Why You Should Write Your Autobiography (Part 1): Unveiling Your Unique Story

[00:00:00] I just want to give a real simple reason why you should consider writing an autobiography. And now you may think to yourself, well what do I need to write an autobiography for? I write about sports or I write about science or I write fiction. That has nothing to do with autobiographies. And I'm going to tell you now that that is a myth of autobiography and we're going to see many examples. Many well-known famous books that you've read or studied or heard about are actually at heart autobiographies.

[00:00:33] This isn't your average business podcast and he's not your average host. This is the James Altucher Show. The simple definition of an autobiography is a book that you write about your life. Now let me ask you a question.

[00:00:55] Imagine if your great, great, great grandmother or grandfather or anybody in your distant family tree that you don't even know about now. Imagine if they had written an autobiography. Could have been just 10 pages. Could have been 50 pages. Could have been 500 pages. But they wrote a book describing what their daily life was like, what their troubles were, what their tragedies were, what the high points of their life were.

[00:01:20] Gossip about their neighbors and other relatives they had and how they met their husband or wife or, you know, what their job was like and what they did every day. Imagine if your great, great, great grand ancestor wrote this. I would be so happy if that happened. I have no idea even the names of my great, great grandparents, let alone what their days were like, what their life was like, how they were born, how they died, what their tragedies were. Imagine if you write your autobiography.

[00:01:48] Let's say nobody reads it. Who cares? Your great, great grandchildren and beyond are going to be so happy you wrote this book. Maybe even your children will be happy you wrote this book. But certainly the descendants who never got to know you but wish they did will be grateful you wrote something about your life. Doesn't matter if you're a good writer. They don't care. Doesn't matter if you include every page of your diary. They don't care. It doesn't matter if it's 10 pages or a thousand pages. They don't care.

[00:02:17] They want to get to know you somehow. And this is going to be the way they get to know you. So, of course, that's a very simple and basic definition of an autobiography. An autobiography doesn't necessarily mean it starts off with, I was born in Kansas on this day and here's the rest of my life. That's not what an autobiography is. So, there's several types of categories of books and there are more than these but I'm going to describe very broad categories of books.

[00:02:45] One, memoirs are obviously a type of autobiography. So, what's a memoir? It's somebody who's famous maybe tells their life story and it starts off, you know, I was born in this state and then I went to this school and then I was president of the United States and then there was a war. And then this is what I did after I was president of the United States and so on.

[00:03:08] So, many famous people, whether they're presidents or movie stars or historical figures or great writers, have written their own memoirs. And people are interested in reading them because they're kind of like a history of that period of time. Like, what was that leader thinking? What was that superstar thinking in their life? And how did they create such impact? People are interested in memoirs. And that's kind of the classic definition of an autobiography.

[00:03:36] But that is not at all the full definition of an autobiography. So, let me move on. What's another category of book? Well, nonfiction books. So, if you buy a book, like the book Sapiens by Yuval Harari, that's a nonfiction book about the history of the human race. Or Freakonomics is a nonfiction book about behavioral finance and the weird kind of economics and economic experiments that Stephen Leavitt and Stephen Dovner have done throughout their careers.

[00:04:06] Malcolm Gladwell, his book Blink or The Tipping Point or Outliers. These are classic nonfiction books. The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene. Classic nonfiction book. So, it's an example of a nonfiction book. Where I will state those are not very autobiographical at all. But we'll get to that in a second. Another type of category I want to talk about is what I call the mini memoir.

[00:04:30] So, it might not be the case that someone wants to write a memoir of their entire life, but maybe a very specific period of their life. So, we saw a lot of examples of this after a war for instance, like after World War II or the Vietnam War or even the Iraq War. Somebody comes back and talks about the experiences of being in that war. And that's like a mini memoir. They don't really talk about before the war or after the war.

[00:04:58] Or it's just this particular slice of time in their life. And they write it in a memoir style. So, I'm going to call that for now the mini memoir. A classic example might be Tim O'Brien in his book The Things They Carried. It's basically a collection of stories of things that happened to him in Vietnam. Now, when it was originally published, it was considered a collection of fictional short stories. But a lot of books then that were really autobiographical were really disguised autobiographies.

[00:05:27] And so, Tim O'Brien's collection The Things They Carried, it does not refer at all to the period in his life before the Vietnam War or after the Vietnam War. But it's a collection of stories of things that happened to him during the Vietnam War. And then another type of book, of course, is fiction. Now, there's all sorts of genres of fiction from thriller to romance to mystery to horror. But there's a kind of style of fiction. I'm going to call it autobiographical fiction.

