6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person

By David Wong
2014, motherfuckers. Yeah! LET'S DO THIS.
"Do what?" you ask. I DON'T KNOW. LET'S FIGURE THAT OUT TOGETHER,
MOTHERFUCKERS.
Feel free to stop reading this if your career is going great, you're thrilled with your life,
and you're happy with your relationships. Enjoy the rest of your day, friend, this article
is not for you. You're doing a great job, we're all proud of you. So you don't feel like
you wasted your click, here's a picture of Lenny Kravitz
wearing a gigantic scarf.
For the rest of you, I want you to try something: Name
ve impressive things about yourself. Write them down
or just shout them out loud to the room. But here's the
catch - you're not allowed to list anything you are (i.e.,
I'm a nice guy, I'm honest), but instead can only list
things that you do (i.e. I just won a national chess
tournament, I make the best chilli in Massachusetts). If
you found that difcult, well, this is for you, and you are
going to fucking hate hearing it. My only defence is that
this is what I wish somebody had said to me around
1995 or so.

#6. The World Only Cares About What It Can Get from You

Let's say that the person you love the most has just been shot. He or she is lying in
the street, bleeding and screaming. A guy rushes up and says, "Step aside." He looks
over your loved one's bullet wound and pulls out a pocket knife - he's going to operate
right there in the street.

You ask, "Are you a doctor?"

The guy says, "No."
You say, "But you know what you're doing,
right? You're an old Army medic, or ..."
At this point the guy becomes annoyed.

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He tells you that he is a nice guy, he is honest, he is always on time. He tells you that
he is a great son to his mother and has a rich life full of fullling hobbies, and he
boasts that he never uses foul language.
Confused, you say, "How does any of that fucking matter when my (wife/husband/best
friend/parent) is lying here bleeding! I need somebody who knows how to operate on
bullet wounds! Can you do that or not?!?"
Now the man becomes agitated -- why are you being shallow and selsh? Do you not
care about any of his other good qualities? Didn't you just hear him say that he always
remembers his girlfriend's birthday? In light of all of the good things he does, does it
really matter if he knows how to perform surgery?
In that panicked moment, you will take your bloody hands and shake him by the
shoulders, screaming, "Yes, I'm saying that none of that other shit matters, because in
this specic situation, I just need somebody who can stop the bleeding, you crazy
fucking asshole."

So ere is my terrible truth about the adult

world: You are in that very situation every
single day. Only you are the confused
guy with the pocket knife. All of society is
the bleeding gunshot victim.
If you want to know why society seems
to shun you, or why you seem to get no
respect, it's because society is full of
people who need things. They need
houses built, they need food to eat, they
need entertainment, they need fullling
sexual relationships. You arrived at the
scene of that emergency, holding your
pocket knife, by virtue of your birth - the moment
you came into the world, you became part of a
system designed purely to see to people's needs.
Either you will go about the task of seeing to those
needs by learning a unique set of skills, or the world
will reject you, no matter how kind, giving, and polite
you are. You will be poor, you will be alone, you will
be left out in the cold.
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Does that seem mean, or crass, or materialistic? What about love and kindness - don't
those things matter? Of course. As long as they result in you doing things for people
that they can't get elsewhere.
#5. The Hippies Were Wrong
For those of you who can't watch videos, it's the famous speech Alec Baldwin gives in
the cinematic masterpiece Glengarry Glenn Ross. Baldwin's character - whom you
assume is the villain - addresses a room full of dudes and tears them a new asshole,
telling them that they're all about to be red unless they "close" the sales they've been
assigned:
"Nice guy? I don't give a shit. Good father? Fuck you! Go home and play with your
kids. If you want to work here, close."
It's brutal, rude, and borderline sociopathic, and also it is an honest and accurate
expression of what the world is going to expect from you. The difference is that, in the
real world, people consider it so wrong to talk to you that way that they've decided it's
better to simply let you keep failing.
That scene changed my life. I'd program
my alarm clock to play it for me every
morning if I knew how. Alec Baldwin
was nominated for an Oscar for that
movie and that's the only scene he's in.
As smarter people have pointed out, the
genius of that speech is that half of the
people who watch it think that the point
of the scene is "Wow, what must it be
like to have such an asshole boss?" and
the other half think, "Fuck yes, let's go
out and sell some goddamned real
estate!"

