Unlike its highly regarded cousin, “full potential,” It doesn’t take much to live up to your fool potential. All you have to do is show up and whine about how your life is boring. You see, the key to living a truly foolfilling life is wishing things were different all the time and never doing anything about it.
Take Mike, for example. He wishes he had some adventure in his life, but he doesn’t have any money for adventures. He also wishes he didn’t have a gut hanging over his belt buckle. Too bad he has no time in the evenings to exercise, he has to rest because being out of shape makes him too tired to exercise after a long day of work. Fool potential rating: high.
I don’t like to gossip, but Mike’s cousin Jay hasn’t been living up to his fool potential. Last time I saw him, he was pulling his kids down the sidewalk in a wagon. He said he was going after some kind of goal for losing weight. It was his night to watch the kids, but somehow he thought it would be a good idea to “get creative” and find a way to exercise anyway. He’s on some sort of kick where he gets a high from spending time with his kids and losing weight at the same time. He says it’s “an adventure” to see if he can become the master over his family genetics that make it more difficult for him to stay lean and healthy.
The problem with Jay is that he doesn’t seem to understand that you just can’t afford to take risks like that. I told him he needs to think about how he would feel if he fails. He started going on about having already succeeded because he’s happier being on the “adventure of his life,” than he’s ever been before.
It’s sad stories like Jay’s that inspired me to create the Fool Potential Guide to help people stay on track.
- Don’t try too hard. Trying feels bad.
- Plan on failing before you start. The easiest way to accomplish this is to assume that people who succeed are just lucky. Whatever you do, don’t start modeling successful people.
- Blame your life circumstances and hard times for the majority of the frustrations you face in life. If someone suggests you could do something about it, point out rule number one.
- Try to avoid thinking about “possibilities.” You don’t want to end up getting all passionate about something in life. If you start to care about changing something, your life force starts surging in a way that puts you in danger of opening your mind and life to change.
- Remember that there really isn’t enough time in your hectic schedule to include the important pursuits of life. Keep your focus on the meaningless daily tasks, and make sure you think about problems as never-ending patterns of defeat so your mood stays nice and low.
- Spend a lot of time with people like Mike. Jay is dangerous. If you start interacting with a community of those Life Modification freaks you can kiss your fool potential goodbye.
