(FORTUNE Magazine) – Congratulations! Felicitations! Huzzah! Hoorah! There are only a few juicy twigs on the branches above you, my brother. The rest of the tree is down below in the fog. You rule, man, and I mean that literally.

But now that you're one of the biggest cheese logs on the cutting board, I thought I might take a few moments to give you some advice on how best to live up to the extreme promise of your new standing. Some new skills and insights are definitely called for if you want to fit in and, yes, get ahead.

--Don't skip breakfast. Next to canapes at drinks before dinner, it's the most important meal of the day. Beyond that, have bacon as often as possible. Back when you mostly ate at your desk, it was hard to get anything more than a pathetic roll and a cup of coffee. Now more and more often you'll be sitting down to parley with some fellow hotshot at eight in the morning at some trendy bistro a world away from the snack bar on the 24th floor. No well-meaning spouse will be there to tell you to put down that slab of fat and salt and pick up a nice, cholesterol-free bran pellet so that you can lengthen your sorry life by a couple of piddling years. The executive path is a hard one. Bacon is one of the compensations. So is almost unlimited access to free shrimp. Live it up!

--Buy good shirts. Real executive shirts are very, very white, and as crisp as frozen lettuce, and not droopy old red leaf or Boston, either, but the real iceberg that cracks when you break it open and remains crunchy all the way down, no matter how you dress it. There's nothing that distinguishes a minor player more quickly than a wrinkled, off-white tail poking out of the back of a rumpled waistband. I saw Barry Diller at an industry dinner the other night. His entire upper torso was garbed perfectly, clean, bone white, not a rumple in it. There's a guy who can do whatever he wants, and his shirt won't do anything but help him get there. Can you say the same?

--Get bone thin. There are very few fat senior officers. At this dinner I was telling you about, basically nobody ate dinner. Perhaps that's because they all had had big breakfasts, with bacon. I didn't ask them. They were all talking exclusively to each other anyway, and that's the way I like it. I talked to another guy who was eating a roll with a lot of butter on it. All they served were tiny, undercooked vegetables, with a rock-hard nugget of meat protein that could have been beef. I hope it was, because I ate it. It tasted like chicken. All the big honcho types had jawbones that could slice granite, and tummies like Kate Moss. I didn't fit in very well, but I'm not up there yet like some people I know.

--Develop an executive laugh. I just mention this because, thinking about that dinner again, it was full of people drinking clear beverages with lime and laughing like horses into one another's faces. It's possible that when you make that kind of money, everything gets a lot funnier. I wouldn't know.

--Get a huge office. To hell with the dinner. Dinners aren't everything. Some of your job will take place at the office, and big guys need big space. I've seen your current one, and it's fine, as far as it goes. But you need more now, my huge friend, if your new status is going to be perceived as anything more than an enhanced business card with a couple of extra stock options. Start by sucking up the areas of smaller life forms within a 100-yard area. Secretarial bays are a good place to start, followed by the offices of executives like me who used to be your peers but are now afraid of you. As well they should be, right? Ha!

--Remember the little people. It's often easier to yell at them than at, say, your wife. In fact, your new status makes yelling at home completely unnecessary. You can just store it up until you get to your desk and then let loose. Man, doesn't that feel good? Feeling good is what it's all about.

--Be large. On the other hand, yelling isn't really necessary for you anymore. In fact, when you get right down to it, yelling is really for middle managers. Senior officers don't need to yell. They have people to do it for them. They just look displeased in order to get the job done. At that dinner, for instance, I saw Diller crossing the dance floor at one point, and he wasn't even scowling or anything, he just looked sort of preoccupied and grouchy, but it still made me sort of nervous to watch him. Can you imagine what kind of loyalty and responsiveness that expression produces in those who work for him? Cultivate that.

--Don't work too hard. That's for middle managers too. Of course, in some sense you're still a middle manager yourself, since there are two or three guys still working less hard than you are. So some actual labor is probably unavoidable. But take as few meetings as you possibly can, and spend as much time as possible wandering around in a fog. After a while, people will start expecting less from you. When they expect virtually nothing, you've arrived. Don't settle for less.

--Don't be afraid to cut into a line when you're in a hurry. Getting back to that dinner: There was one small bar for about 2,000 people, and you couldn't get a drink because every time you got to the front of the line, one of those rock-hard nabobs stuck his nose in front of you as if it were his personal entitlement to do so. You'll have to become like that. Start now.

--Take the giraffe. Every couple of days or so, somebody is going to come along and offer you a giraffe. Take it. You may not know you need a giraffe because you've lived your entire life without one. But once you get used to having a couple around, you'll really start to appreciate them. They're tall and can browse up above everybody else when you want to remain all comfy and secluded in your recliner. They're very sleek and shiny, of course, and look good simply hanging out in your waiting area or, if you take them home, your backyard. While they are completely silent as a species, once you learn to read their expressions, they can be quite loving and attentive. They come in all shapes, sizes, and functions, and if you're thoughtful and aggressive, I'm sure you can find one that is perfectly suited to your lifestyle. The other night, when I left the dinner I was telling you about, there were hundreds milling around outside the hotel, waiting for their owners. I wouldn't swear to it, but I'm pretty sure that one of them had your name on it.

I couldn't be happier for you if this were me we were talking about. I mean it!

By day, STANLEY BING is a real executive at a real FORTUNE 500 company he'd rather not name.