Ask James: Bubbles, Change the World, Nudity, Sports Betting, Twitter Followers, And…My House

Every Thursday from 3:30-4:30 EST I do a Q&A session on Twitter. I answer right then but take some of the questions and expand further into a blog post. If you have any additional answers for the people, PLEASE answer them in the comments. I am sure they will appreciate. And if you have questions for me PLEASE join me in my next twitter section next week and follow me on Twitter.

BENEFITS OF HAVING A LOT OF TWITTER FOLLOWERS

Benjamin Michael@Bmp135 what does having 100k twitter followers open opportunity wise? 500k?

ANSWER:

We each have a personal responsibility to be the best person we can be. A society is made up of individuals. The more inspiring you become, the entire society uplifts ever so slightly. With social media you can now associate with positive and inspirational people from around the world instead of being limited to the people in your neighborhood.

So having 500k followers means more people want to be associated with you. Means you have a great responsibility to be healthy in a variety of ways: emotionally, physically, mentally, and spiritually: to not talk badly about people, to talk about the things that motivate you, to speak about the injustices you care about, to talk about the ways you stay healthy and increase the quality and happiness of your life. People listen to you.

(Ellen has 10mm+ twitter followers and I think that is a good thing)

And then the benefits of having a 500k followers is again: the world society uplifts ever more slightly. And continues as social media interlinks us all every tighter. At the heart we share 99.9% genetic material with each other. And now we also share friends.

[I ran this answer past several people with 500k+ followers and people very much agreed with the answer]

HOW TO CHANGE THE WORLD?

Curtis Faith@inflector What three things would you change about the world for your children?

ANSWER

The world is a sad place. Its a sentence filled with pain, punctuated by only brief pleasures. Every government is corrupt. Every leader in history has espoused change and then raped his own people. Most people walk around, not realizing the cancer cells and bacteria creeping up all over their bodies, their faces sagging, their pasts clogging the thoughts of their futures, their depressions oozing through their pores. The world has to be changed pore by pore. The lights have shut off. Behind the eyes of each person the lights have to be turned on again.

height=”311″ (I want my daughters to be like Wonder Woman)

Things get better one person at a time. So I won’t tell you three things but two and that boils down to one.

If everyone taught their kids, by example, to be kinder and to be honest, then the world will be a better place. That is the only thing that will make the world a better place. And it’s not an easy practice to be both kind and honest at the same time.

BEST BOOKS FOR BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT / INSPIRATION

Peter Sanchez@petersanchez  Best books for biz dev or biz related period. What do you recommend?

ANSWER:

There’s several types of business books I like and I recommend all of them:

Books about business: “The Essays of Warren Buffett” by Lawrence Cunningham is the best.

“Howard Hughes: the Untold Story”

Isaacson’s book on Steve Jobs.

Then books that just make me smarter about the world:

“The Rational Optimist” by Matt Ridley is #1

Then books that are inspirational to me in a business way (but not necessarily in a spiritual way).

As corny as it is “The Science of Getting Rich” by Wallace Wattles is where it all started: Napoleon Hill, Dale Carnegie, Norman Vincent Peale, Wayne Dyer, Tony Robbins, Deepak Chopra, “The Secret”, all came from that book.

But I think to really understand business you need to understand who you are. The best business development is personal development. Making sure you are healthy and smart in the four areas that dominate the health of your body: Physical, Emotional, Mental, Spiritual.

Don’t forget that “business” is a word that comes many steps after the idea. First you have to decide, “I’m going to have to help people”. Maybe people need superstores in rural areas because its hard for them to buy things. So you come up with an innovative way to do that (Wal-mart). Or maybe people need a way to save per unit of light in their house (electricity).

We’re quite lucky to be here. We were all a sperm that won the race. And now we have a chance to help all the other sperms before our short period on this planet is extinguished.

There’s a lot of things to do!

So before you even think “business” think “who am I?” Are you that sperm? Was there consciousness before that sperm? Are you the person who gets angy at kinkos when the printer doesn’t work? Or is there something better inside of you.

