The Nine Steps

"Nobody's heard of you.  Nobody cares," said Bryan Cranston in Little Miss Sunshine.

Then Greg Kinnear says something stupid about his NINE STEP PROGRAM for success, which basically sounds like Matt Dillon from Singles, which is: "THIS NEGATIVE ENERGY JUST MAKES ME STRONGER!"

Probably, you don't know what I'm talking about, and that's okay.  (Movies.)  My point here lies in Richard's NINE STEPS FOR SUCCESS.  What are they, you ask?  I don't know (in regard to the movie), but I'll give you nine steps for success right now:

1.  Don't care what other people think.  (Live your life, and fuck the haters.  If you know who you are, and you can look at yourself in the mirror every day with confidence that you aren't a dick, then do your thing.)

2.  Don't apologize.  (This is actually one of Richard's steps.  He says apologizing is what losers do, but I think that people should only apologize for the things which harm other people.  There's no need to apologize for being a person who exists, even if other people don't like your approach to life.)

3.  Don't be a dick.   (So very easy, and yet most people are assholes - preemptively - just because they can be.  Bullies are everywhere, both physically and emotionally.  Random acts of kindness are a beautiful thing.)

4.  Be honest.  (That doesn't mean "be rude".  Honesty is refreshing, and most people are so interested in being liked, that they forget to speak their truth, when truth can set them free from the cacophony of social noise.)

5.  Judge sparingly.  (While judgement is powerful and important, judging other people all the time does nothing but create a situation wherein everyone is gloves-up for the next verbal assault from someone who disagrees with them.  That's when conflict rears its ugly form.)

6.  Reach out.  (We are not alone in this gigantic, sometimes-vapid world.  Ask for help when you need it, and offer help to those who are drowning.)

7.  Read a book.  (Maybe not Mein Kempf - even though I've read it - but just take the time to read something which increases your attention span, or else I'm afraid all of society will succumb to Ray Bradbury's dystopia of screens in their faces rather than actual thought processing.)

8.  Listen to music.  (As Nietzsche so aptly stated, "life without music is a mistake".)

9.  Breathe.  (Deeply and fully.  Live like today is the last day you have to make positive-sum impact on yourself.  Inhale.  Exhale.  Be calm.  Enjoy what you can of the days you have on this planet.)