Motivation is not for the faint of heart

James Altucher: I’m going to tell you why you should quit your job. Why you need to put your ideas into motion. Why you need to build a foundation for your life, or you’re going to lose your roof anytime soon. 1. The Middle Class is Dead A few weeks ago, I visited a friend of mine who handles trillions of dollars. No joke. Trillions. If I told you the name of the family he worked for, you’d say, “They have a trillion? Really?” But that’s what happens when $10 million sits at 2% for over 200 years. He said, “Look out the window.” We looked at all the office buildings around us. “What do you see?” he asked. “I don’t know.” “They’re empty! Every office is empty. The middle class is empty.” And I looked closer. Whole floors were dark. There were floors with one or two offices, but most of them were empty. “It’s all outsourced, or technology has taken over the paper pushers,” he said. “It’s not all bad,” he said. “More people have joined the upper class than last year.” But more people are becoming temps than ever, he said. And here’s the new paradigm. The middle class is dead. The American Dream never really existed. It was a marketing ploy. It was. The biggest mortgage provider of the last 50 years, Fannie Mae, had a slogan: “We make the American Dream happen.” It was just a marketing slogan, always. How many times have I cried over that slogan. And then they destroyed it. 2. You Will Be Replaced Technology, outsourcing, the growing temp industry, rising productivity — all of these have replaced the middle class. The working class. Most of the jobs that existed 20 years ago are no longer needed. Maybe they were never needed. The entire first decade of this century was spent with CEOs in their Park Avenue clubs, crying through cigars, “How are we going to fire all this dead weight?” 2008 finally gave them a chance. “It’s the economy!” they said. The country came out of the recession in 2009. Four years ago. But the jobs haven’t come back. I’ve asked many of those CEOs: You were just using this as an excuse to fire people, and they winked and said, “Let’s just leave it at that.” I’m on the board of a $600 million temporary staffing company. I see it happening across every sector of the economy. Everyone’s getting laid off. Everyone’s just toilet paper now. Down the drain. 3. Corporations Don’t Like You The executive editor of a news outlet called me to lunch to ask my advice on how to increase traffic to their website. But before I could speak, he started complaining to me, “Our best writers keep putting their twitter bylines on their articles, and then when they get more readers, they start asking for raises.” “So what’s the problem?” I asked. “Don’t you want popular, respected writers?” When I say “top news,” I mean TOP. He said, “No, we just want to make news. We don’t want stars.” In other words, his main job is to ruin the career aspirations of his most talented people, the people who have pledged their allegiance to him, the people who have worked 90 hours a week for him. If they only worked 30 hours a week and were a little more mediocre, he’d be happy. But he doesn’t like you. He wants you to stay in your hole, and he’ll throw you food every now and then in exchange for your excrement. If anyone reading this is a reporter and wants to contact me personally, I’ll tell you who it was. But basically, they're all the same. Every single one of them. 4. Money Is Not Happiness A common question I get asked at least once a week on Twitter is, "Should I take a job I like, or should I get a job that pays more money?" Putting aside the "Should I even take a job" question, let's talk about money for a second. First, the science: Research shows that increasing your salary produces next to no increase in "happiness" above a certain level. Why is that? Because of a simple fact: People spend everything they earn. If your salary increases to $5,000, you spend an extra $2,000 on accessories for your car, you have an affair, you buy a new computer, a bigger couch, a bigger TV, and then you ask, "Where did all the money go?" Even if you don’t need any of the above, you do need one more thing: another pay raise, so back to the corporate casino for another spin of the pay roulette wheel. I’ve never seen anyone save their excess pay. In other words, don’t stay at your job for the steady paycheck. It will never get you where you want to be: freedom from financial stress. Only free time, imagination, creativity, and the ability to disappear will help you create the kind of value no one has ever created before in human history. 5. Count right now how many people can make a major decision that will ruin your life. I don’t like it when one person can make or break me. The boss. The publisher. The TV producer. The buyer of my company. At some point, I’ll have to grovel to them. I hate it. I’ll never do it again. The only way to avoid this situation is to diversify your activities so that no single person – customer, boss or client – can make the decision that will make you rich or ruin you, fulfill your lifelong dreams or destroy them. I realize that this will not happen overnight. Start planning to create your own destiny now, instead of allowing people who do not like you to control it. When you count, make sure the number goes up to 20. That way, when you spin the roulette wheel, the odds of hitting the winning numbers will be on your side. 6. Does Your Job Meet Your Needs? I will explain the concept of “needs” the way I always do, based on what I call “daily practice.” Are your physical, emotional, mental and spiritual needs being met? The only time I ever had a job that I was happy with was when I had to work very little and always had time on the side to write, start a business, or have fun with friends. Other times, I was working too hard, dealing with people I didn’t like, which constantly destroyed my creativity. When you’re in a situation like that, you have to develop an exit strategy. Your hands weren’t made to write notes. Or fax papers. Or hold the phone while talking to people you don’t like. In a hundred years, your hands will be dust in your grave. You have to find a better use for those hands now. Kiss your hands so they can work magic. Some might argue, “not everyone can meet all of these needs at work.” It’s true. But since we already know that a paycheck won’t make you happy, you can easily change your lifestyle and work habits to at least meet more of your needs. And the more of these needs are met, the more you will create the conditions for true abundance to flow into your life. Your life is a house. Abundance is the roof. But the foundation and plumbing are essential, or the roof will fall in and the house will become uninhabitable. You create the foundation by following Everyday Practice. I say this not because I am selling anything, but because it has worked for me every time my roof has fallen in. My house was bombed, it was cold, and the winds were biting my face, but I managed to rebuild it. That is my experience. 