[00:05:56] The book Post Office by Charles Bukowski. And there's a little interesting history to this. Charles Bukowski worked in the post office for about 20 or 30 years. And then finally, someone said to him, hey, you're such a great writer. He had published in various journals and magazines. Someone said to him, you're such a great writer. I'll give you $100 a week. And you could quit at the post office and just write. And Charles Bukowski quit his job. And then he got so nervous that what if he didn't succeed as a writer?

[00:06:25] He wrote his first book in just two weeks. It was called Post Office. Even though it was packaged as a novel, it was really, again, almost like a mini memoir of his time in the post office. And he had a great first line. It started as a mistake. Which I love that first line because what is he referring to? It. And what started? How did it start? And why did it start as a mistake? If it started as a mistake, why did he do it? Why was it done? So it was an intriguing way to start the story.

[00:06:53] And again, it was packaged by his publisher as a novel. But in reality, it was a mini memoir of his time in the post office. And finally, a category I call hybrids, where it seems like another type of book, but it's actually an autobiography. So for instance, I just mentioned two books that were packaged differently, but were in fact autobiographies. So Post Office was one where, again, it was packaged as a novel,

[00:07:20] but it was in fact a real true-to-life memoir of Charles Bucowski's time in the post office. Another book that I just mentioned was The Things They Carried, which was originally packaged as a fictional collection of short stories, but was actually a memoir of Tim O'Brien's time in the Vietnam War. And there's many other examples of hybrids. I'll give you a good non-fiction one. This book is called The Puzzler. It's by my good friend, A.J. Jacobs. He writes many, many memoirs.

[00:07:50] And this one specifically is about a year in his life where he just intensely dived into puzzles, solving them, meeting people who were obsessed with puzzles or who created puzzles. He traveled all over the world for puzzle contests. You would buy this book, The Puzzler, because you like puzzles and you want to learn about puzzles. And it's the history of puzzles in here.

[00:08:12] He goes everything from chess puzzles to Sudoku to crossword puzzles to he and his family compete in the World Jigsaw Puzzling competition. But it's completely also an autobiography. It uses autobiography techniques. So, for instance, I'll just start off with the first couple sentences. One winter morning several years ago, I got an email with some ridiculously exciting news. Or so I thought.

[00:08:36] The email was from a friend who informed me that the answer to one down in that day's New York Times crossword puzzle was me, A.J. Jacobs. The clue was A.J. Blank, author of The Know-It-All. My first reaction was, this is the greatest moment of my life. And it goes on and on where he talks about his own experiences diving into every type of puzzle.

[00:09:00] Like there's chapters on Japanese puzzle boxes, Rubik's Cube, chess puzzles, visual puzzles, ciphers and secret codes. But it's always A.J.'s experiences while he's exploring this entire subculture of puzzles. And if you think about it, many nonfiction books that you've read have probably had that format where it's someone's personal experience experiencing something true. So it's considered a nonfiction book, but it's actually a hybrid.

[00:09:30] It uses all the techniques of autobiography. And again, a great nonfiction book will often have two ways, two entries into the story. One is if you've been following A.J. Jacobs' life story and he's written many of these mini memoirs, you'll be excited. Oh, another A.J. Jacobs book.

[00:09:47] Or if you love puzzles and you're searching for a good book about puzzles and the whole subculture of puzzles and the history of puzzles and different types of puzzles and experiences you could have in the world of puzzle making, you might find this book, The Puzzler, and start reading it. So it's clearly a nonfiction book about puzzles, but it's also secretly deep down an autobiography. And there are many famous examples of hybrids. This is just one. This was a New York Times bestseller.

[00:10:15] I want to add, too, a lot of writers in particular and musicians and other artists are worried, is A.I. eventually going to be able to do what I do? For instance, if you're a writer, you might wonder, will A.I. write better books than me?

[00:10:29] If your books have an autobiographical component and you know the craft and skill of not just writing, but also the craft and skill of writing a book in an autobiographical style, then A.I. can never, ever, ever hope to compete with that. Humans are always on the frontier of knowledge.

[00:10:49] A.I. is great at summarizing that knowledge and putting it to use in new and unique ways, but ultimately, the frontier of all the knowledge is created and experienced by humans. And combining your own personal experiences with a topic that many, many people might relate to is a type of autobiography and a very valuable type of autobiography. Often, those books are extreme bestsellers. So what does that mean?

[00:11:16] A memoir, a mini memoir, maybe a fiction book that is largely autobiographical, maybe a nonfiction book, for instance, about puzzles or a self-help book or a book about the president of the United States, but actually at heart is really an autobiography. Why should you do an autobiography or an autobiographical book, I should say? Well, the first reason is other than that you love writing and writing is a creative art and you like being creative.

