My Favorite Health, Wealth, Love Books

There are three areas of your life that need to be handled: Health, Wealth, Love. If you follow evolutionary psychology, what we're programmed with is just a mechanism for survival and replication. My favorite books that have helped me in these three areas:

Health:

1. Abs Diet
2. Abs Diet: Eat Right Every Time Guide
3. Book of Muscle
4. Full Body Workout

Wealth:

1. The Neatest Little Guide to Stocks
2. Dave Ramsey's The Total Money Makeover

Love:

1. The Secret Psychology of How We Fall in Love
2.   

Of course this isn't complete as I'm still doing some reading, but this is a great start. 

Barbie and The Savanna Principle Explains Men's Psychology Pertaining to Mate Choice

The Savanna Principle is a term from evolutionary psychologist that says: the human brain cannot cope well with things and situations that did not exist in our "ancestral environment." The exact quote:

"The human brain has difficulty comprehending and dealing with entities and situations that did not exist in the ancestral environment" (p. 21). -Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters, by Miller & Kanazawa

This article by Kanazawa suggests that men cannot comprehend technology that a woman uses to enhance her physical appearance and make her appear more young and thus more fertile to seed mate with. Large, ample breasts on a 45-year old should indicate plastic surgery (which it does), but with the Savanna Principle since such technology didn't exist back then, we as men find it difficult to allow that fact to deter us from finding such breasts attractive. If we believe what is young is fertile and worth mating we'll overlook the real facts (that the women is 45, and past fertility age).

My next and last thought was when the author used Barbie as the ultimate perfect woman, a figure that should induce primal sexual desire in any man. I have a particular issue with his use of blond hair being most attractive. I personally love brunettes which may pertain to my ancestry. If in the ancestral world, my ancestors never saw blond hair on any woman so they wouldn't have found it attractive (after all, how can you find something attractive, if you never saw it...*) My simple point is that culture developed in specific geographic area developed differently, a point too often overlooked by Modern Psychologist.

Final Line: The ugly truth is that men find youthful looking women more attractive, because we always have.


* Interesting conclusion from a man who I'll assume is Asian (based off his picture and his last name) and in particularly from a region furthest from any ancestral land that could have blond haired women.

Psych: Why Are there Bad Looking Couples?

Why are there so many bad looking couples? In high school there were enough examples of bad couples to make me bang my head on the walls. A good looking guy with an unnattractively mean girl. A really popular girl with the weirdest dude. It boggled my mind. I still wonder about it.

A recent conversation with a friend revealed to me that girls can change their minds and do change what they want in a guy, often she suggests. One year she was with a model looking guy a few years later she's with the biggest dude I've ever seen. B-I-G, BIG, =).

Physically attractive, intellectually stimulating, being charming all describe ideal traits a great guy should have. However,trying to be  an ideal mate looks to me to be a goal unworthy of your time.
I had a Sim on the game: The Sims that was everything I wanted to be, maxed out intelligence, athletics, cooking ability. . . And the guy could never get a date. It frustrated me, but the lesson was that there's more to human interaction than maxing out your stats, pages read, hours studied, number of bench presses.

In a past relationship, I really tried to be the highest quality of man. I was everything I ever learned to be in regards to being a gentleman, athletic, intelligent, kind, generous, I maxed out my stats so to speak. For whatever reason, the relationship didn't work out. In fact she sought out comfort from lesser males, and I mean, really, really gnarly looking, deadbeats. I couldn't let go of the fact that we looked like a great couple, similar interests, similar values and goals. It just didn't work out, because I wasn't what she wanted.

The final line: don't be drawn in by the seductive practice of finding ideal couples in your life or that of others.

Psych: People Own their Names

I've studied it in psychology, read it in pop culture, and see it everyday. One of my most favorite ideas in understanding people is that the most important word to anyone is their own name. I learned that neat line from "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie. He'll go on to suggest that it is the number one thing you must not do is to forget people's names.

I recently forfeited the point that words have power and I doubt there is a more powerful and influential word than a person's name, to them anyway. It grabs someones attention when they are called by their name, it's special, and too often do people just brush by eachother unnoticed. Some of us go through hundreds of such interactions a day, but we really notice when someone uses our name.  

It's no wonder people care so much about their reputation. Their name is intimately tied with their reputation, and a good reputation will provide you with friends, status, and options in life. It's particularly more important for men to build a good name because men are most judged on their status in career and in relationship to other men. That damning line: "It's not what you know, it's who you know" rings loud and clear here. You may be a genius, but if you can't connect with people or if you have a poor reputation, you can't get as far as someone with a good name.

