Editor’s note: This article was first published in November 2014, and its statement that James Altucher is a millionaire again at the moment refers to 2014.
James Altucher strikes again with an interesting story about a very specific moment in his life when, as he puts it, four words saved his life. Since then they have guided his career as an entrepreneur, writer and father.
For those who don’t know Altucher, he could be quickly described as an entrepreneur, investor, author of several bestsellers, and founder or co-founder of more than 20 companies, of which, by his own account, only 3 succeeded. Ever since, he has made the most of his countless failures by talking about them in the most important media outlets, always with his trademark Altucher style.
This is his story, in his own voice, adapted from his original article:
I had sold my first business thinking I had enough money for the rest of my life, but I fell short. I figured I should have made $100 million instead of the amount I made.
The following year everything collapsed. I had invested in bad businesses, bad ideas, bad real estate deals… everything went wrong!
I was lying on the floor crying, because I was going to lose my house. Nobody returned my calls. After all that time devoted to work and business, I had not built any lasting relationships. Nobody was going to help me.
All I had were two kids and a $4 million life insurance policy. I had a brilliant idea: better for my kids to have $4 million than to have a father like me. So I started thinking about the best way to kill myself.
Years later I told my daughter about that idea, and she said it would indeed have been a very bad idea. And she’s right.
But at the time I was afraid. I was the jailer of my own prison. I had sunk so low that I was afraid to make any other decision for fear of hurting myself even more.
(Read: 5 things to remember when you feel trapped, stuck, empty and lost)
In a moment of clarity, I asked myself: what worked for me along the way? What didn’t?
I decided to focus on improving four areas of my life, and I chose a word or phrase to represent each one. Those words were: physical, emotional, mental and creative gratitude.
Physical.
Physical can’t be measured by strength or weight. It’s measured by the energy you have to face the day. Better sleep, better movement, a better diet, and the willingness to take the stairs instead of the elevator. And by this I don’t mean self-help, but rather helping yourself.
Emotional.
I looked around and realised I had nobody I could call. There were no friends. I had nobody around me whom I could love or trust, and who would trust and love me.
I actively set about building relationships based on love and trust rather than business. I let go of anyone who wasn’t willing to love and support me.
Mental.
I have done this every day since then. I write down 10 ideas a day. They don’t have to be business ideas. They don’t have to be good ideas either. They can be crazy ideas. The best ideas come from crazy ideas. To be frank, Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic was originally a crazy idea.
The ability to come up with ideas is like any other muscle. If you don’t walk for two weeks, walking becomes harder afterwards and you need physical therapy to do it again. The same goes for the idea muscle. Our brain can atrophy too. So to stop it from atrophying, you have to exercise it.
(Read: 14 things to avoid so you don’t wear yourself out mentally and sabotage yourself)
Creative gratitude.
Every day I practise what I call creative gratitude. It’s gratitude with a challenge. Don’t fall into the trap of “gratitude porn”, where we’re grateful for our kids and for having a roof over our heads.
Every day I have to find five new things to be grateful for. This doesn’t sound like good business, but let me tell you a secret: people think you can’t be grateful for things that aren’t abundant, when in reality those things can’t become abundant unless you’re grateful for them.
These four words became the pillars of my business and my life. I had to get back up and throw myself into life again. And I decided to get up.
My life was never the same after that.
This philosophy of life, these rules, helped me stay close to people who gave me emotional support. They were healthy, grateful people, so it wasn’t long before I came back with creative new business ideas to help them.
I started focusing on helping them, because you create abundance for yourself when you create abundance for others. The only way to be a good leader is to become the servant of many other people.
How has my business life changed since then?
Since then I have built companies with billions in revenue around the world. I have achieved much more and helped more people.
Every six months my life is completely different from the six months before. I don’t know what will happen in the next six months either. All I know is that, whatever happens, I’ll be fine.
When I lost my house, many years ago, I was almost dead inside, packing boxes with my kids’ things while they asked me: “Where are we going to go?”
On moving day there was a huge snowstorm. My kids started making snowmen. At that moment I stuck out my tongue as if I were a kid again and started playing with them. Since that day, since that moment, I have been growing.
See also: James Altucher’s 32 rules for becoming a successful entrepreneur
James Altucher has probably known failure more than anyone else. In fact, he is one of the few people who have gone from millionaire to broke and from broke to millionaire more than a couple of times, although he has always been able to make millions as easily as he loses them, both in business and in investing. At the moment, we are pleased to say that Altucher is a millionaire again, with an even more orderly and calm life.
He is, without a doubt, someone I admire as a writer, for his humility and his sense of humour, but above all because I think anyone can identify with his stories of personal collapse, and so they should also identify with the mindset that has helped him get back up again and again.
This article is adapted from a piece that James Altucher originally published as a guest author on Virgin.
Featured image: Grand Canyon National Park, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr.
