I'm in the middle of reading Helen Fieldings latest book: Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination. The plot borders on the ridicilous, but the main character has a list of rules for living.
Rules for Living by Olivia Joules.1. Never panic. Stop, breathe, think.
2. No one is thinking about you. They're thinking about themselves, just like you.
3. Never change haircut or color before an important event.
4. Nothing is either as bad or as good as it seems.
5. Do as you would be done by, eg., thou shall not kill.
6. It is better to buy one expensive thing that you really like than several cheap ones that you only quite like.
7. Hardly anything matters: if you get upset, ask yourslef, "Does it really matter?"
8: The key to success lies in how you pick yourself up from failure.
9. Be kind and honest.
10. Only buy clothes that make you feel like doing a small dance.
11. Trust your instincts, not your overactive imagination.
12. When overwhelmed by disaster, check if it's really a disaster by doing the following: a) think, "Oh, fuck it," (b) look on the bright side, and if that doesn't work, look on the funny side. If niether of the above works then mabybe it is a disaster so turn to items 1 and 4.
13. Don't expect the world to be safe or life to be fair.
14. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow.
15. Don't regret anything. Remember there wasn't anything else that could have happened, given who you were and the state of the world at that moment. The only think you can change is the present, so learn from the past.
Beside rule number 2, thinking all of these rules are good ones to adopt.
I really like them rules as well. Book was a bit surreal, but they are definte rules that one should abide by. Why not Number 2 though? I think that's most apt