Josh Altman - It’s Your Move: My Million Dollar Method for Taking Risks with Confidence and Succeeding at Work and Life

First and foremost, I want to thank my incredible family who is always there for me and supports every decision I make. Without you I wouldnt be here. I always say the true key to success is surrounding yourself with the best. Well, you are the best.

To my brother Matt, youre the best brother anyone could ask for. The fact that I get to own a company and go to work every day with my best friend makes it the best job in the world. Weve come a long way from that fraternity house we used to live in. We always knew we would make it in this townwe just didnt know exactly how. Thanks for paving the way in every aspect of life. I couldnt have achieved the success I have without you constantly pushing me along the way.

To Mom, you are the greatest mom in the world. Your loving support as the matriarch really keeps this family together and stronger than ever. Its nice to always know your mothers only a phone call away and happy to talk about anything, and I wont hold it against you that you told me not to do Million Dollar Listing.

To Dad, I guess youre not the only Altman in the family with a book now! And I didnt even have to be a Harvard professor. Youre the smartest man I know, and what you have taught me about business, life, and public speaking has been invaluable.

To my fiance, Heather Bilyeu, love you baby! Thanks for supporting me day in and out, and for putting up with me constantly on the movewhether its filming, speaking tours, book writing, selling real estate, or any of the other crazy business. The support you give me allows me to accomplish everything in life I go after. Thanks for sitting with me for long hours pulling this information out of my brain even though I dont have the best memory.

To my grandparents Sidney, Sara, David, and Edith who all laid the foundation for the Altman family. I love you and miss you all.

To my dogs, Diego and Lucky, my other two roommates, you guys are the best dogs in the world for always giving me kisses when I come home after a long day and for putting a smile on my face.

Thank you to my wonderful agents Michael Broussard and Greg Ray, my manager Robert Thorne, and my writer Guy Brenan who helped me put the words on paper. Special thanks to HarperCollins who took a chance on me knowing it was going to be an uphill battle: Mark Tauber, Genoveva Llosa, Nancy Hancock, Hannah Rivera, Natalie Blachere, Suzanne Wickham, Kim Dayman, and the rest of the HarperOne team.

And to everyone at Bravo, including Jenn Levy, Shari Levine, Francis Berwick, Andy Cohen, and David OConnell, who allowed me to be part of such an amazing network. And to all my friends at World of Wonder, the best production company to be part of, Randy Barbato, Fenton Bailey, Chris Skura, Todd Radnitz, Angela Molloy, Betsy Allman, Angela Berg, Shahram Qureshi, and Ray Giuliani.

Never ignore a gut feeling,

but never believe that its enough.

Robert Heller

H uman beings are animals. Were full of a powerful range of instincts evolved over millennia to keep us alive in the wild. Most people today ignore those instincts. They think they dont apply to our lives in a complex, scientific, urbanized world. Theyre wrong. Your gut instincts arent the antithesis of rational thought; they are a quick, direct synthesis of the things youve learned, the things you want, and your bodys physical reactions to the world.

This book is about being able to react to situations quickly, intelligently, and with confidence. It doesnt require that you be better or smarter than you are already; it just requires that you learn to use your intelligence and instincts together to make informed decisions quickly. Calculated confidence is a skill you can learn, and the first step is to get in touch with your untrained gut instincts.

Your gut is constantly sending you messages: I dont feel safe. I am hungry. My boyfriend is lying about eating the last tamale. Some of them are right; some of them are wrong. Getting on a plane can seem really, really unsafe to some peoples guts, even though they intellectually understand that flying is one of the safest methods of travel. Throughout this book, well talk about how to manage the relationship between your head and your gut, but for now, lets just focus on being receptive to the messages your gut sends you.

Gut instincts are fundamental, animal messages. A lot of our gut instincts deal with stuff like food and shelterthe kinds of things we had to figure out before we were rational, thinking humans driving Priuses and living in townhomes. We can ignore these instincts as anachronisms, holdovers from our ancient past that dont apply anymore. However, if we ignore these instincts, were giving up one of the most powerful tools we have for decision making.

Sometimes the messages your gut sends you are pretty clear. The summer before my last year of high school, I was going on a trip across the country with other teens from the East Coast. It was like summer camp on a bus: six weeks driving around between big cities and national landmarks. It was cool. There was fun stuff to see, some cute girls on the tour, and they kept us moving enough that we couldnt really get into any trouble.

Or so I thought.

About a month into the trip, when we were heading from the Grand Canyon to Hoover Dam, we stopped off for lunch and I got a burger and cheese fries. I didnt really understand it at this point in time, but my gut isnt the most tolerant of dairy products. We got back on the bus, and fifteen minutes later, I needed to use the bathroom.

There was a bathroom on the bus, but it wasnt exactly working. (After handling forty kids for a month, Im surprised anything on that bus was working.) I wanted to tell the driver to pull over, stop the bus, and let me do my horrible business in some rest stop bathroom, but I was embarrassed. I knew that if I marched up to the front of that bus and announced I needed to drop a deuce, no guy would stop making fun of me and no girl would be interested in me ever again.

I waited. Wed have to stop somewhere, sometime. My stomach was telling me sometime wasnt soon enough, but I wasnt going to break. I was going to keep my, well, you know, together. My body was screaming out for me to ask the driver to stop the bus, but I just couldnt.

Forty-seven minutes later (you can sure as hell believe I counted), another guy asked if we could stop at a rest stop. The bus pulled in... I was so relieved... until I remembered I somehow had to walk to the bathroom. I tried to gently, gently stand up, and as I did, all the potty training my mom drilled into my head when I was three was useless. I was starting to lose control.

In the most awkward possible way, I waddled down the buss center aisle, down the steps, and across the picnic area. With every step, a little bit more of the most embarrassing thing thatd ever happened to me leaked out. I got to the bathroom, said good-bye to that underwear, and did damage control as I hoped no girl had noticed my little bowel-control issue.

It was a simple, direct, physical instinct, but I ignored it, and I paid the price. Most of us have figured out how to pay attention to instincts that are fundamental by the time were adults, but this book is about listening to all of your instincts and training them to be more sophisticated. The same instincts that tell you when youre hungry or tired can also process complex mixtures of data, judgment, and professional savvy to give you the quick reactions you need to be a success.

Your brain works more quickly and more subtly than you realize. Psychologists did a study where they showed people six pairs of numbers in rapid succession, then asked them which set of numbers was bigger. People got it right about 65 percent of the time. Then the psychologists showed them twenty-four sets of numbers in the same rapid succession. People were right 90 percent of the time. When there were only six pairs of numbers, people had to think about the problem. They did okay, but not great. When there were too many numbers to keep track of, people had to just trust their guts, and almost all of the time, they were right.