well at all the first time. As he said in an article in The New York Times “It wasn’t obvious to me that I wanted to sell my business,” he tells me when Google came asking for Blogger and absorbed him into the company. He was dedicated to seeing it become successful, but he did not know the rules and language of corporate success, and he ran into many roadblocks along the way.

Of course, we know from hindsight that whatever he did was right, but how can you be sure of the outcome when you’re just starting on the path?

Ev shares his answers to this difficult question, and his insightful advice on today’s podcast will teach you

• How to find product-market fit for your business
• How to monetize your web and media content in different ways
• How to use multiple media platforms to reach your audience
• How to use more than a website to get real interaction with your audience and clients

Evan Williams’ new site Medium, www.medium.com, is up and running right now. Connect with Twitter, Facebook, or Google to get started, and see how you can use this new, larger platform to market yourself and interact with your clients.

Resources:

Ev Williams Twitter – @ev

Ev Williams Medium here

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The Moment It All Happened

I was sick of it. Another day in suck city, daytrading. It wasn’t so long ago. But now it was forever ago. I always was fooled into thinking I was smart enough to daytrade.

But I hated it. And that day I had lost a lot of money.

Where had it gone? Why was I doing the only job in the world where you can lose money instead of get money?

Claudia said to me, “what’s wrong?” But I couldn’t look up. I felt it in my stomach, in my chest, in my head, I couldn’t move.

The sunlight was scattering through the branches outside, falling like stains on the table while she sat there and I didn’t know what to say.

“Let’s go,” I said.

“Where?” We had just moved into town. 65 miles away from the city so I could be closer to my kids.

“Follow me,” I said.

And we left the house and walked about a mile and came to a small island. We walked over the bridge.

“Where are we going?” she said and I walked us through the paths until we came to the other side of the island, the part facing the Hudson River.

There was a small beach there. I had been there before but Claudia hadn’t. She thought I was crazy.

For some reason everyone on the beach was Hispanic. There in the middle of the day. Why?

Everyone was speaking Spanish. I didn’t understand anything.

“What are you doing?” Claudia said and I walked into the water and started swimming.

There was a boat anchored about 50 feet away. I could swim to it but I didn’t. Instead I swum out far enough where I could sink and put my head under the water.

She came in the water also, but just to the point where she could wade and feel the coolness on the lower part of her body and the heat on her face. The day was split in half like that. Just like the sun was about to set.

I went under, with my clothes mostly on and I floated for a bit. I couldn’t take it anymore.

I had just moved. I had just gotten married. I was still losing money. I didn’t know what I was doing anymore.

And I was just bleeding money and Claudia would realize what a fake I was and my and I would lose her also and then my kids would starve. Everyone would starve.

“Honey?” Claudia said. And I came out of the water.

I pulled her in and she laughed and we floated for awhile and held each other. Other people from the beach, on a 5pm, came in and out of the water.

The people on the boat watched all of us. Where was the boat going? Why were they out here on a Wednesday at 5pm?

Were they rich, without a care in the world, and maybe they were just going up and down the Hudson River, never worried about anything in their lives.

Were there people like that – people with no worries? What separated them from me?

We were laughing. I hadn’t been swimming in years. I had never gone into the water from a beach.

I always thought it was disgusting. What would I step on? Jellyfish were the first beings to crawl from the sea to the land, eventually evolving into sexual creatures, eventually evolving into mammals, into men and women.

Would I step on a jellyfish. Would it stick to me? Or seaweed? Or mud, pulling me back in, back to where the jellyfish first came from?

When I was above the water I thought that love was everything. When I was floating under the water I closed my eyes and felt like wisdom was that feeling of “nothing” you only get when you float. Everything and the nothing.

We walked home. Wet. The sun hot but cooling as the shadow of the mountain began to scrub out the sun for the day.

I then wrote a blog post. About going broke. About being afraid of leaving my kids. About a crushing disappointment.

About something I did that was very wrong. I had been writing for years but I was telling the truth – what a miserable failure I could be. And I was sick of pretending not to be.

Someone tweeted – “too much information”. So over the years I gave more information. And then how I started to bounce back. Again and again and again every time I bounced back using one technique.

And now I needed to do it again. And this time I would make it stick. Please, I said to myself, make it stick!

Or maybe that wasn’t the time I went swimming. Maybe it was the time I couldn’t sleep and I wrote up all my numbers and subtracted and added and divided until all that was let was an equation of my panic at three in the morning.

And I kept writing numbers until I fell asleep at the table. And then the next day, sickened by myself, I wrote.

I don’t know which day it was. But I gave up. I didn’t want to care anymore. I didn’t want to wonder what people thought. I didn’t want to care what happened to me.

Since then my life has totally changed. I feel like I’m in a different universe now. I feel like I’m in a different body. That I have a different brain. I’m almost ashamed to say I’m happy. Or calm. One of them.

I never know what will happen now. I never try to know. Today opens up like a mystery book. I give up. I surrender.

It hurts to feel that panic. To feel that loneliness. To feel scared that everyone is going to realize what a fraud you are. I was scared.

But I wrote. I went underwater and never came back. And this time it stuck.

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10 Habits To Be Happier and More Productive

What a goddamn shitty title. That’s the sort of BS that is everywhere on the Internet these days.

Like, someone gets on a pedestal and teaches people how to be happier and then that same person goes to a motel owned by killers and smoke crack with hookers.

Then go to their kids school plays. I know. I’ve seen it.

