Escaping A Counterfeit Life by mousuf

Design, Layout and Typeset by Quise Kalam

Contents Dedication

Acknowledgements

About The Author

Why this book

Introduction

Today is not your last day but theirs

Build an inspiring Scene

Daily practice where success outnumbers failure

Why gratitude is the ultimate miracle

Become an idea machine

Escape a counterfeit life

Dedication To all those who have in the past And continue to support me I hope to give much more back to you

Acknowledgements Okay, a secret. This would have been impossible with out my grandma making 11 cups of coffee, 10 cups of tea. Also at the cafĂŠ around the corner with 6 latte. I life is good when you have the opportunity to sit down, skip work and write. Also I drew few pictures along the way â&#x20AC;&#x201C; unrelated to the book. My childhood brother/cousin, Always there for me. Tripod, Mizan and Quise (additional thanks to Quise for doing the design part and always being there). Those two are superheros. Credit for me writing this book must go to two people. James Altucher. I was influenced by him since I started my first business experiment. I started to read his stuff. All the ideas in here, I was influenced him and his work. All ideas are what I have been practicing for years. I started to write like him. Boy is his stuff entertaining to read. Also Stephen Covey for his idea that has been changing personal habits of all business people. 7 habits are those to build integrity in to people. Check out their books, available online.

Find your online mentors. You will be amazed how much they can change the way you build yourself and make money.

About The Author Mousuf Chowdhury is a trying young entrepreneur and is committed to helping the disadvantaged as this is what got the ball rolling in the first place. Whilst unemployed and out of luck, his opportunity at finding the golden goose egg came in the form of Mike Tyler, founder of Aid For Trade, Mousuf started to volunteer with the charity with teaching business start-up in 9 developing countries. Now 3 years on, just turned 25, he is still with Aid For Trade working with creating and training Savings Groups in remote villages. Whist this has been going on, Mousuf was lucky to have Mike as a business mentor â&#x20AC;&#x201C; with vast experience. This and from many helping superstars characters in my life, was able to experiment with various business start-ups. Having won successes and lost many, the quest became to look for meaningful way to find and explore passion with much laughter. Money became a side effect of finding this. Here you will find his personal experiences and many mistakes one can make by the time one can before turning 25!

Why This Book It’s simple. Life gets complicated. We lose the will to live. Dang! Why? Because life is F***ed up. At times. How do you get out of this BEEPING BEEPING situation? Through preparation as you become the machine, jerking out ideas. Mr. Cyborg. Being grateful for the world. Building you scene that’s filled with superheroes Also, beating Usain Bolt in a 100m race. A simple – short – steps to being creative in following your passion in ways you can achieve them. Ideas are the key to open doors to opportunities in the room that you have been locked in by the counterfeit world. It’s a new world.

Introduction Time is not money. All those slick guys in their suits, focusing on you lingo with: "Time is money! Hurry, I am losing money! Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re a waste of timeâ&#x20AC;? It's not true. I feel bad for them. Cheapening their time like that. This is something I worked out on my way becoming the master at losing money. I have very clever ways of coming up ways of making my money explode into dust. Like magic. I can make money, then I can lose it, but I know I can make it back again. We'll see. I'm a money roller coaster. Every time though, every time I lose even five minutes of my time, I will never make it back. It's gone forever. No magic can bring that back. I have not yet figured out how to make those five minutes back and God have I tried. Even begged. Even cried. Like trying to hold onto a cup-worth of water with my bare hands. Slip through the fingers, disappear on the ground. Gone. All the good times I want back. All the mistaken words that came out of my mouth. If I'm five minutes late coming home to my family and friends, those are five minutes of their lives I will never see. Five minutes of twinkle. Lost. When I spend five more minutes on a phone call with someone I don't really like, as opposed to five minutes with those I do love, then no

matter how much I try. From now until the day I die I will never have those five minutes back with her. Five minutes evaporated into the thin, invisible air. Please give me those five minutes back. Losing ÂŁ5. That is something that's annoying. â&#x20AC;&#x153;DAMN IT!!â&#x20AC;?

Imagine Mozart, playing wrong notes constantly. Losing a single moment with someone I love is the wrong note. My life is a beautiful musical composition. I am practising on how to play it seamlessly. I fail many times but I try. If everyone would once in their day, step back and listen to their own composition. Maybe we can hear the beautiful and also the wrong notes. Our live has been given a very beautiful gift. Thank you, universe, for this amazing gift I shall treasure. With gratitude and combining it with creative ideas, all my passion will explode with in this gift. Now, for the next note of this composition. And the choice to make it a work of art.

Today is not you last day but theirs I am travelling on business today, well it’s a lie. That’s how I start me chapters, with a lie. I truth, I have already travelled. Today I have business to do. I have 1 rule: Never travel on business. You never make a pound when you travel on business. The second half of that rule will not be broken today. I will not make a pound today. But sometimes, many times, it’s good to just put a “face to the name”. I put that in quotes. It’s most certainly because I get calls, with every helpful calls, I have this big list of names that need faces to them. I’m in a horror movie where everyone has blank faces and are chasing me. It’s hard to trust the ghost from a horror movie. Today I am going to be the hero of other people’s horror movie. Here I am. Ya alright Newcastle!!! If today was my last day would I be in Newcastle? No. 12

But I don’t get why people ask that. “Live today as your last!”…it’s like jamming down a poor individual’s throat … “Be happy …. OR DIEEEE!” If it was my last day, I most certainly be walking outside naked somewhere, for the fun of it, I’d tape black cross across my nipples. It’s my last day, I don’t have to worry about the pain of taking the tape off. I fell asleep on the plane on the here, I woke up thinking, stressful thoughts. I told myself “It’s a very sunny weather and probably my thoughts are irrational. I’m going to make an appointment with myself to reconsider these thoughts again when I reach my aunt’s house (free accommodation, boom)”. The idea is that these thoughts will seem totally irrelevant when I am there. I couldn’t go back to sleep, too noisy, I sat up, drank my £4.00 water bottle (guess which in land airlines) and then looked at the old lady sitting next to me. What if SHE died??! Now we are talking about something here. Then I would be alive and I would have to deal with it. I would be sad and cry? I hope I will be nice to her for rest of the flight just in case chokes on her £4.99 peanuts and she dies.

