

F***ing Great! How To Swear Your Way To A F***ing Great Life!  
(Uncensored Version)

How Swearing Makes You Stronger, Stops Sh★t From Hurting & Helps You Achieve More (Not Just Tell A★★holes Where To Go)

By

Michael F Yew

Copyright 2013 Michael F Yew – Smashwords Edition

Author's note: this book contains 296 f***s, 57 s***s, 15 b***ards, and other swearwords too numerous to mention – and the ***s are only on the cover and here. If you're easily offended, stop f***ing reading now! You have been warned....

This ebook is licensed for your personal use only. So use it.

This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient.

Thanks.

Now f***ing use it!
Contents

Introduction: "First Words"

What's So Fucking Great About That?

Let's Get One Thing Straight: How Best To Use This Book

Part 1: The Fucking Great Plan

1! That Doesn't Fucking Hurt – Now Science Is On Our Side!

How much can you take?

And what if it didn't hurt so much doing it?

That still doesn't fucking hurt!

Let's Get One Thing Straight: Pain Relief Equals Strength

2! Why The Magic Works

It really fucking does though

Magic Words

Let's Get One Thing Straight: This Is Old, But It Works

3! What The Fuck Do You Want?

Don't Be Pissed Off...

...Be Fucking Great!

I want what he's got

How Do You Know What You Really Want?

Let's Get One Thing Straight: You Can Only Get What You Know You Want

4! So What Are You Going To Fucking Do About It?

You Starts With A Why

"Bucket Lists" Are On My Shit List!

...But "Life List" Sounds Too Wanky!

The "Fuck It" List

Let's Get One Thing Straight: Make It "Explicit"

5! I Swear...

It's Not All Bollocks

"Say What You Mean - And Say It MEAN!"

You Are Your Worst Enemy

I Am Not In The Fucking Mood For This

Let's Get One Thing Straight: It Works, It Works, It Works

6! Just Fucking Do It!

Right Fucking Now!

Let's Get One Thing Straight: The Right Time To Do This

7! Don't Make Me Say It Again!

8! A Bit Extra: You Don't Have to Buy This Book But...

What made Apple fucking great?

What makes any sporting great fucking great?

What's going to make you fucking great...

Part 2: Tips, Tricks And Bullshit

A. Tips and Tricks

1. Swear With Your Body Language!

2. Fucking Fake It! (Everyone Else Is...)

3. Get Shit Done!

4. Excellence Or Excuses? Results Or Reasons? You Fucking Choose!

5. Don't Ask, Don't Fucking Get!

6. Be A Bloody Do-Gooder!

7. Make Up Your Own Rules

8. Don't Be So Fucking Hard On Yourself

9. It's not who you are, it's what you do

10. The Secret Is There Is No Fucking Secret.

11. Go With The Fucking Flow

B: Other Shit

1. "May Contain Bollocks": Self-Help Books That Don't Swear – But That Might Need Swearing At

2. Fiddle-Sticks And Balderdash: This Book, But For Ned Flanders

C. Now With Added Badness!

# Introduction: "First Words"

I do it. You do it. We all do it. And we do it for one very simple reason: it works.

Or, in keeping with our chosen theme, it fucking works. It works like buggery. It works like a fucking charm.

It's a release of emotion, like a sneeze is a release of air, as violent and as clearing. There is an irritant we can't stand, and we attempt to sneeze it out. We can't explain why it's happening, but when we succeed, the irritant is gone and we feel better.

It's the snarl of a cornered dog. It's the roar of a caged lion. It's that basic, that elemental, and because of that, we have to acknowledge it's there for a reason: it can release the anxiety we're feeling, or the pain we're suffering, whether physical, mental or emotional. Equally, it can stimulate us into action, raise our hackles, stir our whole body, get our adrenaline running and ready for the fight.

You know it's true if you don't swear a lot but someone, somehow makes you really angry – really really fucking angry – so you can't think of the words you need to properly explain yourself... And the only words that your mind finds are "Fuck you!"

You'll also know this is true if you've ever stubbed your toe and shouted "FUCK!" because that wasn't the end of it, was it? All those nerves at the end of your big toe don't calm down quickly, do they? And the shooting, stabbing hurt continues in a second wave and maybe even a third: "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!" you continue, until the shock starts to diminish.

Some of us who swear more often than others may search our minds for something even ruder to say by this stage, aware that the word drugs aren't working; the "talking cure" as Freud referred to something completely different, isn't strong enough this time.

Those of us who never swear (fuck knows what you're doing reading this book!) may get away with a "Dagnabbit" or even a "FUCKrying out loud!" but whatever the words are that you come up with, when you need them, they'll be of a stronger variety than you usually use.

We've all known this, deep down, probably our whole lives, but finally there's evidence: scientists now know what we swearers have known all along, that swearing helps us. It works; it really fucking does – of which more later...

$ # % & @ !

But first, one of my personal favourite swearing stories...

My wife used to drive our kids to kindergarten every morning – and she hated the traffic. It completely stressed her out. The first thing she did every morning was get in the car and contend with traffic – people driving too slowly, people cutting her up... She hated it.

Now, around the time our oldest girl was almost five years old and the youngest around two, we went on a holiday to Sydney in Australia. One day we took the girls to a park on the harbour where there was a big playground with a great view, although for some reason it didn't have a bathroom anywhere near it – that was across the other side of the park.

The oldest one had asked to go to the bathroom, and my wife had taken her right across the park while I watched the younger one. I guess around fifteen minutes later they were back, and we started to get ready to leave... until my wife checked the contents of the younger girl's diapers. Which were now full.

"Oh..........." she struggled to contain herself thinking about how we would now all have to make the trek back across the park even before dealing with the horrendous contents of the diaper.... "Damn!"

You see, she really doesn't like swearing, and tells me off for my language all the time.

Maybe the strain of keeping her language in check was showing because my oldest daughter caught something in the look on her face. "Mummy," our angelic-looking almost-five-year-old said, "you don't have to say 'Oh damn'. You could just say... 'Oh fuck!'"

Now I have to admit that I instantly found this more than a little funny, although even someone with my poor level of basic parenting skills knows that you're not allowed to let it show. But I bet the blood drained from my face when my wife asked the follow-up question: "Who taught you to say that?"

"Well, it's bound to be me, isn't it?" I thought. "What's the point in asking that question? There really is no point at all, is there?" I waited for the axe to fall...

"You did Mummy. You say it every day in the car."

It's not right to have favourite children, but, you know...

$ # % & @ !

And so this book is dedicated to my daughters, who have learnt the world's supposedly worst words from the earliest age – and seem to have come out ok – and to my wife who made sure it wasn't my sole responsibility to teach them.

But more than that, the central idea and dedication for this book is to us swearers, potty mouths and cussed profaners who have to hold our tongues and watch our language in case we offend the prim and proper.

Let's do something about it.  
****! Let's bring key, emotive words back into our language.

****! Let's not just use them when we stub our toes, or give someone we don't like "directions", but instead use them to become better and stronger people.

****! Let's stop being told what to do and how to do it in cheesy, new-age, hippy speak.

****! And let's get on with having a fucking great life in a language we understand and know how to use.

Are you with me?

I asked you a fucking question: "Are you with me?"

$ # % & @ !

## What's So Fucking Great About That?

Are you with me for what? I'm sure you don't want to read a book that teaches you a few new swearwords (there's TV for that), or even a lot (there's www.urbandictionary.com for that!), and I don't particularly want to encourage a bunch of people I don't know to wander around swearing a lot. Particularly in front of my kids – they get enough of that at home.

The point is not just to swear – the point is to be fucking great, and have a fucking great life – and to use every tool at our disposal to achieve that, without worrying about whether your grandmother, or someone with her sense of vocabulary, approves of your language.

But a fucking great life... What does that mean for you? What's it going to entail? The answer for you may lie in acquiring skills or making money or jumping out of airplanes - but the general answer is the same. Despite all our differences, many of us share goals that are broadly similar, and may be pretty closely summed up by this simple question:

"How do I make the most of my time alive?"

Simple question, right? But so many fucking answers – and so many of them full of shit! If you're like me, you've looked in all kinds of places for the answers:

****! I've bought books about time management, and wasted my time reading them. And then not used any of the tips.

****! I've bought books on being organised - and lost them.

****! I can't count the number of habits of successful bastards I've read about, but noticed that none of them had the habit of reading about the habits of other successful bastards – and meanwhile I stayed unsuccessful.

****! I've been given a cheesy book about my cheese being moved by the very same cheesy wanker who kept fucking moving it.

****! I've lent diet/exercise books to fat fucks who've never given them back. Or dieted or exercised. That's why they're fat fucks!

****! The first book I saw of this type was called something like "The Lazy Man's Way to Riches" - and although as a lazy teenager I thought this had to be speaking to me, it turned out I was too lazy to do what it said.

****! I've even read books about ways to hypnotise myself into making sure I do the things that I'm supposed to do - and then don't do them. In fact, I don't even hypnotise myself. I need a book that would hypnotise me into hypnotising myself into doing the things I'm supposed to do....

No I don't. I don't need any of this shit. I need two things.

1) I need a book that talks to me in my own language. Doesn't talk to me about Chicken-fucking-soup or Cheese-fucking-movers or Neuro-Linguistic-Fucking-Programming or anything else like that. I want one that speaks like I do: rudely, often crudely, but doesn't fuck about and gets straight to the fucking point.

But no such book existed (until now anyway).

2) So I just needed to get on with it – ignore all this shit – which is what I did. Worked it out for myself, lived my life, and learnt along the way.

*** Learnt how to get jobs \- and get well paid for them.

*** Learnt how to get fit.

*** Learnt how to lose weight.

*** Learnt how to be happy.

*** Learnt how I thought the world worked and how I should make my way in it.

*** Learnt how to make the most of what I've got, and the time I have alive.

*** Learnt to stop buying cheesy books by cheesy bastards who have only achieved one thing in their lives – selling cheesy fucking books.

****! Am I a millionaire today?

Yes. Not a hundred times over or anything, but yes, I'm there.

****! Do I hike mountains, run marathons, fly up the front of the plane, write books (not just this one)?

Yes, yes, yes and yes, when I want to.

****! Do I basically do what the fuck I want to do?

Pretty much, yes.

****! Am I having a good time doing it?

Fuck yes.

But am I Superman, super-rich, dating supermodels, driving super-cars and hanging out with super-fucking-billionaires?

No, I'm not – because if I were I wouldn't be telling you how to steal my girlfriend!

Equally because the super-successful often don't really know what it is they're doing that's got them there. Maybe it's fate. Maybe it's God. Maybe it's just that they're super-fucking-brilliant... so they write their books about how lucky they are, and how if you try harder you'll be lucky too. Wankers!

But if I'm not one of them, why should you listen to me?

Because if you've put up with my language so far, you know we understand each other. An old friend of mine once told me that I didn't call a spade a spade, I call it "a fucking shovel" – and because you're still here, I know that's what you want it to be called too.

Because while I don't always have the greatest respect for some of the con-men and bullshit artists that write self-improvement books (if you haven't noticed that yet, you soon will), I have the greatest respect for the people that read them and buy them. I don't believe that readers of these books are looking for get-rich-quick schemes or magical answers. They're looking to make the most of themselves, the most of their lives – and by looking, they have made the most important step.

Because I've noticed that some of the stuff I read in all those hocus-pocus books actually does seem to work occasionally, but it has to be put into plain simple English before it works. And by now you know what plain simple English means to me.

Because I've noticed over the years when I have been successful it has been because I've done things I either didn't want to do, didn't think I could do or was maybe even scared to do... and I've sworn at myself to get stuff done.

*** Just fucking do it!

*** Stop fucking whining and get this done, you asshole!

*** Of course you can do it. If that prick can, so can you!

And more than that, you should listen because the latest research says that swearing works. Swearing is good for you.

It may seem like a ridiculous claim, but swearing can help you do things you couldn't otherwise do. If you don't believe me, read on: we may still have the prudes, prigs and pedants lined up against us, but now, finally, we've got science on our side...

$ # % & @ !

### Let's Get One Thing Straight: How Best To Use This Book

At the end of every chapter, I'll try to summarise the one key thing I want you to remember from that chapter, if you remember nothing else. As we're at the end of the Introduction, I'll keep it pretty simple – how best to use this book.

It seems no book these days is complete without a section telling you how to get the most from the book. This one is no different.

Read it! It's a fucking book!

It's not even a very long one, or a complicated one, and it gets to the point as fast as it can every time. So just read it and stop fucking around!

# Part 1: The Fucking Great Plan

# 1! That Doesn't Fucking Hurt – Now Science Is On Our Side!

We have Dr Richard Stephens of Keele University to thank for ending our pain – or at least helping us to understand how to relieve it.

He's the one who published two sets of research, one in 2009 and then again in 2011, showing that swearing reduced pain. Or maybe more importantly, increased a participant's ability to withstand pain.

## How much can you take?

The experiment was simple enough: as you can't (these days) actually torture volunteers in scientific experiments (and get away with it!), all he was allowed to do was plunge their hands into icy water for as long as they could bear it...

But that was the point: finding out what might help them bear it for a bit longer.

He asked them all for five words that they would expect to use if they hit themselves on the thumb with a hammer – which not coincidentally was how Dr Stephens came up with the idea for this study – and then gave them some mundane words they wouldn't normally use under those circumstances.

