100 Top Quotes From Choose Yourself
In "Choose Yourself," James Altucher delivers a powerful and unapologetically honest manifesto on taking control of one's life and embracing a path of self-determination. Altucher challenges traditional notions of success and offers a refreshing perspective on how to thrive in an ever-changing world.
Through a candid blend of personal experiences, failures, and triumphs, he urges readers to prioritize their well-being, creativity, and happiness above societal expectations. Altucher's central message is that in today's interconnected and unpredictable landscape, the old model of relying on others to validate our worth and offer security is obsolete. Instead, he advocates for adopting an entrepreneurial mindset, where individuals can leverage their unique skills and passions to create their own opportunities and define their success on their terms.
Whether through pursuing creative projects, investing in oneself, or fostering meaningful relationships, "Choose Yourself" empowers readers to step outside the confines of conventional thinking and courageously embrace a life of authenticity, resilience, and self-reliance. By celebrating the journey of self-discovery and the power of choice, Altucher offers a practical and motivational roadmap to personal fulfillment and a reminder that our capacity to choose ourselves is the ultimate key to unlocking a life of purpose and abundance. (Choose Yourself Summary).
Choose Yourself Quotes
"Every time you say yes to something you don’t want to do, this will happen: you will resent people, you will do a bad job, you will have less energy for the things you were doing a good job on, you will make less money, and yet another small percentage of your life will be used up, burned up, a smoke signal to the future saying, “I did it again.”
"Only think about the people you enjoy. Only read the books you enjoy, that make you happy to be human. Only go to the events that actually make you laugh or fall in love. Only deal with the people who love you back, who are winners and want you to win too.”
"No matter who you are, no matter what you do, no matter who your audience is: 30 percent will love it, 30 percent will hate it, and 30 percent won’t care. Stick with the people who love you and don’t spend a single second on the rest. Life will be better that way.” (Meaning)
"Forget purpose. It’s okay to be happy without one. The quest for a single purpose has ruined many lives.”
"The only things that really matter in this world are the relationships you have with the people you love, and the meaningful things that you do. Haters don’t fit anywhere into that. Don’t devote any mental space to them.”
"The only truly safe thing you can do is to try over and over again. To go for it, to get rejected, to repeat, to strive, to wish. Without rejection there is no frontier, there is no passion, and there is no magic.”
"We’re taught at an early age that we’re not good enough. That someone else has to choose us in order for us to be…what? Blessed? Rich? Certified? Legitimized? Educated? Partnership material?”
"Only worry about your own happiness, which doesn’t have to be limited by anyone else’s stupidity unless you allow it to be.”
"Luck is created by the prepared.”
"This is not true. Everyone is an entrepreneur. The only skills you need to be an entrepreneur are the ability to fail, to have ideas, to sell those ideas, to execute on them, and to be persistent so even as you fail you learn and move onto the next adventure.”
"Honesty compounds. It compounds exponentially. No matter what happens in your bank account, in your career, in your promotions, in your startups. Honesty compounds exponentially, not over days or weeks, but years and decades. More people trust your word and spread the news that you are a person to be sought out, sought after, given opportunity, given help, or given money. This is what will build your empire.”
"We all want to de-clutter. To throw things out. But a minimalist lifestyle is bullshit unless you can do it across every sheath in the daily practice: not just physical, but also emotional, mental, and spiritual.”
"If we truly want to learn, we never learn when we are talking. We only learn when we are listening.”
"What you need to do is build the house you will live in. You build that house by laying a solid foundation: by building physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health.”
"Stick with the people who love you and don’t spend a single second on the rest. Life will be better that way.”
"If you have a story to tell or a service to offer (it doesn’t matter what), love yourself enough to choose yourself. Take control of your work, your life, your art. The tools are out there. Now you just need to use the tools inside yourself.”
"Success comes from continually expanding your frontiers in every direction—creatively, financially, spiritually, and physically. Always ask yourself, what can I improve? Who else can I talk to? Where else can I look?”
"The idea that we need to “pay our dues” is a lie told to us by people who wanted our efforts and labor on the cheap.”