Or, as the Last Psychiatrist blog put it:
"If you were in that room, some of you would understand this as a work, but feed off
the energy of the message anyway, welcome the coach's cursing at you, 'this guy is
awesome!'; while some of you would take it personally, this guy is a jerk, you have no
right to talk to me like that, or - the standard manoeuvre when narcissism is confronted
with a greater power -quietly seethe and fantasize about nding information that will
out him as a hypocrite. So satisfying."

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That excerpt is from an insightful critique of "hipsters" and
why they seem to have so much trouble getting jobs (that
doesn't begin to do it justice, go read the whole thing), and
the point is that the difference in those two attitudes - bitter
vs. motivated - largely determines whether or not you'll
succeed in the world. For instance, some people want to respond to that speech with
Tyler Durden's line from Fight Club: "You are not your job."
But, well, actually, you totally are. Granted, your "job" and your means of employment
might not be the same thing, but in both cases you are nothing more than the sum
total of your useful skills. For instance, being a good mother is a job that requires a
skill. It's something a person can do that is useful to other members of society. But
make no mistake: Your "job" -the useful thing you do for other people - is all you are.
There is a reason why surgeons get more respect than comedy writers. There is a
reason mechanics get more respect than unemployed hipsters. There is a reason your
job will become your label if your death makes the news ("NFL Linebacker Dies in
Murder/Suicide"). Tyler said, "You are not your job," but he also founded and ran a
successful soap company and became the head of an international social and political
movement. He was totally his job.
Or think of it this way: Remember when
Chi ck- l - A came out agai nst gay
marriage? And how despite the protests,
the company continues to sell millions of
sandwiches every day? It's not because
the country agrees with them; it's because
they do their job of making delicious
sandwiches well. And that's all that
matters.
You don't have to like it. I don't like it when
it rains on my birthday. It rains anyway.
Clouds form and precipitation happens. People have needs and thus assign value to
the people who meet them. These are simple mechanisms of the universe and they do
not respond to our wishes.

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If you protest that you're not a shallow
capitalist materialist and that you disagree
that money is everything, I can only say:
Who said anything about money? You're
missing the larger point.

#4. What You Produce Does Not
Have to Make Money, But It Does
Have to Benet People

Let's try a non-money example so you

don' t get hung up on t hat . The
demographic that Cracked writes for is heavy on 20-something males. So on our
message boards and in my many inboxes I read several dozen stories a year from
miserable, lonely guys who insist that women won't come near them despite the fact
that they are just the nicest guys in the world. I can explain what is wrong with this
mindset, but it would probably be better if I let Alec Baldwin explain it.
In this case, Baldwin is playing the part of the attractive women in your life. They won't
put it as bluntly as he does -- society has trained us not to be this honest with people -
but the equation is the same. "Nice guy? Who gives a shit? If you want to work here,
close."
So, what do you bring to the table? Because the Zooey Deschanel lookalike in the
bookstore that you've been daydreaming about moisturizes her face for an hour every
night and feels guilty when she eats anything other than salad for lunch. She's going
to be a surgeon in 10 years. What do you do?