And then he told one student to fuck off for failing to come up with proper swear words. (The more I find out about Dr Stephens, the more I like him: his latest research topic is hangovers!)

Interestingly, Dr Stephens notes in the introduction to his 2009 paper that although there are many intuitively-known reasons why people swear (letting off steam, shock, insult), there were theories surrounding the "cathartic" use of swearing, or the swearing that is done in painful situations, that it might be a maladaptive response...

"...in which negative and unhelpful thoughts and ideas are brought to bear when pain is experienced. We wondered why swearing, a maladaptive response to pain, is such a common pain response."

In plainer words, Dr Stephens was testing the basic idea of whether swearing was a good or bad response to pain – but he had already pinned his colours to the mast with that last line: if it's such a shit idea, why do we all do it?

(His full research abstract is here – or was at time of writing: http://www.bat.uoi.gr/files/animal_physiology/2009_list_projects/28.pdf)

The results:

1. Participants were able to hold their hands under water for longer when allowed to swear. Not just marginally longer but significantly longer.

2. Participants reported that it didn't seem as painful when they were allowed to swear.

3. And their heart rated jumped significantly.

Let's leave that last one for a minute, because it's the first two that really matter – although their importance is probably better understood if they're reversed, and rephrased a little...

1. Pain doesn't feel as bad when you swear as when you don't

2. You can do more difficult stuff you don't want to do when it feels less painful... and swearing helps achieve this.

If someone invented something that had no side effects, took pain away, and potentially made you more effective, wouldn't you sign up tomorrow?

And the results were not marginal either.

It is quite often the case that where science meets humans, the output can be at least a little mis-leading, or even worse, marginal, ie, there's a small difference between the two cases, but so small that something else might easily explain the difference.

This was not the case in Dr Stephen's tests. Male participants were able to hold their hand under water for roughly 150 seconds when told not to swear, but that increased to about 200 seconds when they could let fly a few choice expletives. Almost an extra minute, when they could barely do two and a half minutes before. Female participants saw a similarly impressive increase in their time: from about 80 seconds to roughly 120 seconds.

The difference you get from swearing is roughly a 33% to 50% improvement in performance.

Repeat after me: "What the fuck?!"

$ # % & @ !

I'll go back to that question I asked you before: "If someone invented something that had no side effects, took pain away, and potentially made you more effective, wouldn't you sign up tomorrow?" What if it could improve your performance by between 33% and 50%?

****! What if you could go from running 10km to 15km – just by saying something?

****! How much more would you get paid if your work improved 33%, let alone 50%?

****! What would you do with 33% more time or 50% more money?

****! How would you look if your weight dropped by a third? Maybe too skinny? Or if you had 50% more muscle? Maybe a little freakish?

****! What if you could do everything you know you should – but don't want to do, or don't feel like doing – 50% better, 50% faster.

$ # % & @ !

## And what if it didn't hurt so much doing it?

Remember that was the second part of Dr Stephens test: the perception of pain when not swearing, and then again when turning the air blue.

When not swearing, male participants rated the pain level of the experience at 4.9 (I guess out of 10), but when they swore, that perception of pain dropped to a 3.9 – that's a good 20% cut in pain perception. Not only could they last a third longer, but the pain was 20% less of an issue too!

Women swear better though...

This outcome was even more pronounced for women participants however. They rated the pain experienced as being about 5.6 – quite a bit higher than the guys – but when they were allowed to swear that dropped to about 3.8, just a bit lower than men. Women were not only able to last 50% longer in the ice water, the pain perception was 33% lower.

And while they had thought the pain was quite a lot worse than the men when they didn't swear, once they did let fly, their experience of the pain was actually better than the men.

Let's get that last part straight. For centuries men and women have argued about their differing abilities, and one of the abilities they argue about most is their pain thresholds... Men claim they're the stronger sex, while women point out that they can and do undergo the pain of childbirth, which no sensible man would ever want to emulate.

I don't want to re-ignite that debate now – I want to point out how retarded it is:

In Dr Stephens' test, when participants didn't swear, women felt the pain was worse than the men did. So the guys win.

When they all swore, men thought it was worse, women thought it wasn't so bad. So the girls win.

BUT the improvement brought about by swearing for both was greater than the difference between the sexes in the first place. So swearing wins!

It turns out that the difference between the sexes isn't nearly as much as the difference between the swearers.

$ # % & @ !

## That still doesn't fucking hurt!

You've got to hand it to Dr Stephens though. Not content with establishing that swearing was good for you, he wanted to test his theory again, and this time test against some other variables – like how much you swear anyway.

I'm glad he did, because it was when his research in 2011 was published that I first came across it.

It was essentially the same study – timing how long you can keep your hand in icy water while swearing or not swearing – but this time with one additional control variable: asking each participant how much they normally swear.

You can see why this might be important. The whole point of swearing is that it's supposed to be extreme, and therefore somewhat removed from the norm. If you normally swear all the time, then swearing when your hand is in the ice night not make so much difference...

Whereas throwing out a full-blooded "FUUUUUUUUUCKKKKKKKKK!!!!" when you normally just whisper a little "Hot diggety" will work a lot better.

$ # % & @ !

That's what Dr Stephens tested for on the second occasion, and discovered that if you swore up to 60 times a day, without being anywhere near icy water, then the swearing won't protect you from the cold as much as if you hardly swore at all.

And maybe it helps to explain why in the first test, women saw the biggest improvement in pain relief, because in general, or at least on average they swear a bit less.

Now, you might want to take this as evidence of why we shouldn't swear all the time, why we should save it for special occasions – but you know what?

* I'll live with a limited ability to hold my hand in icy water.  
* And I'll think of something new to say if I hit my thumb with a hammer, or stub my toe on a step... I generally do.

If those swear-words can kill my pain and make me feel better, I want to use them now to make my life better. You wait for the hammer to fall if you want.

I knew as soon as I read the report that I wouldn't.

$ # % & @ !

### Let's Get One Thing Straight: Pain Relief Equals Strength

People who swear can stand pain for longer and feel it less. This is not just "psychological" or whatever that might mean – their heart rates increase too, meaning it is physiological too.

It's also not a small difference: the subjects of the tests improved performance by up to 50%. The performance in question may have just been the ability to withstand pain – but let's face it, which tests aren't?

And what does it take? A few choice swearwords.

$ # % & @ !

# 2! Why The Magic Works

Why does this work? I've read around, and people who know a lot more than I do say there's no definitive answer to that, sadly. It just does – but it really does.

## It really fucking does though

Another thing Dr Stephens measured, in addition to how long you kept your hand under water and how often you swore during the day, was the impact that swearing had on your heart rate increase.

When men plunged their hands into the cold water, their heart rate jumped by about 7 beats per minute when they didn't swear. Women's heart rates jumped by 8 beats.

When allowed to swear, men's heartbeat went up by almost 12 beats a minute in the icy water, while women's hearts beat an extra 18 time a minute. That's a genuinely significant increase in reaction.

Where's the advantage in all this?

I don't know why this reduces pain, but what Dr Stephens reckons is that the increase in heart rate shows swearing triggers the primitive fight or flight mechanism in our brains. This is one of the oldest parts of our brains, connecting into our deepest and least understood behaviours. We think we know why we have our emotions, but they often come from our animal past, and can work in ways we don't fully understand... and sometimes that can be in our favour.

Dr Stephens cites Dr Steven Pinker at this point in his research stating that "Pinker suggests that swearing aloud may tap into 'deep and ancient parts of the emotional brain'" –

"You may be interested to learn that the reason you swear when you drop a car battery on your foot is that an electro-physiological response emanates from the anterior cingulate cortex; as Pinker informs us, "in public, cognitive neuroscientists call this response the Error-Related Negativity; in private they call it the Oh-Shit Wave."

We need to find out what else Dr Pinker has got to say on the subject. Dr Pinker is a linguist, and in his 2006 book called "The Stuff of Thought' spent a whole chapter writing about the swearing, or "The Seven Words You Can't Say On Television". That chapter proved so popular, they even released it as a separate book.

$ # % & @ !

## Magic Words

One of the keys to understanding the power of words, and particularly, the power of the most powerful words, our swear words, is that the meaning of words can be broken into two parts: their connotation and denotation. If I understand this correctly, this is the difference between the cold meaning of the word, its denotation, and the emotional feeling of the word, its connotation:

"The concept of a connotation is often explained by a conjugational formula devised by Bertrand Russell in a 1950s radio interview: I am firm, you are obstinate, he is pig-headed."

Pinker continues this to "I am exploring my sexuality; you are promiscuous; she is a slut." Does this dual role of words, to convey both meaning and emotion, which as we've seen from the examples above, are not at all the same thing, help explain the power of swearing: that by swearing we tap into not the dry meaning component as much as we do the emotive part?

"Taboo speech is part of a larger phenomenon known as word magic. Though one of the foundations of linguistics is that the pairing between a sound and a meaning is arbitrary, most humans intuitively believe otherwise."

This doesn't just mean swearing, but magic too; spells and curses in addition to cusses; prayers and meditations; exaltations to an almighty; exclamations at the wonder of nature.

Away from Pinker for a minute, it has long bothered me personally that many people in the profession of affecting the way other people think attempt to imbue words with meaning by the way they say them. This process, of being bothered, first began for me in church.

My first vicar had been an army chaplain during the Second World War, and as such was as much of a swearing man as anyone else you were likely to meet. He didn't let fly often, but he wouldn't back away from it either. He believed in a booming voice, the occasional bit of anger and nothing but direct speech. You were never in any doubt that this man believed in God, but he didn't feel the need to make it feel mystical.

When he died, he was replaced by someone with the new school of Church of England vicar-speak: softness to the point of effeminacy, elongated vowels, stage whispers.

If you haven't heard it in church yourself, I am sure you have heard it somewhere else, possibly among "new age" believers who can stretch the "ee" sound in the word "heeeeeeee-aling" for a few seconds longer than any normal human would choose to, as though there was not just power in the word, but in the "ee" sound itself, and the longer it stretches, the more power there will be.

I don't mean to be overly cynical – only accurately so – but as Pinker points out "even hardheaded materialists find themselves knocking wood after mentioning a hoped-for event." And quoting Niels Bohr hanging a horse-shoe over his office door on the logic "I hear it works even if you don't believe in it."

But where does the power come from, or rather, where does the belief in the power come from? It is the dual role of words, the combination of the denotational and the connotational that holds the key.

"Are connotations and denotations stored in different parts of the brain? It's not implausible. The mammalian brain contains, among other things, the limbic system, an ancient network that regulates motivation and emotion, and the neo-cortex, the crinkled surface of the brain, which ballooned in human evolution and which is the seat of perception, knowledge, reason, and planning."

It's tempting when talking of different brain systems, or parts of the brain, to think they operate separately, but they are all linked, and work together. Some things will appeal to emotions more and some will appeal to our factual brain more.

I personally don't have an emotional reaction to lots of words, from ones as simple as "chair" or "table", to ones as complicated as syntactical, which Pinker uses a lot, or the old school quiz classic, anti-disestablishmentarianism (supposedly the longest word in the English language). But some words fringe on to the emotional: dinner, for example, could just be a meal at a particular time of day, or it could resonate with meaning, if it has a connotation of happy/unhappy family dinners. Family would be another example, meaning a genetic human organizational structure – or something more personal, for some the source of their initial happiness, for less fortunate others, the source of their original pain.

$ # % & @ !

Back to the brain, the limbic system contains the amygdala, which "helps invest memories with emotion" according to Pinker. "In humans the amygdala lights up when the person sees an angry face or an unpleasant word, especially a taboo word."

Aphasia, a condition that results in the loss of articulate language and often caused by damage to the cortex, is often noted that while many elements of language have been lost, the ability to swear remains intact.

And aphasia isn't the only neurological condition in which swearing plays a prominent part: the most culturally well-known is undoubtedly Tourette Syndrome, even though the uncontrollable swearing is not as common a component of the condition as popular culture would have us believe. Nevertheless, "people with Tourette's experience their outbursts not as literally involuntary but as a response to an over-powering urge, much like an irresistible itch."

Tourette's is apparently caused by abnormalities in a part of the brain called the basal ganglia, which tends to act like a bit of a policeman in the brain... acknowledging what we're not supposed to be doing or thinking, and keeping it in the background, unless otherwise conflicted, through pain, aggression, despair, or maybe damage to the basal ganglia itself.

I first received the following picture as an attachment to an email telling me about a charity appeal to raise funds to buy paper and crayons for children afflicted with Mute Tourette Syndrome...

You shouldn't laugh, you really shouldn't...

The joke has more truth to it than the original joker probably first knew though: an American with both Tourette's and deafness has been known to use sign language to essentially blurt out "fuck" and "shit". These "words" are rooted deep in our emotions, such that even when we have no way of "saying" them, they will come out.

$ # % & @ !

I am not going to spend much more time with Pinker here, although his book is definitely one of the most interesting reads you'll find, but I will note two more of his thoughts in his chapter on swearing:

"Some cognitive neuro-scientists have revived Darwin's suggestion that verbalized outbursts were the evolutionary missing link between primate calls and human languages. If so, swearing would have played a more important role in the human career than most people would acknowledge."