People are often happy when something happens outside of themselves that they pre-judged would be “good”.

Like: having more money, or having the object of your infatuation fall in love with you. Or getting that big career boost. Or having that lawsuit be over. Or getting out of that relationship you got “stuck” in.

I don’t judge. That’s fine. But all of that comes and goes. What if the infatuation doesn’t like you? Are you then sad? I know I get sad.

We live in the light of a fucking STAR in the middle of the galaxy and we have the nerve to be sad if someone doesn’t kiss us back.

Ok, I’ve been there. I’ve had that nerve. She didn’t kiss back. She said, “I have to go to the bathroom and then I never saw her again.”

I want to be my own star. I want the nuclear fusion to come from inside of me. Then I know I can do anything I want.

That doesn’t mean: walk on Mars or have 10 private jets. I don’t want those.

I just want to do anything I want to do. Freedom. Is this selfish? Maybe it is. Some people think it is. I don’t kill people with my freedom. But still…some people correctly think it’s selfish.

And what is productivity? It’s getting things done in less time. Why should this matter? Because then I have time to do what I want.

Freedom again.

Here’s what I do:

WANT LESS

The fewer things I want, the more I love what I have.

SAY NO

Steve Jobs used to ask his man designer Jonny Ive (the designer of your iPhone), “how many times did you say No today?”

DO A LITTLE OF SOMETHING I LOVE A LOT

I love to write. I love to talk to friends. I love to kiss and to hug. I love to read and to laugh. Oh, and I love to play games.

And maybe that’s about it. It’s nice to make money. But I don’t necessarily love it. I lose money also. I don’t love that either.

If every day i do a little of something I love a lot, then I feel like inside I’m growing.

A tiny leaf that might grow into a beautiful plant. And then the plant drops more seeds on the ground and more plants grow.

I don’t even fucking know what I’m talking about. Do plants even drop seeds? Or is that flowers?

Are plants flowers? Or are they vegetables. Where is Doctor Science when you need her.

READ AN ARCHIVE

Here’s what I do each day. Find a blog from someone interesting. Read a post at least a year or five or six years old.

If it’s a good post. I send a note and say, “That was a good post”.

The archives of yesterday are the secrets of today.

Because people are very busy and they forget and nobody read that old article in the first place.

So I learn something new at the same time I send a nice note to someone at the same time I find material to steal for myself for later.

I plant a seed (see above).

I DO WHAT YOU CAN’T DO

Most people have their own rules about what you can’t do.

You can’t start two businesses at once. You can’t have a certain opinion.

You can’t make a movie without experience. You can’t start a business with no experience. You can’t fall in love with someone “out of your league”.

You can’t call the President and ask him to be on your podcast. You can’t run a marathon without preparing.

I like to do those things. And you know what? Most people are right. I can’t do them.

But sometimes people are wrong.

I OVER DELIVER

Give people what they deserve, not what they expect.

Most people have been served shit all of their lives and told, “this is the way it is. Deal with it.”

One time I asked for a bonus at job. I knew the bonus was available. But my boss decided to give himself extra. Out of my bonus.

“Welcome to the real world,” he said when I asked what happened.

That’s not the real world. That’s the fear world.

Where people are afraid of running out of things. People are afraid that the world is over unless they take what they can.

Give what you can. Give until you are left with nothing. And even when you are left with nothing, find more to give. You can make someone laugh, even though you started with nothing.

Why does over delivering make me more happy and productive? I have no idea. I do it and it works.

SING, PAINT, LAUGH, WRITE, CELEBRATE

A friend of mine stuttered. But when he sang he didn’t stutter.

How come? Because it’s two different parts of the brain. Most of the time, we don’t activate many parts of the brain.

We activate the part that gets us to the factory, gets us the hammer, and hammers the nail all day long, and then goes home.

I understand. That’s what I do most of the time also.

But I like to make my brain super powerful. So I like to do things that activate parts of my brain that are usually dormant and atrophied.

What are the new things you can do that will wake up parts of you that have been long dead.

Welcome to life outside the Matrix.

SHOULDN’T

There are a lot of things you should think, do, feel, believe. We’re told all of our lives what is “good” and what is “bad”.

Some of those things are political. Some are emotional. Some are religious. Some are taught us so were can fit in and “play well with others”.

None of those things are TRUE, in the sense that they are universal facts that are never wrong.

Ants don’t care about elections. Elephants don’t care about the after-life. Flowers don’t care if they fit in with a crowd. They just want the warmth of the sun to kiss them.

I’m not saying, “don’t love your family”. Or “don’t care about nuclear waste”.

Just double-check who programmed you. It’s ok for you to rewrite the program that makes your brain run every day.

The other day I wrote about why people shouldn’t buy houses.

I got some funny comments. One woman said, “James makes some good points here but, anyway, I hate James.”

Ok, she is allowed to. Part of the fun for me is getting those comments and telling myself it doesn’t matter. Do they hurt? Every single time. But I know it’s also foolish to think about it for even a split second.

Feels like practice.

All of the above feels like practice.

Practice for what? I don’t know. It doesn’t make happy or productive to think about it.

Ugh, there are more things. Like: brush your teeth. Or: sleep more. Or: breathe deep.

I’m going to take a deep breath. I’m scared. Later today and then later this week I have to give a talk. I’m scared of people and talks.

Good thing is: in 10,000 years all of human society will probably be dead and nobody will ever care other than the aliens who are reading the archives.

Kim, I don’t know why you hate me. But I can’t control you into liking me.

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