Book list coming on that!

HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOUR IDEA IS GOOD

Ken@kenthecoder I have a few startup ideas but afraid they will fail and would have lost money and time. How do you validate your ideas?

Also, another tweeter asked a similar question: Jamie Gunn@gunnjamie How much market validation do you get before you start to build your online products?

ANSWER

There’s only one way to validate an idea. And only one.

Build it. Listen to the initial feedback. Rebuild it. Repeat a few more times. Then see if people are using your product.

If they are, then it means your idea is helping people and is good. If they aren’t, then give up and start with a new idea.

By the way, you used the phrase “market validation”.

I don’t like that phrase. What does the word “market” mean. What does “validation” mean. I get it. I know what they mean in the dictionary and in business school. But we’re in the real world.

If you help people, you will make money.

 IS AN MBA WORTH IT?

Someone on facebook just asked me this

ANSWER:

NO. I specifically said to him, “If you go for an MBA I’m going to hunt you down and kill you”

– why take 2 years off from this exciting and fast moving job market.

– 2 years is like 20 Internet generations

– why get $100k in debt? (the world of tutions is a LOT different than even ten years ago)

– A “Marketing” class in a business school is taught by a guy who got his PhD 10 years ago. Real marketing is done by people who are using marketing tools invented yesterday

– “Investing” is only learned by experience

– “Management” is learned by leading people and failing the first few times.

– “Sales” is learned by having the passion to sell something you love.

– There’s no such thing as “business”. There’s such a thing as making people’s lives better. Figure out how to do that and you won’t need business school.

– A school is a business. An MBA was just another way to create a skew. It turned out to be a “screw” but most people don’t learn that until it’s in the wrong hole.

(try not to be a robot)

FACEBOOK / INSTAGRAM / A NEW BUBBLE?

Ken@kenthecoder What’s your take on @instagram being bought for $1bb?

ANSWER

First off, you say, “new bubble”. What was the old bubble? I don’t understand. Was it EBAY? Which makes billions. Or Amazon? Which makes billions? Or Apple? Which makes more money per year than the United States. Was Google part of what you might thing of as “the old bubble”? Or Cisco, which wired up every house on the planet? When was there an old bubble? The dream of the Internet has come true. We are living it.

Second, on this transaction in particular,  most people don’t know this but several companies were bidding for Instagram. I am breaking news here. You can imagine who was bidding. So part of that $1 billion price was the effect of auction.

That said, facebook made a good buy. Facebook has been accused of being weak in mobile. Eventually all 800mm Facebook users will be using smartphones to share photos, just like you and I do today.

Companies like Facebook and Google have stopped caring about words like bubble. Why is that? Because they make a ton of money. Billions. In a bubble, nobody makes anything. No value is created.

VERY IMPORTANT: in a bubble, an asset ONLY goes up in value today because it went up yesterday. That’s it. Google and eventually facebook will go up because they make billions of dollars and create a lot of value for people. Google has saved my life a million times and Facebook has made me lots of friends. If both sites disappeared, I would be unhappy.

If Facebook can make $1.20 extra on every one of their users because they bought Instagram than it was worth it. And, of course, that will be just a start.

Don’t use the word bubble ever again. We are entering a 20 year boom. All the newspaper writers are going to say bubble every day. I will wipe my ass with those news articles.

Laugh in their faces and make money.

(the world’s biggest bubble ever)

WHAT DO YOU DO IF YOU KEEP FAILING? HOW DO YOU STAY MOTIVATED?

This was asked by a protected twitter account so I will respect their privacy

ANSWER:

I failed at collegecard.com, my first business in college. I’ll describe it some other time or maybe I already did.

In fact, here’s 20 careers in a row that didn’t work out for me. I’ve sold 4 companies but have had 20 failures Probably 40 failures but I only admit to 20.

Careers zigzag. The only happiness comes when you lower your expectations below zero. Everything above that is struggle and pain with fleeting moments of success and pleasure.

