Smart Rules: Don’t Buy Your Own Bullshit

You have a persona.  You perform a polished version of yourself to the world.  The real you is an animal that farts with relish, burps like a champ, scratches at will, and has been known to consume an entire box of krispy kreme donuts in a single sitting.  In your performance of you, your hair is enhanced by product, your socks match, and you eat with a fork and knife.  

The two are not the same.  

Your performance of you is sexless (sexy, yes, but sex is sweaty and funny and awkward.  The performance you is never undone).  The performance you is a fluidless mannequin that always smells of Abercrombie and Fitch.  Or lavender.  Or patchouli.  Or Jo Malone.  Or Axe.  Or whatever.  

But.  Always the but.  

It is incumbent that you never confuse the performance you with the animal you.  Bad behavior happens when these two things get confused.  Dishonesty happens when you no longer recognize the difference between the two, and not just that you become dishonest with others…  I’m talking about the inability to tell yourself the truth about yourself, which is intellectually fatal.  

Your ability to *do* smart (rather than be smart) depends on the honest internal conversation with yourself about yourself.  Also known as being self-aware.  This is how you know your weaknesses and your strengths, this is how you know exactly how grateful you should be, this is where you squash your own pretentiousness before it gets out of control.  This is how you know when you should say sorry.  This is where you invest in the relationships that matter most.  This is how you remain someone capable of introspection, course correction, and intimacy.  This is how you retain the ability to be great.  

Look at the people who have bought their own bullshit.  You don’t want to be these people.

• John Mayer.  Incredibly talented.  Bought his own bullshit.  Is a totally unironic twat.  
• Lindsay Lohan.  Incredibly talent.  Got up her own ass about how talented and special she is.  By all accounts, a complete ass.  
• Johnny Depp.  Beautiful.  Talented.  Completely unaware that he’s become a parody of the aging actor; as of this writing, an alleged domestic abuser;has disappeared into the quirks (also unironically); and is gradually becoming more and more ridiculous as the days go by.

People who seem to have avoided buying their own bullshit.  You want to be these people.

• Helen Mirrin.  Talented.  Beautiful.  Sense of humor still intact.  Aging exquisitely.
• Mark Ruffalo.  Avenger.  The boy next door.  Hasn’t lost touch with the world the rest of us live in.
• Bruce Springsteen.   Really, there are no words.  Also doesn’t seem to have lost touch with the real world.  

Don’t buy your own bullshit.  

Smart Rules: Fear

Don’t trust anyone who is attempting to increase your fear.  

Fear is well-known among those who want something as an effective way to get it.  Salespeople are taught (or learn on their own) that the fastest way to close a deal is to convince the buyer that, unless a decision is made right now, the buyer is going to miss out.  (Salespeople tend to dislike it when you call them on this: try it with a salesperson at a gym sometime.  I brought this up to a salesman at Gold’s Gym and he got super huffy with me.)

The reality is that they want your money more than you want whatever item they have in front of you.  The salesperson will want your business just as badly tomorrow as they want it today.  You are in the position of power unless you allow them to make you afraid, in which case the power dynamic shifts over to their advantage.  There is always another car, another house, another way from point a to point b.  

Don’t give away your power.  Fear shuts down your capacity for thinking critically and without prejudice, and that makes you vulnerable to bad decisions.

There are no exceptions to this rule.  

Shut out anything that seeks to increase your fear: news programs that are breathless with manufactured danger, advertisements that raise your anxiety about whether you are rich/smart/sexy/pretty/skinny/young enough, politicians pointing their fingers at an “other” who is out to get you.  

If you hear a claim that scares you, first ask what the claimant has to gain from your fear.  Then do your own research.  Read both sides of the argument.  Look for hidden motives.  Follow the money.  Figure out who gains from your fear.  Find the evidence.  Perform the whackadoodle test: ask what the chances are that the person selling the fear is wrong.  A whackadoodle will tell you that there is no chance that they could be wrong about whatever they claim.  A reasonable, considered person will allow that there is something that they don’t know that would change their conclusion.  Go with the reasonable person’s assessment of the evidence over the whackadoodle.  

Now you can decide if fear is a reasonable response and what constructive thing that you can do with that fear.  The constructive thing probably doesn’t require that you spend boatloads of money.  It may not be as satisfying because real solutions are usually boring and incremental and require sustained attention and hard work.  

Bonus thought: get rid of your TV.  Its primary function is to mainline anxiety into your brain.  Think of how many advertisements want to make you afraid…  if you don’t have a viagra-enhanced package, she’ll leave you.  If you don’t take this anti-psychotic drug on top of your regular anti-depressant, you’re going to be miserable forever.  If you don’t call your Congressman to make sure we don’t bail out Puerto Rico, you’re going to get a huge bill in the mail for your medical costs… it’s a domino effect (that doesn’t follow logically from one thing to the next).  There isn’t that much news on a given day to justify 24 hours of CNN, and there is even less news that you can actually do something about, so worry about the stuff you can do something about, and CNN won’t be able to tell you about those things within your sphere of control.  

Smart Rules: Everything Costs Something

It is my grand unified theory of everything: everything costs something.  Every cost comes with a benefit, every benefit comes with a cost.  You will have to pay one way or another.  Nothing is free.  

There is no point in getting worked up about this, it is a universal law.  There is no emotional content here, it isn’t personal.  Your highs will be countered by lows.  Both bring their lessons – the darkness carves out depth, the light provides strength: you will need both to grow into who you were meant to be.  Do not rail against the costs any more than you complain about the benefits.  Find your gratitude and apply it to the fact that the joys didn’t cost you more.  Apply it to the fact that every joy provides double the strength that every sorrow requires.  

And complaining about the fact that everything costs something makes you a whiner and a twat.  Don’t be a whiner and a twat.  

Also: don’t believe anyone who offers you a benefit without a cost.  They are either lying or stupid.