Recently by James Altucher: July 4th Is a Scam

I got this email a few months ago: “you must be TOTALLY LOADED to write the kind of stuff you do.”

Another person wrote me, “I’m not rich enough to be as honest as you are. I’d lose my job and customers.”

Finally, after I got several emails like this I asked someone back, “Why do you think I’m rich? Do you think someone needs to be wealthy in order to be honest?”

And the guy wrote back: “If you’re rich you don’t have to worry about what clients or customers or investors think about you. Or even what friends think about you. So you can say whatever you want.”

By implication it must mean that everyone who thinks they are “poor” is lying to his friends, customers, bosses, etc. This is a horrible way to live, when the ego tightens around you like a straitjacket. Eventually it doesn’t end well. All of these friends will backstab you. Its happened to me. Repeatedly.

Radical Honesty: How t... Brad Blanton Best Price: $2.19 Buy New $2.99 (as of 12:25 UTC - Details)

Honesty actually creates Wealth.

Henry Blodget asked me a few months ago, what happened in your writing? Why did it change all of a sudden?

I told him, “I decided to stop lying.”

He gave a nervous laugh (it has to be nervous. Was I lying to him? Was I committing crimes?). He asked, “what were you lying about?”

And I was stumped. I don’t really know what I was lying about. I had been lying about everything. To everyone. Forever. I couldn’t remember telling the truth.

I had basically been broken to the ground. I had 16 out of 17 businesses fail. I survived divorce, losing a home, depression, people dying on me, not seeing my kids for long periods of time, investments fail, I was fired from about eight jobs simultaneously. What was the point? I was just going to write how I saw it. Screw it. It couldn’t get worse for me.

Dare To Be True: Livin... Roberts, Mark D. Best Price: $0.25 Buy New $13.99 (as of 03:20 UTC - Details)

For 15 years I’ve been lying. Ralph (not his real name) used to call me up at 4 in the morning. He was a client of my first business. He needed advice about his job. I couldn’t stand him. In fact, at one point he borrowed a lot of money from me he never paid back. And he never paid his bills on time. I had to worry about payroll every month. So at 4 in the morning he’d call for advice and ask, “is now an ok time? I couldn’t sleep.” And I would always say, “of course it is.” When of course, it wasn’t. I was lying to him. And it made me hate him even more. And it made me hate myself even more.

You lose yourself when your ego takes charge like that.

I’ve lied quite a bit. To customers, to bosses, to employees, to girlfriends. It doesn’t work. It shows less pride in your work, less pride in yourself. It makes people hate you in the long run. It makes you less money. You have sex less. You die earlier.

You’re better than that. You don’t need to blog all your failures and confess all your sins. Let me do that. I have fun with it. Just start small by exercising the honesty muscle.

Getting Real: Ten Trut... Campbell, Ph.D. Susan Best Price: $1.95 Buy New $9.42 (as of 11:25 UTC - Details)

How to exercise the Honesty Muscle:

Every now and then someone writes me and says “I broke the rules” on the Daily Practice. It’s ok to break the rules. It’s just a guideline really. But here’s an alternative. A simplified version. And it uses the four legs of the Daily Practice to build the Honesty Muscle so you can slowly stop all of your lying. Because don’t BS me – you lie also.

If you ask these core honest questions (see below) to yourself every day then two things will happen:

A) It will lead to great honesty and confidence in every aspect of your life. And the more you ask the below questions, the more this honesty will increase. It will lower your center of gravity on the planet. So that wherever you stand, nobody can knock you over.

B) Your life will be completely different within six months and that difference will be measured in degrees of success.

Important: You don’t have to answer these questions, “yes!”. You just have to be aware when you are saying “No.” The more you are aware, ultimately the less “Nos”.

Physically:

A) Are you eating healthy? And you know what I mean! I eat that ice cream at 11pm at night also. No good!

B) Are you exercising? Are you keeping clean? Are you sleeping 7-8 hours a night?

C) Are you doing everything you can do so you don’t die an early death from liver or kidney or lung cancer? If you aren’t, then you are lying to yourself. If you lie to yourself, you’re going to lie to others. It’s a horrible spiral down a death trap. Why die earlier and with a lower quality of life than you have to?

This doesn’t mean you have to change everything today. Make one change a day. Pick the biggest lie. And make it honest. That’s all. But don’t BULLSHIT yourself here. It’s ok if you’re not perfect, if you break the rules here and there. But don’t BULLSHIT. Be aware. Be AWAKE. If you aren’t the master of your thoughts then you are the slave.

And if you don’t want to change anything then at least you’re aware of where you are lying. That’s not a bad start. But make sure the start has a good End.

Emotionally:

A) Are you cheating on wife/partner/friends? Are you being good to your family? To your friends? Not in a way that drains energy from you but are you genuinely giving all you can without doing any draining?

Read the rest of the article

July 7, 2011

The Best of James Altucher

$post_author: WP_User Object
(
    [data] => stdClass Object
        (
            [ID] => 144
            [user_login] => james-altucher
            [user_pass] => 3f2231a99b0222a2427a9765f288c5b6
            [user_nicename] => james-altucher
            [user_email] => [email protected]
            [user_url] => 
            [user_registered] => 2011-12-07 15:12:13
            [user_activation_key] => 
            [user_status] => 0
            [display_name] => James Altucher
            [type] => wpuser
        )

    [ID] => 144
    [caps] => Array
        (
            [contributor] => 1
        )

    [cap_key] => wp_capabilities
    [roles] => Array
        (
            [0] => contributor
        )

    [allcaps] => Array
        (
            [edit_posts] => 1
            [read] => 1
            [level_1] => 1
            [level_0] => 1
            [delete_posts] => 1
            [email_single_user] => 1
            [contributor] => 1
        )

    [filter] => 
    [site_id:WP_User:private] => 1
)

get_the_author_meta: 

$bio: 

$bios: Array
(
)