When humans attempt something, they can succeed and they can fail. That is being human. There is nothing wrong with not trying something. Your question implies being motivated is a good thing. Let me just say…its an ok thing. Nothing great. Nothing horrible. You can live a perfectly great life that helps many people for generations to come by living an unmotivated life. I know many unmotivated people much happier than me.

Thomas Edison failed 10,000 times before the bulb stayed lit. I bet he cried at night. Like I do. But now the cost per unit of “light” is one thousands times less than it was then.

Careers are always a zigzag. Accept that. When you feel bad about a failure I know how it feels. It’s in that gut. It’s in the chest. It drags you down. For me, it makes me feel suicidal. Ugh, its horrible.

But

the most important thing for staying on a zigzagged track is staying physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually healthy. Do that every day for six months. Check the box. You can check the boxes here at tdp.me.

In six months your life will be 100% different. I know this because it happens to me every six months.

SHOULD YOU BUY A HOME IF YOU THINK REAL ESTATE IS CHEAP?

Ken@kenthecoder What is your take on buying real estate cheap, developing it (apartments, condos) as a investment strategy?

ANSWER:

Believe it or not, despite my non-stop articles on why you should NEVER buy a house (I really do think its a horrible life decision) I do think real estate will go up.

What!? Did I just say real estate will go up? Yes. I’ve always said it. BUT, never own a home. Never ever own one.

But it’s a natural that real estate will zoom higher. Because population will increase from 300mm to 350mm people in the United States and 50mm extra people will need a house. So demographics forces real estate up eventually and always throughout history.

That’s why Wall Street is buying up real estate. And what do the newspapers do? They act like idiots as usual. “Foreclosure crisis”. they want you to panic about something. Whatever. Go home.

BUT, I would never buy home for the reasons I’ve listed in countless articles. it’s the American religion to buy a house with a white picket fence. I don’t follow that religion. I explain why in “Why I’d Rather Shoot Myself in the Head than Own a Home”.

But if you believe real estate is going up there’s plenty of ways to invest in the stock market on real estate that is not liquid. You can buy a publicly traded REIT. That’s a stock that basically owns lots of real estate. So you can diversify and you don’t have to mow the lawn and the value goes up as real estate goes up. Plus REITS have to pay out 90% of their income as dividends. So knock yourself out.

I’ll tell you something that I haven’t mentioned in any of my articles on why I think owning a house is crazy.

First off, I rent. I live in a beautiful rented house by the river. I like to take my coffee and watch the river. On July 4, across from me on the river is West Point and they have great fireworks. I’m already planning my next move.

BUT, I also own a home. I’m divorced. And I own the home my ex-wife lives in. It’s a beautiful house for sale.

Why did I buy it? Because happy wife = happy life. Or, at least, that’s what I thought. It’s not really true.

So I can tell you, there is nobody more qualified to compare than me.

(I’m ashamed to admit: I own this)

HOW DO YOU MAKE A LIVING AS AN ARTIST?

Brian Moss@brianmossart  how can I make a living as an artist?

ANSWER

Making a living as an artist requires 2 things: Quantity of work, and networking. For better or for worse, art in this world is all mixed up with personality and charisma.To answer your question I asked a friend of mine with a $500 million art collection and that was his answer. You need to have GREAT art AND be out there in the parties.

In other words, it’s unfortunate but to be a great artist requires you to be all the things a great businessman needs: ideas, charisma, networking ability, an ability to follow up, an ability to promote yourself, etc. I wrote a post once about a guy who didn’t even create his own art, nobody new, and he STILL became a famous artist because of forgery.

So maybe I can offer a shortcut that we can all practice, including me. Be an artist in ever aspect of your life. You can’t just be a painter anymore, or a photographer, or whatever. You can’t BE anything.

Be yourself, and from the moment you wake up in the morning try to make this day different from any other day you ever experienced. Make the day a work of art.

So few people do that. And it would make life much more fun if everyone did.

 

HOW DO YOU PITCH AN IDEA?

Jamie Gunn@gunnjamie When pitching ideas, do you have a process that you follow?

