How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life

Focus on your diet first and get that right so you have enough energy to want to exercise. Exercise will further improve your energy, and that in turn will make you more productive, more creative, more positive, more socially desirable, and more able to handle life’s little bumps.

Eat right, exercise, think positively, learn as much as possible, and stay out of jail, and good things can happen.

Once you optimize your personal energy, all you need for success is luck. You can’t directly control luck, but you can move from strategies with bad odds to strategies with good odds.

Most important, understand that goals are for losers and systems are for winners. People who seem to have good luck are often the people who have a system that allows luck to find them.

Happiness is the only useful goal in life. Unless you are a sociopath, your own happiness will depend on being good to others. And happiness tends to happen naturally whenever you have good health, resources, and a flexible schedule.

I would argue that doing affirmations is a system that helps you focus, boosts your optimism and energy, and perhaps validates the talent and drive that your subconscious always knew you had. If you plan to try affirmations, I recommend keeping your objectives broad enough to allow some luck. It’s probably better to affirm future wealth than to try

I tried affirmations on a number of occasions and the results that I remember—or think I remember—appear to be borderline miraculous.

I also find that ibuprofen (found in Advil and other brands) is a huge help in reducing my soreness on those days I overdo it. If I take the ibuprofen on the day I’m stiff, I have a good chance of being willing to exercise the next day.

Exercise becomes a habit when you do it every day without fail. Taking rest days between exercise days breaks up the pattern that creates habits.