How to Successfully Ruin Your Life in 3 Easy Steps
by Robert S. Vibert
Here you will find exactly what you’ve been searching for! This vital information is not covered by those magazines at the checkout counter that you have been browsing through for years, nor those hundreds of websites and books you have been reading. Here you will also discover the latest and greatest details on what you absolutely need to do. And, best of all, it will be explained in three easy steps! Read on!
If you have paid any attention to the average recent article on just about anything, then you’ll not be surprised by the claims made above. They are rather routine and common while still being new and improved! And, best of all, they are not to be found anywhere else! They are yours exclusively… not counting everyone else who is reading this, of course.
Now, on to the meat of the question, or the pumpkin, if you are vegetarian. How exactly does one ruin one’s life in three easy steps? You may be surprised to discover that it is very easy and requires no initial investment. In fact, it will cost you nothing at all! (Unless you want the hard copy, which is available for a modest processing fee…)
Without further ado, here is what you’ve been waiting breathlessly for all your life, or at least since you started reading this. (Do take a breath now, as it will make it even easier, if that is possible, to take in all this wonderful material.)
Step One: Pay no heed to what is going on with you and the world
Even though there are all kinds of important things happening around you all day long, you really should ignore them as much as possible. If you pay any attention to them, you might make informed decisions, and you certainly don’t want to do that. Ignorance is always the best defense! You can claim that you did not know that products go on sale at the supermarket every week, and that is one of the reasons why you are always short on cash. You can also state for a fact that you have no idea why your car keeps breaking – who knew it needed to be serviced regularly??! Generally speaking, you want to be as oblivious as possible to the happenings of the world.
With regard to your self, it also best to completely ignore the signals your body and emotional heart are giving you. Numb down those physical pains with massive doses of painkillers and distractions, as you don’t want to know that you might need to change your habits or get out of that chair and exercise a little. And, if your heart is complaining of emotional distress or pain, do your best to medicate that as well, using as many substances as you need, ranging from chocolate to ice cream to brownies and if that does not work, bring out the heavy guns: alcohol and drugs.
For good measure, distract yourself with massive doses of TV, sports, romance novels, and any other distraction you can find. The last thing you want to do is look at what might be troubling you. After all, if you notice anything about your life, you may have to own your part in it, and have to resign your membership in the Professional Victim of Circumstances Beyond Our Control Club.
Step Two: Focus exclusively on the small stuff
There are significant changes happening in the world today, including pollution, growing inflation, widespread bankruptcies, food shortages, catastrophic natural disasters, severe depletion of fish stocks, and increasing contamination of food by toxic industrial chemicals, to name just a few. To be successful at ruining your life, you should have ensured that your mind wandered off in the middle of that last sentence. After all, you do not want any more than milliseconds of your attention to be on these sorts of problems. They are serious ones, so best you make sure to only pay attention to what immediately concerns you. You know, stuff like the sports game on TV, what your favorite celebrity is up to, and how traffic is flowing on the roads and behind the checkout counter in your local big box store. You can also add to this collection of minor stuff that you pay excessive attention to your latest sitcom and “reality” TV programs, fashion trends, computer games and anything else which is really not all that important to your survival or personal growth, but that does provide for mindless distraction.
You want to keep your attention firmly on those things which will keep you away from noticing that the world you live in is being neglected and abused at a wholesale level. Surely someone else will take care of all that boring stuff so you can focus on “whatever”.
Step Three: Gain more skills
This last step is not so obvious to many people, as it has become part of the mantra of modern life. Much of the “education” we receive is based upon learning and perfecting skills. Day after day, we learn more and more skills and credential-ism reinforces this trend, as getting a new job often requires that we can list off an impressive group of skills and courses that we somehow managed to complete. Whether or not we can actually remember and apply these skills in an effective manner or even judge when to apply one or none of them is usually ignored, so best you ignore that too. Just keep on acquiring more and more skills until you cannot remember when to use them or even how to really use them. You need to stockpile them, like arrows in your quiver, ready to be shot at a moment’s notice.
If you are trying to improve your relationship, for example, the Relationship Obtaining, Improvement, and Repair (ROIR) industry has dozens and dozens of skills they want you to learn as they are sold as absolutely essential to relationship success. You read about these all the time in the magazines of impeccable research sold at newsstands everywhere – you need to communicate better, you need to tickle more, you need to pander to your partner’s insecurities by constantly telling them how wonderful/pretty/thin/handsome they are, etc., etc. Never mind that most relationship problems are caused by unresolved inner emotional pain and traumas, and no amount of skills will fix that. The ROIR folks want you to learn these skills which are actually pretty useless for those who are suffering from the wounds of their past (i.e. about 99% of the population), so get out there and do that! Read another magazine article about how to fake it until you make it, even if that is a dismal approach to real success.
And, there you have it! Three simple steps guaranteed to make it easy to ruin your life. Consistently applying these steps will ensure that you regularly get sideswiped by things that happen in your life, that you waste a lot of time and energy on activities and substances that provide only temporary relief from what ails you, further draining your bank account and spirit. In short order, you can join the hordes of happy sufferers who spend most of their time complaining about the sad state of their affairs, looking about puzzled at where they are in their life. If you really want to ruin your life, there are many more steps that you can take, but given that they actually might require some effort, best we leave them for another day.
What’s that you are saying? You don’t actually want to ruin your life? Then why did you read this article? Were you enticed by the “three easy steps” and missed the part about it being an article on ruin, not on success? Oh, you are actually looking to improve your life? And you noticed how many of the resources you have been consulting are like recipes that require lots of steps and skills you must develop and yet you wonder how they could actually work.
Well, far be it from our normal procedure to present more than one main concept in a single article, what with all the union rules on that sort of thing, but here’s a hint:
When you find it hard to improve on any life skill, look for what is blocking that effort. More than likely, it is an emotional issue with that subject. Once you resolve the emotional issue (usually by simply releasing the stored emotion) you can then get back to improving your life and developing whatever it was you were trying to, without that major distraction getting in the way. Succeeding is not complicated, but it does require that you put some effort into it, and stay focused on the important things in life, which are not money, celebrities or entertainment. Any time you find it hard to focus on the bigger life picture, look inside and see what is being stirred up. Take care of that and the rest will much easier fall into place.
If on the other hand, you do want to ruin your life and remain a victim, then please diligently follow the three steps above and successful ruin is yours to be had!
Copyright 2011, Robert S. Vibert, all rights reserved. May be posted elsewhere with proper attribution and a link back to this blog.
AER is a system to enhance the natural human release mechanism. One of the recorded AER sessions is available for FREE at my Facebook public page. Other AER recordings are available for the low cost of $10 each.
This is brilliant, Robert. I love your sense of writing style, and yeah, there’s the “that’s so true!” factor that made me read to the end….Thanks for a great piece of advice!