ANSWER:

I am pitching ideas every day. Or it feels that way. For 20 years.

The best way to pitch ideas is through a Socratic method of sorts. Ask questions. Make people think and dig deep about whatis missing in their lives.

What do they not have that they would like?

What would they want that would make their life easier?

How can life be better?

What is missing that would make life better?

And finally…as you unravel your answer….here it is!

How can they say no!

Nothing has changed since Socrates and by the way, I recommend Paul Johnson’s recent biography of Socrates.

WHO IS YOUR SAVIOR?

karen parmelee@parmcharm You once said to me “You want a savior.” What does that mean? What did you mean?

ANSWER: Everyone wants a method to “give up”. Its all too much. Someone wrote me the other day on a massive list he sent to all his friends. It was his birthday. He said, I had a horrible 2011. Got into debt, lost my girlfriend, my job, my house, etc. He went on and on.

Then he said, please pray for me so that I get what I want in 2012 and he listed those things:

I want a great job. I want my girlfriend back. I want my parents to love me. I want money to get out of debt and money to buy a big house.I want to start a successful business.

On and on.

I wrote to him: do you think one of your friends is Santa Claus?

All 200 of his friends have to work full time to get him what he wants just so he can be happy.

I asked him: what if you lower your expectations. Just wish the best for all your friends this year and don’t expect anything from them.

Suddenly you totally expand the world of possibilities that will make you happy.

And then you will be happy.

So for anyone who needs a savior, look to yourself: you are your savior.

HOW TO BUILD AN EMPIRE FROM SCRATCH

Yuvraj Jadhav@yuvrajj20 How to get things done? I plan to build empire ! but how to put that first few first bricks in place?

ANSWER: I don’t have an empire and I’ve had my ups and downs. But I can answer this question:

I moved to NYC with $0 in my pocket. I worked at HBO. I was a “Jr. Programmer Analyst” but on my voicemail I put “This is James Altucher from HBO”. For all anyone knew I was the CEO of HBO if all you did was listen to my voicemail.

I then told everyone I worked at HBO. If anyone asked what I did there I just said, “to help them come up with new ideas.” Because I truly believed that’s what I did.

And then I had an idea: HBO does great original TV shows. How about I do original web shows for them. So I did.

And then other companies, even competitors of HBO, wanted to know how I did that. So I started doing it for them also. Why not? HBO wasn’t going to fire me. There was nobody else out there who knew how to build websites then. So I worked hard. 20 hours a day. And started making good money. Then it was too much for me to do. So I started hiring people. More and more people. Then we needed to move offices we had so many people. So finally I quit HBO. Then we sold the company and I was helping run the resulting entity of over 1000 employees and a billion dollar market valuation.

And so on.

Another way to say all this is the 12-step slogan: “Fake it til you make it”. This doesn’t mean “Lie until you make it”. It means: get the knowledge and then already visualize that you’ve succeeded and act accordingly. Do it! Fake it til you make it!

 

CAN YOU BE A SHY LEADER?

Elena Moiseeva@elenawebstudio I feel I don’t hav enough leadership skills & I act shy sometimes.I want 2 b more decisive & persistent. Can u recomend way out?

ANSWER:

I’m really shy. When I was a kid my grandpa would have to go door by door in his apartment building and introduce me to other kids. Most didn’t want to play with me because I kept looking down at the ground. Another time, a few years later, I was in a camp. I was so shy I literally couldn’t talk. Other kids would make fun of me because they thought I had mental issues (and, of course, when a kid has mental issues, other people call him a “retard” all day long). But I couldn’t speak. So other kids would stick up for me and it would lead to fights.

Finally, the camp counselors didn’t want to lose their tuititon so they just let me play on the pool table in the counselors-only room all day.

The other day at a dinner a bunch of people were invited to to network I literally couldn’t speak when we had to go around and introduce ourselves. Not to mention I was still deaf at the time.

And yet, I love public speaking.

So turn your shyness into an asset.