"Nobody can tell you what to do. No matter what they pay you. No matter what obligations you feel you owe them. Every second defines you. Be who you are, not who anyone else is, or who anyone else wants you to be.”
"DON’T LEAD A DOUBLE LIFE. Everything you do takes up space in your brain. If you live a double life (and you know what I mean if I’m talking to you), then that extra life takes up neurons and synapses working overtime. The brain can’t handle it. It starts to degrade instead of grow.”
"Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, ‘I can’t wait to clean out some shit today.”
"When you give up searching for frontiers, inevitably you end up stuck in a swamp, sinking deeper into the mud the more you struggle to get out.”
"Don't Gossip. One time I trashed an entrepreneur I had invested in to another investor. Later that day I was supposed to have dinner with the first entrepreneur. By that time, just four hours later, he had heard I trashed him. He never trusted me again. People always hear. And if they don’t hear, they feel, because word gets around. And you can’t predict this. And it’s another way of living a double life.”
"The best way I have ever found to fill that hole is not to seek external motivations to fill the emptiness, but to ignite the internal fire that will never go out. To light up my own inner sky.”
"Master the form you want to operate in, get experience, be willing to be imperfect, and then develop the confidence to play within that form, to develop your own style.”
"All I was doing was sweeping everything under my bed. My room would look spotless but it was actually still a disgusting mess. The same thing is true of most people’s lives.”
"Hold your breath. Try holding your breath for just thirty seconds. That’s all it takes. Try it right now while you are looking at this line. Now…on the twenty-ninth second, do any opinions matter?”
"Perfectionism is sometimes the most dangerous set of thoughts you can let make their home in your head.”
"Collisions are the fundamental life-giving processes of the universe. Ideas are no different. The best ideas come from collisions between newer and older ideas.”
"Out of silence comes the greatest creativity. Not when we are rushing and panicking.”
"The best ideas are when you take two older ideas that have nothing to do with each other, make them have sex with each other, and then build a business around the bastard, ugly child that results. The child who was so ugly nobody else wanted to touch it. Look at Facebook: combine the Internet with stalking. Amazing!”
"Excuses are easy lies we tell ourselves to cover up our failures.”
"There’s a saying, “The learned man aims for more. But the wise man decreases. And then decreases again.”
"Study the history of the form you want to master.”
"You can’t help others if you look in the mirror and hate what you see.”
"Only read the books you enjoy, that make you happy to be human. Only go to the events that actually make you laugh or fall in love. Only deal with the people who love you back, who are winners and want you to win too.”
"Harry Bernstein was a total failure when he wrote his bestselling memoir, The Invisible Wall. His prior forty (forty!) novels had been rejected by publishers. When his memoir came out, he was ninety-three years old. A quote from him: “If I had not lived until I was 90, I would not have been able to write this book, God knows what other potentials lurk in other people, if we could only keep them alive well into their 90s.”
"Anger is a form of dishonesty. Nobody is perfect. It’s a lie to expect the people around you to be perfect.”
"He took a survey of personal finance authors who recommend that people keep budgets, and he found that none of them actually kept budgets themselves.”
"Too many people, in the rush of their lives, stop at just the second circle, the ones they immediately impact. They might even stop before that. Maybe they just wonder how their first circle impacts only themselves. Don’t stop. Push yourself outward. See the web you spin. See how the world is caught in that web. Push yourself until that web is spun all around, circles within circles within circles. This is not about making the most money, or having the most impact. This is about being connected with who you are. This is about seeing how far your potential truly can unravel, simply because you are human.”
"Wake up early. Avoid distractions. Work three to five hours a day and then enjoy the rest of the day. Be as perfectionist as you can, knowing that imperfection will still rule. Have the confidence to be magical and stretch the boundaries of your medium. Combine the tools of the medium itself with the message you want to convey. Don’t get stuck in the same rut—move forward, experiment, but with the confidence built up over experience. Change the rules but learn them first.”
"Did that attitude work? Of course not.”
" Negotiation is worthless. Sales are everything"
"This is about a new phase in history where art, science, business, and spirit will join together, both externally and internally, in the pursuit of true wealth. It’s a phase where ideas are more important than people”
"You’ve done all you can do. All that is within your power, your control. Now, give up the results. The right thing will happen.”
