How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life by Scott Adams

for money partners to launch an idea that has the potential to transform the entire economy of the world, assuming it works as planned. Will it succeed? Probably not. But the idea of it excites me and raises my energy today. That’s my system.
    By the time you read this book, a lot will have transpired with both of those start-up efforts. Any new business is risky. But for the past several months my attitude and energy have been sky-high because of the potential that both projects have for making the world a better place. My imagined future acts as a cue to keep my mood elevated today.
    You might be thinking this is all well and good for famous authors and cartoonists, but ordinary people don’t have many chances to change the world. I disagree. Ideas change the world routinely, and most of those ideas originate from ordinary people. You might have a patent idea, a product idea, or a process idea that could change the world. Before my cartoon career, I had plenty of big ideas that didn’t work out. When one idea failed, I usually had two more to take its place. And every one of my ideas had real-world potential, even if the odds were bad.
    Don’t worry if your idea is a long shot. That’s not what matters right now. Today you want to daydream of your idea being a huge success so you can enjoy the feeling. Let your ideas for the future fuel your energy today. No matter what you want to do in life, higher energy will help you get there.
    Another benefit of having a big, world-changing project is that you almost always end up learning something valuable in the process of failing. And fail you will, most of the time, so long as you are dreaming big. But remember, goals are for losers anyway. It’s smarter to see your big-idea projects as part of a system to improve your energy, contacts, and skills. From that viewpoint, if you have a big, interesting project in the works, you’re a winner every time you wake up.
    When I consider taking on a new big project, I first ask myself who I know who would be helpful and who might want to partner, invest, or just give advice. In my universe of contacts, which is fairly huge at this point in my career, I would say I met half of those folks in theprocess of failing at one thing or another. And if I ask myself what skills and knowledge I need for my next big idea, invariably that means drawing on knowledge I gained while circling the drain in some doomed project of yore.
    Let’s say you wake up tomorrow full of energy for your exciting new project. Over the course of the day you learn a few things in the process of doing your research, and you meet some new people along the way. If you accomplish that and nothing more, you’re succeeding, no matter what happens with your project.
The Power of Smiling
    Smiling makes you feel better even if your smile is fake. This is the clearest example of how your brain has a user interface. When you’re in a bad mood, the physical act of forcing a smile may trigger the feel-good chemistry in your brain that is associated with happiness. 1
    The smiling-makes-you-happy phenomenon is part of the larger and highly useful phenomenon of faking it until you make it. You’ll see this two-way causation in a wide variety of human activities. Later I’ll tell you that putting on exercise clothes will make you feel like working out. I’ve also discovered that
acting
confident makes you
feel
more confident. Feeling energetic makes you want to play a sport, but playing a sport will also make you feel energetic. Loving someone makes you want to have sex, but having sex also releases the bonding chemicals that make you feel love. High testosterone can help you win a competition, but winning a competition can also sometimes raise your testosterone. 2 Being tired makes you want to lie down, but lying down when you are rested can put you in the mood for a nap. Feeling hungry can make you want to eat simple carbs, but eating simple carbs can make you feel