Once landed I carried her bags till she reached her family. She offered me money. Can I take it and still count it as a good deed, I thought it won’t. I hope she is still alive. So that has been my golden rule, today. I’m going to live life as if everyone else is going to die. Everyone I meet today I’m going to really imagine that today is their last day. Then I will:  Be kind to them  Try to help them be less stressed  Try to fulfil their dreams for the day  Not talk badly about them. Don’t talk badly about someone about to die  Hug them if it’s appropriate. Kiss them. Not the people I’m going to “business” with later. That might be too much. But I will be nice to them anyway.  Really listen to them. I will listen to everyone’s last words today without interrupting them. Even if I can finish their sentence because I am Buzz Lightyear and 14

light years ahead of them. I will let them finish their sentences without my stupid voice piercing the air with its presumption.  Learn from them. I will picture as if god is speaking to me through everyone else. I will listen carefully for clues that I can piece together later like Sherlock Holmes, he pays super attention. These are the only clues that god will ever give me so don’t interrupt. Maybe I can convince him to take a selfie with me.  Don’t opinionate all over them. What does it matter if I change their minds today? Do they really need my fantastic thoughts? They are going to die anyway. Rest in peace my baby. I feel like my life will be better if I practice living it as if everyone else is going to die today. I’m going to live forever. But today I am going to be the hero like the claw, save them like they were saved at the end of Toy Story 3.

Build An Inspiring Scene Every day, I try to understand something new. I don’t think or know if I understand anything in my life. It’s complicated. When I do learn something new, of course I ask myself, “Why didn’t I learn that before?” It took me a long time to come to my current understanding. So far I have gotten is the ability we have to survive, to be calm, to even be happy, to possibly be successful. Only last year did I understand that it shoots entirely from the quality of the people you surround yourself with. I have cut out many over this year. Thanks to a girl, I was heartbroken. I was in the wrong. I am sorry. I cringe at the thought. They say don’t bring emotions to work. Girl, thank you for making me realise. It’s important to realise it’s good to mix everything up. It work, okay! For only a year I have surrounded myself with good people. Caring people. I have reached new heights. Thank you James for inspiring me to write this mini book. It works. Trust me!

Surround yourself with creative, smart, good, honest people and good things will happen. You are your scene. Good things come to you.

Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs went to Columbia together (not sure if Burroughs did for long but he chilled out there). Ginsberg got into publishing and helped Kerouac get “On the Road” published which became the at one point become the bible for 22 year old kids everywhere. When Burroughs was sick from drugs in Morocco and Ginsberg was visiting him he found random scraps of writing all over the floor of Burroughs place. He pieced them together (barely), edited them (just about), and got it published as the now-classic “Naked Lunch”. Together, the three of them consistently helped their friends get books published, art sold, poetry read, and so on and forth. And even though their styles were totally different they created one movement that every writer at the time wanted to be a part of, The Beat Movement.

Around the same time, the painter Jasper Johns lived with the artist Robert Rauschenberg and they both liked the company of dancer Merce Cunningham and the composer John Cage. When they all met Leo Castelli, who sold their works for millions. When they all first met, all of them were complete unknowns.

In Silicon Valley: Facebook, Palantir, Youtube, Tesla, LinkedIn, Yelp, Yammer, and more were all either largely funded or started by ex-employees of PayPal. HBO, Showtime, Viacom, Starz, FX, Universal, and shows like “Mad Men”, “House of Cards”, etc were all started by a core group of people who worked together at the same time at HBO.

Comedians like Louis CK, Jerry Seinfeld, Larry David, Chris Rock, they all worked together in no-name clubs for years, each opening for the other over and over again, until they broke out one by one and pulled their talented friends along with them. I want to be in the same room as them. They would release laughing gas like cows release methane. 19

Before I spent all my time building a “scene”, I realised it’s not working for me. I had made an epic failure. When I needed them the most. They weren’t there. I felt very lonely and scared. I watched stand-up comedy through all the free times I had. my therapeutic remedy. It was either none of these people really liked me, or they thought me a failure or I didn’t like them or I don’t know what. It wasn’t clicking. I was getting kicked off projects, losing all of my gigs, losing all of my mind, failing at opportunities, not doing with good given opportunities and this was eating away into every area of my life’s flesh: getting heart broke (I didn’t believe in that before- it’s a myth), losing trust, going broke. I kept hearing about people talking behind my back. Whatever mayn. It doesn’t matter. It was the wrong scene for me. Rat poison them all. Watching an episode of CSI stopped me.

Instead of making me feel creative and innovative I just kept feeling worse and worse. When people with positive energy are around each other, more energy is created. 1+1= 5. 20

More art is created. More innovation with more integrity with more opportunities. You literally can eat less if you are around people who are giving you energy and bringing you to a higher level. So I started to write and draw. I figured I had nothing to lose. And nothing really to gain. I didn’t know what scene I was in. I just wanted to return to what I loved at the age of 16. I moved from old scenes, old places. Fresh start. Now I had nothing and was getting ready to go broke again, rely on savings I made for Virgin Galactic Flight in to space. I had £1,000. After starting and many projects and then constantly failing. And then bit by bit I met amazing people. People from all around the country. Around the globe or orientated around people doing what I was doing. People are inspiring. They do amazing things. It’s true. Trust them. People would send me an e-mail. Or call me with some ideas. Or promote my work. Or make an introduction to someone amazing. And I would do the same. We’d all like each other’s stuff. We’d all take time out from our own work to help each other.