[00:11:45] The first important reason we have to address is money. You can make a lot of money writing. Maybe on the first book, you make a lot of money. Maybe on the second, the third. Some of it is quantity versus quality where you have to put out a lot of books to make money. But people do make an enormous amount of money writing. And I'll give you an example. Here's the book, Atomic Habits by my friend James Clear. This book has sold over 8 million copies. You could say it's about habits.

[00:12:15] In the subtitles, tiny changes, remarkable results, an easy and proven way to build good habits and break bad ones. Well, you might say this is a nonfiction book. It's not an autobiography. Let's take a look. The first chapter is called My Story. And here's the first paragraph. On the final day of my sophomore year of high school, I was hit in the face with a baseball bat.

[00:12:38] As my classmate took a full swing, the bat slipped out of his hands and came flying toward me before striking me directly between the eyes. I have no memory of the moment of impact. The bat smashed into my face with such force that it crushed my nose into a distorted U shape. The collision sent the soft tissue of my brain slamming into the inside of my skull. Immediately, a wave of swelling surged throughout my head. In a fraction of a second, I had a broken nose, multiple skull fractures, and two shattered eye sockets.

[00:13:06] So then you say to yourself, wait, that doesn't sound like a book about habits. He just told a story about how when he was in high school, a baseball bat flew out of his teammate's hand and smashed his skull in. What does this have to do with atomic habits? So it's interesting. In order to write a nonfiction book, in many cases, you have to experience life in such a way that it becomes important to you, in this case, to learn how to have habits. So the book becomes this story of James Clear, the author.

[00:13:35] It's like an autobiography almost of how this bat caused some severe medical problems. And he wanted to be a professional baseball player. His dad had been a semi-professional baseball player. He wanted ultimately to be a professional baseball player, but he couldn't even play for the rest of high school. I mean, he was in serious medical issues. They had to put him in a medically induced coma. They didn't really know how he was going to. They flew him to a hospital.

[00:14:01] Here are all the details of the flight to the hospital and how this was the same hospital his sister was at when she had leukemia years earlier. So you're getting very autobiographical details. And then in college, he did make the team. He finally started recovering from his medical issues, but he had to build up again. He had to build up slowly, one habit at a time. And this became his story of how he built such habits that he became an elite college athlete and then an elite writer.

[00:14:31] A writer to such a degree that he sold 8 million copies. I mean, his career is definitely writing. He made a lot of money from writing. You could say that's just the beginning of the book. It's not the rest of the book is about habits. But there's a lot of autobiographical material in this book. And I'll have more examples from this book and some other books. But money could be an important motivation to add autobiographical aspects to your book. Again, I'll use as an example, The Puzzler by A.J. Jacobs. A lot of people were interested in puzzles.

[00:15:01] They never heard of A.J. Jacobs. But I, for instance, loved A.J. Jacobs' writing. He had many memoirs or hybrids in his book, The Year of Living Biblically, in his book, The Know-It-All, and several other books. So I wanted to read the latest A.J. Jacobs book. And his books are major New York Times bestsellers, and he makes a great living from writing. Another author who I admire very much, and she's been on my podcast several times, is Annie Duke, who's a professional poker player. And she wrote a book called Thinking in Bets.

[00:15:31] Of course, I was interested in what she meant by thinking in bets. But I also wanted to learn more about her poker career. There's autobiographical aspects all throughout that book. Suffice it to say, money is an important reason to add autobiographical context to your books. So never be ashamed if money is the reason why you want to do something. My best-selling book that has made me the most amount of money, and I'll talk about it later, was a memoir-style book called Choose Yourself.

[00:16:00] And even though there were a lot of nonfiction aspects of that book or self-help aspects, it ultimately was a memoir. This episode of The James Altucher Show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Listen, as many of you know, I have gone broke. I've been depressed. All sorts of things have happened to me. And therapy has literally saved my life. And sometimes, though, it's expensive.

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[00:16:56] So visit BetterHelp.com slash James to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash James. But another important reason, and I shouldn't say this is a different reason, when you write an autobiographical book, you should have something unique to say. Now, again, if all you want to say is, this is my life and my book is for my great-great-grandchildren, you don't need anything else.

