Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Q and A: June 2013

Is life a game?

There are many facets to this game, and many rules, but there is no doubt that life is one huge game. Here are a few rules/realities which determine who get ahead in this game called life. 



  • Rule number 1: good-looking people have an advantage



  • Rule number 2: if you're not good-looking you can still earn an advantage if you're smart/ambitious.



  • Rule number 3: if you're neither good-looking nor smart/ambitious there is still a place for you in life. You can be a pawn or a statistic.A pawn is basically a filler piece, we need people to work as cashiers at gas stations or McDonald's or the supermarket. A statistic is a piece which fills a necessary and inevitable percentage of the population which will "fail". These people are on welfare, food stamps, or other government funded assistance which good-looking and smart/ambitious people provide through paying taxes.



  • Rule number 4: it's not what you know, it's who you know. People who succeed know other people who succeed. They also use these connections to achieve their goals. It's very similar to picking up coins in a video games. The player with the most coins/connections is the player who wins/gets that coveted promotion.


  • Rule number 5: life does not hand you opportunities. You have to chase, hunt, kill, and bag these opportunities. In other words, if you want that promotion, instead of trying to silently make yourself shine, you need to ask for the promotion and clearly state why you deserve it. Repeat as needed.


  • Rule number 6: manipulators are not evil, manipulators are winners. Which brand name will you choose when you go shoe shopping? Whichever brand was successful in imprinting their brand name on your brain in the most discreet yet effective way possible. So what is the brand name in this scenario? The brand name is you, and the brain is other people. Human beings are the keys and obstacles in life. The most successful players are the ones which can most effectively turn the keys and move the obstacles.



  • Rule number 7: worrying will not make you safer. A certain percentage of people will die because of fluke accidents. Worrying about this percentage will not make you safer or happier. You are not special, entitled to safe passage throughlife, or even less-likely to die because an airplane fell on your car. You are simply a member of a population. You are exposed to the same risks, and you are just as likely to become a statistic as everyone else. The sooner you stop spending energy on useless worrying, the sooner you can be using that energy on other facets of the game.



  • Rule number 8: preparing for retirement when you're twenty will be less painful and more successful than preparing for retirement when you're 50.


  • Rule number 9: becoming wealthy is easy. Time and the guts to loose are the only requirements. You don't have to know everything about investing, you don't have to be risky to invest, you don't even have to have a lot of money to begin investing, you only have to start early. 


  • Rule number 10: successful people learn from successful people. If you want to learn about success, the most effective way is to hear a lot of advice from a lot of people who have succeeded already.


  • Rule number 11: time is your only enemy. The only way you can fail is if you never begin. If you want to do something, do it now! Don't waste your time.

There are many more facets to life, but these are a few of the more significant things I've learned so far in reference to winning at life.