"What, so you're saying that I can't get girls like that
unless I have a nice job and make lots of money?"
No, your brain jumps to that conclusion so you have
an excuse to write off everyone who rejects you by
thinking that they're just being shallow and selsh. I'm
asking what do you offer? Are you smart? Funny?
Interesting? Talented? Ambitious? Creative? OK, now
what do you do to demonstrate those attributes to the
world? Don't say that you're a nice guy -- that's the
bare minimum. Pretty girls have guys being nice to
them 36 times a day. The patient is bleeding in the
street. Do you know how to operate or not?
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"Well, I'm not sexist or racist or greedy or shallow or abusive! Not like those other
douchebags!"
I'm sorry, I know that this is hard to hear, but if all you can do is list a bunch of faults
you don't have, then back the fuck away from the patient. There's a witty, handsome
guy with a promising career ready to step in and operate.

Does that break your heart? OK, so now what? Are
you going to mope about it, or are you going to learn
how to do surgery? It's up to you, but don't complain
about how girls fall for jerks; they fall for those jerks
because those jerks have other things they can offer.
"But I'm a great listener!" Are you? Because you're
willing to sit quietly in exchange for the chance to be
in the proximity of a pretty girl (and spend every
second imagining how soft her skin must be)? Well
guess what, there's another guy in her life who also
knows how to do that, and he can play the guitar.
Saying that you're a nice guy is like a restaurant
whose only selling point is that the food doesn't
make you sick. You're like a new movie whose title is
This Movie Is in English, and its tagline is "The
actors are clearly visible."
I think this is why you can be a "nice guy" and still
feel terrible about yourself. Specically ...

#3. You Hate Yourself Because You Don't Do Anything

"So, what, you're saying that I should pick up a book on how to get girls?"
Only if step one in the book is "Start making yourself into the type of person girls want
to be around."

Because that's the step that gets skipped -- it's always "How can I get a job?" and not
"How can I become the type of person employers want?" It's "How can I get pretty
girls to like me?" instead of "How can I become the type of person that pretty girls
like?" See, because that second one could very well require giving up many of your
favorite hobbies and paying more attention to your appearance, and God knows what
else. You might even have to change your personality.
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"But why can't I nd someone who just likes me for
me?" you ask. The answer is because humans need
things. The victim is bleeding, and all you can do is
look down and complain that there aren't more
gunshot wounds that just x themselves?
Everyone who watched that video instantly became a
little happier, although not all for the same reasons.
Can you do that for people? Why not? What's
stopping you from strapping on your proverbial thong
and cape and taking to your proverbial stage and
apping your proverbial penis at people? That guy
knows the secret to winning at human life: that
doing ... whatever you call that ... was better than not
doing it.
"But I'm not good at anything!" Well, I have good news
- throw enough hours of repetition at it and you can
get sort of good at anything. I was the world's shittiest writer when I was an infant. I
was only slightly better at 25. But while I was failing miserably at my career, I wrote in
my spare time for eight straight years, an article a week, before I ever made real
money off it. It took 13 years for me to get good enough to make the New York Times
best-seller list. It took me probably 20,000 hours of practice to sand the edges off my
sucking.
Don't like the prospect of pouring all of that time into a skill? Well, I have good news
and bad news. The good news is that the sheer act of practicing will help you come
out of your shell - I got through years of tedious ofce work because I knew that I was
learning a unique skill on the side. People quit because it takes too long to see results,
because they can't gure out that the process is the result.
The bad news is that you have no other choice. If you want to work here, close.
Because in my non-expert opinion, you don't hate yourself because you have low self-
esteem, or because other people were mean to you. You hate yourself because you
don't do anything. Not even you can just "love you for you" -- that's why you're
miserable and sending me private messages asking me what I think you should do
with your life.

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Do the math: How much of your time is spent
consuming things other people made (TV, music,
video games, websites) versus making your own?
Only one of those adds to your value as a human
being.
And if you hate hearing this and are responding with
something you heard as a kid that sounds like "It's
what's on the inside that matters!" then I can only
say

#2. What You Are Inside Only Matters
Because of What It Makes You Do

Being in the business I'm in, I know dozens of

aspiring writers. They think of themselves as writers,
they introduce themselves as writers at parties, they
know that deep inside, they have the heart of a writer. The only thing they're missing is
that minor nal step, where they actually fucking write things.

