Why 2014 Is The Year You Change

Editor’s note: James Altucher is an investor, programmer, author, and several-times entrepreneur. His latest book is “Choose Yourself!” (foreword by Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter). Follow James on Twitter @jaltucher.

I stopped going to classes. I had a scholarship that paid all my living expenses ($1,200/month) so I didn’t want to quit (ugh, and get a job?). So I stayed a student but I failed every class I took for three semesters in a row.

Finally, the dean wrote me a note that said, “We have to ask you to leave. You can come back when you are more mature.” I haven’t gone back yet.

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Many years later I was at a job, and in the middle of a meeting I walked out, walked out of the building and never came back and never returned the phone calls. I quit.

Another time I stopped coming to work until the CEO asked me, “What’s going on?” and eventually they got rid of me.

I’m not saying this is good advice. I’m not “Dear Abby.”

I knew for sure in each situation that change was needed, but I didn’t know why, and I didn’t know how. I just knew who (me) and what (quit).

Why is this important for entrepreneurs? Because every moment you are a lifepreneur. And the change inside yourself is what allows you to create the abundance and change outside. I say this not like some bullshit self-help book, but because this is what has worked for me.

I started a business and raised a little over $500,000. I built the product and had users. Everyone was excited.

The day I raised the money I woke up shaking.

I knew that the idea was bad. It was called “140Love,” a dating service I built on top of Twitter. So instead of people seeing your profile they can see your tweets and know who you “really” are.

But here’s the problem: On dating services, people want to be anonymous. There was no way this idea was going to work.

I wired back all the money that had come in. I shut down the site, and ate all the costs for building it. I moved onto the next idea and never looked back. And, by the way, the next idea and the next idea failed also. And then one worked. And then another one worked.

When you waste time on a bad idea you don’t have any room or energy leftover for the good ideas.

Sometimes your mind doesn’t know what’s happening. Your mind is really just a tool.

About 10 times so far I’ve made complete changes in my life. Some horribly painful where I had to puke up all the garbage that had been shoved down my throat. And those were the fun changes.

The changes that weren’t fun were the changes I didn’t make. I wish I could apologize here for the changes I didn’t make. I wish I could CC the right people right here. But it’s too late and always will be.

I suspect I have another 10-20 changes left in me.

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Saying “no” to a change that’s begging for you will kill you.

Benjamin Franklin said, “most people die at 25 but are buried at 75.”

You can’t ask the world to change to suit your needs…you have to change first. That’s the first step towards being an entrepreneur.

When you make a change, here is what happens: Well, I have no clue what happens to you. Here is what happens to me in a very no bullshit way.

Fear

What will happen to me? I’ll go broke! Or be lonely! Or get sick! Practicing dealing with uncertainty is the only way (CC: Jonathan Fields) to get comfortable with this fear.

You can let your fears keep you from growing, or you can let your fears inspire you to grow. The good thing is, you get to choose.

Arguments

Bosses won’t want you to quit. Colleagues will get scared because it means change is forced on them. And depending on your change, maybe family is unhappy (when I was thrown out of school, my family was certainly unhappy).

Whoever wrote your script will be unhappy. You’re changing the movie.

Important: There’s nothing to say to the people who argue with you.

Because they are right also. In their life situations, it’s very right for them for you not to quit. Why argue with them? Conserve your energy for your change.

Guilt

Let’s say you’re leaving a relationship or a job or an agreement. I can tell you, someone is ready to make you feel guilty about this. It’s hard not to feel guilt, particularly if someone is sad because of “what you are doing to them.”

But much worse is the guilt you will feel if you don’t make the change your body and the universe is telling you to make. The universe is much bigger than the person on the other side. To go against that flow will make you sink and drown.

Tears

I don’t think I’ve ever once made a change in my life that didn’t involve me crying either on the day of the big change or sometime that week.

Why cry? Isn’t that a bit wimpy?

It’s because you have no idea what you are doing. It’s a change! You’re not supposed to know what happens next.

The faster you can say, “I have no clue why I am doing this but I do know this is the right thing” the faster you can stop crying.

How do you know if it’s the right thing? I can tell you, but the reality is with practice you know.

Change is very lonely, but you will never be lonely if you enjoy being with the person you are alone with.

None of the above sounds that great actually. So why change at all?

Prevent muscle atrophy. When a car doesn’t start all winter, the engine will get ruined. When you don’t walk for two weeks, your leg muscles atrophy and you need physical therapy to walk.

Change is a muscle.

Steep feels good. When you change you go from a flat learning curve (your old situation) to a steep learning curve (the new situation). Steep learning curves feel good. Like the feeling of new love.

So do flattening learning curves because you learn deeper subtleties. But upside down learning curves feel…like fuckness.

You were in the wrong script. At every stage of our lives, the people around us try to write our scripts.

When we are young the script your family writes you might be: school, cubicle, promotions, management, CEO, retirement, death.

But you might realize that the right script for you didn’t include “cubicle.”

You have to rewrite your script. If you stay in the old script it’s like acting in a role that is not written for you. The final production will be a disaster. People will throw food at you and spit on you in the street.

You want to be in a work of art, not a forgery or a plagiarism.

Evolution. For 400,000 years, humans were good at hunter-gathering. Which meant we had to know all of the terrain around us. We had to know all the foods, poisons, animals and enemies. And then we would move to a new terrain. Change was part of our DNA.

But for the past 10,000 years (a blip in evolutionary time), we had to specialize and be good at one thing and in one place.

Nobody told evolution this.

So our bodies break down, our minds get sick, we need all sorts of medications, we die. Evolution wants us to constantly change.

Play. When we were kids we played different games all the time. We would never play the same game for 300 days in a row, for 20 years in a row.

But then we got handed our “scripts” by our parents, schools, political parties, jobs, institutions, etc. We were told to stick to the script. But we never stopped being the boy or girl who wanted to play.

When you stop playing, you enter the vast world of excuses.

World domination. If you are good at making cars, and then you get good at design (a totally different area), then suddenly you might be the best in the world at car design.

When you change and learn from new fields you get to have idea sex (and idea orgasms). Your ideas have children.

Your ideas evolve many generations very quickly. Suddenly now you are the exponential result of your changes.

Your cheeks are rosy with the fresh air that constant idea sex bestows on you.

Being uniquely the best in the world at something is fun and valuable.

And it’s never too late. If you want examples, I will give you them. But you are never too old, no matter who tries to tell you you are.

Getting good at change (big, small, tiny – every day) means getting good at life.

Do it without expectation. Wish for nothing. Care for everything. Happiness will be in between.

Do I feel badly about that scholarship from 22 years ago? Yes. Sometimes I feel bad about a lot of things. Sometimes people will judge you and it will hurt.

But that’s just life. Trust me, you will have plenty of time for death later.

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