I’ve now been all over the country meeting these people, learning from them, really creating new opportunities for myself and for them. Everyone helping everyone, where we can, if we can, in the only ways we can. I felt bad I had no Scene in 2009. But that doesn’t matter. When you do something you love, or even just something you’re good at (you will learn to love what you are good at) or even something you do with authenticity and integrity (because then you become the trusted source of a scene) then people will gravitate towards you. How do you make most of a Scene? It works. Every single person I’ve met who I consider part of my Scene now has offered me opportunities to make money. Trust the scene. Some have worked. Some failed, miserably but we have always worked other ways. There are many ways people can support and help. Artists and entrepreneurs never work by themselves. There’s always a context. There’s always others from around the world that you can trade ideas with and build ideas on each other. If you think you aren’t a creator, then I’m not going to believe you. We all have our secret passions in the desk drawer. Open the draw, clear the cobwebs, we all can find our way to the people who inspire us. The people we admire and want to emulate and want to help. 22

That’s when it becomes fun. Play with new friends. It becomes like building a city out of sticks in a forest. Not caring about what has happened before or will happen afters. Let’s just build the coolest stuff with our sticks. Let’s make it bigger and bigger. There a lot of colourful flowers, lets make it more and more colourful. And if all houses fall we can laugh and start again. I few weeks ago, I called up my friend. We had a mini phone meeting after 2 months. We inspired each other. We built British Young Asian Enterprise after 30 minutes. We’ve since explored few cities, different meetings and fun events. Plus helped with each other in business and helped other people in our “Scene”. He has made an introduction. We wrote some ideas down. Then we got an invitation. Who knows? We will go! Fun things will happen. Dots might connect more in the future. Building a scene mixes up past, present, and future to create a life of reward.

How do you build a scene: 

Find the people whose work inspires you. Businesses, writings, art, whatever.



Come up with ideas for them. How can you help them? (Make 10 lists every day!)



Start doing your own work. Share with the people you like. Interact with the people who interact with you sincerely.



Try to meet the people who inspire you. Some of them are busy. Some would like to meet.



Go to conferences and meet the people who inspire you.



Every day work. Every day create. Every day share. The people you share with slowly solidify into your Scene.



And then…repeat. Never stop helping. Always be honest and show gratitude.

Never stop building each other up. Never stop making introductions (with permission from each side before you make an intro). Go out there. Play. Have fun. Laugh. It works. Trust yourself.

Daily Practice Where Success Outnumbers Failure I told her, “I’m such a lucky guy.” She said, “But are you lucky in love?”. I was in high school. I don’t believe in love. What the hell was she talking about? Love was playing basketball and the ball didn’t care what I did with it. It would be years believed in it, that was after realising I couldn’t have it. Luck was all about winning a game of 21. Or finding £50 on the ground. Or seeing a unicorn when driving along the country side. But it’s different now. Constantly checking in and out of the Hospital of luck. I need luck to be constantly transfused into me or I will run out of it. Without any luck, I’m dead. For me, good luck equals happiness. On a scale of happiness from 0 to 10, I think I’m about a seven. A massive improvement. When I couldn’t be out of my bed, I was probably about a 0, big fat naught. Maybe even

negative. Thanks to my scene and sticking to three simple goals, I been getting lucky. The only 3 goals in life:  I want to be happy.  I want to eradicate unhappiness in my life.  I want every day to be as smooth as possible. No hassles

I am sticking to simple goals, or else, I can’t achieve them. In 25 years there has been so many times in my life that everything seemed so low. I felt like I would never achieve the above three things. My boy stopped me from running away. Starting a fight and the moments when I though the world would be better off without me. All these times I was stuck at a crossroads. I never thought I would figure out which road to take. Each time I bounced back. “How the hell did I do that?!”

Those times were extremely bad yet when I looked back and looked deep in my ability to bounce back. There were common threads. Each time there were only 4 things. There were always in place in the process of me bouncing back. I promised myself to not become a lost puppy again. Because when I once saw a lost puppy, I thought maybe I can adopt it. I feel sad. I don’t want to feel adopted by a stranger. I promised to on a daily basis to practise these 4 things. Daily Practice  Physical Being in shape. Do some exercise. Run a marathon. I try to wake up 5am every morning and work out in my living room and in the summer, play round the world on a basketball court. Dog walkers were sometimes bemused as the sun’s still not quite out. Now having injured my ankle, and can’t walk as I write this. I practice breathing with upper body yoga on my floor. 20-30 minutes. Everyday, it becomes amazing how

much more confident you feel. Healthier you feel. I am not saying you need to get ripped or shredded. Go to they gym, take some steroids. Nope. Just be healthy. You can’t be happy if you aren’t healthy. Also, this helps your mind better deal with its daily anxieties. If you can breathe easy when your body is in pain then its easier to breathe during difficult situations. Next time you panic, make a conscious decision to for 10 seconds to stop everything and breath very deep. E-mail me at hello@mousuf.co.uk and tell me, what disaster it’s saved you from. Here’s other things that are a part of this but a little bit harder, practise it, you will feel much better. 1. Wake up by 4-5am every day. 2. Go to sleep by 8:30-9. (Sleep 8 hours a night!) 3. No eating after 5:30pm. Your body can’t be happy if indigested at night.