[00:17:26] But if you want a book that is widely read, you want to have something that's unique to say. Now, important reason to write an autobiographical book, though, is that no one has your life. No one has your unique experiences. So if you could take your unique experiences and create a book out of it, whether it's a memoir or a nonfiction book like Atomic Habits, or a fiction book like Post Office by Bukowski I mentioned earlier, or On the Road by Jack Kerouac is another example of a fictional novel

[00:17:55] that, in fact, was autobiography, then that's great. But in addition to saying something unique about your life and why your life's unique and why your experiences are unique, you should have some overriding philosophy or point that is the reason why you're writing. So for instance, I'll just use AJ as an example. No one had really written a book about the history of puzzles in such a unique way, where he's experiencing things as he learns things. So it's like edutainment.

[00:18:24] He also has a humorous style. So we follow his journey while he's learning about the history of puzzles and some of the most amazing puzzles in the world and the entire subculture of puzzles. He noticed there was a gap in the marketplace. No one had written a book like this. And certainly no one had written a book that had autobiographical components. So suddenly it becomes unique in two ways. If you have something interesting to say, and you have an interesting way to say it, i.e. by using your own life as an example, then that's great.

[00:18:50] Perhaps one of the most important books in history that's been written like this was Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. The book is an autobiography. It's a memoir of his experiences in a concentration camp. But there are many books that are like that. Many beautiful Nobel Prize winning books about someone surviving the horrors and stresses of concentration camps in World War II. But Viktor Frankl also, the book is titled,

[00:19:19] it's not titled My Journey in Concentration Camps or How I Survived Concentration Camps. But the title is Man's Search for Meaning. So he uses his own life to basically express his philosophy that the way he survived the concentration camp and the way you and me and everyone else can survive the tragedies that naturally come up in life is by always searching for meaning. What is the meaning of your life? If you're going through a bad situation,

[00:19:48] whether it's something as horrific as Viktor Frankl is going through or a bad breakup in a romance or the loss of a loved one or any sort of trauma, finding the meaning in your life and the meaning of these events will help you live and even live strongly and thrive past these tragic events. Nassim Taleb might call it anti-fragility after his book Anti-Fragile. But Viktor Frankl in this memoir,

[00:20:16] he basically doesn't conclude about his own experience. He takes his own life and says, this is why searching for meaning is important for everybody. Every person on earth needs to find meaning in their lives and that will give them the ability and the strength to get through bad experiences. So it's totally a nonfiction book. It's a philosophical book, but it's also an autobiography. So if you have something unique to say, you can sometimes say it much better and much more relatably. If he just said everybody needs to search for meaning,

[00:20:45] I probably would never have read the book. I would have said, oh, that's a nice notion. Good for him. But because his storytelling and the intensity of the story was so compelling, it's the combination of those elements that makes it one of the best-selling books and one of the greatest books of all time. So that's two reasons to write a book. Money and say something interesting that you don't think has been said before. And another reason, which is related to both, is opportunities. So it might be the case,

[00:21:14] very few people read my book. Let's say I write a book, like James Clear did, about habits or even something different. Let's say I write a book about persuasion and I talk about all the negotiating that I've done in my life and each type of negotiating and my own experiences negotiating and what were the bad negotiations, what were the good ones, what were the specific techniques. So it's a book about negotiation, but I use my own experiences. Maybe I'll also tell other people's stories, but let's say not that many people read it. Not that many people read books in general. The average book's read, you know, who knows,

[00:21:44] a thousand times or whatever. But now I might use that book to embark on a consulting career. Now I'm going to consult with CEOs about negotiating, or I might use it to embark on a speaking career. So I give inspiring talks or motivational talks at corporate retreats for people who want to learn more about negotiating and persuasion and so on. Or maybe I want to start a company that, you know, advises on negotiation or does the negotiating in, you know, high pressure, high impact deals. So opportunities,

[00:22:13] again, as I mentioned in the last course, if somebody has to choose between two equally talented people and they have to choose between the person who wrote a book and the person who didn't write a book, they'll choose the person who wrote a book. That could be you, particularly if you include these autobiographical concepts in your book to make it even that much stronger and more relatable. Who am I? Why am I? Why now? Why are those questions important? So to start off with, I'll give an example. James Frey,

[00:22:43] in the, about 20 years ago, wrote a memoir called A Million Little Pieces about his experiences as a really severe alcoholic, drug addict, criminal, and so on. And it's his experiences in rehab while he was trying to recover. And it's an incredibly well-written book. It sold millions of copies. It was a great story, great storytelling. I've read the book three or four times. It's a memoir. It's an autobiography. But anybody who's had

[00:23:12] any problems with addiction also strongly relates to it. And it also, for better or for worse, it was a scandalous book because it turned out the book was largely true but not 100% true. He had gone on Oprah to talk about his memoir, everything, and Oprah was shocked that some aspects of the book were fictional. So that's why I mentioned earlier sometimes a fictional novel could be largely autobiographical, which is why it's important to learn these skills and learn these techniques.

