Lesson 1: How to pretend to be successful!

As this blog is titled "Guide to life" it becomes imperative that the author includes at least some lessons or at worst has a didactic tone ,which, by the way, comes naturally to the author so should not be a problem . So here's the first lesson - How to pretend to be successful in life.

Well, the author himself doesn't know how to be successful in life, had he known he would have been working towards it or would already have been successful by now, in either of the cases he probably won't have written this blog.

Now, why does one need to pretend to be successful? Well, even the author doesn't quite understand why but as they say, you are the perception that the world has of you (If nobody has already taken credit for this/such a quote, I shall like to take it). So people want to show to the world that they are successful , maybe they want the world to be jealous of them or whatever, but yes the fact is that it is in vogue to pretend that one is successful irrespective of the fact whether one actually is.

So, here come the easy to follow and extremely effective rules which will help you successfully pretend to be successful no matter how big a failure you think you are. The results may vary case by case but success or a perception of it is guaranteed:

1. If you are logged into a chat program, always keep your status as busy. If somebody pings, DONOT reply immediately, in fact don't reply 3 out of 4 times and whenever you do - use a lot of short forms, try to show the other person how jobless he is whereas you are so busy in your rocket science research. Try to make the other person feel guilty of having pinged you.

Please find a typical conversation between a successful person and a jobless fellow:

KGV (Jobless fellow) : Hey "Pretending to be a successful person (referred to as PTBSP henceforth)"

sent at 20:55 PM on Wednesday

KGV: You Thr?

sent at 21:25 PM on Wednesday

PTBSP: wht?

KGV: Where are you these days?

KGV: Long time no see... how is life?

PTBSP: ya dude.. had been busy last few weeks..

KGV: Do you still work with ARHPCFW? (Awesome Rocking High Paying Company with Fantastic Work)

sent at 22:05 PM on Wednesday

KGV: ??

sent at 22:25 PM on Wednesday

PTBSP: I left them... now I work with EMARHPC (Even More Awesome, Rocking , Higher Paying Company)

KGV: Kab se?

Chat has been disabled ... reconnecting in 29 sec

The fact of the matter most of the time will be that PTBSP will be busy watching some sitcom, chatting to unknown ,pretending to be female chatter, playing minesweeper or maybe even sleeping as you sincerely try to strike a good conversation. Yet PTBSP is successful in showi

ng off that how successful, busy and preoccupied he is while you are just a jobless jerk who keeps disturbing the successful people.

2. Whenever someone calls you up never answer the phone in two or three rings. Rejecting the call works even better. But the best way is to pick up the call then ask who it is (even if you have the number stored, this makes the caller feel even more unimportant and you more important.) and tell I'll call you back. Never call back in the next 3 hours. Never calling at all will make the other person think that you are too successful to be in touch which will reduce your overall success perception score!

3. While you are talking to the other person try your best to confuse or even misguide, the listener by using as much jargon as possible. Your motto should not be to express and communicate , it should rather be to impress and befuddle.

E.g. If you want to say that shares of telephone companies may fall as all the service providers are slashing tariffs , say with the ARPUs dwindling due to the intense price war like a pack of cards in a storm (Who cares if the simile is correct ! Remember you don't really need to communicate you just need to impress) I see the scrips of front line telcos tanking in the next series.

Warning!!

Don't use extremely high level language like - Pulchritude possesses purely cutaneous profundity. ( Beauty is only skin deep). This is because even if it is grammatically and otherwise correct people will fail to understand it and may brand it as "Gyan". It is an observed tendency to brand anything that one is not able to understand or finds high level as "Gyan" and "Gyan" is considered as good for nothing and a tool used by unsuccessful losers.

The challenge is to confuse people without completely blanking them out.

4. When in a conversation, never be a patient listener. If the other person is taking some time to come to the point, ask point blank - please come to the point fast. Remember a PTBSP is always short on time. If at all the other person is able to express his point, ask sarcastically is it over? And smile mockingly. This shows that you are very confident of your conversational abilities and the other person is not and the reason behind this is obviously your success!

5. Whenever you visit a place which is famous (definition : famous place is where people will want to go after seeing your photo, it is not necessary for the place to be well known. It is successful people like you who make the place famous) or picturesque (even if it isn't, remember you with your style and sunglasses make it picturesque), without fail click a photograph and post it on Orkut/Facebook/Twitter/Any other website where people get updates of your recent uploads. Mention the caption as "Rocking life / Enjoying to the fullest/ any other caption which will imply that I am successful and happy you bloody sucker you don't know how to live (which by the way is just like the intention of the author behind creating this blog :D)"

E.G.

The Rocking 2nd ODI Ind Vs Aus @ Nagpur

6. Always make it a point to offer advice to people especially with regards to their behaviour. Ask people to talk less or more or point out some mistakes in their pronunciation, or tell them how they can become more successful if they mend some of their ways of behaviour. The best time to do this is when people are down having faced slings and arrows of misfortune.

7. Always exaggerate when it comes to your achievements and question the authenticity of others'. Even if you pass a driving test conducted by your regional transport office before granting you a driving licence, proclaim that "RTO conquered in first attempt" or if your blood group is A+ve keep your gtalk message as "A+ yet again!" if someone asks which test , proudly tell blood test.

8. Use the seven rules mentioned above regularly without someone else coming to know of it and if someone finds it out and confronts you - say that "KGV is a big lukkha.. he doesn't have anything worthwhile to do, so he bloody rants on in his blog. I did not know that you are such a big loser that you actually read it. I will teach you how to be successful in life and tell him stories about hard work and perseverance. "

These 8 rules will help you pretend to be successful in life. But the author advices all the readers to someday give up these pretensions and firms believes that if you keep reading this blog regularly at least either the author or the reader will be successful.