In this book, we talk about James Altucher’s book “Choose Yourself” and how you should choose yourself.
Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista. In this podcast, my goal is to give you quick lessons that you can reflect on in your journal so you can grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually and have a better career, better relationships, and better personal finances while you enjoy your morning cup of coffee.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe, where I combine self-development coaching and financial planning for Latino Professionals.
At the end of today’s podcast episode, I’m going to give you a prompt question to reflect on in your journal. The idea is to take one to five minutes to reflect on today’s lesson and write a minimum of one paragraph on how you can apply the lesson in your life life. You can use an actual journal, a word document like on Google Drive, or your note-taking app like Evernote. The idea is that you’re actually thinking about how to process the information to help you improve your life.
In today’s episode, we’re are going to talk about how we need to choose ourselves in life. There is this really great book by James Altucher who wrote the book “Choose Yourself.” I’m also a big fan of his podcast because he asks really good questions to his guest and gets you thinking about topics that you may have never thought of before. He also gets you thinking about how that things that worked in the past, might not apply right now. In the book, he discusses how people 50 years ago, would work for one company for all their life, and then retire from the company and get the gold watch. Those times don’t exist before and I think it was a very unique period in time. In 1900, 40 percent of people lived on farms and 60 percent of folks lived in rural areas. Now about 1 percent of people live on farms and 20 percent of people live in rural areas.
I think baby boomers really benefited from a unique period in time where America was an industrial superpower since Europe and Japan were recovering from World War 2 and had to rebuild, while the US just had to switch up their production to consumer goods. There is a lot of other variables out there. I think one thing that people don’t really think about is that now you have to buy a lot more things to get buy. There was no cable tv, no internet, no computers to buy, no cellphone plans, no cell phones too but, and there are so many other things that people have to but that people 70 years ago didn’t have to think about.
Now with global competition and the need to accumulate more and more skills to stay relevant in today’s economy, it more crucial than ever to choose yourself. That company that you want to stick with, might not be there the next year. I was a federal employee and I knew I had to quit back in 2013 after four months there because they were implementing furloughs, where we would only get paid for four days worth of work instead of doing the five. I was like, I already hate working here, and you’re telling me how I can get paid now. I felt like I was giving too much power to my employer and I choose to go back to school to study economics.
There really is no loyalty when it comes to your career, you should do what is best for you. Once I build up my Grow With Joe Business and I start having employees, I want them to grow and move on to better opportunities. I want to also make sure I have the right culture where people are pushing themselves to solve great problems and they feel like they are properly being compensated for their time. If they do leave, I want to make sure they create a standard operating procedure logbook that new employees can reference and operations don’t skip a beat.
I really did choose myself and I’m so glad that I did. We don’t have all the time in the world so we better make sure we are using it right. A year wasted at a company when you should have left, is a year that you gave to death. You’re one year closer to the grave and what do you have to show for it. Maybe one or two company lunches? A Christmas party? You may be met with some new friends but you can keep up with those friends when you leave the company if you really wanted to. I don’t want to give death wasted time, I want to make sure it’s time that mattered and this is what happens when you choose yourself.
This doesn’t mean being a jerk in life like those jerks who don’t give the middle seat the armrests. You should still be considerate of others but when it comes to your values as a person, you should choose yourself. To choose yourself though, you need to work on yourself. If you neglect your health so you can work more hours, then there is going to come to a point where that choice will come back to harm you. If you choose to give all your time to reality television and no time to your self-development by reading books, listening to podcasts, and taking courses, then will come to a point where you won’t have the skills to handle the new economy and things might turn out really bad for you.
Life is the way it is, and we are just players in the game and by knowing the rules of the game, you can live a pretty good life where life is not dragging you around. If you choose yourself where you know your goals, and you’re designing your life to reach those goals, then you’re going to be fine. Right now I’m in Mexico working on my business. I’m learning a little bit of Spanish every day and my plan is to be here for about two years so that I can become fluent and start creating all my content in Spanish to reach an underserved audience. This makes me happy and I feel like it is really important so I’m going to do it. I remember my last supervisor at my old firm said I shouldn’t target Latinos with Financial Planning and that really upset me and then I eventually figured out a way to to do so and that meant creating my own financial planning firm.
I could die right now and be okay with it because I know I’m doing everything within my power to get a little bit closer to my goal. Sometimes I’m stagnant but I’m not stagnant for too long. The key things are that I’m not giving up my energy and power to something that I don’t believe in and I love the feeling. I haven’t been to a meeting that I haven’t wanted to be in for a year now. There are other stresses I have to deal with but they are for me though and they are bearable.
To choose yourself, that means you have to put energy into yourself though and this means you have to work on yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. If you don’t do this, then you’re really not choosing yourself. You might have chosen yourself but it’s something that is not going to last. Every day I read, I work out, I write in my journal, I review my goals, I learn new things, and I take care of my health. If you do this, then you can handle whatever change that comes your way and you’re going to ensure that you’re being true to yourself. You know what is important and what isn’t important to you. That’s what life is really about, understanding what are the important things you should focus on and ignoring everything else to the best of your ability. Life is short but it can belong as long as you know how to use it.
That’s it for today’s episode, and to summarize it, we need to know how to choose ourselves. That means knowing who we want to be in life and being that person we want to be. You want to minimize your regrets because a wasted hour, day, or year is a time you give to death and you won’t get back. It’s lost forever. So if you work on yourself mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, then this should give you a good idea of what you should do for your life. You’re the director of your life, so might as well try to make it a blockbuster for yourself, instead of a dud.
So in your journal, ask yourself, are you choosing yourself? If the answer is no, what is causing you not to choose yourself? If the answer is yes, I would recommend that you test that thought and see if you’re actually on the right path. After you write your answer, just take five minutes to think about what you wrote. This will help you understand if you’re on the right path or not.
Thanks for listening today! To get a free copy of my book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and just pay for shipping and handling.
I have a quiz on my website that grades your inner circle, so if you want to find out if your inner circle is an A, B, C, D, or F, you can take that quiz at growwithjoe.me/quiz
I’m also trying to do a feedback Friday episode, so if you have a question that you would like to have my answer on the air, just e-mail me at [email protected]
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Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
*Music outro
Who moved my cheese link
