Choose Yourself

By Engr. Carlos V. Cornejo

Choosing oneself here does not mean just selfishly pursue what you want in life and disregard the needs of others.  But it is developing first yourself so that you can be better equipped to help others and at the same time make yourself happy as the title of this book, “Choose Yourself: Be Happy, Make Millions, Live the Dream” by James Altucher says.

Here are the three Choose Yourself fundamental shifts:

Become an Idea Machine

The choose yourself path is paved with ideas. The more ideas you can generate, the more profitable ideas you’ll have, and the more confidence you’ll have to pursue your ideas (because you’ll know that whatever problems arise, you’ll have the idea power to solve them).

We are all idea machines, but some of us have let our idea muscle atrophy from lack of use. Start building idea muscles by buying a waiter’s pad (a sheet of paper where waiters write the food orders of customers) and filling it with 10 ideas each day. A waiter’s pad costs less than a dollar, and it is easy to store in your pocket. It is space constrained, so it forces you to be concise with your ideas, and the pages are small enough to make the thought of generating 10 ideas less intimidating.

You can generate ideas on anything. But to get started, generate 10 ways that you can make a product or service you use better. For example: (a) 10 ways you can make this summary better, (b) 10 ways you can improve a marketing/sales email you have recently received, (c) 10 ways you can improve the frying pan you used to cook breakfast this morning.

Once you have generated 10 ideas, either use those ideas yourself, send those ideas to someone who may benefit from them, or archive them. Author James Altucher used to generate 10 ideas for financial articles and send them to financial writers in NYC. His idea generosity led to a meeting with Jim Cramer, host of Mad Money and creator of thestreet.com, who then paid Altucher to write articles for thestreet.com

Focus on The Daily Practice

Bringing ideas to life requires energy and influence. Create an abundance of energy and influence by focusing on “The Daily Practice.”

The Daily Practice is the act of strengthening four areas of your life by 1% a day. The four areas are mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual. Imagine these four areas of your life like four separate bodies.  (1) Mental Body: Generate 10 ideas or practice a new hobby (take a 15‐minute chess, piano, or creative writing lesson) (2) Emotional Body: Make plans to spend time with a friend or read a chapter of a biography about someone who inspires you. (3) Spiritual Body: For a few minutes, stop time traveling. Stop thinking about the past or future and be grateful for what is right in front of you. When author James Altucher walks through his New York City neighborhood, he marvels and appreciates the architecture of the buildings around him. (4) Physical Body: Take the stairs, eat two meals a day instead of three, or go to bed 10 minutes earlier than you did yesterday.

Underprice and Overdeliver

When James Altucher was building websites, he built a website for New Line Cinema for 1/100th the market rate and delivered a website that was better than most sites New Line Cinema had ever seen. New Line Cinema spoke highly of Altucher’s work, which led to much more work.

Altucher says, “If someone pays you $100 and you give them just $100 in value, then you have FAILED. People are like three‐year‐olds. They like to get presents. When you over‐deliver, you’re giving them an unexpected present. People want to do business with people who give them presents. And when you give, you will receive.”

Eventually, Altucher became so busy that he had to say ‘No’ to incoming work. When he started saying ‘No’, more people wanted to work with him. Altucher says, “If you reduce the supply of you through no, then the demand of you goes up and you make more money and

you have more fun.”