 Emotional If someone is a drag on me, I cut them out. If someone lifts me up, I bring them closer. Building my scene

I mature now! Lets talk maturity at this moment. If the plane is going down, I’d put the oxygen mask on your face first. Family, friends, people I love – I always try to be there for them and help. In the last year I have pressed the delete button on many. I no longer get close to anyone bringing me down. If it’s you. I am sorry. This rule can’t be broken. Energy leaks out of you if someone is draining you. And I never owe anyone an explanation. Explaining is draining. Another important rule for this daily practice is: always be honest. Nobody is honest anymore and people are afraid of it. Honesty is fun. Try being honest for a day (those of you who may want to, don’t be, I repeat, don’t be hurtful). Its amazing where the boundaries are of how honest one can be. Mine is much bigger than I thought. A positive outcome you will ge from this is: you will never again do anything I don’t want to do. Like I NEVER go to weddings of those I don’t want to.  Mental I learnt the daily practice of writing down ideas (My favourite chapter that I explain in coming page) I write

down so many ideas, it usually hurts my head to come up with even one more. That’s usually when I try to write down five more. The other day I tried to write 100 alternatives then travelling abroad, I wrote down 15, then I took a nap. I couldn’t come up with anymore and thinking had made me tired. Then the next day I added 83 more. It definitely made think…hard. I don’t know what I ideas I should make a list for today. So I created a lists of ideas, for ideas. Think of 10 businesses you can start from home (be realistic how you can execute them)? Give me 10 ideas of directions this book can go in. Think of 20 ways the government can replace speed humps. List every productive thing you did yesterday – improve your memory. I bet you cannot remember exactly what you did yesterday, try it. I also like to create list of ideas for people who inspire me. I saw an article of how Eneza Education are innovating ways to give internet access in in school for children in poverty. Toni is an amazing lady! Salute. I sent her 9 ideas and 1 word (because I didn’t know how to turn that word in to an idea) – she inspired me. I tried to help. I try to email 1 person every week. You’ll be surprised, some people offer you opportunity to be amazing like them. Then you

will be a superhero like them. I want to be superwoman like her! Draw back! The “idea muscle” weakens within days if you don’t use it. Just like walking. If you don’t use your legs for a week, they become weak. You need to exercise the idea muscle. It takes about 3-4 months to originally build this muscle. Once it weakens. It takes 3-6 months to build it up once again. There is no cheating. If this happens to you, don’t say, I didn’t tell you so.  Spiritual. Most people say “I am not religious”, when I mention this. I feel that most people don’t like the word “spiritual”. They think it means “god”. It doesn’t. I don’t know what it really means to be completely honest. This was however essential in be bouncing back. I feel like I have a spiritual practice when I do one of the following: 1. Pray (doesn’t matter if I’m praying to a god, to dead person, to the sun or to a table in front of me it just means being thankful. And not taking all the credit, for just a few seconds of the day).

2. Meditate – Meditation for more than a few minutes is hard. It’s boring. My mind wonder of in to naughty things. You can also meditate for 15 seconds by really visualizing what it would be like meditate for 60 minutes. That’s the simple meditation practise! Sit in a chair, keep the back straight, watch yourself breathe. If you get distracted, no problem. Just pull yourself back to your breath. Try it for 15 seconds, then 30, then 1 minute, then 2. It’s important to breath. 3. Being grateful – I try to think of everyone in my life I’m grateful for. Then I try to think of more people. Then more. It’s hard. This is my most effective aspect of the spiritual practice. 4. Forgiving – I picture everyone who has done me wrong. I visualize gratefulness for them. Today is their last day of living. 5. Studying. If I read a spiritual text (doesn’t matter what it is: Bible, Quran, Tao Te Ching, anything Zen related, even inspirational self-help stuff, doesn’t matter) I feel good afterwards. This is not as powerful as praying or meditating (it doesn’t train your mind to cut out the BS in my life) but it still makes me feel good. My own experience: I can never achieve the three “simple” goals on a steady basis without practicing the above 4 daily practices. Physical, Emotional Mental and Spiritual. One doesn’t work without each other. This are the internal 33

organs of you life’s joy and laughter. These daily practice cannot be without the other, Practice on a daily basis. And EVERY TIME I have been confused at a crossroad and I practised ding the above 4 daily practice, magic would happen The Results About one month in to daily practice. I started to notice coincidences start to happen. I’d start to feel lucky. People would smile at me more. I’ll feel more confident. Within three months. The ideas would really start to flow, to the point where I felt overwhelming urges to execute the ideas. Within six months. Good ideas would start flowing, I’d begin executing them, and everyone around me would help me put everything together. 10 ideas everyday add up to 3650 ideas a year. Execute a handful of them. Within a year my life was always completely different. A complete 100% upside down from the year before. More money, more luck, more health. Success was now outnumbering the failures in life.

And then I’d get lazy and stop doing the practice. And everything falls apart again. But now I’m trying to do it every day all over again. Its hard to do all of this every day. Nobody is perfect. I don’t know if I’ll do all of these things today. Maybe I’ll try. I know when I do it, it works.

Why Gratitude Is The Ultimate Miracle “Why am I totally dead broke again?” That’s what I thought the last time I had started a business, a project, an experiment and it failed. I had no income. I had just lost my life saving on herbal Viagra pills. College students can only drink so many cans of red bulls. I was in danger of losing my own small, owned possessions. I was in danger of losing trust of family. And boy, I was bitter: “Why, once again, am I here?” I had made thousand and again lost it. Couldn’t I have held onto one goddamn pound? Just once? How many times do I have to repeat this cycle? People say, “oh go play with your you little cousins (we are a very close family), they will cheer you up.”

No they won’t. I would look at them and think in these moments and think, “how the am I going to pay for chocolates if they ask for some, let alone play with them.” It always starts with the question: how did I get here in the first place? I know the answer, at least for me: I wasn’t grateful for what I had. Or I would’ve treated these passing things (money, love, health, happiness) with better respect and worked so much harder to hold onto them. So to drag myself out of the bed, I have to do the exact opposite of what made me lose everything. Its hard. It’s like when you don’t walk for a month. Your leg muscles just withered away. Now you have to rebuild them again through agonizing physical therapy and many hours of exercise. I had to rebuild my gratitude muscle. This is my spiritual part of my daily practice. I exercise it every day. I get emails: people don’t want to hear it. “Spiritual practice. What?! Why?!”

They get the need for an idea muscle, the need to have an emotionally healthy life and a strong physical presence. Nobody would deny that. People think it means an old man with a beard who created the world 5000 years ago and now we pray to him. Or they think it means new age magic and kaballah rubber bands or crystals or whatever.