"More than any other form of language [swearing] recruits our expressive faculties to the fullest... It engages the full expanse of the brain; left and right, high and low, ancient and modern. Shakespeare, no stranger to earthy imprecations himself, had Caliban speak for the entire human race when he said, 'You taught me language, and profit on't is, I know how to curse.'"

$ # % & @ !

### Let's Get One Thing Straight: This Is Old, But It Works

It looks as though swearing has been with us as long as language – and if it connects into our emotions the way snarls and growls do, maybe even longer.

This may be why it works so well. Although all words and language use the neo-cortex to be understood, words with more emotional meanings or impacts get "felt" in the amygdala as well.

Say something and it will mean something, but swear it and you can feel it!

$ # % & @ !

# 3! What The Fuck Do You Want?

Are You Going To Wait For The Hammer To Hit Your Thumb?

So now we know that swearing works, and we have theories for why it works. Is that enough for you? Are you happy enough to know that taboo words are bad because we believe them to be bad emotionally, and that they stimulate our bodies and brains to do things they wouldn't otherwise too, producing adrenalin and natural pain-killers?

Or do you want to start using this? I suspect as you've read this far, and put up with the language I've used so far, you'd like to get some results...

## Don't Be Pissed Off!

What do you fucking want? I'm serious. What do you fucking want? Do you know? Do you really know? Do you really know why?

It's important...

I read a long time ago that the mathematical definition of being pissed off (those may be my words, however) can be written as an equation:

PISSED OFF = WANT / GET

In case you're maths/equation blind, this is pretty straightforward: the amount of frustration you feel is created by how much good stuff you GET divided by how much good stuff you WANT. (If you're American, pissed off is UK English for pissed, but when we say pissed, we mean drunk - and that doesn't make us pissed off, at least not until the next morning!)

The bigger the first number (WANT) and the, smaller the second number (GET), the bigger the pissed off number will be, the more pissed off you will be.

Think about it. When are you pissed off? When you don't get something you want. When you don't get the gig or the girl. When you don't get the grades you need. When you're a kid and you don't get the toy you want, and you drop to the ground kicking and screaming. When you don't get the right lane in the traffic because some asshole cuts you up...

Or in the negative version of the equation, when you DO get something you DON'T want. Like an asshole cutting you up, like bad grades... It's the same thing. Being pissed off is all about not getting the stuff you want, and getting the stuff you don't want. And being pissed off for a long time must be because you aren't getting any of the stuff you want. Ever.

$ # % & @ !

##

##...Be Fucking Great!

And when do you feel fucking great?

When you do. When everything is going your way. When you're doing what you want. When you get the gig, the girl, and the grades. And the toys. And the lane. We could write the equation of being pissed off the other way around to get the equation for feeling fucking great. So, instead of want divided by get we do...

FUCKING GREAT = GET / WANT

The more you get of what you want, the more often you'll feel fucking great.

And while we're going to spend most of the rest of this book talking about how to get a fucking great life, we've got to talk about what that means to us first.

$ # % & @ !

## I want what he's got

Why are we talking about what we want? Why not get straight to the tools? Didn't I say earlier on that I call a spade a fucking shovel, so why am I fucking you around now?

Because more of what you think you might want - but don't really - won't make you happy, let alone fucking great. It will make you confused. It may distract you from what you really want for a brief period by giving you a little buzz, but once that's over, that's it. You're back to not having what you want again, and pissed off rather than fucking great.

### Watch It!

I'll give you an example. A shitty example, but it's perfect in showing how none of us are perfect. I'm certainly not...

I'm not a watch wearer. I wear them sometimes, when they're useful. When I'm hiking or running or skiing, and I don't want to fish my phone out of my pocket to check the time. Or more specifically, I only like to check my time, not other people's (I don't like constantly checking to see if I'm late for a meeting), or my direction or altitude when I'm hiking, or speed or heart rate when I'm running – because I'm a bit of a geek that way...

And sometimes I don't wear them when they'd be useful – like when I go out at night and think I'd like to be home by midnight but realise I haven't checked the time for hours... And maybe it's morning!

Anyway, one day I bought myself a smart watch. Not super-smart, because super-smart watches don't have the super-geeky features I like, but definitely smart enough. Why did I do it? Because I think I was the only person I knew in my industry, finance, who didn't have a smart watch. You can often see hundreds of thousands of dollars poking out from behind the French cuffs and cufflinks around the conference table, but not on mine. So I bought one. Maybe I thought it was something that would help me be taken seriously, help me fit in...

Now, I didn't know what it was called at the time, but there's a thing called "mimetic desire" or "mimetic impulse" – and it's important to explain here. Humans learn by copying. As babies, we copy the expressions on our parents' faces and the noises they make: it's how we learn to smile and talk. And we learn everything else in much the same way.

And we don't do it deliberately. We copy because it's an impulse, something we don't and can't control. We want to be like others.

$ # % & @ !

I'm not a huge fan of the French (Don't get me started. Let's just say that's as close as this book gets to massive fucking understatement), but there are some things even I have to admit that the French do well:  
\- Steak, chips and red wine  
\- Bitterly cynical philosophy

### "Mimetic Desire"

And they don't come much more cynical than Andre Ricard, who wrote about "mimetic desire" – the desire to copy. Although that doesn't sound too cynical, let alone bitter, it's important to understand that this is more of a genetic impulse than desire. Because we are programmed to learn through copying, we learn to contort our faces into emotionally expressive and recognisable configurations through copying; we learn to control our vocal chords and mouth to make sounds others can recognise through copying, all before we are aware of doing so, and the impulse to copy stays with us.

So we copy what other people do. And we want what they have. Not because we want it, but because we like to copy, or rather, what we know how to do is copy – so we do that.

Ricard reckoned that up to 80% of human behaviour is driven by copying. He describes how this impulse explains competition, conflict and even wars – and particularly when nothing else can explain them.

If people want something because other people want it, then it won't matter if that thing is useful. Diamonds. Gold. Expensive watches. If you don't have it and they do, you'll want it. And if there isn't enough to go around – and there never is – competition results.

And you chase after something you don't really need or want.

Sound familiar?

### "Social Proof"

This effect also goes by the name of "social proof" in the classic book "Influence" by Robert Cialdini, an excellent book that lacks nothing except the occasional swearword. Cialdini describes how "social proof", the desire to confirm our behaviour by checking the behaviour of others first, impacts all kinds of areas, such as the mass-suicide of Jonestown, assisting crime victims and advertising strategies. I read it on my Kindle, and made the following note:

"In general, when we are unsure of ourselves, when the situation is unclear or ambiguous, when uncertainty reigns, we are most likely to look to and accept the actions of others as correct."

And then I noticed that this section had been highlighted by me and 824 others – so it must be the right part to note!

I'm not saying it's always wrong – sometimes you really do want what he's got – but the process is piss-poor. And piss-poor process leads to piss-poor results, and that leads to being pissed off!

Before you spend a lot of energy and time doing something, let's make sure it's worth having for its own sake.

$ # % & @ !

Remember that I bought a watch because other people had them: this is what happened:

I put it on. I looked at it a lot. I played with the geeky functions a lot (I said it didn't have super-geeky functions: I can't buy a watch that just tells the time though!). And I checked the time. And I noticed that I checked the time. I checked the time when I didn't want to know the time, but I'd got used to twisting my wrist around to look at it. I'd developed a tic or habit that I didn't previously want or need.

And then I lost it. I took it off at the swimming pool when I'd gone for a lunchtime swim and left it there. I remembered later in the day when I twisted my wrist to look at it, and it wasn't there. I rushed back to the pool but it had gone. I had owned it less than a week.

I was furious to the point of feeling sick. I had wasted a lot of money on a few days of checking the time. You can imagine how mad I felt...

But then I thought "Fuck it" and let it go.

I realised I hadn't put my watch back on because I'm not a watch-wearer. It's part of what makes me, me. I don't always need to know what the time is, and I knew that losing that watch was only a matter of time. I had only bought the watch because other people have watches and that wearing it had actually annoyed me.

I thought to myself: "That's that then – no more watches for me!" I learnt a lesson that may have been more valuable than the watch.

If only I didn't keep needing to re-learn it, because it's not the only thing I've done because I've been copying other people.

****! I've bought golf clubs and learnt to play golf, despite hating nearly every minute of it. "They can't all be wrong," I thought – but they fucking are.

****! I've bought clothes that I saw other people wearing, people I know or people I don't, but I looked crap in them.

****! And every time I've got blind drunk, it's not exactly because I consciously felt like it when I started. Normally quite the opposite.

And I don't think I'm particularly guilty of mimetic impulse... I think I'm one of the 20%, just like you think you are. But I'm not, not entirely, and nor are you.

So when I asked you what the fuck you wanted, did you want something that YOU want, or was it something that someone else already had?

$ # % & @ !

## The Journey Of A Thousand Miles Is A Long Fucking Walk!

If you're going to start being fucking great, it's really important to know what that means to you. You've got to know what your version of fucking great is, because it won't be the same as mine... And it won't be the same as anyone else's.

It's a fucking terrible old cliché, but I love it because it is true. It's obviously true, but it's even truer than it sounds...

"The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step"

It's true of running a marathon and living your life. It's true because often the first step is the hardest one to make, but taking that journey step-by-step is as important as the aphorism makes clear.

It also really helps if that step is in the right general direction. A thousand mile walk is one thing. A thousand mile walk to the wrong place would be a serious pain in the ass.

Figure 1: The Journey Of A Thousand Miles Is Much Longer If You Head In The Wrong Direction

I just made that pretty little picture to summarise the point graphically (I'm pretty proud of it – I am shit at diagrams!), but I've kind of had it in my head for a while now. Being fucking great is a journey of way more than a thousand miles. It isn't going to happen over night, it's going to take work and effort, and even when you get there, you'll realize that there's still more to do. You'll realize that it's the journey as much as it's the destination.

But what the diagram shows very clearly is that a step in the wrong direction isn't just a wasted step, it's two wasted steps. If the circle is your journey to fucking greatness, and the area at the top is where you want to get to, then only a step in the direction of circle A is going to get you where you want to go. Stepping towards circle B is a waste of fucking time, and circle C is too fucking annoying to even contemplate...

Am I, as Basil Fawlty said in Fawlty Towers, "stating the bleeding obvious"? Can I hear you no-shit-sherlocking me?

Ok, ok, but have you actually mapped out where you want to get to? Don't start criticizing me if you haven't got your act together on this, if you haven't taken the time to think about the things you really want, haven't stopped to consider the things you do because you copy other people, because you're competing... the things that could be taking you towards C rather than A.

Like they should say...

"Fucking up your plan is planning your fuck-up!"

$ # % & @ !

## Want Less

In a minute we'll get to how to write out a plan, but for now we need to go back to the maths – the equation for feeling fucking great. It's got two parts: get and want. The more you get of what you want, the better you feel – we said that. But similarly, the less you want, the more able you are to get it, the better you feel.

I am not suggesting you become a Buddhist monk, sitting in saffron robes and wanting nothing at all, not even wanting to reach Nirvana, and through that level of self-denial you can be supremely happy, maybe even reaching Nirvana. Don't let me stop going for that if you like, but this is probably not the book for you as you might have been able to tell from the title, genius.

But equally, it's really important that you cut out a lot of the shit you think you want. The shit you think will make you fucking great, that you waste a bunch of time and money on, and then you end up realizing does fuck all for you.

Reduce the things you want to the things you really want. Don't bother with the other shit. Don't bother with things in the shop that you think will make you happy, the things you think will make you look cool. They won't.

You have to learn to fight the desire to want stuff that doesn't get you to being fucking great. Because more of what you think you might want – but don't really – won't make you happy, let alone fucking great. It will make you confused and pissed off.

*** The food you know you shouldn't be eating when you want to get thin

*** The shit you shouldn't be buying when you're saving for something else

*** The night out boozing when you know the work you've got to do the next day is important, and could get you promoted...

It may distract you from how hard it is to get what you really want for a brief period by giving you a little buzz, but once that's over, that's it. You're back to not having what you want again, and pissed off rather than fucking great.

Cut that shit out, and go for what you really want.

$ # % & @ !

## How Do You Know What You Really Want?

But what is the important stuff? What matters to you?

Do you really think I can answer that for you? Of course I can't. I can pretty much answer it for myself, but even then the answer changes over time. I definitely can't answer it for anyone else though.

But I do think I can tell you how to get to your answer – and it means going back to the picture of the circle again. The journey we're talking about isn't actually a physical distance from A to B, but a journey through time: the journey from who you are today to who you want to be in the future.

*** Who do you want to be in five years' time?

*** What do you want to own in 10 years' time?

*** What do you want to do before you die?

*** What do you want to do before you're too old to enjoy it?

*** How much do you want to weigh at the end of this year?

*** What do you want to see in the mirror when you go out?

This shit is important – more important and more powerful than you might think.

I tend not to have a huge amount of respect for cheesy self-help books and the cheesy fucking salespeople that write them. Don't tell me you hadn't noticed... But I will make one enormous exception – for Victor Frankl who wrote a "Man's Search For Meaning". Why? What did he do that's so amazing?

Well, while other gurus will tell you about their tough times, sleeping in their cars, working as janitors, whatever, Frankl survived Auschwitz. He not only survived Auschwitz, he studied what he saw there, and thought long and hard about the people who survived the work camps and the ones that didn't.