"The only truly safe thing you can do is to try over and over again. To go for it, to get rejected, to repeat, to strive, to wish. Without rejection there is no frontier, there is no passion, and there is no magic. How”
"When you’re a kid, everything has a question mark at the end of it. Only later do they turn into periods. Or even exclamation points. “Will I get over this?” becomes “It’s too late.” Becomes “I can’t get over this!”
"You will be the beacon that will enhance the lives of everyone around you and, in doing so, trigger the actual law of nature that says when you enhance everyone around you, you can’t help but enhance yourself.”
"If someone insists they need to be in prison even though the door is unlocked, then I am not going to argue. They are free to stay in prison.”
"If you don’t make courageous choices for yourself, nobody else will.”
"You can’t hate the people who reject you. You can’t let them get the best of you. Nor can you bless the people who love you. Everyone is acting out of his or her own self-interest.”
"Don’t focus on those things in the material world that you cannot control or possibly ever change, when you can focus on inner health, on your inner world, on the things that matter.”
"The value of your network goes up exponentially when you view your contacts and resources not as a list but as a network of nodes on a graph. Think of the number of connections that can connect two different nodes on that graph. It’s exponential compared to the number of items in a list that connect directly to you. The way you create the network effect is by encouraging people in your network to connect to each other and to help each other.”
"The universe has limitless resources. You have limited resources and limited time. The only way to create abundance is to behave more like the universe.”
"With each obstacle, turn it into a moment where you can"
"The only way to create value for yourself is to create value for others.”
"Be an entrepreneur at work. An “entre-ployee.” Take control of who you report to, what you do, what you create. Or start a business on the side. Deliver some value—any value—to somebody, anybody, and watch that value compound into a career.”
"You can either take the blue pill (become depressed about an artificial reality that is never going to return) or take the red pill (fully enter the Choose Yourself era and take advantage of its opportunities).”
"Your retirement plan is for shit.”
"My only hope for my future is I learn to dot the landscape of my life once more with question marks instead of periods. To turn judgments into queries. To turn “this” into “that?” To make every problem a maze. To be like a six-year-old.”
"People are walking around blind. If you are the one who can see, you will be able to navigate through this new world.”
"You don’t have to come up with the new, new thing. Just do the old, old thing slightly better than everyone else.”
"I hate to sound like a weirdo Buddhist, but the only things that really matter in this world are the relationships you have with the people you love, and the meaningful things that you do. Haters don’t fit anywhere into that. Don’t devote any mental space to them.”
"I’m trying to have fewer things in my life right now. This doesn’t always mean fewer trinkets that shine on a shelf. It also might mean fewer things that upset me. Fewer people who bother me. Fewer regrets about things that are long dead and buried. Fewer anxieties about a future that may or may not exist.”
"Count all the things you are grateful for. Even the negative parts of your life. Figure out why you should be grateful for them. Try to get up to one hundred.”
"Improve. You wanted that ONE job, that ONE scholarship, that TV show, that book, to sell your company, to sell your product, whatever. And they said, no. Take a hard look at the product. Can you improve your offering? Can you take a step back and improve what you are doing? Maybe you can and maybe you can’t. But brainstorm first. What are the ten things you can do to improve what you are doing?”
"And ultimately, a happy you will be the greatest contribution you can make toward a happy society.”
"If a painful memory arises, don’t fight it or try to push it away—you’re in quicksand. Struggle reinforces pain. Instead, go to love. Love for yourself. Feel it. If you have to fake it, fine. It’ll become real eventually. Feel the love for yourself as the memory ebbs and flows. That will take the power away. And even more importantly, it will shift the wiring of the memory. Do it again and again. Love. Re-wire. Love. Re-wire. It’s your mind. You can do whatever you want.[…] The results are worth it. I wish that for you.”
"The normal thing is to be rejected. To get rejected by jobs, your kids, friends, family members, relationships, businesses, publishers, everyone.”
"Not every failure is an opportunity. But figure it out. Look at the times you failed. How many, in retrospect, were opportunities.”