But really, does that matter? Is "writing things" all that important when deciding who is
and who is not truly a "writer"?
For the love of God, yes.
See, there's a common defence to everything I've
said so far, and to every critical voice in your life.
It's the thing your ego is saying to you in order to
prevent you from having to do the hard work of
improving: "I know I'm a good person on the
inside." It may also be phrased as "I know who I
am" or "I just have to be me."
Don't get me wrong; who you are inside is
everything - the guy who built a house for his family
from scratch did it because of who he was inside.
Every bad thing you've ever done has started with
a bad impulse, some thought ricocheting around
inside your skull until you had to act on it. And every
good thing you've done is the same - "who you are
inside" is the metaphorical dirt from which your fruit
grows.
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But here's what everyone needs to know, and what
many of you can't accept:
"You" are nothing but the fruit.
Nobody cares about your dirt. "Who you are inside" is
meaningless aside from what it produces for other
people.
Inside, you have great compassion for poor people.
Great. Does that result in you doing anything about it?
Do you hear about some terrible tragedy in your
community and say, "Oh, those poor children. Let
them know that they are in my thoughts"? Because
fuck you if so -- nd out what they need and help
provide it. A hundred million people watched that
Kony video, virtually all of whom kept those poor
African children "in their thoughts." What did the
collective power of those good thoughts provide?
Jack fucking shit. Children die every day because
millions of us tell ourselves that caring is just as good as doing. It's an internal
mechanism controlled by the lazy part of your brain to keep you from actually doing
work.
How many of you are walking around right now saying, "She/he would love me if she/
he only knew what an interesting person I am!" Really? How do all of your interesting
thoughts and ideas manifest themselves in the world? What do they cause you to do?
If your dream girl or guy had a hidden camera that followed you around for a month,
would they be impressed with what they saw?
Remember, they can't read your mind -- they can only
observe. Would they want to be a part of that life?
Because all I'm asking you to do is apply the same
standard to yourself that you apply to everyone else.
Don't you have that annoying Christian friend whose
only offer to help anyone ever is to "pray for them"?
Doesn't it drive you nuts? I'm not even commenting on
whether or not prayer works; it doesn't change the fact
that they chose the one type of help that doesn't
require them to get off the sofa. They abstain from
every vice, they think clean thoughts, their internal dirt
is as pure as can be, but what fruit grows from it? And
they should know this better than anybody -- I stole the
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fruit metaphor from the Bible. Jesus said something to the effect of "a tree is judged by
its fruit" over and over and over. Granted, Jesus never said, "If you want to work here,
close." No, he said, "Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown
into the re."
The people didn't react well to being told that, just
as the salesmen didn't react well to Alec Baldwin
telling them that they needed to grow some balls
or resign themselves to shining his shoes. Which
brings us to the nal point

#1. Everything Inside You Will Fight
Improvement

The human mind is a miracle, and you will never

see it spring more beautifully into action than
when it is ghting against evidence that it needs
to change. Your psyche is equipped with layer
after layer of defence mechanisms designed to
shoot down anything that might keep things from
staying exactly where they are - ask any addict.
So even now, some of you reading this are feeling
your brain bombard you with knee-jerk reasons to reject it. From experience, I can say
that these seem to come in the form of:

*Intentionally Interpreting Any Criticism as an Insult
"Who is he to call me lazy and worthless! A good person would never talk to me like
this! He wrote this whole thing just to feel superior to me and to make me feel bad
about my life! I'm going to think up my own insult to even the score!"

*Focusing on the Messenger to Avoid Hearing the Message
"Who is THIS guy to tell ME how to live? Oh, like he's so high and mighty! It's just
some dumb writer on the Internet! I'm going to go dig up something on him that
reassures me that he's stupid, and that everything he's saying is stupid! This guy is so
pretentious, it makes me puke! I watched his old rap video on YouTube and thought
his rhymes sucked!"