So what is this spiritual gratitude daily practice? The

best

way

exercise

Gratitude

Muscle

List on a paper all the problems in your life: Example:      

You hate your job. I can’t get a job. Every creative act I do is rejected My girlfriend/boyfriend is currently cheating on me My house is being repossessed I’m working as a bartender even though I really want to be acting or writing a novel or working for a hedge fund.  I work as a janitor when in my old country I used to be a doctor 39

 My neighbour upstairs is an alcoholic and is too loud!  The tax man is after me So on and so forth and more. Now, you’re not going to love these situations. If you say yes, then that’s false spirituality and ego. I will be very amazed and interested to work out how you mind works if you have the power to love (and control) something that you really, deep down, hate. Specially if you try and fill those, downright nasty situations with love. That only further damage the spiritual muscle rather than build it. You can on be honest with yourself if you admit you hate it and look at it constructively! So let’s meet somewhere in the middle, somewhere where you can build that spiritual muscle. I love my family and few friends. That’s probably about it. I don’t love anything else in the entire world.

So how do you exercise the gratitude muscle you ask: List all the negative situations in your life.

Now, for each situation, think of at least one reason why you are grateful you are going through each of these experiences. There’s always one reason or you are lying to yourself. For instance, you can be grateful that overcoming this challenge will make you a better person. Find that silver lining. If you can’t think of one good reason, then come back tomorrow and try again. At the very least you can say “thank god I’m alive and can try again.” I hate having arguments with my family, but I’m grateful they put up with me and so many kind people have given advice and ideas for avoiding some arguments. List the good situations in your life, Otherwise you will take them for granted like I did. I’m very grateful for my cousin brothers and sister, for instance. It’s the perks of being spoilt as the only child yet have brother and sisters! This one takes awhile, it’s hard. Be grateful, all day, for everything you look at, no matter how small. RESPECT. They are all there with you right now. Also it’s ok to be thankful for the small things in life. 41

Every day write 2 emails to people you are thankful for. Tell them why! Be completely honest. It’s their last day of being alive. This will always remind you to be grateful. It feels good. And after 2 emails, it feels great! Try this: keep a gratitude diary. Everyday I write 3 things that I am grateful for throughout the day. My highlight of the diary of 2013 is training an elephant on taking commands. 2014 was eating a burger…size of my head. This year so far; this old lady that comes to the cafe. Her mother was a survivor of the holocaust. She has stories you can’t help but to sit and listen. The more you do things like this, the more the superpower inside of you will get unleashed. You won’t be able to stop it. You will completely transform whether you want to or not. Do it in a small pad so it’s easy to pull out and list things. Every day, you will start to do what you live and makes you happy.

THE DOWNSIDE OF NOT BEING GRATEFUL Hang out with criminals then eventually you’ll become a criminal. It’s natural process. You are the average of 5

people you have around you. If all you do is hang out with people who are wealthy, then eventually you will be wealthy. What does this have to do with the spiritual muscle? It’s the same thing with thoughts. If all of your thoughts are about poverty and anger, then that’s where you will find yourself – try as you might, in no way can you avoid it. You’re subliminal wish will be automatically granted. Unless you win the lottery there’s no way to be rich if all you think about is your impending poverty and your anger towards it. I have not yet met a successful wealthy person who was constantly angry and bitter about how poor they were. Never. Maybe I am looking in the wrong place. Many started in the gutter, they were angry. Then they practiced gratitude. Whenever I meet an older person who has built up their wealth and stayed that way, usually what they talk about are the people they are grateful for, grateful for the people who gave them a chance, grateful for the lifestyle they are now living, and so on.

I have met also met wealthy people who lost it all by not being grateful for what they had. They started cheating, on their wives, on the tax man, to their self – and they trivially lost it all. Even, 2 member of my family has gone through this. It’s sad to watch a downfall of a giant. You won’t get rich, if before you never learned to be grateful FULL STOP

Benefits of being grateful: You turn a negative thought into a positive thought. This “experimentation” will save your life. Instead of being angry and poverty-stricken (e.g. “I can’t do this”, “I’m going to run out of money”) you will start to figure out how to execute on your positive thoughts. That is the key. You actually release dopamine Yes, your brain does that when you are feeling grateful. This makes you feel uplifted and acts as an antidepressant. Dopamine is released when you are having an orgasm. This is sex for your brain. Don’t keep your brain horney for long!

You’re able to see that your current problems are potential sources of creativity. If you are about to be unemployed and you are grateful for that then you will begin to be creative on where your next job can be. I started writing this when I was stuck home from an ankle injury. I have been wanting to write this for the past 3 years. This is not to say you are happy about being stuck home. That would be stupid. Some will expect that of me but just thinking “I’m injured. Damn it!” will not get me anywhere. Being grateful for an opportunity for new experiences will force you to be creative. Your stomach will stop hurting My stomach hurts whenever a situation doesn’t work out for me. Its gets tense. It’s like when you roll a bowling bowl down the lane and your body twists almost the way you want the bowling bowl to go. It doesn’t work. You don’t have that superpower, you still need to discover it! When I want to control a situation, my stomach hurts. When I’m grateful for the situation I’m in, RIGHT NOW, this very second, my stomach stops hurting. My body stops twisting. I stop trying to control the world.

I let the world do what it wants to do and be grateful for that world this second. That’s my superpower I have discovered. Thereafter, the world starts to bend to my gratitude. Creative energy You can’t control the world. Plan your next playful step. Being grateful for what you have, this second, allows you to start planning the next step in a very creative way as opposed to suffering in the state of depression. You’ll treat all the positive things you have and do with better respect. MOST IMPORTANT: All of the other legs in the “The Daily Practice” get UNLEASHED. It’s automatic. Don’t believe me on this? I’ve seen it for myself. It’s only when I took it for granted that I lost it all. Almost overnight, it all disappears. I was sitting back on the floor thinking, what the faa!?! There’s also been many scientific studies on the physical, emotional, and mental benefits of being grateful. So why be grateful for just 5 minutes. Try to do it all day today. In fact…

TRY THIS: Go on a GRATEFUL DIET – Over the next 21 days, non-stop. Be grateful. What could it hurt? What can you lose by doing it. Be grateful for every object, person, thought, situation, that enters your mind. All of these are deserving of your gratitude. Do all of the above things for 21 days. I personally promise, your life will be completely transformed. You’ll be fully active in all the daily practice that I recommended.

