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I love people sometimes; they come up with every possible excuse and self justification for their own actions.  Usually focused on how somebody else’s actions or thoughts are the REAL reason they turned into a sloppy, irresponsible, broke jerk wad.  So…I decided to sum up some of the more effective methods of thinking and acting like a loser.  The next ten steps are not in any particular order, you can choose any combination of the ten below in order to prove to the world how awesome at NOT being awesome you really are:

10). Don’t think about your future…live for today only.  Don’t plan.  Don’t cogitate.  Don’t worry…be happy.  If spending every penny you make, and some you haven’t yet made, makes you happy…do it.  If quitting college makes you happy…do it.  If doing a lot of drugs and partying every single day makes you happy…do it.  If you plan for the future, you might be disappointed.  Don’t be disappointed…don’t plan.  Instead, live for today!  You might be dead tomorrow, so why bother. 

9) Take no risks professionally or personally.  Risks are stupid.  Risk takers are stupid.  Think about them all: Amelia Earhart, Howard Hughes, Donald Trump, Oprah.  Shoot…if you take risks, you could end up dead, crazy, with really bad hair, or have a PR nightmare from your most recent $50 million donation.  Who wants that mess?  It is much easier to sit on your ideas forever, to play-it-safe, and to ride out mediocrity.  If it’s good enough for the unnamed and unknown masses of humanity…it’s good enough for you.  Grab another beer and bag of chips…life is waiting.  It can wait.

8) Let other people make all your decisions.  Stay safe…avoid ever being accused of being decisive.  It is always the decisive guy that gets axed first in the movies…witness Samuel L Jackson’s character in Deep Blue Sea.  You don’t want to be that guy do you?  Crunch!!  No way!!  Sit back and let some other lime-light grabbing jerkwad lead the troops and paint his face blue…it’s much safer to be the schlep following all their decisions.  Do you want to live forever??  Yes!!!  Leaders die gruesome horrible deaths.

7) Never, ever read.  Reading is over rated.  If the subject matter was important, they would have taught it to you in Junior College.  Besides, life isn’t fun or challenging when you are smart and well equipped for the variety of challenges life has a habit of throwing at you…it is much more fun to go into the unknown wearing only your underwear.  Real men don’t read.  Reading is a pansy sport.  They read a lot in France.  

6) Never accept responsibility.  Deny fault, even when you look like a stupid a-hole.  You will recover from being a stupid a-hole, but they will never recover from properly assigning blame and responsibility on the irresponsible (i.e. you). 

5) The world revolves around you.  Keep telling yourself that, it will come true someday.  If it doesn’t come true by the time you are old and decrepit, buy some ruby red slippers and tap them together while reciting “It’s all about me, it’s all about me.”  You will eventually get back to Kansas Dorothy, or at least your Mom and Dad’s home in Topeka. 

4) Join a religious or tree-huggers group that backs up your moral conviction that money is bad.  You’ll feel better about being a broke, lazy, stupid, schmuck when you are chaining yourself to a tree or sitting astride your valiant steed “Ego”, your moral high horse, with your trusted friend “Judgment” by your side.  In fact, if you can tell people that you are following “the will of God”, or helping the green movement…shoot….you can justify almost anything.  What’s a little laziness, bias, castigation, or abuse of others compared to what other people do in the name of religion and eco-terrorism.  I bet God invented potato chips and beer.  If not, you know you saved a cow when you bought that Naugahyde couch you can sit and eat your organic chips and drink your micro-brewed beer on…who wants real leather anyway.
 
3) Look for a job with a massive company, ideally the government, where you can hide safely amidst the masses and nobody in management will ever see your complete lack of efficiency and productivity.  This is crucial.  Good benefits and “job security” come with big companies.  Just ask anyone who worked for Enron, Dynegy, Arthur Anderson, Eastern Airlines, or WorldCom.  Let some nameless boob control your retirement account and your economic future.  He will absolutely take care of you and put your interests first, employee number 32,789, he promises.

2) Never ever learn from the mistakes you make, or the mistakes of others. That would require asking yourself hard questions and accepting responsibility, or humbling yourself to learn from other who may have experienced similar life and business issues to those you are currently exposed.  Screw that.  Humble pie doesn’t taste good.  Instead, just keep making the same dumb mistakes over and over and over.  Never change your formula.  It worked for Thomas Edison…remember, he tried to invent the light bulb 10,000 times.  I’m sure he never changed his test.  It just worked one day because he bent the rules of nature to his needs.  Persistence.  Over and over, never change, but expect different results.  Learn from Thomas Edison.  10,000 tests…then whammo…it magically worked.   

1) Don’t work hard.  Laziness is the secret.  You’ve heard the saying about being a duck, calm on the surface but paddling furiously under-water?  Screw that.  Ducks are lazy.  They float around all day, and sleep, and wait for kids to feed them bread crumbs.  Be the duck.  Float.  Don’t even paddle…shoot…who knows where you would end up if you did that!  Float down life’s river.  Eat the bread crumbs thrown by others in your slovenly direction…because bread crumbs from little booger-picking kid’s hands are much better than fois-gras.  Who wants fake grass anyway?  Ducks eat real grass.  Ducks have it made. 

Ps - Don’t be the lead duck.  The wind hurts his face when he’s flying.  It is way better to be the duck in the rear.  Yeah, the view never changes, but it’s better to have your duck bill up someone’s back-side than to be buffeted by the cold, harsh, winds of taking on what lies ahead.  Duck-holes are warm; who wants cold duck lips?   

So…there you go. Follow this sage advice and you will succeed mightily at being unsuccessful.  You have to be good at something…maybe you have finally found your calling!

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