He survived because he wanted to see his family. Once he got out and realized his family didn't survive, he kept on living to write this book, to help other people understand how important it is to have meaning, purpose or goals in their lives.

Obviously you can't choose to survive a gas chamber, but Frankl observed that the people who died fastest in the camps were ones who felt that they had nothing left to live for. The ones who survived the appalling work, the hunger, the unfit for human living conditions, Frankl noted that these people believed they had a reason to live. It could have been to see someone again, to find out if someone was safe. It could have been anything, but crucially, it involved a future. What I took from Frankl's book was that it always involved looking into the future, thinking that there was something important enough in that future to make sure you did anything you needed to do today to get to it.

What we have to do in our lives is trivial by comparison, but how can we not learn from someone so impressive? If Frankl can survive Auschwitz because he believes he has a future, envisaging your future is your way of ensuring you prioritize what you do.

That is how you become fucking great.

*** See who the person is at the edge of that circle – the person you want to be.

*** See what they own.

*** See what they have done with their life.

*** See what their job is.

*** See what their salary is.

*** See who their partner is.

*** See where they live.

*** See what they look like, how fit they are.

It's future you. See what the fuck you did to get there... and start thinking about your first step.

$ # % & @ !

### Let's Get One Thing Straight: You Can Only Get What You Know You Want

If you want a fucking great life, you will need to get a lot of what you want, but there is no point just trying to get a shitload of stuff, without really knowing if you want it. Sometimes a lot of what we think we want is just shit we have seen other people with. And they've got it because they saw other people with them, etc, etc.

Know what you want and go after it without being distracted by all the other shit. That's the only way to go about this.

$ # % & @ !

# 4! So What Are You Going To Fucking Do About It?

So where are we?

We know that swearing is something we do naturally. It taps into some of our oldest mental capabilities in an evolutionary sense, and that generates a reaction that is more extreme than would be the case without the swearing, whether that reaction is good or bad.

And we know that if we want to go somewhere, it's a bloody good idea to get a map. If we want to achieve something, it's an even better idea to know exactly what it is we want to achieve.

## You Starts With A Why

Simon Sinek wrote the book "Start With Why", which is eloquently and quickly explained in a Ted Talk called "How leaders inspire action". The points it makes are simple.

****! If you know WHY you want to do something, you won't have to do too much thinking about what you need to do: you will already know.

And that's kind of it. It's simple, but it is useful.

If we think of our diagram of the circle, we want to travel 1,000 miles, in a particular direction.

*** Why take a first step in the right direction? Because it's getting us towards our goal

*** Why not take a step in the wrong direction? Duh.

*** Why am I doing this particular thing? Is it because others do it, or because it's important to me and my goals?

If you want, you can subscribe to Simon Sinek's "Why University" to get at why you do what you do... what makes you happy, what inspires you...

Personally, my why is always inspired by what I want to do, the person I want to be in the future. Does the thing I'm doing help me get towards my vision of that person? If not, I shouldn't be fucking doing it. If it does, I should get it on the plan. Plain and fucking simple as that.

$ # % & @ !

## "Bucket Lists" Are On My Shit List!

I hate the term bucket list. And I hate the film even more.

I hate the term because I really feel it got something essentially wrong with the idea. The idea, for me, anyway, is that when you're lying on your death-bed, you should be looking back at your life and thinking... "Yep, I made the most of that. I did this, I did that, and that and that. And I didn't hurt too many people in the process (who didn't entirely deserve it!)"

I don't think we should be thinking "Oh, but I didn't see the Grand Canyon!"

Who gives a fuck?

Secondly, I once wrote a treatment for a screenplay about a bunch of older guys that got bored after they retired and decided to a bunch of crazy shit... So not only do I think the idea is shit, but the fucking film version of "The Bucket List" stole my screenplay.

Bastards!

(Writers of the movie "Bucket List" and probably more importantly, your lawyers and your studio's lawyers: I get it. I know you didn't really steal my idea. I know you got it separately. I know you actually finished writing it, got it to a studio, got it approved, got it made and then made it well... while I did none of those things. So I know you didn't actually, in any way, steal it. It just feels like you did, and makes me feel better to call you bastards. So no law-suit, ok?)

$ # % & @ !

###...But "Life List" Sounds Too Wanky!

I believe "Life List" is a term that life coaches employ for getting people to the same point. It's not a list of one-off things you have to do before you die, Grand Canyon-style, but instead a list of ways you want to live your life, before you die.

*** Things you want to achieve.

*** The person you would like to become.

*** Where you want to be and with whom.

*** Something you want to learn – language, martial art, knitting...

I believe the life coaches have a number of ways of getting to what should be on this list.

*** Remembering where or when you were at you happiest

*** Writing down words that describe you now and words that describe how you want to be

*** Discuss it with your friends over a nice glass of Pinot Grigio...

Oh, I'm getting annoyed now. If I had to put on my list of things I REALLY DON'T WANT TO DO BEFORE I DIE, it's at least the last two of those, if not all three of them.

$ # % & @ !

## The "Fuck It" List

Get to your list anyway you want, but if I can ask you one thing, it's that you strip away your inhibitions. Tell the little wimp inside your head who tells you that you can't do something to fuck off.

Just think, "Fuck it, what do I REALLY want to do?" and make that your list.

Your "Fuck It" List!

$ # % & @ !

I think I mentioned earlier on that I tried learning to play golf at one point. Stupid fucking game – but anyway, I tried for a bit.

All kinds of lessons, all kinds of advice. Some work some days, some work on others. But as the lessons and the advice layers up and up and up, there are too many things to think about. Am I doing this, or this or this? Or should I be doing that?

Your mind goes mad. Like I said, stupid fucking game.

Anyway, over all that time I learnt only one technique that seemed to work every time I remembered to use it, which was usually when I was putting.

Once I'd assessed the green, the lay of the land, the slope, the turf, any bumps, my line, and thought about the speed I should be hitting... then, when I'm standing above the ball, I would try to remember to say to myself one thing, and just one thing, as I was swinging back, ready to hit the ball...

"Who gives a fuck?!"

I'm not saying the ball went in the hole every time, because, as you're well aware, I am not a professional golfer, but I reckon my putts were significantly better when I did that than when I didn't.

Is there a science to it? Is there bollocks? But I reckon that saying that helped me do the one thing that all those calculations and concerns couldn't help me with... relax, and focus on hitting the ball nicely.

Before you write out your "Fuck It" list, maybe it would be a good idea to do some of the techniques that a life coach might recommend:

****! Maybe you could see yourself on your deathbed and imagine what would strike you as having been a successful life at that point.

****! Maybe you could discuss it over beers with some friends (who won't laugh at you).

****! Maybe you could even draw up a mind-map, or whatever you want to call it (I call it a BUST – Big Untidy Scribble Think).

****! And maybe you should then think about prioritizing all these things, balancing them all of against each other.

But then, when you're standing over the list, as I was standing over the ball, you've got to forget all that and just think "Fuck it!" and shoot for the stars.

$ # % & @ !

### Let's Get One Thing Straight: Make It "Explicit"

You need to know what it is that you want to do. You've got to know, and you've got to make it explicit.

Explicit as in write it down so it's "out there" and explicit as in you should say "Fuck all that shit that other people want or want me to do – this is what I want to do!" before you write it.

$ # % & @ !

# 5! I Swear...

...and for once I don't mean cursing, although I will in a minute.

I don't know what you think about affirmations. Part of me thinks they're the cheesiest fucking branch of a, let's face it, cheesy fucking tree! You know what I mean....

****! Some books will tell you to go into a hypnotic state before reciting the magic words

****! Some writers insist you say each affirmation three times, and each time you'll have to say them in a different way, adding new meaning to the words each time.

****! You can be bloody certain that they start mentioning your "sub-conscious" at some point, as though only your sub-conscious has the mythical powers that your consciousness lacks...

BOLLOCKS!

$ # % & @ !

But then again...

## It's Not All Bollocks

I can actually think of some very useful arguments in their favour, not least that they're quick, free and potentially incredibly effective.

How effective?

Well, the first time I ever drafted out a list of things I wanted to achieve I must have been only 16 or 17 years old, so I can't pretend to have a clue what most of the things on the list were, but I do remember a few of them:

*** Become a published writer

*** Be a millionaire

*** Own homes all over the world

*** Have sex with ----- \------

Like I said, I was 16 or 17! What would you put in your list at that age? Particularly considering ----- ------ was HOT??!!

Anyway, I'm sure there were others of which I have no recollection, but I remember these for a very important reason. They were my stretch goals, the big hairy unattainable goals, the dreams that if I achieved some of them I should be happy, and if I achieved all of them – well, that's in the realm of dreams.

And I did what everyone probably does with such incantations... I wrote them down, recited them religiously for a little while, until, of course I couldn't be bothered any more.

I guess I'd already achieved some of the easier goals on the list or something, or I lost the scrap of paper I wrote them down on... Whatever. Either they worked or they didn't or I got bored.

But as they came true, and yes, all of those I mentioned came true, I remembered the list I'd written years before.

Yes, I became a published writer – no shit sherlock – but not just this book. I managed it in double-quick time, working for national magazines and consumer books while still in university. I ended up running a free weekly newspaper with a print run in the tens of thousands while still in college and editing a magazine before turning 26. I paid for beer through college and after by writing.

Here's a problem though. Anyone who knows what editors and writers get paid knows it's bloody unlikely that either of the next two affirmations came true – being a millionaire and owning homes across the world – but they did. Admittedly I had to switch industries, find a space in finance that could reward someone with my skill-sets - but once I'd found the right spot, I managed to not just save up a million bucks, but occasionally earn more than that in a single year.

Which enabled me to buy houses across the world. I'm not going to tell you what or where I own at the moment because it changes, but there's one next to one of the best ski resorts in the world, one in my favourite city in the world, and one with 180 degree views of the ocean. And every now and then I start thinking about a new one, and my wife starts to wonder what the hell it is that I like about buying up properties in foreign countries. And I can't tell it's because I wrote a list out as a teenager...

And no, ----- ------ isn't my wife. Nor was she ever. In fact it was just the one night and it wasn't exactly the best night either of us had ever had. She was still pretty hot, and I was still very keen, don't get me wrong, but something wasn't quite right. It is hard to remember back all those years, but I can remember the following morning, wondering why it had happened the way it had. And I think I remembered the list, and wondered if my mystical subconscious had just ticked a box...

BOLLOCKS!

$ # % & @ !

It's easy to believe these things may work when you're doing them, because they're so easy... They feel like a short-cut. A hack.

But they're equally easy to dismiss over the long-term, and then cynically cast aside because as you do the work to get the thing you want, you feel like there's no magic trick to it – you're doing the bloody work after all, aren't you?

But something must have been at work, to make sure you did the work that got the reward you wanted... If I can't believe in the power of the subconscious, maybe at least recognising and asserting desires gives you a chance to accomplish them. You have to know what you want to have a chance of getting it – at least if you want to get it deliberately!

That, for a very long time, was my only experiment with writing affirmations. Despite evidence to the contrary – listed out above – I had this overwhelming suspicion that they didn't work. And I felt like a twat doing them.

Then, years later, a couple of relatives of mine started to practice therapy and counseling. One of them focuses on people trying to deal with stress, sometimes it can be terminal cancer patients, others trying to give up smoking. The other counsels women at risk, in all kinds of dangerous and awful situations...

Very serious, and very worthwhile stuff I'm sure you'll agree, and yet they were discussing hypnotherapy, NLP and the work of Richard Bandler. He's the man who, to my limited knowledge, was there at the beginning of affirmations and inspired a legion of copy-cat affirmers. Many of them, as far as I could tell, absolute wankers.

Maybe if some very serious therapists could consider "trances" and other such stuff, I should look at it too. So I looked at some of his original work, and read up some of his most recent work, and I wrote down 3 goals.

****! I am writing my book, chapter by chapter, every day, and I will finish it by Christmas.

****! I am running further and faster, eating more healthily: I will get to and stay at my ideal weight.

****! I am building a bigger and better client base, and I will get paid more than I have ever been paid.

This was more than a year before starting this book. I wrote them down in my Blackberry, so I could look at them regularly. I may not have said them out loud, probably didn't say them in a funny voice, but I did say them in my head... and I bet as I didn't feel them happening, I probably starting swearing too.

And now?

The third one is pretty much true. For the two years after I wrote those down, I did a lot better at my job than even I had expected, and despite the fact that global markets have been shit, I am getting paid near my all-time highs.

A lot of people in my industry are getting laid off, so having a job is a triumph (don't worry, I'm not looking for sympathy: if you work in finance and you look for sympathy from anyone for anything, you deserve getting your head kicked in!). You can't guarantee not getting fired right now, but it has made me feel a lot more comfortable knowing I'm in the top 1% of performers.

And for some strange reason, after writing those goals down, I trained for my first marathon – something I had previously sworn I would never do and thought only idiots did – and I completed it. Not happy with the weight I achieved doing that, I played with my diet and exercise regime, and now weigh inside my ideal weight according to the BMI measurement scale for the first time in my adult life, and I haven't been outside it for almost a year as I write this. A year or so after writing them down, I had a health check and I was below 10% body fat, and ideal weight. I have been above 30% body fat.

And as for the first one, you're holding the fucking book!

And you know what? As I write this now, I'm asking myself, of the three things I wrote down, why is the book the one thing that's not yet finished... and I'm telling myself...