I'll Be Trying Blogging For a Bit

I just started to read Problogger by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett and decided blogging is something I want to do on the side. No! I'm not selling out! I promise! I just figured that on my facebook page I have about 100 posts over the last couple of years, more since I began a private blog, and I have some things to say I believe can benefit more than the few friends I write for. Why not share my ideas with the world? The good ones.

So I'll commit to writing everyday, well, I already do that. I will allow myself one ad per blog, and my model will be multiple blogs. I already write a lot anyway. My format is digestible, entertaining, and very functional, but be patient as I evolve and my blogs evolve with me. Here we go!

Links:
Problogger.net

Patience

My next big lesson is patience. I want to be doing what I want to do, civil engineering, NOW. However, I am a ways away. I need to calm down and have respect for the uncontrollable, and have faith in my hard work and in myself. I must recognize that I am in a unique situation and I must find ways equally as unique. Be patient, the solution may take awhile to arise.


-- Post From My iPhone

Miss March

Just saw the movie Miss March, and it is absolutely hilarious. There is a great lesson on relationships there. Tucker Clay tried to talk up a big game but strikes out a lot. He finds Candace and they love doing the same things. Tucker meets with Hugh Heffner and listens to his story about a one true love with this really busted girl that has a dead eye. "It's not the quantity it's the quality, if you have a great girl then there you go."

The other guy says something about how it doesn't matter who his girl had sex with because he had a relationship with a great girl. That HorseDick.mpeg wouldn't know what to do with a girl like that.

• it's not the quantity, it's the quality


-- Post From My iPhone

Tonight Introducing New Routine

"You are your habits."

10:30pm to 11pm is my night review. This is the one habit I want to keep for now. I will review all my completed tasks and my goals for tomorrow.


-- Post From My iPhone

Called UNLV: Second Degree is a Go

Just called UNLV and Carry said second degrees are offered, and if I want to eventually get my graduate degree I should get my second degree first. The whole call lasted about 2 minutes and I stretched it, but it inspirational. I'll start my application tomorrow. 

Job Search: When to Not Apply

I was looking at jobs and construction caught my eye. I want to be  civil engineer because I like working with my hands, being outdoors, and using my education in science and people to solve problems and create. 

I realized that if I were to become a construction worker I would have to be a full time apprentice or something similar. I would be going in a direction away from my desired degree. I believe that as soon as you realize that the deal is not great, you should walk away. 

I now believe I should start sending inquiries to schools about my second degree. 

Don't be afraid to walk away if there is a better way in a different direction. 

Lords Dying

Watching Tristian and Isolde and hearing about the fighting, I wondered if the lords understood their purpose at times to put themselves in peril knowing death was right in front of them. They did not run, but faced their world with courage. I wondered if they knew at some psychological level that was the contract with leadership that could not be broken, that they knew what they must do.


-- Post From My iPhone

Talk With Sean Tario

So last Friday I watched a keynote with Sean Tario. The one thing I remember is to keep a blog to get known. And that in my daily journal I should review it every night to make a note of what I got done and what I didn't.

-- Post From My iPhone

Men In Relationships Withdraw From Fights To Save Their Own Lives

The future of the world will not be determined by nations, but rather in the relations between men and women

The Potential Importance of Physiological Soothing of the Male

“Gottman and Levenson (1988 ) hypothesized that this gender difference is based, in part, on a biological difference between the sexes. Their hypothesis was that men are in some ways more reactive to stress than women, particularly in the adrenergic parts of the cardiovascular system and in the stress-related endocrine responses that accompany active coping, particularly the catecholamines adrenaline and noradrenalin (Obrist, 1981). There is some evidence to suggest that this difference is found physiologically (in the autonomic nervous system and endocrine responses) and in emotion-related behaviors. (For a review, see Polefrone & Manuck,1987.) Recent evidence suggest that this gender differences may be particularly pronounced in the vigilance-startle system (McCarter & Levenson, 1996) and that there is a greater male adrenergic-cardio vascular response to acoustic startling in terms of the reactivity of the heart rate and vasoconstrictive responses.
Because of the aversive nature of diffuse autonomic arousal, men may attempt to avoid negative affect in close relationships because it is more physiologically punishing for them than for women.”

Gottman, J. (1998 ) Predicting marital happiness and stability from newlywed interactions. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 60, 5-22.