[00:23:42] Now, James Frey apologized, but the reality is it's still a great book and it was still largely a memoir and it was a book about drug addiction and alcoholism. So whether people want to argue how much was memoir and how much was fiction, I could say that's true for every fictional book and every nonfiction book. Some components are fiction, some components are nonfiction. But the publisher has to label it something and publish it. So anyway, we'll get more to his book later because it was very well written and it was a very well-structured memoir

[00:24:11] or novel, whatever you want to call it. But who was James Frey? James Frey, at that moment when he was experiencing the things in the memoir, he was an alcoholic. When he wrote the memoir or when he wrote the novel or the autobiographical novel, he was a writer. So if I was James Frey, I would say, who am I? I'm an ex-drug addict and I'm a writer. Then he had to ask himself, why am I? Well, first and foremost, and we see this from his later books, he wrote about

[00:24:40] his beginnings as a writer and how obsessed he was with writing all throughout this process ever since he was a kid. And he traveled around the world, you know, learning and experiencing and really studying the process of writing. His purpose, he felt his purpose in life, what gave him meaning, and we discussed Viktor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning, itself an autobiographical book. James Frey said, why am I? Well, I am a person who wants to share my experience with being addicted to drugs,

[00:25:10] being addicted to alcohol, being an alcoholic and how I recovered from it and maybe it will help people. And I could do this because I have an expertise in writing and expertise in communication. So that's why he wanted to write that book because he was a great writer and he had this really intense experience as an alcoholic and his recovery. And then why now? Well, he would have to answer that. I don't know why he felt right then was specifically the moment, but this was his first successful book. I think maybe actually it was his very first book

[00:25:40] and he sold tens of millions of copies. And why now? He probably felt I'm sufficiently good as a writer. I've gotten through this experience. Now is the time I'm going to succeed as a writer and I'm going to write the most intense story of my life. Everything came together and so that was the moment he did it. Or take James Clear. We talked about James Clear before with Atomic Habits. Who was he? Well, at one point he was a high school baseball player who had a horrific accident that caused him

[00:26:09] intense medical trauma where he had to build up his skills from scratch. And then he became more and more of an expert on habits because he had to learn step by step the habits that would make him a great college athlete which is what he became despite having these medical issues. And it was very hard for him and he writes about this in the book. It's an autobiographical book Atomic Habits even though a large portion of the book is about how to get good habits and what are good habits and how I can get better

[00:26:39] and achieve success through his approach to atomic habits his why when he answers the question why am I he became a writer he started collecting all his habit related blogs and articles on a site called jamesclear.com he was starting to get millions of visitors a month so he felt like compelled to write his story Habits at that time was getting more and more popular in 2014 I think it was Charles Duhigg wrote a book called The Power of Habit that became a big bestseller so

[00:27:09] his why became he had this intense story this intense trauma he built up this expertise on habits and he was becoming a writer while he was writing about habits on his blog so his why was again he felt compelled to help people to learn about habits and he had something unique to say people were only just starting to write about habits then and it was becoming like a popular non-fiction category why now well he wrote this book

[00:27:39] in 2018 but he had spent years first working on his website he got millions of visitors on his website then he got a book deal because publishers noticed he had millions of readers already and he collected enough information about habits that it was time to write and also the publishing world just seen that a book called The Power of Habit became a major bestseller so everybody wanted him to write Atomic Habits so I want you to think about who are you what has been the defining moments of your life and we'll talk a little bit

[00:28:09] more about that later then why are you what what's your mission what do you feel is your mission in life going forward you don't have to know the answer just have to have some clue make it up even but put down an answer to why are you and then erase it put down another answer why are you and then if you're going to write about these things why not so for instance when I wrote about Choose Yourself so Choose Yourself was a book I wrote when I was

[00:28:38] I had overcome many many failures in business and life and I had made money and I got gotten broke and then I made money and I got broke and I'd gotten so suicidally depressed that I had to really figure out how to come back from it and part of coming back I realized nobody was going to choose me for anything I pitched TV shows people said no I pitched books to publishers people said no I got rejected from jobs I got rejected from opportunities so much rejection

[00:29:08] and people were always saying no no matter I wanted to raise money for a business I wanted to succeed in a business that didn't succeed ultimately I figured I was always waiting for the gatekeepers to choose me and I decided instead and I learned the steps by which I should choose myself and when I started writing about this it was right after the great recession from 2008 to 2009 and many people were struggling with how to come back from the massive failures that tens of millions