"Get it fucking done!"

So you know what, although I hate fucking saying it, maybe part of me does think there might something to these cheesy fucking statements.

BOLLOCKS!

$ # % & @ !

Let's not start with the mystical bit, the appeal to the untapped power of the subconscious, or any of that bollocks! Let's start with the purely practical part of this:

1) You've got to write down your goals anyway. You might as well repeat them.

2) They're a fucking damn sight cheaper than a course in coaching.

3) They only take a few seconds to repeat. Working out could take 5 hours a week. Saying you're going to, less than a minute...

So you've got to do it, they're free and super-quick: why the fuck not?

One of my favourite examples of how and why to use this actually isn't an affirmation, but it's more of a brilliant mental reminder. In her book "The Drink Less Mind" Georgia Foster talks about using a technique similar to banging your head on the pillow 6 times to wake up at six.

Now, we all believe that method works, although in reality none of us wake up only at 6: our sleep patterns rise and fall through the evening until it is finally 6, and we check our alarm clocks and it feels like magic. We may even remember checking the clock a couple of times, but maybe not. At the back of your mind (the plain English version of the mystical sub-conscious) you know you've got to get up soon, and as your sleep cycles vary, you may become aware that it's about the right time.

Georgia Foster notes that you can achieve a similar impact by saying to yourself how many drinks you want to have, before you go out to get completely shit-faced. Whatever the number is – two glasses of wine, four shots of tequila or 22 beers – say it to yourself at the start of the evening. It won't be magic, but if you mean it, and you say it, it increases your chances of staying below that number.

Let's face it, how could it not? You couldn't possibly increase your chances of restricting yourself to a certain number of drinks without knowing what the number is now could you? So deciding on a number, thinking about a number, and then forgetting about the number until that drink arrives, can only increase your chances. It cannot decrease them.

It's like a gambler's view on religion. You might as well believe because it's a free bet, with huge upside if you're right and no downside if you're wrong.

Deciding on what you want, thinking about what you want, and reminding yourself regularly what you want can't decrease your chances of getting what you want. And maybe, just maybe, you'll tap into some mystical reservoir of super-power bullshit that helps you get it all done!

But how are you going to say this to yourself, repeat your goals over and over, without sounding like a wanker?

## "Say What You Mean - And Say It MEAN!"

Let's not fuck around. What do you do when you're struggling to get someone's attention? You raise your voice. What do you do if that doesn't work. You might shout. What do you do if that doesn't work?

"Will you fucking listen to me?"

****! It's no accident that when drill sergeants bark orders at new recruits, they come up with the most colourful and aggressively rude language they can think of. Why? Because they want their fucking attention!

****! It's no accident that an average threat of physical violence is peppered with as many expletives as it can fit in, because whoever is issuing the threat wants it to be taken extremely seriously.

And what about you?

When you put something in your to do list, what do you write?

\- shopping

\- pay bills

\- gym

\- blah blah bloody blah

When you are asked to write your cheesy, lame-assed affirmations, what do you write?

\- I will achieve all my goals at work

\- I am working towards becoming a better person

\- Every day in every way I am fitter and stronger (even if I am also lame-assed and cheesier!)

How's that going to sound on the parade ground?

If a drill sergeant shouted at me "Every day in every way you are getting fitter and stronger," it wouldn't convince me to drop to the ground and do 50 push-ups: I'd know I could bargain with him and get him to settle for 20. I definitely wouldn't follow him into battle!

But this is YOU and ME we're talking about: you talking to yourself and me talking to myself. Shouldn't we talk to ourselves in such a way that we take ourselves seriously? If I'd do 50 push-ups for some guy in a buzz-cut swearing at me, shouldn't I do it for myself? Maybe if I swore at myself I'd do it...

And you know what, I noticed years ago that I do.

At the beginning of a very long road to losing about 30kg (more than 60 pounds - I had it to lose!), I started out running. Everything looked like a hill. At my weight, everything was hard.

Stopping, starting... Pushing myself harder... As anyone knows who has done it, it's about pain. It's about taking the pain, and pushing through it. It's about progression – the fact that 1km hurts at the beginning as much as 10km hurts later. And that to get to 10km, you've got to push yourself through the pain of running 2ks, 3ks, 4ks, and so on.

And I heard myself going up a hill one day, not so much running as heaving, sweating, climbing, and I heard myself talking to myself. It probably looked like some fat bastard walking up a mild incline to a passer-by, but for me it was Everest. And there was an almost dis-embodied voice, my own personal internal drill sergeant, shouting obscenities at me: "Get the fuck up this hill you lazy fucking bastard. Don't fucking ease off. It doesn't fucking hurt that much. You're just fucking making excuses. Fucking DO it."

And I did it. And I did every hill, and when on any hill I felt like I really couldn't continue, I summoned my inner drill sergeant to tell me what a low-life piece of scum I was for even thinking about stopping.

I have not become an athlete since then, I can't show you any medals, but I have gone from 1k to 42, and I have run ultra-races that involve running up and over mountains, all the time swearing at myself in language that you would normally reserve for your worst enemy...

## You Are Your Worst Enemy

And it's the right language to use. You've heard the phrase before, and you may even have said it about yourself – but you know what, I bet you said it as a joke, and I think there's no truer phrase. You are your own worse fucking enemy, just as I am mine.

Not all of me, of course. I am my own best friend, but not all the time. The voice inside my head that wants to quit, the voice that wants to take the easy route, the one that orders the round of shots, the one that gets scared of asking for a pay increase, the one that is scared to death of going to the dentist... this little voice is an asshole, and deserves to be told so.

He's a lazy little shit. He's a devious little cocksucker who will tell me that the wrong thing is the right thing. That taking the easy route won't make any difference. He's always there in the background, trying to shaft my plans, and make me go off the rails.

Now, I don't think I am more schizophrenic than the next person. I believe most of us have a multiple of voices telling us when to start, when to stop, when to hold back, when to charge through. It's the angel and devil on Tom and Jerry's shoulders.

And one thing we all know is that the devil won't go away easily – it's going to take some firm language.

I don't care which analogy or metaphor you come up with. You can think of the negative voices as the devil, or "bad radio", and you can think of the positive voices as your own personal drill sergeant, or an angel. Whatever you need to think to get your thoughts on track, to threaten your own worst enemy to back down, you do it.

## I Am Not In The Fucking Mood For This

It might work for you, but I am not in the mood to hypnotise myself. Not now. Not ever. It may well work, but it isn't fucking magic.

I am rarely in the mood to meditate. It would probably be very good for me, I know, I know, but it just doesn't happen.

I am equally rarely in the mood to lie down in a darkened room, put on some relaxing soothing music, and recite positive but rather bland general statements about my life. No that's not true, it's not rare: it's fucking never.

Richard Bandler, the co-creator of NLP, or neuro-linguistic programming, was a big fan of hypno-therapy. He reckoned we could get stuff through to the deeper parts of our brains by going into a trance state. The theory is we can access motivational strength, and use the parts of our brain that programme us to do many of the things we already do without thinking, but now we do the things we want to do.

If you like doing that, please go ahead and do it – it may well help – but I will take Bandler at his word. He says that being in trance doesn't necessarily involve "going under", in the sense it means in popular imagination. It just means day-dreaming. It just means thinking about stuff that isn't there, in a serious and deep way.

*** When you remember a holiday, about specific things that you did.

*** When you imagine what a job would be like.

*** When you think into the future about how cool it would be to...

Yep, we've all done these things, and it's all just harmless day-dreaming... and they're all forms of being in a mild trance.

I can do that. So can you. In fact, if you're going to decide on your goals, and decide to repeat them regularly, that is what you'll be doing...

You don't need to swing a crystal in front of your eyes, or stare at a candle, or count your breath 100 times... none of this is necessary. You just need to write down what you want.

$ # % & @ !

### Let's Get One Thing Straight: It Works, It Works, It Works

What does? Saying what you want and repeating it. Saying what you want and repeating it. Saying...

Yeah, you get the fucking idea. The idea I don't get and won't get is that there is some magical force in the universe that brings stuff to me because I repeat some magic sentences. Or that I can tap into hidden super-powers with mystical incantations. That is all bullshit.

What I do get is this. I am easily fucking distracted and very, very busy. I constantly need to remind myself of what I want to do, and particularly of the things that aren't easy but that will make a big difference in the long run. If I can do this in a way that means I remember them even when I'm not thinking about them, or increases my chances of acting upon them – that's what I need.

$ # % & @ !

# 6! Just Fucking Do It!

How are we going to do this? You really think there's something scientific to this?

Just fucking get on with it!

But let's remember that we want to get somewhere. We want to go 1000 miles, and we want to take a first step, and we want to go somewhere in between.

Set yourself the big scary goal – the houses on every continent, the supermodel girlfriends – but set yourself a goal that gets you there, and set yourself something to do right now.

Where? Where are you going to keep track of this? Honestly, wherever the fuck you want.

****! You can write it down on a piece of paper you keep in your wallet.

****! Or stick it on your bathroom mirror so you see it when you clean your teeth.

****! Or on your toilet door so you see it when you take a dump.

****! I don't know, you can probably find a goal-setting app on your smart-phone.

****! You can tattoo it to your wrist if you really want, although I wouldn't recommend it.

Wherever you write it and whatever it is you want to write, you'll be better off doing it right fucking now than worrying about how you do it and then not doing it.

Just fucking do it NOW!

$ # % & @ !

Missing photo credit: I don't know who took this photo, but I want this guy on my side next time I run any kind of endurance race!

## I Am Going To Be Fucking Great

We talked about this before. This where you are going. This is who you are going to be. This is the dream. This is why you are doing this.

I am not going to tell you how to do this, but I can give you some examples.

*** I am the boss of the fucking company!

*** I am the best-fucking-selling author of however many books I want to write!

*** I have so much money that I can do whatever the fuck I want!

You want to write it down? Go ahead. Write it, read it lots. More importantly, swear lots. Make the swear words a big part of it.

****! I am going to fucking do this.

****! I am not going to fucking let myself down again.

****! I will show those bastards that I can do this.

Don't be soft on yourself, be hard. You are your school sports coach. You are your drill sergeant. No one else, not me, not even your fucking mother, gives enough of a shit about you to tell you the real truth. Truly. Give yourself a real shot at getting what you want, and get hard on yourself.

You can do this, but it will be hard, and as things are at the moment, you don't have what it fucking takes. Do you see?

Get tough on yourself, and tell yourself how tough you are going to be, to make sure you get it done.

You will fucking do this. Say it.

"I will fucking do this."

Get it written down, right now, whatever the fuck it is you want to be, where you want to go, what you want to make, what you want to make of yourself, who you see yourself becoming...

Fucking write it down now. Fucking write it down like I write it down. Say it like you're angry. Say it like you're going to get even. Say it like you won't fucking tolerate failure.

Go on. Fucking do it. NOW!

$ # % & @ !

## I Am Going To Fucking Get There

Intermediate goals are good – not fucking great, admittedly – but good. They aren't the most important things we're going to discuss today, but they're worth thinking about a little.

*** They're the weight you're going to weigh when you're happier than you are today, but not where you want to stop.

*** They're being in middle management.

*** They're being comfortable.

You hear me. Recognise them for what they are. If they're lame-assed, forget about them.

But if they're good sign-posts, good intermediate steps on the way to where you want to go, they're worth considering.

Getting really super-fit from really super-fat takes time. You'll be better off and encouraged along the way if you have an intermediate goal... maybe even two or three.

No one runs the business from being post-boy in one step. It's good to aim for the top, but you've got to go through the middle.

If you've got a good one, something you can imaging being, something you'll be happy with, set it as a goal.

If you don't have a good one, forget about it. Skip to the next bit, it matters a fuck of a lot more.

$ # % & @ !

## Right Fucking Now!

The most important goal though is the near one. What are you going to do right now? What's the first step? Where are you headed? What are you going to do that really gets you where you want to go?

****! Are you going to start attending a class?

****! Are you going to sign up for – and go to – a gym? Are you going to do it regularly?

****! Are you going to work later, work harder, work more, work for more money?

****! Are you going to work less but for more money? That would be nice...

****! Are you going to be nicer to someone?

****! Are you going to stop being so nice to someone?

When? Now, obviously.

There is no other time. There are no circumstances that will change to help you do this. You cannot change anyone except yourself, and you can only change yourself when you start trying.

And you can only start trying NOW.

Why?

Because only now exists. Let's not get too philosophical about this, but if you think you can do something in a week's time, you're fucking kidding yourself, because next week doesn't fucking exist. No really. In a big fucking philosophical sense it actually just doesn't exist, but even in a practical sense, when next week comes around, it will then be now, and the excuses you're making about not doing it now will either still exist, or will have changed, and make you think you have to do it another week later.

It is always NOW, and it is never THEN.

It is either now, or it is never. Which one is it?

RIGHT FUCKING NOW!!!

$ # % & @ !

### Let's Get One Thing Straight: The Right Time To Do This

IS RIGHT FUCKING NOW!!!

# 7! Don't Make Me Say It Again!

I don't like repeating myself. Most people writing a book like this would make it 5 times longer by saying the same thing over and over and over again. I don't want to do that.

But you have to. You have to be prepared to repeat and repeat these goals... Not necessarily in a voodoo trance state, but get them into your head.

