How To Be Awesome By Alex Poirier

First of all, I will define what I think Success is, which is pretty much just thinking you’re awesome. Fuck money, fuck a career, you don’t need a girlfriend, you don’t even need good prospects. If you think you’re awesome, I’d say that’s quite the fucking success if I do say so myself. I apologize for my language, but I’m trying to get a point across here, haha. Okay, okay, here’s my list of what will make you successful.

1. Be positive! I know this probably sounds ridiculously lame, but fo reals. Consistently tell yourself you’re having fun. Even if you’re at work, hating life so hard, you can be cursing your existence in your mind, but act like you love life. Tell your co-workers about how much you love life, when your shift ends, complain that you can’t wait to come back tomorrow. After you do this for long enough, you’ll eventually actually love your job, no matter how horrendous it is. I speak from experience here, I hated my last job for the first while, one time I even went on a huge rant about it to Prasheel. Then around November I completely turned around my attitude, I became positive! I call this pessimistic optimism. Yes, perhaps your life “sucks”, but be optimistic about it! Love it anyways! Hating life sure as hell isn’t going to change anything, so why not just be happy? Make sense?

2. Be able to have the greatest time ever alone. If you rely on others to have a blast, you’re fucked. I spend hours upon hours alone on my bike having the greatest time of my life. I come home from work and usually am by myself every weekday until I go back to work. I have a great time! I don’t really know what it is I do that’s so fun, but dear god its great times! Sure doing things with people is better probably, but if you can’t have fun by yourself, my god you are in for trouble.

3. Money. This is a touchy one. You really don’t need money to think you’re awesome, although having it wouldn’t hurt thinking you’re awesome. A key to thinking your awesome is girls (or boys if you’re a girl) thinking you’re awesome. Unfortunately (and I may be a little bias here), girls like money. Girls even more so like men with money. I’m not sure why, but money doesn’t seem to concern men as much it does women. How do you get past this obstacle and make women think you’re awesome. Simple! Just act awesome. Confidence, not arrogance, confidence! Be able to hold your own in a crowd. Make an impression, girls will love you. Want girls to love you when you go out to the bars, suspenders. Don’t ask me why, girls LOVE suspenders. Seriously, be confident, wear suspenders, you will get girls. As for girls, I don’t really know how to get men, so best of luck in that department.

4. DO NOT CARE ABOUT THINGS. Holy good god, I cannot emphasize this more. I’m not saying don’t care about your friends and family and loved ones. I’m talking about the small things here. For example, you go to a coffee shop before work/school/whatever and get a coffee. You walk out coffee in hand, you start drinking it, and its terrible, or they messed it up and put in too much cream, or whatever. What should you do? First of all, you should be over it and just drink the god forsaken coffee. But if you must get another one, DO NOT make a scene. DO NOT get angry. How will this help the situation? I worked at a Tim Hortons when in high school, trust me, we did not care, and if anything laughed and ridiculed any upset customers. Getting pissed off won’t change how your fucking coffee tastes, and it’ll just get other people laughing at you behind your back that you are THAT pissed off about a stupid god damn coffee. Fo reals. If you are getting pissed off about things like this, you’ve got bigger problems then thinking you’re successful.

5. Have something you’re passionate about. I know this seems kind of contradictory to my last point, but its not. If you’re not passionate about something, you’re probably not that interesting. There’s a lot of things you can be passionate about. Pretty much an endless list of things actually, if you’re passionate about something, it will show when you talk about it, and make you much more interesting to others. I ride bikes, its my “passion” as gay as that sounds. Its amazing how much of a conversation piece it is, the odd person thinks its weird that I’m 21 and ride little bmx bikes, but for the most part, people are genuinely interested about it and interrogate me thoroughly about it. This will make talking to the opposite sex much easier, as once you get into it, you’ll be able to talk for ages because you’re so god damn passionate about it. Bringing us back to point number three.

6. Get out and about! Stop sitting around and doing nothing. Travelling is cheaper than you think. You just have to find the right people to do it with. Find people that follow similar guidelines as the ones I’m listing. Care-free, go-with-the-flow type people. Don’t make tight knit plans, have a general guideline of the things you MUST do (which should be small) and just let the rest happen. I’ve driven to Atlanta twice now, spent more time driving, then I actually did in the damn city, but this makes a great story. It gives you something to talk about (and even gives the appearance that you have money, see point 3) and makes you more interesting to others. I’m hoping by now you already think you’re awesome, and now you’re just working on convincing everyone else, which should be pretty easy once you think you’re awesome.

7. Haters gonna hate. Yes, believe it or not, not everyone will think you’re awesome. But this is good! Look at Kanye West, no one has more haters than that dude, and yet he’s constantly talked about, dude sells millions of albums, probably has sex with tons of hot girls, and can pretty much do anything he wants at this point, and nothing will hurt his career. So be prepared to take some slack, don’t hate back, just laugh! See point 4.

8. Okay, well that’s pretty much it for now. This isn’t like the bible or anything, you don’t have to strictly do this shit. Everyones different, you can’t just change yourself, I just think these are some simple things to help you out. Number 1 is the most crucial…Once you are having fun no matter what you’re doing, and you think you’re great, you’re pretty much set, the rest will just follow. Okay, now, go be awesome and love life like Team Pralex does.