The Underachiever's Manifesto (free sample)

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COPYRIGHT
The Underachiever's Manifesto by Ray Bennett. Copyright 2006 by Ray Bennett.
All Rights Reserved. Sharing not permitted.

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THE UNDERACHIEVER'S MANIFESTO
The Guide to Accomplishing Little and Feeling Great

Ray Bennett, M.D.

For J. T.
Without his dedication to mediocrity, this book would not have been possible.


INTRODUCTION

Congratulations! Opening this book is the best decision you've ever made. There, that was easy, wasn't it?

The pleasures of underachievement are many, but they are all too often lost in the pressure for success. (Or, SUCCESS!) The achievement lobby is powerful, and underachievement is, surprisingly, not as easy as it should be. Our world is so full of unrelenting messages about being the best you can be that it may not have even occurred to you to try for anything less. We've been brainwashed over many years to believe that striving for success is essential to our well-being. Be number one! Don't settle for second best! Give 110 percent! It's an endless, exhausting litany, thanks to advertising stars and corporate executives busy cashing in our inadequacies for their overpriced sneakers and shiny BMWs. Never mind that no one agrees on what it means to be "the best," and that it's actually impossible for everyone to be it, whatever it is.
Maybe you're working really hard at resisting all that, but even if you are, chances are you're still striving in some way to live life to the very best--and it's killing you.

Consider: How many brilliant careers are coupled with disastrous marriages? How many talented, hardworking people smoke too much, exercise too little, or drink themselves into oblivion each week? At the other extreme, how many fitness-crazed or hypercompetitive individuals tear up their knees running marathons or risk life and limb scrambling to mountaintops? How many brilliant and ambitious people dream of winning accolades for their genius, only to wind up working for their C+ colleagues? And even if you do manage to just about maintain a full-sprint schedule of personal and professional achievement, it can take something as commonplace as the flu to throw your whole highly tuned enterprise stressfully out of whack. What you've never realized all these years is that it's your commitment to excellence that is the source of your trouble. And that's where this book can help.

In these pages you'll learn how to live life to the minimum and love it. If that sounds like a strategy to maximize happiness . . . okay, it is. But that is the exception that proves the rule. When you picked up this book, maybe you were feeling a little guilty about your halfhearted effort at work; or perhaps you've given up on an exercise regimen because you just can't pound the pavement like you did in high school. You feel like you should be doing more, or doing something better, or, more likely, doing it all better. But you'll soon get over that and enjoy the contentment that results from giving less than your very best. It's all about the right balance, the right amount of effort, which is probably a lot less than you've been led to believe. In our overachieving society, a little underachievement is the necessary corrective.

So relax, read this book, and put your potential back in the lockbox. Turn everything down a notch. Lower the bar. Discover the laziness that has so far eluded you. No matter who you are, there's something you're trying too hard at.