[00:29:38] of people had experienced during this great recession and so that was the perfect moment where my book was very relatable still relatable now I get the benefit of writing a book like that is I get letters every single day thanking me for the book and people telling me their stories and I'm always very grateful for those letters but it was particularly back then from 2010 to 2013 that I was writing about these experiences that many people coming out of the great recession related to so 2013 was the perfect why now moment

[00:30:07] and I was able to answer it people need this and I wrote the book and it was immediately successful was immediately on all the bestseller lists and I was very very happy with it well now if you're going to write an autobiography we need to know what happened in your life and you may think you know but we're going to go a little deeper I want you to go to your Google document or write on your notepad or whatever you want to do and answer these questions very important

[00:30:37] you have to write them down don't just think out loud about them when you get home open up the computer and answer these questions by actually writing the answers down so what are the most important events in your life now again we're not thinking about autobiography yet I just want you to make a list for instance Tim O'Brien who wrote The Things They Carried and it was a book of his basically his memoir of the Vietnam War sure the Vietnam War and the specific events covered in this book were very important

[00:31:07] events in his life they're not the only important events in his life I'm sure his relationship with his parents was important I'm sure having his own children was important I'm sure getting his first job or getting his first book published was an important event in his life I don't know all the important events in Tim O'Brien's life but on his list of the most important things that ever happened to him one of those items was the Vietnam War so I want you to write just again we're not thinking about what we're going to write about yet but the idea is write all of the events that you feel right now

[00:31:37] this second are the important events in your life write at least five items okay don't write a hundred items write between five and ten another question what people have had the biggest impact on your life was it a high school teacher or was it your parents was it your grandma who always took care of you when you came home from school was it a professor or a first boss or someone you fell in love with who treated you very poorly and broke your heart or a colleague at work

[00:32:06] or a soldier you fought in a war with I don't know what are the most important people in your life and by the way it doesn't have to be someone who's alive or even real it could be a historical person who you're obsessed with or who was your hero or it could be a fictional person who was your hero just write down again five to ten who are the most important people in your life another question this almost sounds like I'm doing a job interview but it really becomes important for any autobiographical writing

[00:32:35] what are your strengths and weaknesses you know for instance I wrote a book called The Power of No now this was a Wall Street Journal bestseller it sold many copies I did very well with it and even now a decade later people run into me in the street and said oh The Power of No gave me the ability to say no the reason I wrote that book was because I was really horrible at saying the word no to people I had no boundaries in my life and it was really hard for me to say no

[00:33:04] so I had to learn over decades how to just say no and put up boundaries in my life and then I wrote about it so it was an autobiographical book about a very non-fiction topic which is the power of saying no and how that makes your life simply better by having those sorts of boundaries but it was by knowing that this was a weakness of mine that turned into a strength hopefully I still have that strength it's not always so clear but it was by understanding my weaknesses that I was able to turn that

[00:33:34] not only into a strength but into an autobiographically based book that no one would say oh that's your autobiography it's basically the autobiography of my ability to say no but in some cases I'm very concrete and give specific examples and I tell stories of other people and it's ultimately like kind of a self-help book with a lot of autobiographical content so write three to five strengths three to five weaknesses and move on to the next question next question is what are your hopes and dreams for the future do you want a world where there's world peace

[00:34:03] do you want a world where more people know about puzzles or more people are able to survive tragic events in their life or more people want to know about what really happens behind the scenes in the poker world imagine what the future is like five years ten years fifteen years from now what do you think is going to be important to people what do you think are solutions for problems that the world might have again you might not write about any of this at all we're just answering questions and making lists let's have fun with it

[00:34:32] next question what lessons have you learned from your major experiences so remember the major events that you talked about before you don't even have to say specifically what the lessons are that you learned but oh when you had your first child what did you learn the first year what did you learn the fifth year the tenth year when you had a certain kind of job what did you learn when you got thrown out of graduate school like I did what did I learn from that experience when you went through a big breakup

[00:35:01] what did you learn Susan Cain in her book Quiet it's a book about her experiences being an introvert and feeling really uncomfortable with herself because she was so introverted but she turned that weakness again into a strength because she learned all these lessons about what it means to be an introvert she learned them not only from her own experiences but the experiences of other people who shared their stories with her historical examples scientific research and so on and her book called Quiet

[00:35:30] became a major bestseller so pick a couple of these important events in your life or pick one of your strengths or one of your weaknesses or pick one of the people who had a big impact on your life what lessons did you learn put down five to ten events slash people slash strengths or weaknesses and what lessons did you learn and again it doesn't have to be what you learned by yourself personally it could be lessons you've learned from other examples or from research but it's good to include some of your own personal experiences and finally

