Gary really knows how to cause himself pain. I sit amazed week after week as I see him wage wars on himself. Sure, sometimes he is yelling at Melinda,his girlfriend, or the guy at work who he thinks doesn't show him enough respect, but for the most part he isn't at odds with them so much as he is simply just driven to continuously stir headache in his own life. What is he thinking?

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 the rich and famous and 5 minutes after 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 them have, including Gary, is that they all seem to need drama in their lives.

A few days prior to me writing this, Gary and Melinda had a fight. I know because I was there as it happened. I live next door to Gary. It's the exact same thing as you hear it on TV talk shows. Melinda is on medication for being bipolar. She skips out on taking her meds, goes nuts, and next thing you know they are fighting. She physically attacks him. He pushes her away a little too hard and she trips. One of her girlfriends calls the cops, and next thing, Gary is in handcuffs. The high point of this stupidity is when she later says, "but I love him." This happens 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 just as crazy as her to say something like this! 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 do this.

Everything I teach is rooted in the science of evolution. If you want to understand why people do what 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.

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