5 Key Ideas from Choose Yourself by James Altucher: Quick Book Summary and Review

Of course, as the forward indicates, the reason why you should always choose yourself is because if you don’t choose to serve yourself first, no one else will. But Altucher suggests that the business opportunities that you create for yourself are not likely to be found in a book. So where will they be found?

Altucher recommends that we should only do things that we enjoy. He explains that we feed our own fire by doing things we enjoy, but when we do things that we do not enjoy doing our fire begins to go away.

The Daily Practice 

Take care of your physical body by getting between 7-9 hours of sleep, exercising and eating a healthy diet. Also, take care of your emotional body by feeding it with people who are positive and encourage you and limit exposure to people who criticize and drain you. You need to tame your mind by focusing on what you want.  For your spiritual body, live in the present. By keeping your mind focused on the present moment you avoid stressing out about the past or future.

Making Money

If you want to earn money, find a problem and solve it.  The more people you solve the problem for, the more money you are likely to make. If you have an idea for a product, build it, sell it, ship it and then quit your job.  But if you don’t promote yourself, no one else will.

Don’t Be a Hater 

If you want to be successful, study success. Bless that which you want, especially others who are successful.

How to Become an Idea Machine

Every day read/skim books on at least four different topics. Every day write down ten new ideas on anything. Tap your own internal resources by cleaning up any past emotional garbage and stay physically, emotionally and spiritually healthy. Occasionally, spark your brain by trying something completely new, like taking a watercolor class. Look through old ideas and compare then to new ideas to see if you can generate something new by mixing the old with the new.

Always be Honest

Dishonesty works until it doesn’t and when it fails, a person’s life goes downhill quickly. Think of Bernie Madoff and his family and the massive scam that netted billions but resulted in Madoff going to jail, his divorce, a son’s suicide, and the pain of all the people who lost their entire retirement savings.

There are plenty more good ideas in this book. These are just the ones I selected that deal with earning money.

Rating: $$$$ out of five.   This is a quick read, interesting and quite inexpensive at less than a buck on Kindle.

Copyright @ 2016 Christine Esser

This book was purchased, not a gift.   

This book can be purchased on Amazon by clicking the first link below. Disclosure: We may receive a small commission from your purchase, but this will not raise the amount you pay. Thank you for reading this review. Comments are welcome.  We have not received anything from the author or publisher in exchange for this review.