[00:36:00] write this question down and ask if you were to write any autobiographical story what are one or two things you hope readers get from it and I was once talking to Stephen Dovner who co-wrote Freakonomics and I asked him what percentage of a book a non-fiction book do you think you remember and he replied and I was surprised by this but I thought about it it was a very true answer he replied maybe one to two percent so if people read your book they're probably going to only remember one to two percent of it basically the important

[00:36:29] takeaways they might remember oh it was a beautifully written book or oh this guy had intense stories but they'll take one or two or three or four whatever two percent is they'll take those lessons from the book so again what are the one two three items that if you write any book you want the reader to take away from it and you can get as specific as you want or as general as you want so these are kind of the basic questions you need to run through before you start your autobiography

[00:36:58] let me ask you a question if you were looking for dating advice would you ask Brad Pitt or would you ask me now I hope you answered me because Brad Pitt doesn't have any dating advice for you I'm speaking if you're a guy if you're a girl maybe ask Angelina Jolie for dating advice or my wife Robin so the reason I'm asking this is because Brad Pitt is not going to tell you anything useful for dating he just snaps his fingers and he can date anyone he wants

[00:37:28] he's a handsome rich movie star and millions of people already love him and he doesn't really have to work hard to go out there and find someone to date and fall in love with but me on the other hand I've always been kind of like an offbeat weird looking guy I'm the type of person who is very you know sometimes I make money sometimes I lose a lot of money there's a certain risk involved so if I'm giving you dating advice particularly again

[00:37:57] the weird looking part is key here I'm probably going to give really good advice that I had to try a lot harder than Brad Pitt to be even remotely successful when dating this is a long way of saying that it's the difficult and stressful and even traumatic situations in life that are what give you wisdom and the ability to move forward and a story to tell nobody wants to hear the story of a super rich

[00:38:26] handsome person who succeeds at everything in life and then dies there's not a single story in the world or a TV show in the world that has that storyline everybody has got problems and it's from your problems and from adversity that not only you learn valuable lessons in life hopefully maybe some people don't learn those lessons and slip backwards but I want you to write what difficult situations you've experienced in your life and I'll give you

[00:38:56] some categories so remember these categories maybe you've experienced some kind of trauma and abuse in your life maybe you've experienced addiction in your life like I described with James Fray's book A Million Little Pieces maybe you've had mental health issues so I don't know if you remember the story of Sylvia Plath a very good poet she ultimately committed suicide because of depression well she wrote a book about dealing with mental illness and it was called The Bell Jar and became a hugely successful book

[00:39:25] maybe you've had in your life various illness and health challenges so I remember this book that was a very beautiful book it sold millions of copies bestseller but it had an unfortunate story it's called When Breath Becomes Air and it's by Paul Kalaniti he was a professor at Carnegie Mellon he got diagnosed with cancer and he knew he was going to die from it so as he was dying in his last days he wrote this autobiography about how he was dealing with his upcoming death and he called it When Breath Becomes Air

[00:39:55] sold millions of copies maybe you've experienced somewhat recently loss and grief maybe you've experienced the loss of a loved one and every category I'm saying write it down trauma addiction loss and grief and so on write these categories down maybe some of these categories will resonate with you and you'll have something to list on these items and maybe you've never been addicted to anything you don't have to put anything again we're not writing the book yet we're not figuring out what the topic

[00:40:24] of an autobiography should be or what it should center around we're not just putting Vietnam War or Iraq War and then that's our book we're just putting everything you're being like a little bit of a detective on yourself you're investigating yourself and things that might be in the subconscious and it comes bubbling up and before you know it you're making your list so loss and grief a good example is Joan Didion's book The Year of Magical Thinking in the same year her husband died and her daughter died and she wrote

[00:40:53] a beautiful book about dealing with the loss and grief another one that's almost a little bit more on the non-fiction self-help side my good friend Amy Morin wrote a massive bestseller 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do well how did she become mentally strong was she born that way or was she preaching from the mountaintop that everyone should be mentally strong no she got there the hard way like everybody does in a span of a few years in her early 20s her mother died and then her husband

[00:41:23] died at the age of 26 and other things happened to her and she had to deal with this pain and depression and sorrow and grief and she wrote an excellent book that is autobiographical but is not called my story it's called 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do and that became a franchise now she has 13 Things Mentally Strong Kids Don't Do 13 Things Mentally Strong Women Don't Do 13 Things Mentally Strong Parents Don't Do and on and on it became like a franchise so she included

