Life Advice with Animal Analogies

Go with the flow like a dead fish.

If you don’t like where the flow is going, stop the flow like a beaver does with wood.

Laughter is the best medicine, unless you laugh like a hyena, in which case you should laugh like a hamster. (Hamsters don’t laugh.)

Pursue your goals with passion and determination like a mountain lion stalking a household pet.

Remember that it’s all about the journey, not the destination. So enjoy the views along the way like a mountain lion watching a household pet’s owner heading off to work.

No matter what life throws at you, always keep one foot on the ground like a pink flamingo and your head buried in the sand like an ostrich. This may sound impossible, but you can do it if you practice Pilates.

Age gracefully but invisibly, like a pigeon.

Patience is a virtue. Be patient like a mountain lion when the household pet’s owner returns home because she forgot her phone.

Take big swings like a howler monkey, and don’t be afraid of crashing into a tree like a howler monkey that is bad at judging distance.

Visualize your future self emerging from a cocoon as a beautiful butterfly. Then lower your expectations, because butterflies emerge from a chrysalis, not a cocoon, so you are actually a moth. Accept your moth identity and fly toward a flame.

Always move forward like a shark. Unless there is a shark approaching you, in which case scurry sideways like a crab.

Be mindful and notice the little things, like a mountain lion suddenly noticing the electric fence.

When life gives you lemons, eat the lemons off the ground under the cover of night like a possum.

Love what you do like a bear hunting salmon. Do what you love like a salmon futilely attempting to thrash upstream away from a bear.

Change is good—it’s the only thing that’s certain in life. Embrace change like a snake shedding its skin, but stay true to your authentic self. If your authentic self is the skin you just shed, go find it and put it back on. If it shrivelled and no longer fits, make a vest out of it and wear your true self as a layer when it gets chilly.

Work hard and keep your eyes on the prize like a mountain lion digging a hole under the electric fence.

Ignorance is bliss. Be blissfully happy as a clam that doesn’t know it’s at a clambake.

Remember that life is what happens while you’re busy making plans to eat a household pet but sometimes you find yourself covered in mud, sitting alone in a hole under an electric fence, no closer to the household pet than you were eight hours ago and wondering if it’s even worth it, but you’ve already dug a pretty deep hole so you should probably just keep going so that you don’t feel like a total loser. But then it starts raining, so you say fuck it.

Follow your gut like a cow with four stomachs, but don’t always trust your gut. It could be indigestion. ♦