Here’s how:

Words are like any market. A market is ruled by supply and demand. Focus very hard on making sure every word you say is meaningful and thoughtful. This means no gossip, no random opinions, no obvious statements, etc.

Here’s what will happen. The supply of your words will go down. And the demand will go up. Which means the value of your words will go up. Which means you will become a leader.

I was once in the management of a public company with a billion dollar valuation. I wanted to quit and start my own business so I started going to fewer and fewer meetings and only saying stuff if I absolutely needed to. You know what happened next? They offered me the CEO job! And I said no!

And, oddly, ten years later, the guy who made the offer got me this weird spot on Jay Leno through a rather convoluted story.

USING TWITTER FOR SPORTS BETTING

Ashmeet Sahni@sk8erboyash what will you say for betting on sports??

ANSWER:

The only way to win in sports betting is, Moneyball style, using computers to find statistical patterns in the data and diversify across thousands of bets. I personally know people who have made millions doing this.

But it’s getting harder. Computers are easier, the software is out there, the data is more readily available.

So think out loud: what NEW data is out there that not so many people are using yet?

Social media data. So use a site like DataSift, which has access to the entire twitter data feed, and figure out if there is something worthwhile there you can program that gives you an edge over the other computer sports bettors out there. For instance, maybe the number of tweets goes up considerably for the winning team right before a match. Who knows why? Maybe it just happens on average and you can place winning bets accordingly.

After my tweet, due to the magic of twitter, DataSift then tweeted:

Agu Mingorance@aguming  Hi can we help? You can access DataSift using our PAYG model from just $10. Any question agustin @ datasift .com cc: @jaltucher

CAN I MAKE A WILL WITHOUT A LAWYER?

wilsprod@wilsprod  What is the best avenue to use when writing a will? I’d prefer to not use a lawyer, but if it makes sense, I will.

ANSWER:

I hope my lawyer doesn’t get offended but lawyers are glorified secretaries. Think about it: let’s say you were really in trouble and you go to court. There’s one of you there and there’s two lawyers. So lawyers only have a 50-50 chance of helping you in the worst moments of your life.

So for basic stuff: wills, divorces, real estate, insurance, basic partnerships, setting up a company, why pay $500 an hour to someone who is going to take out a piece of paper and fill in the blanks.

You can do that also! And, in fact, there are many websites that are being set up to help you do that. I mentioned LegalZoom.com in my tweet answer to you. Because of twitter, LegalZoom was aware of my tweet and they responded also:

LegalZoom@LegalZoom @jaltucher Thanks for the mention! @wilsprod Let us know if you have questions or need more info. 🙂
So the dream of the internet is coming true. We are all getting closer and closer. Use your friends to help you. Not your lawyers.

 

WHAT IS THE SECRET TO TIME MANAGEMENT?

Randy De Montalegre@randyaaron what’s your secret to time management?

ANSWER:

– No TV

– No dinner (you don’t really need it to live. And it’s hard to sleep when your stomach is digesting crab cake appetizers, pasta, steak, dessert, wine)

– Don’t talk to anyone unless you really need to Silence is the best time saver.

– Don’t travel for meetings

– Actually, don’t go to meetings. My criteria for a meeting now is: unless I have a 10% chance of making $X at a meeting I won’t go. That’s a pretty good criteria for eliminating 90% of my meetings. And so now I’m happier.

– Wake up before everyone else. I wake up at 4:30am. That’s 3 hours of silence at least. Because I didn’t eat dinner or watch TV I can go to sleep earlier.

 

HOW DO YOU FIND A MENTOR?

@petachung asked: how do you find a mentor ? (although I am paraphrasing since I can’t find it now but still want to answer it here).

nobody needs a mentor. Every day find someone u admire and list why. And just think abt what was truly good they did.

ANSWER:

I’ve had a lot  of mentors. Eventually the mentor-mentee relationship tends to go sour. The mentors try to control the mentees but eventually you will surpass or lose interest in your mentors and their egos can’t handle it.