Let's recap very, very quickly:

1. Swearing is something we all do because it's built into our systems. It's encoded into us to get a reaction.

2. And it does get a reaction. It makes our hearts beat faster and our pain thresholds rise. We can do more when we swear.

3. We're going to use this to get what we really want. Not something other people have, not some bullshit that's in a shop. What we really want from our lives.

4. And we're going to reinforce our efforts at getting what we want by incorporating lots of swearing into our plans...

*** We're going to get the fucking job

*** We're going to make more money than any of those other bastards

*** We're going to do it NOW. Right Fucking Now.

And we're going to come back to those goals as regularly as we can, particularly when we need them.

That's the plan. No more complicated than that. The only problem is that you could leave it there, write down some goals and hope they work their magic. But the reality is that there is no magic – there's just you and your time and your efforts, but once they're turned in the right direction, you'll make much better use of them than you did before.

****! When you feel yourself slipping away from your goals, from being fucking great, give yourself a bollocking and tell yourself to get back on track.

****! When you think things are going against you – shout at yourself to do better!

****! And maybe, just maybe, even when you're not really thinking about it, you'll make decisions that take you towards your goals rather than away from them.

$ # % & @ !

## Tell Them All To Fuck Off

Still a little unclear as to exactly what you're supposed to be doing?

One last quick way of putting this in three easy steps...

1. Think about an area of your life you want to improve...

\- Work? Career?

\- Money? Saving? Investing?

\- Relationships? Family?

\- Sex?

\- Studies?

\- Diet?

\- Exercise?

\- Personality?

2. Think about what it is that blocks you achieving those things...

\- Insecurity?

\- Lack of focus?

\- Not enough time?

\- Shyness?

\- Not enough concentration

\- Temptation?

\- Laziness?

\- Distractions?

3. When you think of those blockages, when you see an occasion when it could block what you want to achieve, when you can feel it blocking your way...

Tell it to "FUCK OFF!"

\- FUCK OFF

\- Make fucking time!

\- Tell it to "FUCK OFF!"

\- Fucking Do It!

\- Tell it to "FUCK OFF!"

\- Tell it to "FUCK RIGHT OFF!"

\- TELL THEM ALL TO "FUCK OFF"!

Right – that's enough delay. Get fucking moving you lazy bastard!

If you don't know what to do by now, go back to the beginning and read it again.

$ # % & @ !

# 8! A Bit Extra: You Don't Have to Buy This Book But...

...It's the things you don't have to do that will make you fucking great!

There are two parts to this: there is the totally fucking obvious part – as obvious as a punch in the face – that anyone who does the least possible cannot have a great fucking life. If you don't get off the couch except to buy more junk food...

\- You won't learn to kite surf (nor have I, but I should)

\- You won't read Dostoyevsky (you should)

\- You won't meet new people from whom you learn new things

\- You won't ever push yourself to find out who you can be

\- You'll be lazy, fat, spoilt and fucking shit

But there is a second, less obvious part to this.

We should all, always, be searching to do the little extra thing that will make us fucking great. Even when our fat ass is off the couch and is a super-fit, totally hot, really energetic ass that you think is headed towards being pretty fucking great – searching for and doing the thing YOU DON'T HAVE TO FUCKING DO, will probably be the thing that makes you fucking great.

$ # % & @ !

## What made Apple fucking great?

Steve Jobs, you say. Yep, probably, but what was it about what he wanted to that made it fucking great. It was to be more than just a tech company.

I don't know what kind of reputation Apple has today, but up to mid-2012 Apple had not just a good reputation but a unique one. As someone who spent more than a decade analyzing and studying consumer companies, I could see that Apple had become the first genuinely consumer-oriented technology company.

Let me explain that a little.

Most tech companies act as though they are run by the engineers, who (1) understand that their products do without thinking too hard about it (2) but also enjoy thinking about tech anyway and so (3) think that putting together as much high-speed super-powered whatever into a box will make it better than another box with similar but slightly inferior whatever in it.

But Apple didn't. Apple cared that we got something we like using. We being non-engineer humanoids who just want something that looks nice and doesn't require too much thought to integrate into our daily lives.

And then they made it sexy, so it appealed to our "I must own one of those" emotions...

I could go on, but I don't want to give you a company fucking history lecture. I want to make a point. You can make tech boxes like everyone else, or you can do something you don't have to do, and become fucking great!

$ # % & @ !

## What makes any sporting great fucking great?

I am very deliberately not going to mention any particular sportsperson by name, because I'm writing this at the end of a year in which Lance Armstrong has been stripped of all his titles – and I don't want to mention someone here today only to find out that they get stripped of all their titles in the future.

But ask yourself what it is it that makes your favourite sportsperson fucking great, and you'll come back to a similar answer... it's doing what they didn't have to do.

You might think it's their natural talent, and obviously that got them into the top however many, but practicing for hours and weeks and months and years on end gets them to compete for the very top.

But what gets them onto the podium? To win, you've got to want to win, and you've got to do more than everyone else. Whatever the sport – running, football, darts – winning requires doing more, or doing it faster, or scoring more points than the competition. You might think "but that's what they HAD TO DO to win", and you're right – bit no one else did it. The guys in second, third and fiftieth place did less. And that's why they finished there.

Finishing a race requires doing what you have to do to finish. Coming second requires doing what you have to do to come second. Winning requires extra.

But the fucking great sporting greats don't just win once, do they? We don't remember the people who just win once, do we? We remember the ones who win the most ever, three in a row, four in a row.

We remember the Michael Jordans, the Manchester Uniteds and the Muhammad Alis.

Outside of sport, we remember the Van Goghs and the Charles Dickens, because they did not just do what they had to do. They did more. We remember them because they stood out from what everyone else in their era was doing – which would have been what they had to do.

It's doing that bit extra that makes all the fucking difference.

$ # % & @ !

## What's going to make you fucking great...

I don't know – you have to work out what it is. But there are more than a million ways to be fucking great at whatever it is you want to be fucking great at.

###...at work?

We can't all be the best at our jobs. In fact, in any given group, there's only room for one person to be "the best" at something. It's in the nature of being "the best".

But it's in the nature of most jobs these days to be multi-faceted, ie, there are a huge number of skills that you can bring to the job that might not really be about the job, but can be as important as the main thing...

\- you could be fastest

\- you could be earliest

\- you could be the nicest, the happiest, the most outgoing

\- you could be the one who thanks everyone for doing stuff the most

\- you could be the most creative

\- you could be the most responsible

You see where I'm going with this, right? You may not be the one who does the main defined part of the job best, but maybe you can do the softer skills better. And as long as you don't fuck up on the actual job – as long as you do what you HAVE to do – then doing the thing you don't have to do will make you shine...

...And picking something that you like or find easy to do will mean it isn't all that much more extra effort.

It could be that you like to do work fast. Or turn up early. Or be nice, and happy and outgoing. Well then do it and enjoy it.

It might be that you don't – but then find the thing that you do enjoy doing and apply it to your job.

###...not at work?

But this isn't just about your job. Maybe it's precisely not about your job. Maybe your job is the thing you have to do to get enough cash in the door to make you fucking great in another arena... then that other arena is the thing you don't have to do, whether it's snowboarding, or cooking to Michelin chef level, or doing a psychology degree part time.

Whatever it is, it's doing the thing you don't have to do that makes you more than the person you would be if you didn't.

But don't make it something you don't want to do. Make it something you want to do, or enjoy doing, or are good at... but just make sure it fucking happens!

###...with family and friends and networking?

Again, I'm not going to give you the solution here, because I don't know you and I don't know what you want and what you've got to offer, but if you ever, ever, hear yourself thinking "I don't have to do that..." you'll know that the route you're thinking of taking is not exactly a fucking great one.

What do I mean?

I don't mean, by any means, becoming inefficient and doing things that just aren't necessary...

\- I mean the right word at the right time

\- I mean the gift that shows more thought than the one you are thinking of giving

\- I mean the really meaningful thank you email, or better yet, letter or card.

\- I mean DOING THE THING YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO.

$ # % & @ !

## You already know the answer

The fact that you're already this far through this ebook tells me you already have a pretty good idea of how you're going to become fucking great.

We all have our skills and we all have things we like. If you've got enough determination to put up with my swearwords and antagonism, I suspect you already have the idea and maybe even the formation of a plan for being fucking great.

\- It's something you already like

\- It's something you're probably already pretty good at

That doesn't mean it's easy, as you've probably already discovered. But if you can find the time, and the focus, and the determination to push through the difficulties, and the pain, then this could be your thing. But how are you going to find that determination...?

Have you been paying any fucking attention at all? Go back to the beginning and start telling yourself to fucking do what you really want to do. Make the fucking time and push through to the next level and the next level and the next.

While it may be that the thing you don't have to do will be the thing that makes you fucking great – or it may not – what I can definitely say is that the one thing you really don't have to do is be fucking great, or have a fucking great life. That's your choice. Your decision. You really don't have to do that. No one is going to complain later – except you.

You don't have to even want to be fucking great or have a great fucking life at all.

But if you do, I'd like to make one last suggestion:

Fucking start now!

$ # % & @ !

# Part 2: Tips, Tricks And Bullshit

This bit of the book is if you have already worked out what it means to you to be fucking great, and how you're going to fucking get there. If you haven't, go back and do it. Seriously, you don't belong here.

Fuck off back to the start!

If you've already done what you're supposed to do, then these next few pagers are just really quick short ideas about things I think work. You may disagree – and I'm not going to pull any science bullshit on you to convince you otherwise – but try them while you're working on being fucking great. If they help, cool.

$ # % & @ !

# A. Tips and Tricks

## 1. Swear With Your Body Language!

And I do mean swearing in a good way! Ok, no, I don't mean promising or vowing, I mean turning what could be seen as aggressive body language and making it work for you.

We all know how to tell someone to fuck off with our body language – one finger raised to the sky is pretty universal on this planet – but what about the kind of positive effects we've been discussing that swearing can have, like helping us deal with pain, encouraging us, making us stronger.

One of the best uses of 15 minutes you'll ever get is to watch Amy Cuddy deliver her TED talk (available here: archive.org/details/AmyCuddy_2012G) on the subject of body language.

It's not the old version of "body language" where you try and guess what other people are thinking by their body language...

*** She's touching her hair so she must like me

*** He's folded his arms so he doesn't like me

...although that's all still as valid as it ever was, and it's still all about the stances that people adopt, but there's a twist, a very important twist.

Standing in a typically powerful or dominant position doesn't just make other people think of you as powerful – if it works – it makes you feel more confident. It will change your attitude too, quite possibly more than it changes the attitude of the outside world.

This is the spectacular finding. This is what it has in common with swearing. It isn't just an outward thing. It's an inward thing, and it can help change you

Dr Cuddy and her research team ran tests on subjects that, instead of swearing, saw them adopt "power poses": big body shapes, arms outstretched, upright, commanding space, making the body seem bigger and more potent... typical alpha male stuff. They then ran tests on the subjects for risk appetite, testosterone and cortisol.

Two minutes of posing sent risk appetites through the roof, spiked up their testosterone and shrank their cortisol – all the key ingredients for a confidence boost. The test subjects who did low power poses... hunched over, arms folded tightly, covering their bodies, all saw drops in confidence.

Not only that, they ran another test to see if doing those same poses, gaining that same confidence, would have a result in getting jobs. Not in the room, but doing the poses before going in the room – and they all were picked as having the key attributes for the job: passion, energy, enthusiasm. Confidence is what allows that to come across...

The first trick is to "Swear with your body." Get any extra source of confidence you can to make your fucking great life happen.

$ # % & @ !

## 2. Fucking Fake It! (Everyone Else Is...)

The second trick is inspired by Amy Cuddy too (really, do watch her video: archive.org/details/AmyCuddy_2012G), her own personal story and a pair of catchphrases she used in her speech:

*** Fake it until you make it.

*** Fake it until you become it.

That's partly about the body language stuff we spoke about in the first trick above, but there's an additional wrinkle to this: Amy instructed her student to fake it just as she'd been instructed to fake it when she was a student. And the highly likely corollary is that everyone else is faking it too...

Let me ask you a very simple question: How do you know you if you are fucking useless?

Answer: You don't. You can't. If you are fucking useless, or incompetent as theorists prefer to call it, you don't know the parameters of the area, and therefore you won't know how fucking useless you are.

That might seem like a sort of silly Victorian type of riddle, but there is a cognitive bias called the Dunning-Kruger effect that states that unskilled individuals suffer from the illusion of being superior, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than average. They are unable to actually recognize their own inabilities.

Equally, being good at something may actually weaken your confidence. David Dunning and Justin Kruger note, "the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others"

Why is this useful to know?

*** In life, you will go up against two types of people: people who know more than you and people who know less.

*** You will also go up against two other types of people: more confident than you and less confident than you.

We often feel that there is a direct correlation between the two, that the confident know more, and the insecure know less, but the reality is there is likely to be no correlation or causation. And if there is a causation and/or correlation, then it may well be inverse, or the opposite of what we think.

What? The stupid ones are more confident. The clever ones may be less sure of themselves.

Where does this become relevant as a tip or a trick? Because you do have to fake it to make it or become it.

The clever ones, of which Amy Cuddy was clearly one, are often initially too shy to speak in public – but have to push themselves to do so. Everyone is faking it.

