Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 stars8 Things I Learned from Reinvent Yourself
Reviewed in the United States on January 8, 2017
The book reads like a stream of consciousness exercise with little or no connection between the different chapters or paragraphs. And yet, it deserves five stars. James Altucher has developed a unique writing skill - he has learned to trim out all excesses and shares his view in the most simple way possible. This is rare and it has to be appreciated.
I enjoyed reading Reinvent Yourself. The book is packed with useful advice. Here are eight of my favorite quotes:
1. We are what we experience every day - “You are not just the average of the five people around you. You’re the average of the five habits you do, the things you eat, the ideas you have, the content you consume, etc.”
2. “Learning never stops. Many people die at 25 but are not put in the coffin until 75. The learning stopped for them early.”
3. Quantity often leads to quality - “Try many things. One thing I realized is that quantity equals quality. People think it’s one or the other but it’s not. When you have a quantity of ideas and things you are trying, you will find quality.”
4. On mentoring - “Believe it or not, sometimes it’s just as good (often better) to read all of their materials rather than be directly mentored.”
5. On how to be creative - “People say, “Everything has already been written.” Everything has already been said. But that’s a lie. I think every outline has already been written. But each human has a unique fingerprint. Just putting that fingerprint on an outline makes it yours, different, unique. And through practice and vulnerability, you make that fingerprint something others want to see.”
6. On how to sell - “If I want to sell an idea, if I want to convince, if I want someone to like to me, I have to figure out how to connect.”
7. On how to find your unique niche - “It’s hard to be the greatest at any one endeavor, but by combining passions, it’s much easier to be the greatest in the world at the intersections of those passions (because there are billions of things that can intersect, you can find your own place in the “long tail of passion” to be the master of).”
8. “But the only thing that gets results is action. Not a single ounce of greatness in history ended with thoughts. It happened with hands. With actions.”