[00:41:53] other stories her own stories scientific research and so on so again that all came out of her dealing with this loss and grief in her life what are some other topics that could be difficult questions for you you know identity and coming of age did you have a hard time kind of becoming the person you are today was there you know did you grow up one way and now you're another way like you grew up some way traumatic or you grew up in a cult and now you got out of that and you've lived to tell the tale and now you can

[00:42:23] talk about it so is identity the difficult situation for you socio-political challenges could be very personal The Color Purple by Alice Walker is a semi-autographical novel about a main character's issues with slavery and even if it was about your ancestor it's still something that you're dealing with in your life now so she wrote The Color Purple which is more metaphorical but also autobiographical probably the most famous memoir

[00:42:53] of all time and obviously I don't think she intended this as a memoir was The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank so that's the memoir it was a book about World War II and the Holocaust but ultimately it was her very personal experiences and her diary she didn't live long enough to see the book published unfortunately but it's a very valuable and important memoir in history make a list call it obstacles what obstacles have you encountered in life so for instance there's a book I think they made it

[00:43:22] into a movie Hidden Figures and it was about the women who worked on NASA's first rocket launch you know they were kind of not really talked about much in history so the book was called Hidden Figures and it's a memoir of the story of these women who were critical for the US space program so what obstacles have you overcome like for me when I wrote Choose Yourself I had to you know I was writing about obstacles of going broke and then being suicidally depressed and how I came back from that

[00:43:52] or when I wrote The Power of No I'm writing about you know how difficult it was for me to say no and how I learned to overcome that we keep talking about James Clear but he learned how to get good habits when it seemed like his sports career was going to be over and Viktor Frankl he wrote about overcoming the obstacle of surviving the Holocaust by his you know figuring out that having meaning in his life like he would write about how every night he would dream of one day seeing his wife again

[00:44:22] and that gave him meaning in life and the ability to survive World War II and sadly he never saw his wife again but also meaning in his life was he knew if he got out of this experience he was going to write about it and that became Man's Search for Meaning so all of these difficult situations and obstacles and adversity and loss and grief and war and addiction and socio-political challenges and so on this is the meat this is the meat in your life which you're going

[00:44:51] to be able to dive in and find the gold the gems that you can offer in a book through your story and again your story becomes the backbone but you can include other stories you can include other experiences you can include scientific research that sort of proves out your theories and on and on but it starts with the things that you personally know that's really authentic to you so now you've answered lots of questions you asked you answered who am I why am I why now

[00:45:21] you answered all the basic questions about the important events in your life the important people in your life your strengths and weaknesses other situations that might be or people that might be important to you and then we got into the difficult situations the obstacles the loss the grief the addictions whatever all the adversity now how do we mix that up into a pot and make an autobiography well it might be the case that you've been through a divorce well I've been through a divorce as well but the way

[00:45:51] you've handled it and the way I've handled it are very different well how different well now we look at our list well I might have also been dealing with drug addiction maybe that's why I got a divorce or maybe I had a mentor who was able to help me stop me from committing suicide or helping me to learn to say no better you know that's where you have this list now the important people in your life or your strengths and weaknesses our strengths and weaknesses might be different maybe you came from a different type of background loss was impossible

[00:46:21] or dealing with loss was very difficult or less difficult or who knows so it's by combining all these things that you know maybe while someone was at a war they experienced loss back home so look at all of your lists now which where are the intersections because the more intersections you have the more unique your story is and you're going to build on that and you're going to start having ideas what your autobiography is and again you could just write your autobiography

[00:46:50] based on all these different intersections and that's the story of your life or you can take one of these intersections and that's the mini memoir or you can go one step further and instead of saying oh this is the story of how I learned to say no you make it a book about how to say no and you're just using your autobiographical story to be the backbone of the book the way Susan Cain does with the book Quiet about being an introvert or the way Jocko Willink

[00:47:20] with his book Extreme Ownership so Jocko Willink was a Navy SEAL who was in Afghanistan Iraq he's been to all these recent wars and he was in incredibly difficult situations where he had to be a leader in these difficult situations he didn't write a book called My Experiences in Iraq he wrote a book called Extreme Ownership the importance of taking ownership taking responsibility and not blaming others for both the good and the bad things in your life so you can decide am I going to tell

[00:47:49] an autobiography of my whole life using all these lists I just made am I going to write a mini memoir or am I going to write a hybrid like a non-fiction book that covers the bigger picture of these experiences but you use your experiences to drive the book forward I hope you answered all these questions and I hope it gives you a lot of food for thought now we're going to go on to writing the autobiography are you looking for your next case Pluto TV has all

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