Josh Kilmer-Purcell has been lot of things: A farmer, an adman, a reality television star and a self-described “terrible drag queen.” He has written memoirs, novels and a cookbook or two. And he certainly does not believe in life lessons. In his 2013 CIW Talk, “A Contrarian’s Non-Lessons For Life,” Kilmer-Purcell hacks apart the feel-good, tried and true lessons we all learned as kids and reminds us that sometimes quitters win.

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1. Take advantage of unique opportunities.

“A few months ago, when the organizers of this event called me and they said would you like to come and talk about some of your life lessons during Chicago Ideas Week, I was really flattered and honored. I mean, this is Chicago. This is where Oprah invented life lessons.”

2. You can’t be whatever you want when you grow up.

“I was a terrible drag queen. That’s when I learned you really can’t be anything you want. We all do have limitations. And sometimes it’s just smarter to recognize them and move on.

3. Things don’t always work out for people on TV.

“When you have a reality show and someone doesn’t renew it, it’s sort of like someone saying your reality is not interesting enough to subject people to anymore. It’s sort of like losing the ultimate popularity contest of all time.”

4. Sometimes quitting has an upside.

“When you’re eliminated from [The Amazing Race] early, you get to go to an all expense paid resort in Tahiti to wait it out for the other racers to finish…. So about halfway through the race, when we are passing out, I’d sprained my ankle. We’re so far behind [that] nobody has ever won [from our position]. This little voice comes into my head and says, ‘Umbrella drinks.’”

5. Don’t obsess over “life lessons.”

“We always want our lessons to be 100 percent true. When we do that, we create fences. We turn our lessons into fences that keep us in [and] that tell us what we should do, what we shouldn’t do.”

6. Even if they’re not perfect, some lessons just stick with you.

“This [lesson] is one that I hate to admit I learned from my childhood priest, but it has stuck with me all along. I used to pester the guy with how I could go to heaven and not go to hell, and I was just a ball of nerves as a kid. Finally he looked at me and said, ‘Josh, there’s no point in asking God for the answers to life. Chances are you won’t even get the questions right.’”