The only people not faking it are the really stupid ones, because they don't know they're incompetent!

So, if you're too nervous to do something, if you think you're not ready, if you think you're faking it... Get up and do it right away. It's probably a sign that you're not incompetent, and that you are ready – just because you know you're not! Treat faking it as learning a new skill, and do it.

Tip 2: If you don't feel you can "Just fucking do it" then "Just fucking fake it" until you can!

$ # % & @ !

## 3. Get Shit Done!

David Allen has this book called "Getting Things Done". I bought it and couldn't believe there was really a whole discussion about filing. Not a quick discussion either. Sorry. Life. Is. Too. Fucking. Short.

I took away one very useful piece of information though, and that is that our brain does some things really well, but one thing it tends to be quite bad at is remembering shit we have to do. Not only that, but doing that tends to block up big chunks of our brain's capacity, or "cognitive load".

****! You know how when you've got too much to remember, and you just can't concentrate on the thing you really have to do right now...?

****! Or when you do really concentrate on what you have to do right now, and you forget that thing you're supposed to do, like go and pick your wife up at... Oh shit! Is that the time?

You get the idea.

The point is that we're not very good at remembering a lot of little things... and we need help. Thankfully there are tons of devices that can help you do this, and a million apps, so I'm not going to recommend one with an interface I like – but just deal with the simple process I go through when I have a task.

I call it The Four D's:

*** Do it.

*** Delegate it.

*** Defer it.

*** Don't Delay it? "To Do List" it.

1. Just fucking do it now. Is it super-urgent? Do it. Is it really quick and trivial, and doing it right now would take less time than doing anything else with it? Just fucking do it, and go back to what you were doing...

2. Please, please, delegate it if you possibly can. You don't have to be a boss to do that: a lot of things that land on your desk, or in your inbox, are someone else's problem – let them deal with them. Quickly spin an email telling someone else about the problem. "Can you deal with this?" Job done.

3. Defer it. Defer kind of means delay, but to me it means delaying to a very specific time... That means, chuck it into the calendar and forget about it. Calendarise like your life depends on it – because it does!

****! If you're busy, and you don't really want to break into what you're doing, but this other thing that's come up is important (not urgent), throw it into the calendar.

****! Something's come up, but you can't do it yet (you need someone else's help, or something else), throw it into the calendar.

****! Something you want to remember every day, but tend to forget. Throw it into the calendar.

****! Something you should do every day, but hate, and don't do even when you remember. Put a note in the calendar saying "Fucking do it you lazy shit!"

I'm not going to tell you what kind of calendar to use, but if you're reading this, I guess you have some kind of electronic device that makes recording events easy.

Just do it. Do it until you have alarms beeping all day long reminding you of things you need to do...

Things you no longer need to remember. Things that won't distract you from getting shit done, while reminding you that you've got other shit to do too!

4. Don't ever delay stuff... put stuff out there into the never never. If you want to do it, plan how, or when. If you don't want to do it, don't.

I keep a to do list running all the time. At the top of it is my "fuck it" list: all the stuff that starts "I will fucking do..." is right at the top so I see it all the time.

Underneath is the stuff that needs to be done sometime soon... Sometimes they're connected to the fuck it list, and sometimes they're just things I have to do that I haven't assigned a time to.

I actually really don't like this list, and try to either do stuff, or delegate it (best of all) or assign a time. If you can't do those three, then the "to do" list is your last option, but you do have to check it all the time.

It becomes a combination of "Do It" and "Fuck It" list.

If GTD by David Allen works for you better than GSD by me, then by all means use it. If something else works, use that. The key is, in the end, to Get Shit Done so you can move on to living a fucking great life.

$ # % & @ !

## 4. Excellence Or Excuses? Results Or Reasons? You Fucking Choose!

Don't get me wrong. I am as guilty of this as you are – and I need reminding as often as you do... but you don't get both.

****! If you make excuses, that's all you get – you won't get excellence.

****! If you're looking for results, then don't look for reasons you could fail – because you will.

When I really need reminding though, I remember what must be one of the strangest places to find inspiration you can imagine – an episode of Miami Ink! But this one featured Mark Zupan, the star of the movie "Murderball" and the captain of the USA wheelchair rugby team. Look up the video on youtube if you like, but check the following quotes from Wikipedia...

"After a soccer game on October 14, 1993, Zupan got drunk with teammates at a bar and then crawled into the back of friend Chris Igoe's truck to sleep. Some time later Igoe left the bar unaware that Zupan was asleep in the back. Driving drunk, Igoe spun out and Zupan was thrown from the pickup bed, over a fence, and into a canal, where he held onto a branch for 14 hours until being discovered by a passerby.[1]#cite_note-1) He went into hypothermia and became quadriplegic as a result of the accident."

His friend, Chris Igoe, seems pretty impressive as, despite this being an accident, he pledges to take Mark everywhere from then on, driving him to the Miami Ink store, for example... He sees his friend's disability as his fault.

Mark's take is different. Wikipedia again:

"When asked if he would "turn back the clock on that day", Zupan answered "No, I don't think so. My injury has led me to opportunities and experiences and friendships I would never have had before. And it has taught me about myself. In some ways, it's the best thing that ever happened to me."

See what I mean? Trick #4: No Fucking Excuses Allowed!

$ # % & @ !

## 5. Don't Ask, Don't Fucking Get!

In the year that I got my biggest ever bonus, a colleague asked me what I was going to ask for. I told him. He said that was bullshit, and I should ask for double.

Long story short, I did, and I got it. The most money I made in my time in that job, all because a friend basically told me "Don't ask, don't fucking get!"

And now I always ask.

If you don't already do that, it may be because you feel bad about it, but you must stop that right now.

When you go out shopping, do you look for the most expensive thing? Do you say, "Oh, you seem to be charging less than the other shop across the road. You should put your prices up." No, you take advantage.

It's not a bad thing. It's just natural.

And other people will take advantage of you if you let them.

*** If you're cheap, they won't pay you more because they feel like it.

*** If you're over-worked, they won't give you extra holidays because they're nice.

*** The most beautiful girl in the bar won't walk up to you and talk to you.

*** Sometimes job offers do land on some people's laps... but they're bastards. The rest of us have to ask.

People don't take advantage of you, or ignore you, or pass you over, or any of the other things because they're evil or because life's unfair. It's the same as you picking up a bargain – everyone is helping themselves...

And if you don't fucking ask, you won't fucking get. That's Tip 5.

(And tip 5a is never stop asking. You will be rejected. You will be let down. Not every girl will fancy you – they have the right to do that. But if you don't ask her, you're not allowing either you or her the chance. Keep on fucking asking!)

$ # % & @ !

## 6. Be A Bloody Do-Gooder!

It's written between the lines of this book in various places is that one of the things that's stop you achieving what you really want from life is that you're too nice.

Yes, I mean you and yes, I'm serious.

The fact that you're arguing with me, when I'm not even here, makes that probably even more likely to be true!

Look at it this way: one of the main stumbling blocks to achievement is that lots of people suffer from a low sense of self-esteem.

*** They think other people are cleverer or more talented

*** They don't want to make a fuss

*** They're shy and introverted

In short, they don't think their wants or desires are as important as other people's so they hold back. That's fine – as long as you're happy with that – but considering you're reading (a hopefully paid-for) copy of a preposterously titled book called "Fucking Great: How To Swear Your Way To A Fucking Great Life" suggests you might be looking for change. Dramatic change too.

Look at it another way. I have worked in finance a long time, and a lot of the successful people were not particularly nice. Borderline fucking psychopathic, is probably closer... and certainly no self-esteem issues.

*** They didn't think other people were cleverer

*** They couldn't give a fuck about making a fuss

*** Who gives a shit anyway?

Now, I've looked at this two ways – I'd like you to look at it two ways too.

1) Make the world a better place. Be stronger, go out there and be a successful nice person. The world needs more of those.

2) If that's still not working for you, then don't do it for yourself. Do it for someone else.

Very often it turns out, if we suffer from low self-esteem, we can do things for other people that we can't do for ourselves.

*** We can go up to complete strangers and ask them to fill in a form if it's our job, but not if we'd like them to dance

*** We can shake a tin on a street for money for charity, but not for ourselves (that's ok though, as that's often illegal!)

If some of your wishes and desires aren't being fulfilled then stop making them about you. Do them for someone else.

*** Run a marathon for charity

*** Stop smoking for your kids

*** Lose weight and get fitter for your wife

Not only will this make you more likely to do it, it is also likely to make you happier in the process. Michael Steger of the University of Louisville in Kentucky researched the levels of happiness of people engaged in tasks for themselves, and those doing things for others: the ones doing things for others always felt happier.

Tip 6: If you won't fucking do it for yourself, fucking do it for someone else!

$ # % & @ !

## 7. Make Up Your Own Rules

You may not get the sense from this book, as the language I use may distort the issue, but I am not a competitive person.

"Fuck off!" you say, but I promise you it's true.

I look at it this way: being competitive or being creative sound like they are totally different spheres, not connected at all, but I see them as being at the opposite ends of the same line.

****! Creative people want to think for themselves, invent their own games, design their own goals, run along their own tracks at their own speeds. They may well want to paint the best painting ever painted, but deep down they know that's not possible, so they want to paint the best painting they are able to do, make the best movie they can make, etc.

****! Competitive people want to win. They may want to be the best in the world, but they want to do it in an environment where the rules have already been set for everyone. They don't want someone else to make their own rules, or design their own goals – they want to know who is best when everyone is doing the same thing.

It's a personal frustration of mine that activities that require judges to separate winners and losers are allowed into sporting events like the Olympics and Winter Olympics. This is not because I view the gymnasts or divers or ice dancers as any less serious athletes than jumpers or runners or speed-skaters, but they have chosen a creative form of endeavour and not a competitive one – and their talents deserve to be showcased in a different way.

In a similar way, the Oscars and the Booker prize are equally as silly, because there can't be a "Best Film" or "Best Book". There can be the one that made the most money, or the one that I liked the most. But nothing else.

Why this little rant here?

Because I want you to decide which you are: competitive or creative. You may be a little of both – and that's fine, so am I – but try to focus on goals that emphasise the one you really are, and take pleasure and pride in the achieving of those goals.

****! If you're competitive, recognize that you need to beat other people, and focus on doing so.

*** Run faster than your regular running partner

*** Beat everyone you play at pool

*** Drive a bigger, faster more expensive car

*** Actually, fuck it, focus on making as much money as you can, because that is where the big boys play... but at least now you know your goal.

****! If you're creative, though, revel in it. Let those competitive assholes struggle over things you don't give a shit about. Make your own game. Make your own rules.

*** Run at your own pace. The best thing that's ever happened to me on a run (most memorable, anyway) was seeing a bear by the side of the track. I was on my own, I was going slow, I was looking at the view... I broke my own 5k record running back away from the bear though!

*** If you want to write a screenplay, TV programme, design a chair or a jumper, build a house or a shed... these are your thoughts, your ideas. There is only creation involved, not competition. Competitive people won't get that, but that's a good thing!

$ # % & @ !

## 8. Don't Be So Fucking Hard On Yourself

This may sound like a fucking strange thing for me to say, given that I was telling you to beat yourself up earlier on – but I only want you to be hard on yourself when you are trying to make yourself do stuff that you might otherwise back out of.

What I don't want you to do is entertain the little internal voice that nags at you telling you that you're not good enough.

One of the best descriptions I have heard of that voice is "negative radio", a persistent internal detractor, telling you that you can't do things because you will fail...

*** That it's too late.

*** That you're too old.

*** Or too young.

*** Or not sufficiently qualified.

*** And that if you fail people will laugh at you.

Fuck them. No really. FUCK THEM ALL TO HELL!

People like that don't deserve your consideration – and while we're at it, nor does the little voice inside your head that not only seems to agree with them, but also seems to be able to anticipate what they're going to say, even if they weren't going to say that...

You see?

Recognise that little voice for what it is:

*** Bullshit.

*** Fear.

*** Chemical shit inside your head, that not enough of us understand – but you don't need to listen to it.

Don't let that little voice be hard on you. When you hear the "negative radio" turning on, recognise it as bullshit and ignore it.

NOTE: There's a famous criticism of positive thinking, or rather, the attempt to extinguish negative thoughts, that works along the lines of it being impossible to deliberately stop thinking about something.

The first idea of this came from Dostoyevsky who discusses how, if you ask someone to not think about a polar bear, then a polar bear will be the only thing they can think of.

Similarly, telling someone not to entertain their negative thoughts can make them focus on those thoughts instead.

To keep with the wintry polar bear theme, I learnt the best analogy for learning to avoid negative thoughts when learning to mountain bike and ski: look where you want to go, and you'll go there.

If you're riding down a trail with trees or rocks on either side, or a huge cliff looming, you mustn't look at it. You must never look at the thing you want to avoid – because if you do, you'll hit it. Instead you must focus on the path in front of you, and then you'll be ok.

Moving this back to negative thoughts rather than rocks and trees, the path analogy is clearly where you want to go, your goals and your plan for getting there. If a quick "fuck off" to the negative thoughts doesn't remove them, then get out your plan and restate them, with the biggest nastiest swearwords you can think of. Make a trooper blush!

$ # % & @ !

## 9. It's not who you are, it's what you do

One of the most important lessons I learnt about writing years ago is that character are not what they say, it's what they do.