So here’s what I do now. I find people I admire and I try to read and study everything about them. There’s where I come up with posts like 9 things I learned from Woody Allen. Or “What I learned from the World’s First Blogger“.

There are many amazing people throughout history. Really study them and list what you’ve learned from them. They are your best mentors. Right now I’m reading books about Howard Hughes, Kevin Smith (writer/director of “Clerks”), and Cyrus the Great. These are my latest mentors.

 

(2 of my mentors)

WHAT SHOULD I DO WITH 1-2 MONTH OF FREE TIME?

Abby Ferri@abbyferri if I all of a sudden had 1-2 months off from traditional employment w/expenses paid, what should I do? daily practice?

ANSWER:

Yes! The Daily Practice. It doesn’t matter WHAT YOU DO. But every day check the box:

– did I do something to physically make myself better

– did I do something to emotionally clear my head

– did I express my creativity in anyway today (the idea muscle)

– am I grateful for what I have and how can I express it. Surprise every day the people you are grateful for.

And it will all be fun. All the things are above are fun for me each day. Track your progress here. It’s not fully ready but for you, it has the functionality you need. You will see how nice it looks when you have 2 months of color fill up on that page.

 

BORED AT WORK?
Steve Skojec@SteveSkojec How do you balance job security vs. passion? Being bored/procrastinating means move on, but there are bills to pay!
ANSWER:

I had a job that I was bored with. I couldn’t take it. But I couldn’t leave. I had bills to pay.

So I started a business on the side. I did that by taking the skills of my job and at night applying them to other companies.

I also started having more fun at my job because my side gigs were giving me a lot more knowledge.

So I would get more responsibilities at my job until I felt like I was running two companies: the new company on the side plus managing all my employees at my current job.

Every day network with new people. Every day come up with ideas and give them to people for free. Every day come up with ideas that can make your job better.

Don’t waste time gossiping at work. That’s very bad. Don’t waste time at the water cooler. Work hard coming up with ideas and that will crowd out the boredom over time.

JOB OR STARTUP: WHAT SHOULD YOU DO?

Lefteri@TheFreeGreek Jobs: a step forward or backward? Do they teach obedience and destroy innovation, or are they an important step?

ANSWER:

Ok, lets stop with bullshitting ourselves.

There is no such word in the English language as “startup”. Don’t check your dictionaries! I’m telling you this. The word “startup” was made up at Silicon Valley tech meetups where 1000 guys are trying to have sex with 12 female “social media experts” who happen to be there. This is TRUTH I’m speaking out to you now.

But the question is: do you have passion for something, have you indulged and immersed yourself in that passion so you can easily say that you are in the top 0.0001% of the world in that passion? And have you seen gaps that nobody has filled in that passion. Then go ahead and fill them. And charge for that service you offer. That’s a real business.

Is a laundromat a startup? Is a deli? If I wanted to start a deli would I go to a VC? Again, “startup”, the word, was made up in garages in Northern California. If you use that word again you will fail.

And if you can’t follow the passion to money scenario I describe above, then get a job you love. Here’s the benefits of a job: a stable paycheck, insurance, you can still be creative, you can still help others, you can make friends, you can leave your work at the office. Make sure you still network and come up with ideas every day. You can be an entre-ployee. Follow the advice I give in this post. If you follow that advice you will become CEO.

And if people give you shit, or you hate the people you work with: then quit your job and find another.

By the way, the statistics on the number of people quitting in the job force right now are higher than ever. People don’t realize it’s these stats that show the economy is quietly booming.

Oh, one more thing: there’s nothing wrong with starting a business on the side while you work your job. That’s how I start EVERY business. Go for it.

WHAT IF MY IDEA IS SHOT DOWN?

Elena Moiseeva@elenawebstudio how I can I be more action oriented?It seems like I’m easily discouraged if my idea is not accepted by others from the 1 time

ANSWER:

You know why people shoot down your idea? Because you are smarter than them. And they don’t get it. Don’t even talk to them about your idea. They are stupid.

Don’t talk to anyone anymore. Build your idea.