One might say, why the hell should I be grateful my girlfriend left me and I lost my job? In all honesty, I am an average guy, and an average guy will say “I have no clue why it works!” The ONLY way I’ve been able to pick myself off the floor is by starting with building the gratitude muscle. If any two things you takeaway from this book, please take away this and practicing 10 ideas every day. Your life will be different every 6 months. Always for the best. 47

Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t believe anything you read on a book. Even this one. . Maybe I want you to be grateful for my own selfish reasons. Experiment on yourself and give it a try. Experiment yourself and find out. This part of the daily practice (the spiritual muscle) is equally, or more, important (I could be lying to you) than coming up with ideas (the mental muscle), having a healthy emotional muscle (not dealing with crappy people, for instance), and being physically in shape.

Listen to the music composition of your life. And failing to exercise the gratitude muscle is a playing the wrong notes.

Becoming an Idea Machine When you have a gun to your temple. You have two options. You either figure it out or you get shot. When you cut yourself open, you almost bleed ideas. If you are broke or close to death, watch you imagination go wild with creative ideas. You need to come up with ideas to rebuild your broken life. When I was sitting in a cafĂŠ, drinking a cup of coffee, I realised 2 years of work on a project was, worthless. When I was planning my own death with no one knowing at such a young age, at 2.45am, it was a good plan. When I was down and out, my trusted ones left me in a pit of snakes.

See your thinking straight most of the time during these periods. Think of the time, those moments you reached rock at the bottom of the cliff. But just before hitting the rocks, we are forced to come up with idea, to get stronger, to become invincible, it connects your inner force with the outer force. 50

This is why, right now, it’s important strengthen that connection to that idea zen with in you. All your thought of before, has not amounted to anything – that’s why you are exactly where you are at that moment of hitting bottom. All of your billions of thoughts have led you right there. Do you want to keep on trusting that style of thinking? They came to you, they saw you, and they conquered you. Learn to interact with outside the universe. New way of thinking and having ideas. In a crisis? Time to change and become a machine of ideas. Training for a marathon will give you the “runner’s high”, when you are completely exhausted, and cannot go on….something kicks in and gives you the “second wind” There were no sports shop selling jogging bottoms and trainers 400,000 years ago. Back then it was about eat or live. So either you were running to eat or running from being eaten. In both these cases, second wind was natural or you died. This is built in to our brain us over the period of evolution. When you are about to die. BOOM. Second wind kicks in.

Ideas. Experiences. Opportunities. Most probably hidden forces and neurochemicals we don’t understand. You training lets you to become a Jedi for that moment. However, I didn’t tell you the secret behind runner’s high. Unless you are able to run long distances and are in a good shape, you can’t get runners high. This is why it’s important to be practicing your idea muscle. Otherwise your idea muscle weakens. So even at your lowest points, it will be very hard to come up with “good” ideas. If you don’t build it up and practice it, like if you don’t use your legs for two weeks, you will need physical therapy to walk again. Many people need idea therapy. Not to come up with great ideas right this second (although maybe you maybe forced to read this with a gun to your temple) but so that you can come up with ideas when it’s needed. When their car is stuck, when their house blows up, when they are fired from their job, when their other half betrays them (yes I am writing this at 8.31 on the 14/02/2015 – I hope this book leads me to someone special for next year!), 52

when they go bankrupt or lose a big customer, or lose a client, or go out of business, or get sick (again – me).

Ideas are the currency of this new world Not money. Money gets exhausted until you go broke. However good ideas buy you good experiences, buy you better ideas, buy you better experiences, buy you more time, buy you time in this world. The good side effect of the Idea Machines High is financial wealth.

So as I made a long intro to get to my point. Woo, that was long. I encourage those people who will stop reading here. It’s ok. I’m not mad at you. I’ll write smaller introduction in future books and maybe I’ll draw cartoons. I haven’t drawn in a book before. I love drawing. If your reading on paper. Feel free to use a pencil and start doodling. If on ebook, draw in your colleges work when you next get the opportunity. Just to cause and stir trouble! It’s play time sometimes. I often stress and write about the idea muscle as part of daily practice. Every day I have to check the box on physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual muscles.

See the only reason I started to write ideas was when I was on the floor, broke and dead lonely. I had no prospects and vision. So I had nothing to lose. A great man suggested this idea. So here are the things that have worked for me. Try them, many will be able to build upon it and find new things that work for you. Send me an e-mail, hello@mousuf.co.uk, I would love to learn from you.

What am I mumbling about Idea Machine? You will become a superhero. You can be guaranteed to be fighting alongside Iron Man in the Justice League. (Just send 10 ideas to Stan Lee – and Stan Lee – You are welcome for me sending you so many ideas you will be receiving). No matter situation you are in, you will have a ton of ideas. Any question you are asked, you will know the response. Every meeting you are at, you will take the meeting so far out of the box you’ll be on outta the universe, if you are stuck inside a café in Newcastle – you will figure the way out – “this event happens to be an exclusive revelation, right here, right now”. If you need to make

money you’ll come up with 50 ideas to make money, and so on. It’s like magic being released within me. The feeling was amazing when I started to exercise the idea muscle. Everything was new and unique in what I was doing. It’s okay if you don’t believe me. Or maybe you think it’s bragging. There are many times when I don’t have any ideas, at all. That’s when I stop teaching, I go back to practicing the other muscles to make this muscle work. Try it for yourself. I am not selling anything here. It changed my life 100%, I want to share my experience. It really like someone has ideas in a big bucket. They cut your head open and pour the content of the bucket in to your brain.