But it's not a lesson about writing, it's a lesson about life. People are not what they say, or what they think, or how they think, or what they say they're going to do – they are what they do.

Some of the greatest sportspeople, or artists, or singers, businessmen, whatever, became as great as they are through a combination of natural talent, hard work and confidence to do what they needed to do. If they're intelligent, this combination carries them through their sports career until their physical talents begin to subside.

But then there are the more infamous cases of sportspeople whose confidence and natural ability combine to make them arrogant – and as their skills begin to slip, they can't believe it. They may have neglected their practice, and over time their skills have slipped... but they don't see it.

*** The top businessman who thinks everything he touches turns to gold – and so starts taking on stupid risks.

*** The rock band with a few hit songs in their playlist, so start taking every drug they can, and still think the magic will work.

It's even worse for them, because rather than defining themselves by the work they have done and the progress they have made, they may have defined themselves by their position and their status.

But it's not about who or what you are – it's about what you do.

****! If you want to be successful, it's no good just wanting to be. You have to do the things that successful people do. You have to do the practice they do, the work they do, make the effort they do.

If you want to beat them, you have to do better than them.

And although there are some talents that are naturally handed out at birth – many of them – there are lots we can acquire, and we acquire them by doing what has to be done.

In what way is this a tip or a trick? Well, to me it's a reminder, and a symbol of hope:

*** It's a reminder that I have to keep working hard to keep getting what I want.

*** And it's a symbol of hope, because so does everyone else.

And if they don't, and we do, we'll fucking catch up with them and overtake them!

$ # % & @ !

## 10. The Secret Is There Is No Fucking Secret.

This last tip or trick may seem very similar to the previous one, but I wanted to add it here, at the end for a couple of reasons:

****! I'm going to talk in a while about some of the self-help bullshit books that drive me fucking mad – and probably none of them comes higher up the list than "The Secret." Those fucking people.....

****! But I also wanted to talk about it here, at the end of the tips and tricks, because this is the right time to take a skeptical view of what this book is about... how swearing can make your life better.

I am not stupid. I don't think I can just say "Fuck" 50 times a day and money will magically arrive in my wallet. I sincerely hope you are not that stupid too (if you are, I wish I'd charged you more for the book!)

The secret of this book is that there are ways of making the hard work required to become successful, achieving what you want to achieve, or having a fucking great life, that little bit easier. A bit easier to get started. A bit easier to continue, and a bit easier to put in the hard yards when the going gets tough.

But that's the point of this last tip: there is no secret to avoiding the hard yards or the going getting tough. There is no secret for success just coming to you because you want it.

Swearing reduces pain and makes you able to stand up to things better – but the pain will still be there. The hard work still needs to be done.

There is no fucking secret.

$ # % & @ !

## 11. Go With The Fucking Flow

Other lists go to 10, this one goes to 11.

I was going to leave the list of tips and tricks at 10, but partly out of respect for Spinal Tap, but more from a desire to share one more idea that follows on directly from "there is no secret", this list goes to 11.

The eleventh tip is inspired by a book called "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi – and you have to admit that the idea of "optimal experience" sounds pretty good.

The amazon description says this:

"Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's famous investigations of "optimal experience" have revealed that what makes an experience genuinely satisfying is a state of consciousness called flow. During flow, people typically experience deep enjoyment, creativity, and a total involvement with life. In this new edition of his groundbreaking classic work, Csikszentmihalyi demonstrates the ways this positive state can be controlled, not just left to chance. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience teaches how, by ordering the information that enters our consciousness, we can discover true happiness and greatly improve the quality of our lives."

I say this:

"You are at your happiest when you are immersed in something sufficiently difficult that you can't be distracted. Saying that it is not the destination, it is the journey gets you part of the way there, but it's more than that. It's not the destination, but it's the difficult journey. The tougher the journey, the more immersed we are in the struggle, the more optimal our experience."

And this is the perfect number 11 for me... because I fucking HATE writing. I am not one of those writers who sits at a keyboard merrily and couldn't think of anything more fun.

I hate it.

But I don't. I hate starting. I feel like Douglas Adams when he said:

"Writing is easy. You only need to stare at a piece of blank paper until your forehead bleeds."

Once I have started properly, once I know where I am going, once I have a plan mapped out, and a pretty good idea of where I'm going, and really all that's now required is to put in some serious hours, then I'm happy.

But then again, I hate running too. Or rather I hate going through the door. And I hate the first 500 steps or so. And then the next 500. But then, at some point, the pain of that subsides into the requirement to put in the effort.

And that's what it is about. We are not happiest when we achieve something. And we are certainly not happiest sitting on our ass doing nothing. We are happiest working towards the goal, and defeating the pain that is required to achieve those goals...

So go to 11. Go with the flow. Start fucking swearing at yourself, standing in power poses, faking it until you make it,

So fucking get to it!

$ # % & @ !

# B: Other Shit

## 1. "May Contain Bollocks": Self-Help Books That Don't Swear – But That Might Need Swearing At

I didn't swear at all of them, and to be honest, I haven't even read "The Secret". I don't think I could without exploding. But I've read some of these, and some have some kind of merit... while others are just total and annoying shit.

But I've read some of these things, and I just thought I'd share some of my thoughts here...

$ # % & @ !

### A. "59 Seconds" – And Not A Minute Wasted

"59 Seconds: Think A Little, Change A Lot" by Richard Wiseman

Buy this and read it before you buy and read any other self-help book. It is, in the genre, a fucking masterpiece, blowing away much of the bullshit that surrounds the sector, but also delivering little tips and tricks that really do work, and have been tested and peer-reviewed.

Buy it before anything else down here. You should have bought it before buying and reading this book, to be quite honest.

### B. "7 Habits" – Really?

"The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People" by Stephen Covey.

I know this book is now treated as though it's gospel, and I know that I shouldn't speak ill of the dead... No, don't worry, I'm not going to... even I have more taste than that.

And in all honesty, there's not a lot to be overly critical about. As with the first sentiment of the Hippocratic Oath, Mr Covey "did no harm", and that's more than can possibly be said for many "gurus".

Thinking back to my reading of the book, though, and then taking a quick look back at the summary of those habits now, I came away with two thoughts:

1) We are in the land of the blindingly obvious, here, aren't we? Habit 3 is basically "prioritise". You have to prioritise to be effective? Really? Ok, I suppose there's nothing wrong with re-stating the obvious, as I have done a little at times here, but the combination of the esteem within which the book is held and the level of insight... It didn't work for me.

2) It also didn't work for me because I got the feeling that to get the most from it, you had to use it quite rigidly. I seem to remember courses and planners and diaries and all kinds of other stuff. If it requires following an exact system, then it may work for some people, but I really really want my own life.

$ # % & @ !

### C. "Getting Things Done" – Making Me Sleepy.

"Getting Things Done" by David Allen

It's a book about filing, as far as I can work out, but some people seem to rave about it. What's in their files that is so fucking complicated?

I suppose that after I read it, I did take away some of the ideas – like fire off quick emails if they can be done quickly, stay in the flow if they can't – but I really felt like that was more my interpretation of his ideas than his straight thoughts.

And I would never, ever, have worked out what I was supposed to do with the filing...

$ # % & @ !

### D. "Who Moved My Cheese?" – You Did You Bastard!

"Who Moved My Cheese?" by Dr Spencer Johnson

I don't think I'm alone in being handed this book by the business manager who was in the process of deciding where to hide the fucking cheese while he handed me the book.

It was a work offsite, and I really don't know what the guy was thinking. I had been in finance long enough to not be over-awed (which no one should be, but the size of some people's egos in the business does make a normal person take a step back), and long enough to be hungry. I think the rest of the room was similar, or hungrier, or more ego-driven.

In short, it was very alpha – and we all got handed a book of "Who Moved My Cheese?"

Quite a few of us took the two to three minutes that book takes to read, looked around at some others who had clearly finished it, and tried to work out if there was any kind of ironic intent.

Apparently not. In short we were being told. "Things change. React."

Every single person in the room worked in markets, and did that every fucking minute of their fucking lives. And the guy giving us the book was our boss. He might as well have come from a different company in a different industry. From a different fucking planet.

Twat.

I felt like writing him a book back. "You moved my cheese, fuck-head!"

Maybe I still will...

$ # % & @ !

### E. The Secret

In the time-honoured tradition of religious zealots from all corners of the world calling a book that they haven't read "evil", this book is evil. I'm not even going to link to its title and author, it's so bad.

And I'm certainly not going to read it, because to do that I'd have to either give them money, or break the law to read a pirate copy, and I'm not prepared to be sued over this.

But "think and things will come"...

Oh fuck off.

I get the idea that we do have to want things for them to come. But you know what? Then the work starts... the idea that it happens without the hard yards, with just wanting enough, without any negativity...

Please, really, fuck off.

And if you disagree with me, you can fuck off too!

$ # % & @ !

## 2. Fiddle-Sticks And Balderdash: This Book, But For Ned Flanders

I suppose I have to admit that some people don't like to swear, and they don't like to hear swear-words. I don't know why. Maybe they don't like the rush of energy that a well-executed "fuck" can bring about. And I meant that figuratively rather than literally!

Sorry.

Hopefully none of those people have read this far. If they have, I'm sure they'll be so far beyond being offended that hopefully they won't have time or energy to complain. Or sue.

I do intend to write and publish a bowdlerized version of this ebook at some point, with the stars put back in (link here someday...), but in the meantime, if you really need to discuss this book with someone who really can't swear, or wish to tell your grandmother about it, I thought I would give you a list of what are called "minced oaths", or euphemistic phrases that either sound rude but aren't, or are, but don't sound, rude.

$ # % & @ !

Bastard **** Bar steward

Bitch *** Beach, beyotch, witch

Blind Me *** Blimey

Bloody Hell *** Bleeding heck, Blinking heck

By God *** Begorrah, By George, By Gosh, By Gum

By God's Body *** By Golly

By Jesus *** Bejabbers

Christ *** Crikey, Crickets, Criminy, Cripes

Damn *** Dang, Darn

Damnation *** Tarnation, dangnation

For Christ's sake *** Chrissakes

(although this is a particularly good one, as if you start by saying ''For Chr-" as you start with a "Fuck", and get away with it!)

Fucking *** flipping, freaking, fricking, frigging, fudging, effing, fracking

God *** goodness, gosh, golly, gad, gor

God Damn It *** Dagnabbit, Dagnammit.

(I do love the idea that this might be derived from

Dang Rabbit by Elmer Fudd)

Goddamn *** Doggone, dadgum, goodnessdarn, goshdarn, goshdang, goshdern

Jesus *** Gee, geez, geesh, jiminy

Jesus Christ *** Cheese and Rice, Jiminy Cricket

Motherfucker *** Mother-father, monkey-fighter, futher-mucker

Shit *** Shoot, sugar, shucks, sheesh, crap, shat, shite

Son of a bitch *** Son of a gun, son of a biscuit, son of a preacher man

What the Hell *** What the heck, what in the World, what in Sam Hill

$ # % & @ !

Casting a quick glance around on the internet, I did find this rather charming version too:

"Whale oil beef hooked!"

Kind of how I feel about the whole point of saying something that you know other people think is a swear-word, and that you're saying because you're in an emotional state where you would want to use a swear word, but you don't.

By all means, use at your own discretion, but oil beef hooked if I will.

$ # % & @ !

# C. Now With Added Badness!

There was a time when television commercials for food products would always assert that they had "added goodness" – whatever that was. I mean, I know what good means, but "goodness", particularly in a food context – it's meaningless.

Added "badness", however...

Sometimes some motivational quotes have the right idea, but they just sound a little tame. A little effeminate. You know what I mean. They're the kind of quote your grandmother could have on the wall, but not the kind of thing you'd really expect a some tough bastard to use to motivate you. And that is what we want, right?

So here, for the first time, some of my favourite quotes, but "now with added badness!"

## Change

"You, you lazy fucker, yes you. You must be the fucking change you wish to see in the world"

Gandhi (now with added badness)

$ # % & @ !

##

## Get Involved

"You miss 100% of the shots you don't fucking take."

Wayne Gretzky (now with added badness, but probably how he said it).

$ # % & @ !

## Happiness

"Happiness is not something ready made.

It comes from your own actions, knucklehead!"

Dalai Lama (now with added dorky badness):

$ # % & @ !

##

The Importance Of Immediacy

"Screw it! Let's do it!"

Sir Richard Branson (no extra badness required, thanks to Sir Richard)

$ # % & @ !

## It's the Journey

"The resistance that you fight physically in the gym and the resistance that you fight in life can only build a strong mother-fucker."

Arnold Schwarzenegger (changed into something a bit badder)

$ # % & @ !

## Goals And Hard Work

"I hated every minute of training, but I said, "Don't quit you asshole.

Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a fucking champion."

Muhammad Ali (now with added badness)

$ # % & @ !

## Belief

"Do or do not. There is no fucking try."

Yoda (with badness, now added)

$ # % & @ !

##

## Determination

"Never give in – never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."

Winston Churchill, one of the few people in the history of the planet who swore without swearwords.

$ # % & @ !

## Saving "Your Best" For Last

"You can only do your best,

as long as your best kicks their sorry fucking ass!"

Michael "F" Yew

Now get out there and fucking do it!

$ # % & @ !

