Fit for Life or Fit to Drop&;#063;

Fit for Life or Fit to Drop?
or The difference between success and failure in the Age of
Aquarius

Do you ever look around you and wonder where things went wrong? Does it
ever seem that at some point in your life you took the left-hand fork
while the happy successful people around you took the right? Me too.
I'm a confused fool and I'm willing to admit it. I live in a world that
is dominated by other people. We all do. The only catch is that no
matter how I try I find it impossible to understand what personal
qualities some people have that allow them to achieve exceptional
things, when the vast majority of the world struggles to achieve the
basics. There seems to be no significant difference between the
successful and unsuccessful in terms of personality, ethics or
intelligence (although I have noticed that successful people usually
have good hair). But don't let it get you down, the truth is that it's
them who you should feel sorry for. Don't envy successful people - pity
them! Feed them lumps of bread dipped in milk. Put them in theme parks
and take young children round to stare at them. Make them wear
tight-fitting shirts with very long sleeves and keep them in
institutions.

The world is a strange and complicated place. It's too varied and
complex to be explained easily by simple rules or stereotypes. But
people are lazy, so they do just that, and I'm no exception. I didn't
get where I am today (that's to say, nowhere) by appreciating the rich
variety of life that exists around me. I did it by constructing
simplistic models of the world that don't bear up to scientific
scrutiny. I have a theory about successful people. I believe that the
world can be conveniently split into two groups of people. The mad,
insensitive sociopaths, or mis-fits; and the utterly normals, or
un-fits. I believe that in order to be successful you have to be a mad
insensitive sociopath.

Guess which team you get to play on?

Mad Insensitive Sociopaths - the MIS-Fits

Suppose you wanted to dance naked down the street? What's stopping you
apart from the fact that with Britain's weather you're as likely to get
hypothermia as a suntan? Or you're standing in a queue and someone
pushes in front of you. Scientific research suggests that only one in a
hundred people will do anything about it . But why do so few people do
anything? There's no real danger involved in stepping forward. Are we
really nothing but a bunch of gutless cowards? Go on, look into your
heart. No, that's your liver - you can tell by the spots. Go up and
right a bit. There now, can you see the real reason?

That's right, you have a sneaking fear that other people will attack
you (they won't - they'll be scared), laugh at you (possible, but still
unlikely) or even worse talk about you behind your back (dead
certainty). This common paranoia is a legacy from your parent's
childrearing style.

Parents always raise their children to be utterly terrified of doing
anything in public that might embarrass them. They are absolutely
convinced that their job is to make sure that you "get on" in life. You
know, fit in, make something of yourself? I know my mother was. The
slightest hint that I preferred my sister's clothes and she dragged me
off by my ear and gave me a good talking to. Hence the almost universal
desire to conform to what everyone else is doing. After all, if you
step out of the crowd then you may get told off and made to go to bed
early without any tea. This is not a deliberate strategy by your
parents. It's genetic. I think it's probably a survival mechanism to
prevent hypothermia. Only a deviant has what it takes to step out from
the crowd.

The other behaviour that these strange people exhibit is a tendency to
put themselves into extreme situations. If your basic nature is to be a
mad insensitive sociopath then you will find that your life naturally
follows a course of doing extreme things that scare the pants off those
who are close to you. I see these sorts of people all the time. It's
easy to get the impression that what marks them out is the willingness
to stand up for what they believe in, but this is a mistake. It's not
your willingness to stand up that matters, it's what exactly it is that
you believe in. And in the case of mad insensitive sociopaths the one
thing that they believe in above all other things is themselves. They
may or may not be good and moral people; they may be clever or stupid;
ugly or beautiful; but they all share an unshakeable belief in
themselves. It's like being part of a secret cult of self-worship. All
you need to do to join is light a candle at the altar of your ambition
and then use it to slowly burn away the thread that links you to
reality.

This of course leaves the question about the rest of us. Some people
have the personal qualities that allow them to achieve exceptional
things, when the vast majority of the world struggles to achieve the
basics. But we aren't them. The rest of us are permanently aware of our
own basic inadequacy. We are, with all our little trials and
tribulations, Utterly Normal. UN-Fit

Utterly Normals - The UN-Fit

That's you and me Bob. Right now for example I should be preparing to
make a keynote presentation to the board on my next project. A
career-turning event that could well decide the next 5 years of my
working life.

Naturally the prospect of writing these notes is far more enticing than
preparing a well-crafted proposal. I'll probably pick my fingernails a
little later on, and then it will be lunchtime. By the time I've had a
nice relaxing cup of coffee after lunch and finished reading the
minutes of last weeks management meeting (which I attended for once) I
will have about twelve minutes of actual preparation time left. Since
I'll spend at least seven of those walking to the meeting room that
means I will have invested one minute of focused effort for every year
that the effort will affect. At that sort of rate it's no wonder my
career is taking a nose dive.