10
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*Focusing on the Tone to Avoid Hearing the
Content

"I'm going to dig through here until I nd a joke that is
offensive when taken out of context, and then talk
and think only about that! I've heard that a single
offensive word can render an entire book invisible!"


*Revising Your Own History
"Things aren't so bad! I know that I was threatening
suicide last month, but I'm feeling better now! It's
entirely possible that if I just keep doing exactly what
I'm doing, eventually things will work out! I'll get my
big break, and if I keep doing favours for that pretty
girl, eventually she'll come around!

*Pretending That Any Self-Improvement Would
Somehow Be Selling Out Your True Self
"Oh, so I guess I'm supposed to get rid of all of my
manga and instead go to the gym for six hours a day
and get a spray tan like those Jersey Shore
douchebags? Because THAT IS THE ONLY OTHER
OPTION."

And so on. Remember, misery is comfortable. It's why
so many people prefer it. Happiness takes effort.
Also, courage. It's incredibly comforting to know that as long as you don't create
anything in your life, then nobody can attack the thing you created.
It's so much easier to just sit back and criticize other people's creations. This movie is
stupid. That couple's kids are brats. That other couple's relationship is a mess. That
rich guy is shallow. This restaurant sucks. This Internet writer is an asshole. I'd better
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leave a mean comment demanding that the website re him. See, I created
something.

Oh, wait, did I forget to mention that part? Yeah, whatever you try to build or create -
be it a poem, or a new skill, or a new relationship -- you will nd yourself immediately
surrounded by non-creators who trash it. Maybe not to your face, but they'll do it. Your
drunk friends do not want you to get sober. Your fat friends do not want you to start a
tness regimen. Your jobless friends do not want to see you embark on a career.

Just remember, they're only expressing their own fear, since trashing other people's
work is another excuse to do nothing. "Why should I create anything when the things
other people create suck? I would totally have written a novel by now, but I'm going to
wait for something good, I don't want to write the next Twilight!" As long as they never
produce anything, their work will forever be perfect and beyond reproach. Or if they do
produce something, they'll make sure they do it with detached irony. They'll make it
intentionally bad to make it clear to everyone else that this isn't their real effort. Their
real effort would have been amazing. Not like the shit you made.

Read our article comments -- when they get nasty, it's always from the same angle:
Cracked needs to re this columnist. This asshole needs to stop writing. Don't make
any more videos. It always boils down to "Stop creating. This is different from what I
would have made, and the attention you're getting is making me feel bad about
myself."
Don't be that person. If you are that person, don't be that person any more. This is
what's making people hate you. This is what's making you hate yourself.

12
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So how about this: one year. The end of 2014, that's our deadline. Or a year from
whenever you read this. While other people are telling you "Let's make a New Year's
resolution to lose 15 pounds this year!" I'm going to say let's pledge to do fucking
anything -- add any skill, any improvement to your human tool set, and get good
enough at it to impress people. Don't ask me what -- hell, pick something at random if
you don't know. Take a class in karate, or ballroom dancing, or pottery. Learn to bake.
Build a birdhouse. Learn massage. Learn a programming language. Film a porno.
Adopt a superhero persona and ght crime. Start a YouTube vlog. Write for Cracked.
But the key is, I don't want you to focus on something great that you're going to make
happen to you ("I'm going to nd a girlfriend, I'm going to make lots of money ..."). I
want you to purely focus on giving yourself a skill that would make you ever so slightly
more interesting and valuable to other people.

"I don't have the money to take a cooking class." Then fucking Google "how to cook."
They've even ltered out the porn now, it's easier than ever. Damn it, you have to kill
those excuses. Or they will kill you.
If you want to make note of your project in the forum thread or the comments and
check in this time next year, knock yourself out. I'll be curious to see if even one
person actually does this, but if so we'll look back, not just on whether or not we
actually followed through, but why. You have nothing to lose, and the world needs you.
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