Tips for being human that won’t make you half-bad.

6 tricks to cease being mediocre.

1. Set goals. Make the plans that get you there fun. It’s not the journey, or the destination, but the fact that you recognize both are the same. If it’s, “My goal is to succeed as a photographer,” the plan is, “I’m gonna take pictures all the time and get noticed and enjoy both the labor of the shoot and the labor of the self-promoting.” The journey and the destination get really blurry when you realize the only place we’re all ending up is in the grave, and all the matters is the habits you make and keep and make and keep and make.
2. Learn the difference between your fake smile and your real smile. As soon as you can feel the difference on your face, you should find a way to get the real smile out of the fake feelings. That will make the fake feelings real. If it’s, “I’m smiling because I think my boyfriend is being stupid in his attempt to be funny,” it should be, “I’m smiling because I like my boyfriend’s sense of humor.”
3. Ask for everything you want as politely as you can while at the same time assuming you’re going to get it. If it’s, “If you could please take my shift tomorrow because I’m desperate and I have so much to do,” it should be, “I was going to be off-work tomorrow and made some plans before the schedule change, if it’s possible do you mind trading with me?”
4. Think about the last time that someone inconsequential (like a classmate) said anything and you worried about it for more than 5 minutes. Nobody. Ever. Right? Now realize that, to everyone, you are just a first-impression and a few sentences and you can stop taking yourself so seriously. If it’s, “I don’t want to answer a question in class because the professor and my classmates will laugh if I’m wrong,” it should be, “In my opinion, I think this is the answer, and I’m smiling while I say it so there’s no possible way I’m a jackass ’cause I’m cool and confident.”
5. Don’t talk about anyone or anything as if you pity them or are complaining about it. Negative words breed negative thoughts and they breed more negative words, but if you can come up with something nice to say – say it instead. It’s better than silence because you’ll learn to believe the good things coming out of your mouth. If it’s, “My boss is out to get me because he doesn’t think I can do this job and because we aren’t as close as he is with the other workers,” it should be, “My boss is doing everything he possibly can to use me to the best of his knowledge, and since he doesn’t know me very well he can only be making the greatest decisions that his power and understanding can.”
6. Tell yourself this when the day is too hard: “If I am trying to make the world a worse place, then I really don’t matter because that is impossible. People are like me and they screw up all day every day – and plenty of them are worse. But if I’m trying to make the world a better place – that is easy and I can do it fast and I can do it all the time, because the world gets better every time I help somebody and I can do that just with good words and good deeds. There are fewer people doing that than doing nothing, and that’s when I actually matter.”