 How do you start you ask? Take a waters pad (small and keep it with you!). Go to a local café. Maybe read something inspiring – book or an article. Then start writing down ideas. Pick a subject for which you can come up with, at least, 10 ideas and of you are feeling brave 20 ideas.

If you can’t think of a subject. Come up with a list of 10 ideas for subjects to write ideas about. Don’t worry about the ideas being good or bad. During my good and bad times, I was coming up with some really ridiculous ideas.

 Why 10 Ideas When you start to write ideas, I bet you easily manage 4 to 5 ideas. At no 6, it starts to get hard. “What else can I come up with”, you will start to think. This is when your brain starts to sweat. Like when you are at the gym, your brain doesn’t start to brake until you start to sweat. The same thing is happening to your idea muscle, stretch it, smash through idea no 6 and come up with 10 ideas.

 I can’t come up with 10 ideas! Magic trick is here…. Come up with 20 ideas.

 WTF?! I can’t reach 10, how can I come up with 20 ideas?? It’s obvious! You are putting too much pressure on yourself. Don’t focus on perfectionism. It’s the idea muscles worst enemy. Perfectionism is your brain trying to protect itself from harm. Harm from ideas that are stupid, dumb and embarrassing, what can cause you from suffering! You have to shut down your brain to come up with ideas! The simple way to do this is by coming up with bad ideas! So you have written 5, now you are stuck. “How can I top this brilliant list of 5!?” Well, let’s come up with some bad ideas.! ….What a bad idea! Ok, now go onto the next 15 ideas.

 You won’t know if the idea is a good idea! You can’t. You don’t and most certainly. You Shouldn’t. If you want to get good at this, no weekends off. Okay? Trust me at the beginning. So you come up with 10 ideas. Every day. It’s very much unlikely you will come up with 3650 that are top notch good ideas. At the beginning,

expect the ration of 1:1000 of ideas being a super brilliant. With practice, this goes up. Don’t pressure yourself, they key right now is to come up with good ideas. You are practicing here  Practice doesn’t make perfect but make it permanent. If and when you are with a gun pointed to your head, you will be fountain of ideas.

 How do I execute on these ideas? This is often my way of going about it. I make two columns. On one side I write down the ideas and on the other side, the first step I will have to take to make them happen. Remember, only the first step. You never know where the first step will take you. My favourite example I read was of Richard Branson. He didn’t like the service on some airline he was flying. So he had an idea: I’m going to start a new airline. How the heck can a magazine publisher start an airline from scratch with no money?

His first step. He called Boeing to see if they had an airplane he could lease. No idea is so big you can’t take the first step. If the first step seems to hard, make it simpler. And don’t worry again if the idea is bad. This is all practice. Another example I love is by Mr Altuchre. In 2006 he had an idea for website. He wanted to build. Knowing how to program but not wanting to. His first step was to find an outsourcing site like Elance, then put the spec up and find programmers in India who could make the websites. Paying $2000 to develop it and 9 months later which he sold for $10,000,000. He had 10 ideas for a website. He only needed one!

 Creating lists of business ideas, how do I know I am on the right track Google started up in 1996 but didn’t make a penny until 2001. There is no way of knowing. Here’s my favourite example. A company called Odeo was a software company to help people set up podcasts. They raised a ton of money from professional venture capitalists. Then one of their programmers started working 59

on a side project. The side project got a little traction but not much. But the CEO of Odeo decided to switch strategies and go full force into the side project without having a clue if it would work. He felt bad since this isn’t what the investors invested in. So he called up all of the investors, some of the best investors on the planet. He described the side project to them and all the traction they were getting, etc and then made an offer, “Since this is a different direction, I’d be willing to buy all of your shares back so nobody will lose any money.” 100% of his investors said, “YES! GIVE IT BACK!” and so he bought all of his investors’ shares back. Now, Ev Williams, the founder of Twitter (which was the side project), is a billionaire as a result. Nobody knew. And nobody will know. Try multiple ideas and see which ones gets the excitement. Always be improving. Don’t be afraid. Keep coming up ideas for your project, business and new businesses. Don’t forget, ideas for other people’s business. As your idea muscle improves, so will your ability to “fail quickly”. Failing quickly is a better skill than executing quickly.

 When do I close down an idea? In 2012, Comet closed down, I brought many of their headphone for half price. I was going to be a personal headphone powerhouse. Only after buying and started to sell I found out, people or businesses will not buy from you unless you can show proven guarantee to refund the product if they don’t work. I walked the full high street in to every hope. I sold most of them but not much profit. Not worth the time I spent. Once your idea muscle develops and the other muscles of the daily practice are fully developed (Physical, Emotional, Spiritual) you’ll have a better idea when you should go for an idea and when you should stop an idea. When you are closing down on ideas for the right reasons is when you are “failing quickly” as opposed to selfincompetence, fear of success or just pure stupidity.

How do I keep track of all these ideas? The whole purpose of this is to build my idea muscle. So usually, all my ideas are thrown out. If some of the ideas are good, I keep them or usually start working on them the next day.

Sometimes but very rarely, I find old list with a good idea in them. Then I usually do nothing, because I always unconsciously come up with those ideas in new lists. They are usually an upgraded version to. Remember it’s almost impossible to come up with new business ideas every day. They usually vary from 10 ways I can save time in my day to 10 things I can do while I’m on the toilet. Don’t restrict yourself. Have some fun with it.

Is idea muscle more important the other muscles? No! A 4 muscles work entwined together. It’s like 4 legs on a table on each corner. If one is missing. It all becomes unbalanced. The Daily Practice is: Physically, Emotionally, Mentally (the idea muscle), and Spiritually healthy. If you aren’t physically healthy you won’t come up with ideas. You’ll be choking and coughing and sneezing. If you are around people who hate you, you won’t come up with ideas. Because they will be yelling at you while you are trying to think. Look after your emotions.

And if you aren’t feeling grateful and calm. You will be anxious in your life on a regular basis. Then you have no time to come up with ideas. So all four parts of the Daily Practice work together to come up with great ideas.