"Everyone is an entrepreneur. The only skills you need to be an entrepreneur are the ability to fail, to have ideas, to sell those ideas, to execute on them, and to be persistent so even as you fail you learn and move onto the next adventure.”
"Is about a new phase in history where art, science, business, and spirit will join together, both externally and internally, in the pursuit of true wealth.”
"In this new era, you have two choices: become a temp staffer (not a horrible choice) or become an artist-entrepreneur.”
"The rise of corporatism (as opposed to capitalism) forced people into cubicles instead of out into the world, exploring and inventing and manifesting. The ethic of the Choose Yourself era is to not depend on those stifling trends that are defeating you. Instead, build your own platform, have faith and confidence in yourself instead of a jury-rigged system, and define success by your own terms.”
"Dwelling on negativity won’t suddenly have positive results. It only brings more negativity into your head. You can’t buy happiness with the currency of unhappiness. The idea that we need to “pay our dues” is a lie told to us by people who wanted our efforts and labor on the cheap.”
"We can no longer afford to rely on others and repeat the same mistakes from our pasts.”
"What if you have a job? Get rid of it. You ultimately don’t need it. You ultimately will be pushed out of it.”
"Don’t pressure yourself. This is similar to the “burnout” issue from the chapter “How to Choose Yourself.” Sometimes you plant seeds but not every seed takes and grows into a beautiful plant. In fact, very few do. If you pressure yourself to turn every seed into the most amazingly beautiful plant the world has ever seen, then you are going to set yourself up for burnout and disappointment. You’ve consciously done all you can, now you need to let those unseen life forces go to work on the seeds. The best ones will sprout if you let them.”
"Freedom to help ourselves so that we can help others. Freedom to live the life we choose to lead, instead of having to live the life that has been chosen for us.”
"The way you get good ideas is to do two things: 1) Read two hours a day. 2) Write ten ideas a day. By the end of a year, you will have read for almost one thousand hours and written down 3,600 ideas. One of these ideas will be a home run.”
"The best ideas come from collisions between newer and older ideas.”
"Choose to commoditize your labor or choose yourself to be a creator, an innovator, an artist, an investor, a marketer, and an entrepreneur.”
"Both of these stories are about the same thing, even though they seem completely different. Gandhi chose himself. He once said, “You must first be the change you want to see in this World.”
"People fool themselves into thinking that the currency of unhappiness will buy them happiness. That we have to “pay our dues,” go on some sort of ride, and then get dropped off at a big location called our “purpose,” where now we can be happy. It doesn’t work that way.”
"You need to build a positive base: physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. Once these four “bodies” are working in harmony, you can reach out into the world. You build the foundation for the house you want to live in.”
"How do you get past this?” Diversification is everything. You get past “this” by having lots of “that”s.”
"You can find the tools to be happy right now. I still don’t know what my purpose is. I’m afraid I will never know. That makes me very happy. Maybe I can have lots of adventures between today and the day I die. Maybe I can do lots of different things. And if I don’t—if I die even tomorrow—that’s fine also. What does purpose mean when we are dead? We might as well choose to be happy now.”
"Honesty is the only way to make money in today’s world.”
"If you want to be successful, you need to study success, not hate it or be envious of it. If you are envious, then you will distance yourself from success and make it that much harder to get there. Never be jealous. Never think someone is “lucky.” Luck is created by the prepared. Never think that someone is undeserving of the money they have. That only puts you one more”
"The idea muscle must be exercised every day. Even if you’ve come up with ideas every day of your life, it will atrophy if you give it a two-week rest.”
"In some cultures, like Buddhism, you want things in your life to disappear, to reduce your needs and desires. To achieve some form of enlightenment. I believe in this brand of spirituality as well. I don’t think it and abundance are mutually exclusive at all. If you lower your expectations, for instance, your expectations are easy to exceed.”
"We can choose the life we want for ourselves. You choose that life by doing the best you can right in this moment. Right now. By being bold in this moment. Right now. There is no other moment to wait for.”
"If you think, “Everything would be better off if I were dead,” then think, “That’s really cool. Now I can do anything I want and I can postpone this thought for a while, maybe even a few months.” Because what does it matter now? The planet might not even be around in a few months. Who knows what could happen with all these solar flares.”
