In this day (and age) we focus a lot of on self-help and self-improvement. Books about how to be the best version of yourself while holding a low-squat and getting a promotion are flying off the shelves (not to mention the ebook sales of these bad-boys). Some of these books are effective, others less so, but all of them share the same premise: that if we work on ourselves, then life will feel better and the world will be a better place.
I’m not disputing this premise, but sometimes I feel it misses something. Sometimes it’s good to forget about improvement. The pressure can be too much; the cultivation of healthy and happy relationships gets tiresome; achieving goals gets repetitive. At what point in life are we allowed to stop growing? Our culture’s obsession with self-help has made me wonder whether the opposite might be worth pursuing: self-destruction. Actively making yourself a worse person every day. Becoming the worst version of yourself. Being an absolute shitbag.
This guide will help you become that shitbag. Right now, you might be a mature, independent person that is socially well-adjusted and emotionally-stable. You have a sense of balance when it comes to attachments to the objects and people that surround you. You exercise, meditate, eat the right foods, keep yourself well-informed and approach the obstacles in your life with a level-head. The aim of this piece is to snap you out of that and put you in a nice, cosy rut. You will become emotionally dependent, draining to be around, and worthy of nothing more that pity. At the end of this guide you will hopefully be ready to pursue a career in the arts.
The best way to achieve self-destruction is through bad habits. Aristotle said “We Are What We Repeatedly Do” which makes me both a writer and a fleshlight. If we habituate ourselves to negative thought-patterns and behaviours, then soon our reality will change to fit those patterns and behaviours. The following 7 habits are what I consider the quickest and most effective habits to cultivate the true loser inside of you.
Habit 1: Be Unproductive
Productivity is one of the surest ways to develop self-esteem. Whether you’re getting through those business emails or making headway on that novel you always wanted to write, regular progress can give you a sense of accomplishment, and crucially, independence. You start to see yourself as someone who “gets shit done”, and in turn someone that others can rely on.
However, losing that productivity provides the foundation for becoming your worst-self. The more hours in bed you spend the better. The end goal is to be someone who does nothing, as that will provide you with a seemingly infinite expanse of time for you to sit with negative emotions.
Habit 2: Overuse Social Media
Social Media can be a great tool for growing your business or just connecting with friends. When becoming a shitbag, though, you need to focus on the more negative aspects of it. Studies show that people who use social media too much become absolute pricks, so our main goal here is to maximise amount of usage. Looking at the profiles of exes is highly effective in creating negative emotion, and if you can compound this with entering into debates on controversial topics, then you can really create the right cocktail of inward-anxiety and external-hatred towards you. You can play around with how you want to do this, but if you’re looking for suggestions, then for every picture of your ex smiling with a new partner, comment the hashtag #AllLivesMatter twice.
Habit 3: Stay Inactive
Regular exercise is vital when leading a healthy and happy life. Exercise stimulates the body to produce endorphins which make you feel good and be less of a dickhead to the people around you. Doing cardio-work that increases heart rate has been shown to be effective in treating both depression and anxiety.
I’ve got a top tip for you losers: don’t do it. Living a sedentary lifestyle where you burn as few calories as possible will not only reduce those feel-good hormones, it may lead to long- term back problems that compound over time and turn you into an irritable cry-baby.
Habit 4: Eat shit
If you really have to get up and move around, make sure it’s only to retrieve and consume junk food.
I’m talking high-carbs and high-sugar. A poor diet with lots of carbs can lead to spikes in mood that come with a corresponding crash. Crash in mood, I mean, not crash as in lose-control-of-the wheel-because-you’re-stuffing-your-face-with-a-big-mac-and-then-accidentally-run-over-an-innocent-child-and-ruin-your-life forever.
That is also possible, though, and recommended, should the opportunity arise.
Habit 5: Don’t Give… Take
It is said that the greatest gift is giving, so give people the opportunity to give by taking all the time.
And I mean ALL THE TIME. Take everything – people’s time, people’s emotional energy and people’s biscuits (this ties in with the eat shit habit nicely).
This habit is a tricky one, as at first you may get the sense that your life is improving. People are being nice to you and you’re getting free stuff. You might even start to feel a boost in self-esteem; feelings of gratitude may arise. Don’t panic. Sit tight and carry on being a bad person. This habit requires persistence.
Over the long term is where you really start to see the gains – or should I say, losses – when it comes to being a taker. Soon people will realise that their relationship with you is one-sided. They’re giving and getting nothing back in return. Their life, which is challenging enough, is only made more taxing by your inclusion in it. Eventually they will make the decision to cut you off. The negative emotions that follow for you will far outweigh the small positive boost you got when you started this habit.
Habit 6: Blame
A lot of the current self-help literature stresses the importance of personal responsibility. If you mess up, it’s on you to fix it. You need to analyse your decisions and think about what you could’ve done better. A true shitbag doesn’t do this. A true shitbag blames others, always.
Maybe you’ve just lost your job. The boss says you’ve been underperforming for months and they want you out. You’re understandably upset. Now’s the time to fire off some blame. It’s your girlfriend’s fault, right? If she wasn’t on your case all the time, then
maybe you wouldn’t be so tired at work. Maybe you wouldn’t have lost focus and run over that toddler. And how are you supposed to guard against the possibility of a toddler stepping out in front of the forklift you were driving? What was the forklift even doing there in the middle of the office building you work at? Especially on bring-your-toddler-to-work-day. Besides, weren’t you crashing from all the sugar you’ve been eating from Habit 4?
Remember: responsibility leads to autonomy, and autonomy leads to growth. Blame leads to shitbaggery, so start pointing the finger.
Habit 7: Synergise
The last habit is the most important of all, because it brings together the other six.
We’ve briefly discussed how some of the other habits link with each other. Habit 7 is about looking for those links and vicious cycles more carefully and exploring the ways you can combine the habits to really ruin your life. Habit 1 told us to be unproductive, so merge that with overusing social media. Habit 5 told us to take more than we give, which will lead people to abandon us. Why not use Habit 6 to blame those former friends for the subsequent failures in our life?
There are lots of ways to combine these habits, and I’ll leave you to be creative with it. If you are looking for a synergising agent – something that will help you combine these habits in the most destructive ways – then I recommend alcohol.
Now, if after you’ve followed these habits, and you’re a complete mess, someone still manages to see past it all and care for the person you are underneath, then there’s only one thing left to do:
Give them a Chinese Burn.
------------------------------------------
If you enjoyed this post, please consider donating to Eric
- he's very poor, so any amount is greatly appreciated.
Comments