This is utterly normal behaviour. Every single one of us has been in a
situation where we have something that we know we must do, but we just
don't do them. Have you ever noticed that in life there are certain
activities that you find hard to get around to? Even though they are
relatively simple and clearly important. My favourites include:

&;#8226; Cutting the grass

&;#8226; Opening the bedroom curtains in the morning

&;#8226; Washing the car

&;#8226; Rinsing the cereal bowl out before the milk dries crusty
bits onto it making it absolutely impossible to wash up (bit of a
personal bug bear)

Not hard to do, but easy to put off. The more you fail to carry them
out the more their perceived difficulty rises. One day you will be
pinned to the sofa utterly convinced that you will never generate
sufficient strength to put the toilet seat down after use. I know, I've
seen it happen.

MIS-Fit or UN-Fit? Try This Simple Test

1) If you have responsibility for other people at work do you:

a) worry about whether or not you have enough ability to gain their
respect, or

b) worry about whether you have enough people that you can get rid of
the ones who don't give you the respect you know you deserve?

2) You're playing a game of truth or dare. You lose and have to
describe your most embarrassing sexual encounter. Do you:

a) tell some vaguely funny story about being discovered in flagrante
delicto by your parents

b) tell them about the time when you lost the cucumber

3) In the event that a piece of work is getting badly behind schedule
do you:

a) draft in extra resource and support the people doing the work,
or

b) suck up even more of their already stretched time by scheduling
daily progress reviews?

4) One of your nephews is in tears. His pet cat has just been run over.
Do you:

a) give him a hug and buy him a nice present to make up for it.

b) insist he pays for the damage to your bumper.

5) It's performance review time. Do you:

a) always give a fair and even-handed in evaluation of your staff,
or

b) store up minor indiscretions to use in a manipulative way to
satisfy your dark side.

6) At work do you:

a) recognise publicly the achievements of those around you, or

b) have an annoying habit of trumpeting other people's work as
examples of your motivational abilities?

But there is of course rather more to it than that. Successful people
need more than good hair (though in the case of Anthea Turner I will
admit that this seems to be enough). They also need a flame-proof
conviction that the only limit to their abilities is their ambitions.
They need to be able to carry on without any regard for what other
people think of them. For example, I once had the privilege of sharing
a house (for those readers who live in the London area try to imagine a
large flat that doesn't actually border anyone else's flat) with a
spectacularly unattractive Italian guy who was studying medicine.

Some of his more charmless mannerisms included:-

1) His usual habit on returning from university was to disappear into
his room and then spend an hour moving a large rusty filing cabinet
across the floor for no apparent reason

2) He would sit in the living room and throw crisp packets and sweet
wrappers onto the floor, then say "But my mother always let me do that
at home".

3) In a rare and distressing variation of Tourette's syndrome he was
unable to spend time alone without swearing in a loud voice. Mind you
this was also the reaction of everyone who found themselves in his
presence, so perhaps it is unsurprising.

4) Despite having all the charitable characteristics of a jackal he did
do one "good" deed a week. Every Sunday evening he would arrange
tea-dances for the local pensioners club. During the night afterwards
he would sit alone in his room and make strange choking noises with the
back of his throat for several hours. We speculated that he was yacking
up balls of blue-rinsed hair.....

The situation got so bad that at one point all the other residents
would hide from him in the front bedroom with the door locked, the
lights out and the curtain drawn for days at a time. And yet this guy
was training to be a doctor! It's entirely possible that one day he may
be responsible for the safe delivery of your child. But due to his
unique ability not to match up his personal qualities with the demands
of his chosen profession he was able to live with this wild
inconsistency without a twinge of guilt.

This is the way with many successful people - good and bad. They are
able to ignore flaws in themselves that would prevent the majority of
us from continuing without a lobotomy. Would Mother Teresa have spent
all that time looking after the world's poorest people if she'd paid
any attention to the other nuns in the convent? Would Chris Evans have
made so much money if he'd listened when well-meaning friends pointed
out that he was an ugly four-eyed maniac with a dodgy singing voice and
crooked teeth? Of course not. They carry with them at all times a
teflon coated unreality shield. This unique product allows them to
breeze through life with scant regard for events around them. They just
don't care what people think.

But you do, don't you? If you get told that you'll never make it as a
freelance photojournalist you nod, sigh with relief and get back to the
day job as a tax accountant. You'd like to have a successful career but
sometimes you just can't be bothered to get up in the morning. If
someone told you that you did have the talent you'd probably wet your
pants. After all, going after your dream would involve risk and
self-belief.

Only if you are able to completely ignore good sense, practicality and
the opinion of those around you can you be successful. There is a
scientific term for this sort of person.

MAD INSENSITIVE SOCIOPATH

... I think I'm getting through.