Who’s in control of your life? A simple ques­tion with a not so simple answer. I ask you to take a look at how you live your life, how you inter­pret the events of the day, and how you choose to respond to them. Are you simply reacting as a knee-jerk response? Or are you consciously choosing how to react?

One of the biggest turning points in my life is when I real­ized that we are in control of our emotions and reac­tions — either by default or consciously. What do I mean by that? Well you can either be “programmed” auto­mat­i­cally by events and forces outside of your control and live life by default — or — you can choose to repro­gram your­self and start responding and feeling how you want to instead of how you’ve been.

Being at cause in your life means that you create your reality instead of letting your reality create you.

Which way are you living your life?

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It’s always fasci­nated me how people spend their lives. How some people are successful and others stay poor, coming from the same back­ground and oppor­tu­ni­ties. How people will complain about their health and misery, yet it’s obvious to many how simply lifestyle changes could trans­form their lives. That’s why when I saw the above info­graphic on video and TV usage by average Americans, I was blown away.

Taking what’s presented, I decided to do a few calcu­la­tions and put into perspec­tive how much of people’s lives are being wasted infront of the boob tube. While there’s some inspi­ra­tional and educa­tional shows on TV that even I person­ally dig, we all know the chances of main­stream America are more fasci­nated by the mating rituals of guidos in Jersey than geckos in the jungle. I’m not against enter­tain­ment itself — just 33 hours a week in brain-numbing amounts of it. The last thing I want to have on my deathbed resume is 1/4 of my life spent accom­plishing nothing and numbing myself infront of a screen.

So check it out:

Based on these find­ings by Nielsen, the average American spends 33 hours per week watching TV. So we take that (33) then multiply that by the amount of weeks in a year (52), and we get 1,716 hours/year watching tele­vi­sion. Divide that by the average waking time in a day 17 (24 hours in a day, minus the average hours of sleep 7) and you get 100.9 actual waking usable days. That’s a bit more prac­tical than simply using 24, because how can you compare hours of active television-watching to sleep? Assuming the average amount of sleep per person who watches TV and who doesn’t is fairly similar, their choice of what to do with the remaining 17 or so waking hours is what’s more useful and rele­vant to discuss. Even if not — even if we used the full 24 hours — 71.5 days is still an incred­ible amount of addi­tional life regained.

Whoa. What would happen if we stopped watching TV completely?

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Hot Chicks with Douchebags

Fitting image cour­tesy of the contro­ver­sial site Hot Chicks with Douchebags

It was about 11 PM on a midsummer’s Friday night in Huntington Beach — a popular beach city in Southern California known for its surf. Waves crashing in the back­ground, almost drowned out by the boom-boom-booms of dance floors; the salty smell of the ocean, flirting with the chem­ical baths of drug­store cologne and hair­spray. An evening when you can plug in and plug out at anytime; it’s the perfect place and time to hit the cover-free bars, food digs, and ocean­front house parties for seem­ingly any aged adult.

While a gener­ally nice and expen­sive place to live, places like this can often be known as a breeding ground for “brahs” and their Affliction-wearing, bro-culture embracing, bros that sport SoCal stickers on their rear wind­shields. While there’s nothing inher­ently wrong with that, they often portray the quin­tes­sen­tial jerk/asshole that anyone can relate to.

So my friends and I are out ‘n about Main St., and not being huge on the getting “WAAAAASTTEDDD” rage scene, we tend to have enough brain­cells avail­able to notice what’s going on around us. This night, for what­ever reason, “love” was in the air and it seemed as if wher­ever you looked there were couples. The fasci­nating part of this was not only that a good portion of the bro-couple guys were coming across as arro­gant jerks, but the fact their girl­friends were hot… and not just bro-hoe slutty hot — these girls were gorgeous and nice.

One of our acquain­tances that we met up with couldn’t get over the fact that these “douchebags” had these “hot babes” all over them, while there were plenty of “better, nicer men” out that night whom deserve her more (AKA him). Amidst his throwing of a fairness-fit, I attempted to be posi­tive and said we should assume that they were prob­ably actu­ally good guys inside, since we don’t have any idea and shouldn’t be THAT quick to judge.

Almost as if straight out of a movie, the next moment a “bro” proceeded to be a total asshole to his girl­friend and cause a scene right in front of us. All eyeballs imme­di­ately darted to me, and I was left as the jackass explaining for the remainder of the night, how on earth women can be attracted to these guys… since it obvi­ously wasn’t because they were secretly soft cuddly stuffed love bears on the inside.

So gentlemen, it’s time once and for all to explain in simple, basic terms, why women date jerks and assholes instead of nice guys. It may seem para­dox­ical and enig­matic, but once I explain why women are attracted to these guys, and what they do that average nice guys don’t — you’ll see quite clearly what’s elusive to most, in order to solve this puzzle. While this is in no way a complete guide on addic­tive behav­iors, code­pen­dency, abuse, or emotional & mental issues — I do hope it serves as a primer illu­mi­nating where typical “nice girl/jerk” rela­tion­ships arise from.

I’ll be covering the wide range of points in this article, aimed at well-intentioned, good men that are looking to under­stand this phenom­enon and become a more attrac­tive and successful man with women. In this one article, you’ll learn all this:

  • What it is that makes these jerks attrac­tive, and how to utilize these “dark” qual­i­ties in a posi­tive way.
  • The real, hard truth why some women seem to “put up with him” even though you think these women could do much better.
  • Why you should typi­cally run in the oppo­site direc­tion when you see these kinds of women.
  • Politically incor­rect reasons why these aren’t the droids women you’re looking for.
  • The few times when you should chill out and give certain girls a break that are often around losers.
  • The real reason these jerks are dating your women and what to do about it.

The views expressed herein refer to a very specific kind of man and women; they in no way encourage sexist views towards either gender. The stances I’m about to take are to empha­size my point, and don’t neces­sarily reflect my everyday views of the general popu­la­tion. I’m going to speak as everyday friends do about this, not in a acad­emic or “proper” fashion. If you’ve read my other arti­cles, it’s obvious I love women as equals — simply wishing the best for every­body on their journey.

This following article may seem a bit… harsh. That’s because, well,  it is. It’s not called “why jerks are assholes to women” (even though you can invert the points in this article and have a good idea), nor is it called “how we can all hold hands and become in touch with our oneness”. No. This is to bring aware­ness on this one dynamic out of many.

Sometimes we all need a good kick in the ass. There’s so much crap and foo-foo nonsense around this partic­ular topic, and I’m taking off the kiddie gloves to bluntly call it how I see it. It’s a lengthy article, but will completely address this issue in a NO BS way, yet also more whole­some than I have yet to find written anywhere else.

Without any further ado, let’s get right to it!

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