7. Wipe Yourself with Your Retirement Plan I don’t care how much you report on your 401k. It’s over. The whole savings myth has dissolved. Inflation will eat up most of your 401k. And in order to cash in on that retirement plan, you have to live a really long time doing things you don’t like doing. And then you’re 80 and living in a cave, living a sluggish lifestyle, barely keeping warm at night. The only retirement plan is to Find Yourself. Start a business, a project, or a new lifestyle where you can stop thinking about money all the time. Some people might say, “Well, I’m just not an entrepreneur.” That’s not true. Everyone is an entrepreneur. The only skills you need to be an entrepreneur are: the ability to fail, the ability to have ideas, to pitch those ideas, to launch those ideas, and to be persistent so that even when you fail, you learn and move on to the next thing. Or be an entrepreneur at work. An “entrepreneur for hire.” Take control of who you report to, what you do, what you create. Or start a business on the side. Create some value, any value, for someone, anywhere, and watch that value flow into your career. What other choice do you have? Stay in a job where the boss is trying to drag you down, will eventually replace you, will pay you just enough to survive, will alternate between compliments and insults so that you are a baited fish while he jerks the line. Is that your best choice? You and I have the same 24 hours each day. Is this how you are going to spend them? 8. Excuses “I'm too old.” “I'm not creative.” “I need insurance.” “I have kids to raise.” I was at a party once. A stunningly beautiful woman came up to me and said, “James, hi, how are you!?” WHAT? Who are you? I said, “Hi! I'm fine.” But I had no idea who I was talking to. Why was this woman talking to me? I was too ugly. It took me a few minutes of playing along to figure out who she was. It turned out to be the old-fashioned woman who had quit the job we had together six months earlier. She had cried as she gathered her things from her office when she was fired. She was perpetually disheveled, looked about 30 years older than she actually was, and at the time, her life was going to hell. Until… she realized she was out of the zoo. In the George Lucas film, THX-1138 (that was the main character’s name), everyone’s aspirations are suppressed and they all live underground because the earth is “radioactive.” Finally, THX decides that it’s better to die on the surface than to suffer forever underground, where he’s not allowed to love. He wasn’t free. He made his way to the ground, dodging all the guards and police. And when he got out, it was sunny. All the people on the ground were beautiful, and they were waiting for him with open arms and kisses. The excuse, “But there’s radiation!” was just to keep him down. “Easy for you to say,” many people say to me. “One of us HAS to do it!” And the beautiful woman in front of me had to do it too. “What are you doing now?” I asked her. “Oh, you know,” she said. “Consulting.” But some people say, “I can’t just go out and consult. What does that even mean?” To which I say, “Yeah, I agree with you.” Who am I to argue? If someone insists that they should be in jail even if the door is unlocked, I’m not going to argue. They have a right to stay in jail. 9. It’s okay to take baby steps. “I can’t just QUIT!” people say. “I have to get out of debt.” I get it. No one is telling me to quit today. Before people run a marathon, they learn to crawl, then they take baby steps, then they walk, then they run. Then they exercise every day and stay healthy. Then they run a marathon. What the hell am I even talking about? I can’t run more than two miles without a fit of agony. I’m a wimp. Make a list right now. Every dream. I want to be a best-selling author. I want to reduce my material needs. I want to free myself from the many miseries I’ve been victimized by my entire life. I want to be healthy. I want to help all the people around me or the people who come into my life. I want everything I do to be a source of help to people. I only want to be around the people I love and who love me. I want to have time for myself. THESE ARE NOT GOALS. They are affirmations. What do I need to do each day to practice following these affirmations? It starts the moment I wake up, “Who can I help today?” I ask the darkness when I open my eyes. “Who would you like me to help today?” I am a secret agent, and I am waiting for my assignment. Ready to receive. This is how you take baby steps. This is how you will eventually run to freedom. 10. Abundance Never Comes From Your Work Only by breaking out of the prison you were locked into at birth can you achieve abundance. You can’t see it now. It’s hard to see the gardens when you’re locked in a prison. Abundance only comes when you move according to your affirmations. When you truly improve the lives of people around you. When you wake up every day with that drive to improve. Make a difference to your family, your friends, your coworkers, your clients, your potential customers, your readers, the people you don’t even know yet but would like to know. Be a beacon of improvement and then when the sun goes down, all the ships will come your way, bringing their endless riches. Don’t believe me. Stay with a boss who hates you. With a job that keeps you chained up, tempting you with constant raises and promotions. Stay in a culture that is quietly replacing the entire middle class. This is no one’s fault. This is the tectonic plates of the economy, destroying an entire suburban culture that has been going on for almost 100 years. Until you set yourself up for success and all that that choice entails, you will be locked in a prison. You will be staring into your partner’s eyes, looking for a hint of whether he or she loves you. But gradually the light will fade, the warmth of the other body will grow cold, and you will once again fall asleep without dreams in this darkness.