Should you give your ideas away for free? If you are coming up with ideas for someone else, always give them ALL away for free. I worked with my friend for 6 months with coming up with ideas. It takes around this time to become an idea machine. Where your idea muscle is toned as Usain Bolt’s running muscles (if you read this in the future where he has been found for drug abuse, then well, you have to steroid pump your idea muscle). Well 2 years in, he started to give half his idea for free and then made them pay for the other half. He found out how bad idea this is, he was reserving his idea unconsciously, to come up with bad ideas. He was turning on his brain whilst coming up with ideas. He was doing it for money. It’s an obstacle from freeing your idea muscle. Think of abundance, ideas are infinity, give your all with abundance to others. Give with up any expectation and you 63

will receive when you least expect it. You will get back for your abundance help. Be grateful that you are able to share your gift. Ideas, where do they come from? No one knows. However they will be infinite and lucrative for you.

I have so many great ideas but they keep failing. What’s going on?? There is a cult of failure that’s around recently. Saying, you need to fail to succeed. What?! Failure sucks. I don’t want to fail. Why would someone want to fail. Stupid saying. I took the work “Fail” out of my dictionary a long ago. It does me no good. Everything I do and I witness others do, is a success. Breathing, love, kindness, then we deal with it, we improve, we have experience. This is magnificent and abundance of success. The ability to try new things every day, to celebrate, smile and play. The only job I have is to prepare. Most things I do, never work out as I see it go in my head. But who am I to predict my outcome. I only prepare.

A weather presenter, predicts, every day, like many do in their jobs. Every day, EVERY BODY is poor predictors of outcome. We can on the other dimension, be very good at preparation. Then I always show up at the starting line. I try with my hardest and with the most amount of integrity. The results are not up to me, as I start running soon as the gun fires. Having been beaten by Usain Bolt, I go back and learn from the race. Then I prepare more and show up for the next race. Eventually good things happen. Faith in yourself is hidden in and only comes from preparation. I never believed good come to anyone. I saw my dad. Nothing good is happening to him as much as I know. I thought my fate was going to parallel his. But evert moment, as you have the opportunity to read this, you have the option to choose abundance, gratitude, kindness, integrity and all that is in goodness. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s your universe and you choose what you have space for. But when you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t, all you do is make excuses.

 So the million pound question, is it worth building you muscle to become a machine for ideas? Ideas can bring you a joyous life style. I come up with ideas for people, companies, for myself on my random things and people don’t have a clue I am but I would like to meet them. It leads to invitation to share my ideas further. It gives me opportunities that lead to money. Sometimes I get more introductions to people and sometimes I get a chance to advise them on their companies that do well. And sometimes I write books. When got are idea muscle that is finely tuned alongside the other muscles, everything around you, that is exposed to your senses, become collection of ideas. You know how to turn these ideas to help you to build your city with your friend in the forest. To build it for a better society of superheroes.

Ideas are the dark matters of the universe. You have to be in the Justice League to see them, love them, seed them, live them. I don’t know what you will do with them, but you are a new superhero. All superhero are confused at first. But they will find a calling on how to use their power. 66

Oh and yes, you have to practice using your power everyday.

Escaping a counterfeit life I once printed up two fake £5 pound notes on my copy machine and spent it in the local café. They check £50 notes for counterfeit but not £5 notes. Every time I went back and someone tried to give me £5 note back in change, I’d refuse. I was the looser there for good few weeks before my paranoia was over. The owner became a good friend. I felt bad. I gave £15 tip in secret one day. Hope he doesn’t read this.

I didn’t need to print counterfeit notes. I was earning good money on part time job and side project. I'll tell you why I did it. Because I did not want to. Nobody wants to work!

Mr Doctor doesn’t really wants to operate on your prostate. Nobody wants to sit in a conference room at a meeting about insurance policies. Why else are books like "The 4 Hour Work Week" so successful. People want to work only four hours. But if Tim had written “Zero Hour Workweek” we know he’ll have been lying. We want to explore and be free. Not be prisoners of 9-5 in a 36 hour week. 4 Hour Work Week is perfect. After 4 hours I will follow my passion? Their life's purpose? Stopping global warming or trafficking? I don't know. Many people are amazing. But I want to know, "How can I find my true passion in life?" "I won't make money by following my passion or be happy." – Well that’s the usual response.

Let me be honest. Those who live their life buying and selling stocks. Or building an agency of some sort. Or build a big doughnut company. Or work in an office all day. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think they are born with a passion to do that. Are they not the side effects of being alive.

The only purpose is to do the things you enjoy, with the people you enjoy and who inspire you, as much as possible. Anything that brings 300 laughs, naturally. Today, engage less with someone who you don't like, and engage more with someone you do. Make your scene full of people you want to help on their last day of their life. Today, throw something out or someone that is dragging you down. Throw out a bad idea that you once had. Boom and it's gone. Write two emails today to someone who helped you expand your frontier. Write "thank you" and let that feeling of gratitude soak in to your spirituality health.

Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t lock yourself in. Pull those curtains and open the windows. Let the sun shine on to your skin. Stretch your muscles and work on the daily practices. Physical, Emotional, Mental and Spiritual muscles. I have never done this. I have a passion growing inside me. There are 7 billion + people in the world. How many of them had a passion growing inside them where they want to lay their self in the middle of the road at half hour before and watch the sun come up. I wonder if the birds will sing to me. I shall let you know! Purpose is a man-made fiction. Nobody on their deathbed gets a plaque that says "he focused on only one thing for his entire life!" I will, after the sun rises, practice. I will work on my them with my passion. Then my passion in to action, abundance.

practice my 4 daily ideas, I will combine I will practice putting with gratitude and

I will not lead a counterfeit life in a counterfeit society where the world is trying to enslave me. When I am on my deathbed I will have a plaque over my head that says: â&#x20AC;&#x153;He was creative in practicing whatever passion happens to come to his mind.â&#x20AC;?