Lessons on Life According to Barney Stinson

Barney Stinson is one of the greatest philosophers ‘How I Met Your Mother’ fans might have seen. That dude is one of the coolest and most experienced life coach. I think there is a word that describes him – bro. He is the real bro.

In this article, I want to make my case as to why Barney is the real bro. I’ll be highlighting his great words, followed by the life lessons behind them. Here they come:

"Suit up"

Barney Stinson used to insist on always suiting up. If you don’t know about this, he always wore a suit so that whenever a hot girl was around, he would be ready to shoot his shot.

Suit up is a metaphor for always being ready to work towards your goal, so that if an opportunity shows up, you are ready to shoot your shot.

“Look, our forefathers died for the ‘pursuit of happiness,’ okay? Not for the ‘sit around and wait for happiness.’ Now if you want, we can go to the same bar, drink the same beer, talk to the same people every day or you can lick the Liberty Bell. You can grab life by the crack and lick the crap out of it.”

We must always remember that we are pursuing happiness. We tend to work hard and do the same things over and over. There is no problem with this. We must work hard. But a key aspect that must go with work hard is play hard. Often, we forget that happiness just doesn’t come to you. You cannot sit and hope that you will be happy. Playing hard involves getting up and consciously pursuing happiness. Happiness doesn’t come to you by sitting around. You must pursue it. Therefore, there is no harm doing crazy things like spontaneously flying to Philadelphia and licking the liberty bell, though you may go to jail or risk the chance of catching the flu.

“A girl is allowed to be crazy as long as she is equally hot. Thus, if she’s *this* crazy, she has to be *this* hot. You want the girl to be above this line. Also known as the ‘Vickie Mendoza Diagonal.’”

The Vickie Mendoza diagonal is not always about dating. It is also a lesson on how to make career decisions. A career may be hot and crazy. Hot could be the money and prestige, and crazy refers to how nuts it may drive you.

According to the Vickie Mendoza line, for a certain amount of craziness, if the hotness of the career is above the line, it is a great option. Whenever you are making career decisions, you must make sure that it falls above the line.

These were some of the life lessons Barney Stinson taught me. But there is a lot more. If we get a chance to meet, I’m telling you more about it haha.