Promise #11: Identify your lifeline

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You don’t need a ticket to Who Wants To Be A Millionaire to identify your lifeline. After all, this is the person guaranteed to save your butt, right? Don’t you need to know at all times who that person is? Damn straight you do.

Your lifeline, hereafter referred to as LL, must complement your brainpower. Weak in common sense? Your LL must have wicked street smarts. Unable to find your way out of a paper bag? Your LL must be a walking GPS. Bit of wallflower? You need an LL that can work the room. Get it?

Let’s whittle the remaining assessment process down to four very simple questions:

1. Who doesn’t send you chain emails? This person is void of ill will which is why they don’t ask you to forward ridiculous or, as Bill Maher would say, religulous emails to a set number of friends in exchange for a year of good luck, three wishes or—the ever famous—money from Bill Gates.
2. Who understands your need for understanding? This person listens when you need to be heard and then invents sound support points to make you feel like a genius when you’re clearly being an idiot.
3. Who knows your favorite drink? There will be more than one time in your life when you just need one and the keeper of this information will always make sure your glass is half full of something you truly enjoy whether it’s apple juice or an appletini.
   
4. Who fills in the blanks for you? S/he introduces themselves to the nut that you’re talking to because they know you have no idea who it is; finishes the occasional incoherent sentence with a nod and a wink; and/or whisks you away from trouble the minute they notice that dang magnetic attraction between your foot and your mouth kicking into gear.
   

Got it? Good. This is your LL—willing to leap tall buildings in exchange for nothing at all. Everybody has at least one. Finding (and hanging onto) yours will help you feel like a million bucks.