Book Review - "Choose Yourself"

A couple of months ago, I started reading a book that I believe changed my life. Because of it, I chose to reinvent myself.

For the last several years I have been writing for print and online publications and various people in my network. I wanted to make money at it, but it just didn't materialize into what I had hoped. We made the decision to move across the country and that was the end of my writing career.

After we moved to California it became clear that a part-time job was needed. I struggled to find something that I could do from home that would make money. My sewing hobby wasn't going it, I love kids but I had no desire to take care of someone else's child, and I had struck out the idea of working a part-time job outside my home. I wondered if my writing ability could be that job I needed. The only problem - I had no idea how to start a business in an area where I had no network.

We had decided to take a long road trip - get out of the house and do something fun. In getting ready, started to search through the book offerings on Amazon. I came upon a book that had an interesting title - Choose Yourself - Be Happy, Make Millions, Live the Dream. I'm pretty skeptical, so the title seemed a little over the top. But, I thought what the heck it was only $.99. So, I downloaded it along with a couple of other books - just in case I didn't like this one.

Well low and behold, I was blown away by the book.

Who is James Altucher

Besides being an author that has a very easy-to-read writing style, James Altucher practices what he preaches. Altucher explains how he has built up million dollar companies only to loose them to a bad economy also some mistakes of his own.  He does such a great job of explaining how he was feeling during his lowest moments and how he got out of each of them. I could totally relate to what he was writing.

Humor is another needed skill that Altucher has in his arsenal. Choose Yourself could be a very intense book if it didn't have humor. The lightness of the writing often makes the subject matter more understandable and less burdensome.

Today, Altucher is a successful entrepreneur, author, and pod-caster. I'm sure he has a few more successful titles in there somewhere, but for now that is a good start. He is someone who has developed a strategy for picking up your life and making it what you want it to be.

The Daily Practice

Very simply put, a daily practice is something you do on a daily basis. It is meant to be a practice that invigorates your entire being - the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual parts of your being. In his book, Altucher lists several things that one can do for a daily ritual. The items range from sleep eight hours to write down a list of ideas to surprising someone. Once again, the idea is that the daily practice will put you into a place where each part of your body - physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual - is aligned.

The daily practice is very similar to Reggie Rivers idea of not focusing on the goal, but focus on behaviors to reach the goal. Similarly, the daily practice focuses on behaviors that need to change or need to be developed to get one to the next level. Starting very small, do only one thing from the list and do it consistently every day. Then build on that item and incorporate two items and then three items and so on until you have a daily practice of items that feed your entire body - physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.

For me, I picked four items for my daily ritual:

• Thankful journal - I bought an inexpensive journal from the Dollar Tree - yep, it cost me a whole dollar. I got a pen out of the junk drawer in the kitchen and put both the journal and the pen next to my bathroom sink. Every morning, I make a point of writing down ten things I'm thankful for. This one item has completely changed my perspective. It has opened up my mind in the morning to the possibilities of today. Even if I wake up in a bad mood, after writing out the ten things I'm thankful for I have no choice but to change my mood.

• Exercise - This is one of the items that changes a bit for the weekend. I confess that I sleep in on the weekends and only do the exercise in the morning during the week. That means I have to make up the exercise at different times on both Saturday and Sunday. During the weekday mornings, this isn't that long of a session; a 15-minute walk with our dogs. It is just enough to get me up and moving and ready to sit at my computer for the next part of my daily ritual.

• Daily Devotion - Every day, I choose to open up my Bible and read a few verses and then I write a small post on Facebook describing what the passage said to me. I've found that if I do this the first thing in the morning it centers my day, it puts me in the right frame of mind to deal with the issues at work, and it puts me in connection with my creator. Plus, it gets me writing in the morning.

• Writing - Every morning, after my thankful journal, exercise, and daily devotion I do some writing. It isn't much, but it is something. Sometimes it is writing for me, sometimes it is writing for a client; whoever it is for, I write. 

I have found that doing this daily ritual for the last two months has made me a better human being, a better writer, and a better wife.

Choose Yourself and Small Business

Some of you may be asking what this has to do with small business Wednesday. The answer is - everything. This book put into perspective that if I wanted to make my writing into a business I needed to think outside the box and push some envelopes. I put my name out on a few freelancing websites, started my blog, got my Twitter feed going, and sent out a few advertising e-mails. Within a week, I had my first two clients. This week I have three clients. My goal is that within two years, I will not be working for someone else. 

I realized through this book that my writing is my small business. I needed the  put it into perspective. I don't have to have employees to have a small business, I don't have to be making $1,000 a month, and I certainly didn't have to live up to someone else's expectations. I needed to choose myself. I needed to reinvent myself. I needed to take myself and my writing seriously. 

My suggestion is for you to pick up the book, give it a read, start a daily ritual, and let your mind, body, and spirit take you to whatever level you feel your business should be at.

Today - Choose Yourself!