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Gary is his own worst enemy. I sit in amazement day after day as I watch him wage wars on himself. Sure, sometimes he is yelling at his girlfriend, or the person at work who he feels doesn’t show him enough respect, but for the most part he isn’t fighting them so much as he is simply just compelled to continuously create drama in his own life. Why does he do this?
I live in Las Vegas, also known as “Sin City.” The tourists that come here have a saying that “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” I’ve lived here for a little over a year now and have come up with my own saying, “What happens in Vegas makes for interesting newsletters for you all to read.” Las Vegas is one of those places where one minute I can be 500 feet above the strip having drinks with movie stars and five minutes later I can be less than a mile away, in the ghetto, smiling at homeless people. We have no shortage of diversity in interesting people. The one commonality all of these people have, including Gary, is that they all seem to crave drama in their lives.
A few days prior to me writing this, Gary and his girlfriend Melinda had a fight. I know because I was there as it happened. I live next door to Gary. It’s the exact script as you hear it on daytime TV talk shows. Melinda is on medication for being bipolar. She skips out on taking her meds, goes crazy, and next thing you know they are fighting. She physically attacks him. He pushes her away a little too hard and she falls. One of her girlfriends calls the police, and next thing you know, Gary is in handcuffs. The punch line to this joke is when she later says, “but I love him.” This reoccurs every few months or so. Now, you would think that Gary would wise up, get a restraining order, and find a “normal” girl, but no, he doesn’t. Not more than 24 hours after the police have left, he tells me that his apartment is just so quiet without her. He misses her. He is nuts! He would rather have a clinically crazy girl nagging and occasionally attacking him than a quiet apartment.
I’m sure you know people who behave like this. Maybe they habitually use drugs to get as high as the moon and then suffer though the hangover after. Maybe they are in a bad relationship like Gary and Melinda. Maybe even you have something repetitive that you do that takes you through emotional highs and lows for no logical reason. It’s time for you to finally understand what’s built into every human that compels us to behave in this way.
Everything I teach is rooted in the science of evolution. If you want to understand why people behave the way they do, evolutionary psychology will give you the answer. Your brain and how it functions is the product of evolution. Evolution is a slow process. The “software” that is running in your head is about 40,000 years out of date. So you are living in today’s world, but your head is wired for the world of 40,000 years ago. This mismatch is the number one cause of all the bad decisions that people make today.
40,000 years ago, life was harsh. If you were alive back then all you thought about was hunting/gathering food, trying to not become dinner for some other animal, and if you were lucky, reproduce before dying at a very young age. Life was very, very stressful. It was programmed into you that survival and huge emotional swings went hand in hand. The reason we developed this over 40,000 years ago was because it was an advantage to us. Your ancestors craved situations like this because it was to their benefit. There were two options back then:
OPTION ONE: Cower in the back of a cave too scared to leave to gather food and hunt. They sit there until they get so weak that they either just die or the first fierce animal that finds them has no problem making dinner out of them. – This group dies out quickly.
OPTION TWO: Be a prehistoric adrenaline junkie. They leave the safety of their cave and risk death as they hunt and fight off animals that are hunting them. As they participate in these feats of bravery/stupidity they find women willing to mate with them (some of whom already have mates who may try to kill them for stealing their women). – Bottom line is that this is a game they will eventually and inevitably lose, but before they do, they will survive long enough to have children. These children are your ancestors. We are all decedents of prehistoric adrenaline junkies because they were the ones who survived. Our brains are wired for desiring huge emotional swings because 40,000 years ago it increased our chances of survival and replication.
As life changed for us over the years and got easier, we came up with new ways to satisfy that evolutionary need for highly charged emotional swings. We replaced hunting tribes with sports teams. We replaced quests for conquest with movies. We replaced inter-tribal rivalry with day time TV soap operas. Our brains are wired for drama and that is why we create it.
So where does this leave us? Are we doomed to create useless drama in our lives to satisfy some outdated evolutionary need? Thankfully, no. We can use the logical part of our brains to actually use this to our advantage.
So how do we do this? The first step is to understand why this exists in you, and now you know the answer. The second step is to choose the emotional rollercoaster you are going to ride wisely.
Stop watching TV habitually. Stop drinking and doing drugs habitually. And if Gary happens to read this, stop getting into relationships with women who are clinically insane.
Like our ancestors, get your fix of emotional highs and lows from things that make your life better via participation.
One hour of strenuous exercise a day will do the trick. GO TO THE GYM! Trust me, when those endorphins start to kick in (once you make habit of working out every day) you will feel great after you workout. As a side note, you’ll hurt like hell when you push it and that will provide the emotional low. If this isn’t enough for you, start kickboxing. Beating the hell out of people and having the crap kicked out of you (in the safest way possible) a few days a week will definitely do the trick. You will actually get in good shape doing this, a benefit to you, rather than Gary who gets his kicks when his crazy chick calls the cops, which is never a good thing.
Another option is to start a business. Starting a business in some cases is almost as good as a serious gambling addition. It amazes me when people come to Las Vegas, look around at all the money the casinos pull in to build ridiculous tourist attractions, and still think they are going to win. Did all these people fail math class in Jr. High School? You want to gamble? Start a business. I speak from personal experience when I tell you that it’s an emotional rollercoaster ride, but at least the odds tip in your favor more and more the longer you play.
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