"Oxytocin is the “god hormone.”
"You either read the book and use these ideas, or you shouldn’t bother.”
"Not everyone is an entrepreneur. Not everyone wants to be one.”
"Nobody questions anything if you have confidence, intelligence, and you are proud of your product.”
"Companies simply don’t need the same amount of people anymore to be as productive as they’ve always been. We are moving toward a society without employees. It’s not here yet. But it will be. And that’s okay.”
"Blogging is not about money. Blogging is about trust.”
"Every time you say yes to something you don’t want to do, this will happen: you will resent people, you will do a bad job, you will have less energy for the things you were doing a good job on, you will make less money, and yet another small percentage of your life will be used up, burned up, a smoke signal to the future saying, “I did it again.” The only real fire to cultivate is the fire inside of you. Nothing external will cultivate it. The greater your internal fire is, the more people will want it. They will smoke every drug lit by your fire. They will try to ignite their own fires. They will try to light up their own dark caves. The universe will bend to you.”
"There were about ten different areas I needed to improve and gradually I improved them all and sold the company a year later.”
"Improve your approach. You keep getting rejected in bars? Find a different place, where the odds aren’t stacked against you. Nobody responding to your networking e-mails for “Ten minutes of your time please?” Then offer something. Give something for free so people immediately see value in your approach immediately. You keep cold-calling customers and they hang up? Find a different way to get distribution. CHANGE UP, DON’T GIVE UP.”
"In life, you will always have 30 percent of people who love you, 30 percent who hate you and 30 percent who couldn’t care less.”
"You will always have 30 percent of people who love you, 30 percent who hate you and 30 percent who couldn’t care less.” When I heard that, my entire”
"I don’t like the word purpose. It implies that somewhere in the future I will find something that will make me happy, and that until then, I will be unhappy. People fool themselves into thinking that the currency of unhappiness will buy them happiness. That we have to “pay our dues,” go on some sort of ride, and then get dropped off at a big location called our “purpose,” where now we can be happy.”
"Improve your authenticity. Social media can also be called “Individual media” as opposed to “Group Media.” Instead of a large group broadcasting your effort, you can build up your own presence by establishing your Facebook platform, your Twitter presence, your LinkedIn, Quora, Pinterest, blogging, Amazon, SlideShare, Scribd, reddit, etc., presence. All of these channels are used to create authenticity for your offering. Each follower, fan, etc., you are personally able to sway over to your side of the world continues to establish your authenticity, regardless of who is “rejecting” you. This is how you choose yourself and build your own platform rather than relying on the whims of a meager few.”
"In every business, I’ve loved meeting my competitors. The reality is there’s no such thing as competition. The world is big enough for two people in the same space.”
"Yogis measure their lives in breaths, not years. Deep breathing is what keeps those breaths going.”
"Society is made up of individuals. The only way to improve society is to come at it from a place of deep, individual satisfaction. The only way to do that is to spend long periods of time just being silent. Find out who the real you is.”
― Quotes from the book Choose Yourself by James Altucher
Choose Yourself Author
James Altucher is a multifaceted entrepreneur, investor, and author known for his candid and unconventional insights into business, finance, and personal development. He has built and lost fortunes, giving him a unique perspective on success and failure. Altucher's writing is characterized by its refreshingly honest and vulnerable tone, where he shares personal stories of triumphs and setbacks to provide valuable lessons to his readers. He encourages individuals to embrace their creativity, take calculated risks, and cultivate a mindset of resilience. In his book "Choose Yourself!" Altucher challenges the traditional career paths and advocates for self-reliance and the pursuit of passion and purpose. His non-conformist ideas often inspire people to reconsider their approach to life and career, empowering them to seize opportunities and embrace change in an unpredictable world. James Altucher's work serves as a motivating reminder that embracing one's authenticity and taking ownership of their choices can lead to a fulfilling and fulfilling life journey.
Chief Editor
Tal Gur is an author, founder, and impact-driven entrepreneur at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own daring design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 major life goals around the globe. His journey and most recent book, The Art of Fully Living, has led him to found Elevate Society.