And if it fails, like most do. Build the next one. I’m 44, you’re 24. In the past 20 years I’ve tried over 100 ideas. Maybe 90 of them were horrible.

But that’s life. Eventually I will stop worrying about ideas. And whether people accept them. And a huge weight will lift off my shoulders. I want to walk into a field and life down. But first, I still have some ideas I’m passionate about….

HOW CAN I HAVE THE WORLD’S FUNNEST JOB?

Patrick@CredibleLA Twitter Q&A: How can I be like you Man with Worlds Most Fun Job?

ANSWER:

Very easy: every day pick an expectation you have. It could be: I expect my kids to be star athletes. Or I expect to double my traffic today. Or even, I expect to be happy today.

Drop it.

Expectations are the clothes we wear.

Be a nudist. It’s fun.

 

(another great Spencer Tunick photo)

ARE BREAKS FROM SOCIAL MEDIA A GOOD THING?

Andrew Ferri@Andrew_Ferri I’m stepping away from Twitter until Monday. Are beaks from social media a good thing?

ANSWER

Breaking from anything is good. For the past week I’ve stopped coffee. It feels good to break patterns. I may take it up later. i don’t like to make things permanent. Why? Because we’re human and nothing is permanent.

Here’s the benefits of social media:

A) its always good to be around positive inspiring people.

B) 100 years ago we could only be around the people who lived near us.

C) Now we can find inspiring people in the 800 million people who joined the social media age. If we use social media correctly we can improve our lives, we can be around better people, we can learn from them, we can be friends with them.

Like you, Andrew. I feel I’ve known you and Abby for the past year. I don’t really know you guys. I barely know what you look like . But I feel we are all friends.

But a break from anything is good. Particularly when your body is telling you it’s starting to feel addictive qualities inside. Then you take a break until you feel better. Like any illness. You because you get sick sometimes in the world, doesn’t mean you leave the world forever.

WHY DOES EVERYONE GO TO COLLEGE?

This question was deleted so I will leave the questioner anonymous but basically the question was: Everyone knows college sucks so why do people go?

ANSWER:

Everyone goes to college because they are brainwashed. America has a religion and its precepts are college, housing, the constitution, “Good wars”, and other things I discuss in my book “I Was Blind But Now I See”

With college even my thirteen year old, who can’t even tell me who the Vice-President is, says, “But doesn’t college get you a good job?”

And my answer is: “of course not. You’ve been brainwashed by a cult that wants all your money and I have 5 years left to deprogram you.”

Every day, constantly ask the real agenda of the people sending you messages. Trace the money. College tuitions have gone up 10x while inflation has gone up 3x since 1977. And the government gets interest on every student loan. So of course there is huge incentive to brainwash you.

I’m making a kindle single now: “50 alternatives to college”. I hope when you read it, it helps you live a better life. College is very stressful now for parents and kids to pay for. Its indentured servitude as you pay back your loans.

And if you have  better title for my kindle single please tell me.

By the way, I encourage people to even question my agenda. Why I am I doing these Q&As. I’m up on a Friday night answering these questions. It takes about 7 hours of my time. I don’t charge a dime. And within 3-4 weeks I’m going to fully open up a service that I think will help people get healthier with The Daily Practice. I won’t charge a dime.

Not because I’m so charitable. I like to make money. But I like doing this. And sometimes its good to do what you love, what helps people , and what helps me to learn as well. Because I learn so much from the community that has built around this blog.

NOW I HAVE A QUESTION!

This post is about 6000 words. This is like the longest blog post in the history of the planet. And yesterday’s post was almost 2000 words and was initially part of this post. So that’s like 8000 words.

Do people like these posts? Would they prefer I break them into smaller posts spread out? I really enjoy doing them and grateful that you guys let me do them. I wish I could do a post this size every day but I’m afraid then nobody would read them. But if you have any recommendations on how I can better format them or make it easier for people to read, let me know.

Also, If you have any answers you want to share with the above people, please put them in the comments. My answers are only beginning points for conversations. Let’s help people together.

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